Busting the "Open-Mindedness" Bubble

[hkellick]

OK, I'm in a particularly foul mood today, and something stupid just raised my hackles, so I'm going to spot gibberish in my journal for a little bit.

Society teaches us we're supposed to be open-minded, to respect everyone regardless of race, religion, sex, personal beliefs, personal handicaps, age and any number of other options.
And then turns around and paints everything in broad strokes of Men and Women, Black and White, Catholic and Protestant.
We teach our kids in equality. I swear to god (and I'll fight you tooth and nail on this one, Kristen), I WILL NOT. I will teach my children to see in black and white (possible pun not intended) because that's how the world works.

Deep inside, we know that there's no equality. We know men aren't EQUAL to women. We know that gay people aren't equal to straight people. We know handicapped people are not equal to those of us who aren't.
The argument, the since-man-became-conscious argument that's been going on is: Who is Better.

You hear it all the time:
The bible tells you homosexuality is immoral. So straight people are BETTER than gay people.
You hear off-color jokes about how once you go black, you don't go back. Blacks are BETTER lovers than whites.
And, hell, even the dean of Princeton is trying to tell us (I'm NOT saying he's right) that boys are BETTER than girls at Science and Math.

We can try to see past the common divisions: past religion, politics, race, sex etc. etc... I'm saying try, because most of us can't.. because most people clothe themselves in ONE of these divisions.. as a good liberal or a good christian or as a black worthy of black pride.
We can TRY to see past these people.. and try to see everyone as individuals.. and then discover, for yourself, that there are STILL worse people and better people.

My point.. if there's much of a point here at all is... let's get off the equality talk. There is no equality. Try to accept people as individuals, try not to lump and accept that some of us suck and some of us rock and that there will ALWAYS be divisions between those who suck and those who rock.

Comments

[soreth.livejournal.com]

Just because you can't have equality, there's no reason to go and dump on equitability. I don't give a damn who's better than someone else at math, or at being a good writer, or at making armpit noises; they all have the same basic human rights. In that sense they are exactly equal.

Isn't that what counts?

[phoenixsong]

*blink*

I'm not getting into this with you over LJ, and especially not without a context.

[janinedog]

there will ALWAYS be divisions between those who suck and those who rock

Do you think that on an individual or group basis?

I agree that there are individuals who are better at some things than others. But I don't think you can say all people belonging to <this group> are better than all people belonging to <that group>. Of course everyone's different, and, on average, groups of people are different too. But that doesn't mean that there can't be a member of a group that is better than a member of another group, even if the group average is not.

Hopefully that made some sense. :P

[blackfelicula.livejournal.com]

I challenge everyone to be many-colored flowers in a forest of right and wrong.

[peachtess.livejournal.com]

I agree that we shouldn't teach children equality. Here's my reasons from not so much a parenting point of view but as an educator. Equality usually ends up teaching "white" based culteral curriculum. The vast majority of students are caucasian middle class so you pretend everyone is caucasian middle class and thats how you teach them. Studies of child development and education have proven this just doesn't work. The melting pot theory doesn't work in pratice because there is no equality and your neglacting a large part of your classroom and destorying the childs respect of their home culture.
So as an educator and even as a parent you need to teach diversity vs. equality. Diversity says yes everyone is different and thats okay..in fact thats great..and we need to respect those differences in others and in ourselves.