| The dying gasps of an age of ignorance |
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| Blog |
| Tuesday, 03 March 2009 16:38 |
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I was born in 1966 and consider myself a child of the 1970s. At any rate, this is the time when most of my formation seems to have taken place. There have been refininements since then, but how I came to percieve the world was formed during that time. It was a turbulant time (perhaps not as turbulant as the 1960s, but I have almost no memory of them). It was a time when racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimmination existed. Where prejudiced ideas and notions about people, their capabilities ruled. I couldn't understand it. the colour of a person's skin, or the ancestral race of a person, the gender of a person, the language spoken, none of these made a person better or worse. I believed that people held such foolish ideas out of ignorance (either that or it was out of idiocy). I came to the conclusion that such ideas were the result of ignorance and, happily this would soon be extinct thanks to education. My line of reasoning was something as follows: For most of human history, people have led meagre lives of subsitence, struggling to survice from one year to the next. Knowledge and power was kept in the hands of a few who manipulated people according to their whims. And the masses, lacking education, had no way of knwoing any better. If your king said something, then who were you to question. However, slowly, over time, this changed. People gained more power for themselves. Had more say in their day to day existence. While early forms of democracy existed, they were far from perfect, since knowledge, education was still available to the few, the elite. After the second world war, I saw what I thought was a critical change in history - universal education. finally, people would be taught, would learn, would be freed from their ignorance. The Vietnam War, the Cold War were all relics of a dying age, a bloody testament to the power of madness and ignorance. With education, people would come to see that this sort of behaviour, constant aggression were wrong. I astounded when Ronald Reagan was elected. How could we (well, the Americans), in this age of knowledge, elect such an ancient dinosaur? Of course, Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain wasn't any better, nor was Breznev, or Andorpov or Chernko in the USSR. Clearly these were the final acts of ignorance in its death throes. Gorbachev seemed to signal the end of the era of ignorance. Of course, we still had that old dinosaur governing the US, but surely, he could see what was going on? Apparently not. And were are we today? Are we any more enlightened? Are we any more adavanced? I wouldn't bet on it. We still live in an age of ignorance. We still live in a world where prejudice and ignorance drive people. Do you want proof? When they talk about president Obama in the United States, they don't talk about him as a president. They talk about him as a BLACK president. He is not a man, he is not a person, he is a labelled person. He does not stand on his own, he is not his own, he is label. Until we see and treat people as human beings - without labels, without prejudice - we continue to be a people who walk in ignorance. /\/\/\/\/\/\/\\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\\/\/\/\ Apologies for any spelling mistakes or any incoherence, since I am hurridly typing this before getting back to workign on the house. It is likely I will update this post in a few days time. |
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I was constantly annoyed by how much emphasis the CBC was putting on Obama's blackness. What does it mean for black people. Etc. Why couldn't they just treat him as a human being.
Things I didn't write about were the idea that women were too feeble to handle education, or too weak to be doctors, or couldn't run marathons because everybody knew their uterus would fall out (women were not allowed to run in the Bostaon Marathon until sometime in the 1970s because medical opinion was they just couldn't do it). I could go on about how girls aren't allowed to play on boys sports teams. Or how fighting is an integral part of hockey (it would be a sissy sport without it). etc ...
Despite of the hardships and failure to trusting our leaders,the stories still repeat themselves.each and every human being is responsible regarding that matter.
nothing to do but to hope for the best,I am one among billions of people who believe that Pres. Obama will do some changes.no choice but to be optimist that the depression of mankind that global crisis brought us would end...soon...
btw,I made my salad,and I got the idea from you.pls take a peek if you find a free time and good luck to selling your house!I hope you can get a nice deal. :)
Of course, we still have people with the old ways of thinking (Putin, Mugabe, the warlords of Afghanistan are all notable examples).
There were a number of things that made me more sensitive or aware. The first being the son of Polish parents, made me sensitive to people who were always considering Eastern Europeans as suspect (possible Communist agents), seeming not to have regard for the lives of people living in the Communist Block, sinc ethey were the enemy. All I knew was that I had extended family there - not enemies.
There was the Vietnam war. That played big. The US had mandatory military service (you could see the ads reminding American youth of their duty and obligations mixed in with the Saturday morning cartoons).
There was the Lebanese Civil war starting in 1975. There was the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the capture of American hostages.
I don't think I was really politically aware un til around 1976 or so. I remember Jimmy Carter as the President of the United States. I remember Pierre Trudeau as Canada's Prime Minister (and Joe Clarke - briefly).
Nuclear weapons, the threat of global annihilation (the MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction, policy that was supposed to keep us safe).
In the 1990's, after the fall of Communism, I think the world was a very quiet and safe place.
I tihnk you will find kids born in the mid ti late 1990s will probably be more politically sensitive - given the current state of the world.
yes,I really hope that he will fulfill and pursue all his beautiful and encouraging words...He`s the American President but it is the fact that the whole world is counting on him.Honestly,I am praying for his safety...
About the dressing of my salad,Richard,I juts purchased it,all of my salad dressings,a matter of fact.There are lots of delicious dressings in the store and you can pick your own calorie-level choice. :)
I like cabbage,too,even my family,with coleslaw.
We will see if his words of hope and cooperation turn into genuine actions.
So, to talk about him as a black president is really talking about him in the context of what it means to the country's history, which is how a president SHOULD be discussed as opposed to discussing the identity of the president himself. Had Hillary been elected, she would have been a "female president" because that, too, would be a novelty.
If that's correct then the second black president won't receive nearly as much attention to his or her skin colour because that particular uniqueness will have been violated.
Aside, though, I find it silly for a number of reasons. One if that, if you want to accept that there was a barrier in the US that prevented a black person from becoming president, then you also have to accept that there was no barrier preventing a black person from becoming US Secretary of State and a number of other high-ranking positions in the US government.
I agree that the "what does it mean for black people?" stuff was a bit silly, though. But I think that thought came from the "black community" (another stupid generalization) itself. I think that's where CBC picked up that particular meme from. I don't think there were that many white people who thought that it meant anything of great significance to black people in general, but if you talk to some black people then you'll see that it is meaningful to them. And that's part of the problem, really... that a lot of black people think it is significant.
I don't have a problem with categorization, though, as long as the category isn't too broad. I don't have enough free time to risk imagining that everyone is equally competent or reliable. My generalizations may not be race-based (although there is sometimes a cultural component that can't be separated from race in all cases), but they are based on something else that I can detect easily.
I think it was fine to refer to his black heritage at the time of his election, since this was a historic moment - one I still did not think the US was willing to entertain. But 3 months later at his inauguration, it should have been a non-issue (let's not even go to the "what does this mean for black people" discussions and panels and interviews that were being held).
Descriptive terms are fine, as long as they are used in a descriptive rather than labelling / categorizing manner. Race / colour should be no more an issue that hat size or shoe size, or hand span, or mother tongue or weight or whatever.