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Should Business Owners Have More Rights Than Blacks?
With the end of Jim Crow, business owners had fewer rights. But blacks had more rights. Whose freedom counts?
Black History Month has got me thinking about Rand Paul’s belief that business owners should have more rights than Blacks.
What? You say. Paul never said that!
Well, not in those words. He’s probably never thought about it that way, himself. But that’s the implication of his stand on the Civil Rights Act, which forced White business owners to hire and serve Black people on an equal basis with Whites.
Like other libertarians Rand feels there is a trade-off between liberty and equality. The more fairness arises via legislation, the more freedom is suppressed.
Government is tyranny, we are told. Government should not force private businesses to do anything other than abide by contract law and pay as few taxes as possible to support police and defense.
Under segregation, allowing Blacks to eat at any restaurant, stay at any motel or be hired for any sort of job would infringe on the liberty of Whites to keep Blacks out of their restaurants, motels or sundry businesses.
So last May, while running for senate, Paul stated that he would not have supported the Civil Rights Act at the time it was introduced (though as established law, he would not support its repeal now).
Too much freedom lost!
But whose liberty is lost, exactly? Did the Civil Rights Act infringe on the freedom of Blacks to eat, sleep or get a job? Or did it expand their autonomy?
When Black people could not find a place to eat or sleep, or even use a restroom while traveling in the South, health problems could arise, including falling asleep at the wheel — killing themselves and others. Health problems also stem from the poverty that comes from poor education and job discrimination. And a Southern resistance to paying for healthcare for Blacks was a key factor in fighting universal healthcare under Nixon.
How free is someone who’s sick or dead?
Whose freedom counts in Paul’s world? Really, who counts and who doesn’t?
Powerful Whites may have felt restricted under the Civil Rights Act. But powerless Blacks could gain liberty only with greater equality.
In Paul’s world might makes right: The powerful should stay powerful. And since they have much more control over political and economic structures, as well as media, they’re likely to retain privilege.
If there is a conflict between freedoms, whose rights should take precedence? Here we have property rights of Whites versus health, dignity, and self-determination of Blacks.
I personally feel that health, human dignity and autonomy should take precedence over property. But you make your own call.
Georgia Platts
Related Posts on BroadBlogs
“Why I Left the KKK”: One Man’s Revelation
How Does Racism Hurt Racists? The Case of Emmett Till
Rise Up or Beat Others Down: Reactions to Oppression
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Rape Epidemic in South Africa. Why?
More than one in three South African men admits committing rape, one in seven has joined a gang rape, and more than three quarters admit committing violence against women.
More than half of South African women have experienced violence at the hands of men, and one-quarter will be raped by age sixteen.
Why? Two thirds of rapists felt sexually entitled. Some wanted to punish women who had angered or rejected them. Others wanted to turn lesbians straight. And some were just bored.
These “reasons” may only get at surface issues. What else is going on?
Rachel Jewkes, a lead researcher on the study of violence in South Africa, feels that racism lies behind the abuse.
Rape holds a sexual component, but it is essentially about power. When a large population is oppressed, say through racism – even as manhood is defined as “dominant and powerful” – men may use rape as a weapon to gain a sense of personal empowerment. Rapists are often trying to bridge a gap between their impotent selves and the dominant men they seek to be. Imagine the control they feel when they restrain, take over, and invade another person’s body. Imagine how high and mighty they feel in creating humiliation.
Gay bashing is another weapon whereby some men try to create a sense of male superiority. If women act like men (sexually/stereotypically) how can men keep their sense of dominance? Hence, the need for “corrective rape” in South Africa that seeks to turn lesbians straight.
In one attack Millicent Gaika was beaten and raped for five hours as her assailant screamed, “I know you are a lesbian. You are not a man, you think you are, but I am going to show you, you are a woman. I am going to make you pregnant.” Since the women are often murdered “correction” sounds less likely than gay-bashing as motive.
Others were simply bored. So the eroticized violence of patriarchy comes in handy: Oh, let’s have some fun!
This is helped when women are seen as sex objects, and not people who have their own lives, goals, thoughts and emotions. When women become nothing but objects for sexual pleasure, it’s no wonder that one third of the rapists said they did not feel guilty.
So here we have powerless men trying to feel powerful, who live in a world where violence against women is eroticized, and where women are seen as mere objects. A recipe for epidemic rape.
Georgia Platts
If you would like to read more and sign a petition on corrective rape, go to change.org
I received this note from change.org: “Several weeks ago, survivors of “corrective rape” started a petition on Change.org to ask the Minister of Justice to declare corrective rape a hate crime… More than 65,000 signatures later, and the senior Ministry officials we targeted are apparently having major difficulty accessing their e-mail because of all the e-mails your signatures are generating! WOOOHOOOO! Well done & thank you!”
Let’s help keep it up!
Related Posts on BroadBlogs
Women Seeing Women as Sexier than Men
What Happens When You Beat A Sex Object?
Mind of a Rapist: Trying to Bridge a Gap between a Small Self and a Big Man
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Rise Up or Beat Others Down: Reactions to Oppression
People who feel oppressed can react in very different and opposing ways. Some grow, gaining character and compassion. Some tear others down in hopes of feeling bigger, themselves.
Life gave Shirley Sherrod good reason to be racist when a white farmer murdered her father in 1965, and an all-white grand jury failed to bring charges.
Many would become bigots. But Sherrod filled with purpose as she resolved to bring change to the South.
Others feel they are victims of reverse racism, fearing that they have lost, or will lose, jobs to minorities.
Right wing internet provocateur, Andrew Breitbart, seems intent on bringing others down, as he did in misrepresenting Shirley Sherrod, airing only her reluctance to help the white farmer, and ignoring the fact that she eventually did, and how she grew from the experience.
Some fill with hate, others fill with love.
I recently watched a PBS series on the Buddha, whose main concern was suffering. Sometimes suffering is unavoidable, like getting cancer or becoming a victim of cruelty. But too often we take on suffering that could be avoided when we respond by becoming depressed, angry, resentful, filled with hatred, or when we retreat into a shell.
These are all very human reactions, but where do they take us?
We all face challenges in this world, and some are atrocious. But we really only have two choices in how to react. We can act in ways that create misery for ourselves and others, or we can grow.
Georgia Platts
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How Does Racism Hurt Racists? The Case of Emmett Till
How does racism hurt racists? In many ways, actually. Here’s one:
The case of Emmett Till.
In 1955 this 14-year-old African-American left Chicago to visit his cousin in Mississippi.
One day his cousin dared him to flirt with a white woman. Accepting, he whistled at a woman who was working at a grocery counter, and called her “baby.”
Later that night the woman’s husband and his half-brother hunted Emmett down, kidnapped him, and the torture began. They cut off one of his ears, gouged out an eye, and put a bullet through his head before throwing him into a river.
The men were arrested. At the trial witnesses placed them at the site where Emmett was tortured, and the two men admitted the kidnapping.
But they faced a jury of white men in a Mississippi courtroom. After deliberating for less than an hour, they acquitted the case. One juror told a reporter, “If we hadn’t stopped to drink a pop, it wouldn’t have took that long.”
We easily see how racism hurt the young minority in this case. But how did it also hurt the white people who were involved?
When one person can torture another, with no conscience or concern, and when others dismiss the behavior, we see that racism dehumanizes its target, but it also dehumanizes the racist.
Georgia Platts
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Why Are We More Offended By Racism Than Sexism?
As a culture we are more offended by racism than sexism – which is not to say that we’re more sexist than racist.
But sexist jokes are more easily traded. Nearly anyone at a U.S. University knows the punch line to, “What’s the difference between a slut and a bitch?” (I’ll answer that in a later blog post.) I attended a university in which jokes about women students prevailed. Typical “coed joke”: “What’s the difference between a coed and the trash? The trash gets taken out once a week.”
When Don Imus called Rutger’s women’s basketball team “nappy headed hos,” we were offended by the racism. But the sexism was mostly overlooked.
In fact, sitcoms rarely have mixed-race casts, possibly because they fear a racist joke cropping up, or a comment coming across as such. Meanwhile, I’ve watched a couple of seemingly feminist shows that used the word “bitch” (and not in a good way) in nearly every episode: Ugly Betty and Life Unexpected. Some TV shows’ raison d’etre seems to be spewing sexism. Family Guy and The Man Show come to mind.
Gangsta’ rap is full of sexism, but few complain. If a genre of music talked about people of color the way that women are labeled in rap we would be outraged.
During the last presidential election mainstream media took way more shots at Hillary than Barack, as with Tucker Carlson’s well known crack, “When she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs.”
There’s a reason for the difference in offense.
Basically, women put up with sexism more than ethnic groups put up with racism. But why?
First, ethnic groups are aware of times and places when whites haven’t ruled, from present-day Japan to pre-imperial Africa. People of color know that things can be, and have been, different. U.S. racism is glaring by comparison.
On the other hand, most women are unaware of cultures that have existed with gender equality. Knowing nothing else, the inequity they face can seem natural and normal to them.
Many women attend churches that teach that men should be in charge. These women don’t want to go against God. I’m not aware of any ethnic minority churches that preach God wants whites to rule.
Men are women’s lovers, husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers. They love them and want to keep relationship with them. They don’t want to offend them.
Meanwhile, our culture does much to make sexism seem sexy, from Eminem, Rihanna, and Megan Fox sexing up domestic violence to a Rolling Stones billboard depicting a woman sprawled on the floor, mouthing, “I’m black and blue and loving it,” to Justin Timberlake slapping Janet Jackson around and ripping her blouse in a so-called “wardrobe malfunction.” Yeah, right.
All of this leaves ethnic minorities unified in their offense against inequality, while attitudes among women are more mixed. I’ve heard women say that they don’t want to be equal to men, but I’ve never heard an ethnic minority say they don’t want to be equal to whites.
So racism is more difficult to spew, as it meets greater indignation.
As women become more aware of sexism, and come to understand that their silence sounds like acceptance, things will more quickly change.
Georgia Platts
See related post: Eminem Makes Sexism Seem Sexy – And That’s A Problem
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