Think about this country's great movements for equality. What comes to mind?  Suffragettes, Civil Rights, AIM, Americans with Disabilities, Queer Nation, La Raza? All of these equality movements were generated to address an imbalance in the way society treats people with innate differences.  Often society is horrible to people with innate differences.  We have come to agree that this is bad, and so we seek Equality.

There are other differences between people. I may be a vegan, and you may eat T-bones, and we may disagree about which is the "right" way to live, but hey, that's life.  I am choosing to disagree with you, and this is not a trivial thing.  In fact these disagreements over time can change the normative idea of what is "right". And that's good.

But it's not the same thing as Equality.

Check out the comparison below,

Is this from Eschaton? MyDD? Annatopia? Or perhaps one of our own...PastorDan, maybe?  You've probably guessed that the answer is coming out of Right Field. You're getting warmer....

I think this goes to the heart of an "umbrella problem" - one that affects every other debate. This is not always a "Right vs. Left" fight.  There are concerned parties on both sides of the Great Divide, and we shouldn't forget that sometimes it's good for us to pull our own heads out of the Media Soup Bowl (MSB).

Let's discuss. Answer below the fold.

Setting: Bucolic campus. Happy coeds in collegiate conversation:

Super Ju: They charged me six dollars for this measly sandwich!  I really got jipped!

FOSJ (Friend of Super Ju):  Do you know what "gypped" means?

Super Ju: Yeah, it means ripped off, cheated.

FOSJ: How do you spell "gyp"?

Super Ju: "jay ai pee"

FOSJ: No, it's "gee wai pee", as in Gypsy, as in "Gypsies who con you and steal your money".  It's a totally racist term.  

Super Ju never used the term "gypped" again.  Why?
Not because she was afraid of the reprobation of her smart liberal friends.  
Not because she wanted to hide her secret internal racism.  
But because now that she knew where the word came from, it no longer meant what she wanted to say.

She grew as a person that day.  No one was censoring her.  No one was telling her she couldn't say "gypped".  She just didn't want to anymore.  

(story continues)

whoareyou

347 responses down AMEN we all want to talk

to each other but we talk at each other
so angry and tired and energized at the same time
everyone telling us what to do, how to fix it, IknowIknowIknow!!

I am not, you are not, we, as the DKos community believe
we are not so many things.
But the love runs out when left high and dry
And words come tumbling past the long lines to vote but don't put
that screen
In front of me any faster - I left work for this shit?

So experiences pile up in the diaries and we all have our song to sing
Hoping to sing loud enough to drown out the freepers and trolls with our mighty song of
what exactly? because we are all singing our own song

And so sing to me, my Kossacks, keep singing the pain to the screens.

As you are aware, the Religious Right has an extensive cadre of keyboard warriors waiting to fire off indignant letters to the guy who put "Happy Holidays" and a snowflake in his bakery window instead of a hearty "Merry Christmas" and a nativity scene.

The Right is outraged that cities and schools and stores want to include everyone in the holiday spirit. Happy Holidays? I don't think so - don't you realize everyone who matters celebrates Christmas?

It seems that the persecution of the majority is never ending!

Are you sick of this too?  

David Brooks pulls another social movement out of his ass in today's Op Ed piece "The New Red Diaper Babies". Leave it to Brooks to put a positive spin on the old "white flight" chestnut.

Reading this Op Ed is worth the elevation in blood pressure; It is a morally seductive, frightening window into the thinking of the 51%.