Hello there.
My name's bevenro, and I'm a bigot.
At least I think I'm a bigot. See, I don't like groups. Any groups. Black folks, white folks, red folks, Jews, Christians, Muslims, atheists, frat boys, indie rockers, doctors, accountants, evangelicals, progressives, people whose middle name starts with 'D'.
My dad used to say "you know bevenro, if some guy drove by in a red sports car wearing a backwards baseball hat and listening to the Eroica symphony, you'd say 'Goddamn it...it's one of those backward-hat, red-car driving Beethoven fanatics. I know the type. I hate the bloody lot of 'em'.
And he's right. I hate the bloody lot of 'em.
Follow me over the fold, you fold-jumpin' democratic-voting big-orange-site surfing groupthinkers...
***UPDATE***
I knew I'd get yelled at...but wasn't sure what it would look like. Normally I'd stand by my comments but there is something that you're missing that I should clarify....
As some people have picked up, the 'i hate groups' line is obviously tongue-in-cheek. I very much love groups, since I'm in many. I do have a problem where the oppression of certain groups takes precedence over the oppression of others--I believe that, despite what may have happened in history, underprivelege is underprivelege and that certain causes with more leverage behind them tend to take control at the expense of others. This bothers me. That's all...
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A bit more seriously, I'm writing this in response to the 'white privilege' diary that pretty much everybody seems to love. Diary itself is ok...it outlines reasons why whites tend to have some inherent privilege over blacks, and it is without a doubt true. In general, white people in America have not had to overcome the same obstacles that black people in America have. This is fine, I accept that, and it would do all of us some good to remember that.
At the same time, there are many other privileges that we enjoy. American privilege (remember the old line 'I'd never live anywhere else?). For many of us, economic privilege. Perhaps for many of the posters on this site, intellectual privilege. If you're 6'5, height privilege. If you're 120 pounds, weight privilege. If you have 20/20 vision, sight privilege.
I've probably lost half of you by now, saying 'what the hell's the point..you're going nowhere'. Fine. So I'll get to the point with a question.
Why are some forms of privilege or underprivilege--why are some 'isms' more celebrated that others? Is having darker skin more of an inherent negative than being blind? Is the Defense of Marriage Act the moral equivalent of Plessy vs. Ferguson? How do we choose which isms to fight for, which to postpone, and which to ignore altogether? There was a diary recently on what's referred to as 'audism', which refers to discrimination against the deaf. I wasn't familar with the term, but I found it interesting that the discussion, while certainly sympathetic, was far more nuanced and academic than the visceral reactions that tend to surface in discussions on racism, homophobia or anti-Semitism. I wondered how the person who posted that diary felt about that disconnect.
So...back to my distaste for groups. I have always felt that, lost in the public outcry and the funded megaphones of better-known groups who have faced discrimination, are the quiet voices of the truly downtrodden, people who are oppressed as individuals but who either have no will to speak or no power to make themselves heard. We scream for the rights of the middle class---but even on this site the homeless are largely forgotten. We have a voice here for the urban poor but not the rural poor (and this largely because the rural poor often have conservative cultural values--perhaps if we included them in the 'big tent' they may come around).
I see these dichotomies, and I'm bothered by them. I believe in helping people...not people with a certain skin colour, or a certain gender, or a certain religion, or a certain sexual preference, but people. Because of that preference, I tend to raise a lot of ire on this site because I question posts/diaries that raise a certain 'ism' over others--because it seems that the principle ends up taking precedence over real people.
I suppose I'll take some flack for complaining without offering a solution--but the truth is I don't have one...beyond the adage of 'be nice to people', which is how I was raised. Sometimes, there are some 'isms' that show up in my family...and unfortunately even within myself. But they never take precedence over the all-encompassing approach. Hell...some of my best friends are (insert name of group above). Lots of them.