Jeber’s

Are you a character?

Character is what a person has made of themselves. It’s the truest measure of a person. You’re born a certain color, in a certain country, into certain status, as a certain gender. It’s the height of folly to praise or blame a person based on what they have no responsibility for. What is a legitimate criteria is what they’ve made of the circumstances they were handed.

I may honestly consider the belief in gods to be so highly unlikely as to be insignificant, but that doesn’t mean that a Christian can’t also be a person of character. Religious beliefs or lack of same is only a small part of a person’s character. Their character is the sum of all the parts of a person’s life. I know of quite a few people of character who also believe in gods. I don’t hold it against them. The sum of their personality, their character, renders that unimportant. I also know of a great many people who claim Christian or otherwise religious beliefs who lack character, who are far from noble. I respect a person of character.

White Privilege

For the last 40 years I’ve maintained a passion for the subject of White privilege and racial equal rights. It’s not a popular position even among my liberal friends, who perhaps out of a feeling of guilt prefer to avoid the topic, or would rather focus on the equal rights angle and sweep the concept of White privilege under the rug.

I’ve recently come across Tim Wise, who writes eloquently on this subject. Here’s a snippet of one of his articles at the Red Room, titled “This is your nation on White privilege“. In this article he refers specifically to the current candidates for president.

For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you’ll “kick their fuckin’ ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.”

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office–since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s–while if you’re black and believe in reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), you’re a dangerous and mushy liberal who isn’t fit to safeguard American institutions.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do–like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor–and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college and the fact that she lives near Russia, you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist.

White privilege is being able to go to a prestigious prep school, then to Yale and Harvard Business School (George W. Bush), and still be seen as an “average guy,” while being black, going to a prestigious prep school, then Occidental College, then Columbia, and then Harvard Law, makes you “uppity” and a snob who probably looks down on regular folks.

White privilege is being able to graduate near the bottom of your college class (McCain), or graduate with a C average from Yale (W.), and that’s OK, and you’re still cut out to be president, but if you’re black and you graduate near the top of your class from Harvard Law, you can’t be trusted to make good decisions in office.

White privilege is being able to dump your first wife after she’s disfigured in a car crash so you can take up with a multi-millionaire beauty queen (who you then go on to call the c-word in public) and still be thought of as a man of strong family values, while if you’re black and married for nearly 20 years to the same woman, your family is viewed as un-American and your gestures of affection for each other are called “terrorist fist bumps.”

White privilege is when you can develop a pain-killer addiction, having obtained your drug of choice illegally like Cindy McCain, go on to beat that addiction, and everyone praises you for being so strong, while being a black guy who smoked pot a few times in college and never became an addict means people will wonder if perhaps you still get high, and even ask whether or not you may have sold drugs at some point.

In response to some of the more heated and ignorant comments he received on this article, he posted a follow up with the following analogy to help make his point clearer:

Taking things out of the racial context for a minute: imagine persons who are able bodied, as opposed to those with disabilities. If I were to say that able-bodied persons have certain advantages, certain privileges if you will, which disabled persons do not, who would argue the point? I imagine that no one would. It’s too obvious, right? To be disabled is to face numerous obstacles. And although many persons with disabilities overcome those obstacles, this fact doesn’t take away from the fact that they exist. Likewise, that persons with disabilities can and do overcome obstacles every day, doesn’t deny that those of us who are able-bodied have an edge. We have one less thing to think and worry about as we enter a building, go to a workplace, or just try and navigate the contours of daily life. The fact that there are lots of able-bodied people who are poor, and some disabled folks who are rich, doesn’t alter the general rule: on balance, it pays to be able-bodied.

That’s all I’m saying about white privilege: on balance, it pays to be a member of the dominant racial group. It doesn’t mean that a white person will get everything they want in life, or win every competition, but it does mean that there are general advantages that we receive.

America is a nation of White privilege, one of the more prominent examples of our national belief that might makes right and the majority rules.We offer faint praise for minority programs but drop their funding in order to free more funds for killing those in foreign countries who aren’t like us. America, where the continued presence of the KKK and Neo-Nazis is blamed on the right of free speech, when in reality they persist because there are Americans who still believe in the ideals espoused by those groups.

American society is still largely racist. Our social policies are still largely racist. We may claim our objections to Mexican immigrants are based on economics, but it’s rather obvious there’s a strong element of racism in our xenophobia as well.

I think it’s sad that in the 21st century, after all this nation has endured, we still have to ask if the country is ready for a Black president.

On the web no one knows you’re …

In the July 5, 1993 issue of The New Yorker, a Peter Steiner cartoon revealed a truism.

The cartoon was funny, but the message it conveyed turned out to be one of the most valuable features of the internet.

Suddenly no one could judge you (with the implied and find you wanting) based on your age or gender or race. You could recreate yourself as an avatar of your mind. Everyone you ever met in cyberspace would only know the you that you allowed to be known, and nothing would be more the eYou than the words you used, the thoughts you typed out for us to read.

Those of us who for years have been humanists, believers in the basic decency of humanity, saw this next medium of communication as a real chance for people around the world to share their common humanity with anyone else with whom they could connect. It would no longer matter if you were a poor child in Vietnam or the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. The quality of your mind would be the leveler. Here was a means for people to get to know each other at a less superficial level than judging them by their age, gender or race. We were idealists.

“Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist” George Carlin

There’s talk around the internets about racism again. Many of us have spent years objecting to and rallying against racism. The internet gave us a reason to hope racism would quickly disappear from the mind-pool. Once race was no longer obvious or easily discerned, it would cease being of any importance. We further hoped this race-ignorant attitude would speedily spread throughout the real world. We may have been overly optimistic.

Louis Gray has written up the latest chapter in this sad saga on his blog, LouisGray.com. If you want to delve deeper into this situation, check out the conversations on Friendfeed.

It’s good that these conversations are taking place. Racism, like sexism, shouldn’t be allowed to avoid scrutiny. Those of us who find racism ignorant need to speak out against its infection of the internet. The racists should be held accountable for their attitudes.

Freedom of speech? I’m all for it. Being held responsible for the attitudes you espouse? I insist on it.

The internet still has the potential to help humanity evolve to the next level. We can leave behind our less-than-noble fears and superstitions (the breeding ground for racism) and let the internet guide our real lives. See others for who they are, not what they are.

The alternative isn’t good.

Non-believers are just being selfish

Selfishness is not a sin, not a defect, it’s the obvious and unavoidable conclusion of our individuality. We are self-aware beings, aware that we cannot know anyone else better than we know ourselves thus are forever trapped behind the wall of ourselves. Selfishness is a part of our character. It’s our survival instinct. It’s why we admire those who put their own safety and life at risk to aid another. We know how hard that is. Our self-fascination is a factor in our mental health. Like a good sense of humor.

“Depends where you draw the line for your self, doesn’t it?”

It does, I agree. The line I suggested was the division between instinct and character. Selfishness is a base concept, part of our instincts. It’s our survival instinct. Layered on top of that are the adopted traits and mannerisms that further define us as individuals. In those upper layers are parental love, honor, selflessness, all our more noble and prized attributes. For those we may express pride or shame, each life is different. But our selfishness is part of our core beliefs. In itself it’s neither a good attribute or a poor one. It’s how we build our lives around it that speaks to our character.

“…when I act in my total interests, it would be misleading to call it selfish.”

Misleading, yes, but not inaccurate. The problem is that we’ve allowed the word selfish to be given a negative connotation it doesn’t deserve. There are biological and evolutionary reasons we’re selfish. If you act totally out of self-interest, you’re behaving selfishly. And there’s no good reason in the world why you shouldn’t. Like I said, selfishness is instinctual. It’s how we dress it up that expresses our values and defines our character.