On cultural intolerance
Oct. 2nd, 2008 12:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbr(A follow on from Speaking about bad ideas...atheism and race! since a lot of the same arguments came up in the comments)
Why I see cultural intolerance as racist: VERY few people in polite modern western society are explicitly racist in the "I hate everyone with dark skin" way. I tend to use "racist" to mean any tendency in society which consistently and unfairly discriminates against people of a particular ethnicity, even though most of these justify themselves using cultural rather than explicitly racist ideas. If you scratch the surface, a lot of the time these ideas are being applied arbitrarily or inconsistently and it really is about race after all.
I covered the basic ideas in Why you can't trust your values, so this is just a "few" *cough* extra things.
I mean you can't help but have values and judge other people by them, and since you don't grow up in a vacuum chances are you're going to end up seeing people from your own culture as being (on average) better since they follow your values more closely. But you have to be very careful about thinking about where those values come from, and if you're applying them fairly, and what consequences you bring from them.
Short version:
It's ok to say "I don't understand why more americans don't oppose the death penalty, though I guess I can see how it ties in with the emphasis their society tends to place on justice"
It's not ok to say "All christians are a bunch of bloodthirsty savages, just look at the bible and the way they all support the death penalty"
A lot of "obvious" moral situations are actually incredibly subjective, and what seems incredibly harmful and unnecessary is often deeply tied up with everything a member of that culture values so to ask them to change is a lot more significant than it seems.
Also, all cultures are complex and heterogeneous, with every tradition and opinion tying into all the others in complicated ways, and every member of that society having their own unique perspective. The borders and intersections of any given culture/religion/ethnic group etc are complex and fuzzy too. There's a lot of statements here which to be accurate should have "mostly" "in general" etc added in but this post is long winded enough as it is :D
To give a trivial example: wedding gifts. In Australia, everyone gives a gift, and it costs $100ish and is usually homewares, and everyone is told about the registry. That seems perfectly logical to me.
In America, people only give gifts if they feel like it, and so it's considered incredibly rude to assume they'll give you one.
Thus they think we're unbelievably selfish and grasping for so brazenly telling everyone about our registries and assuming a gift, while we think they're illogically coy and etiquette driven for setting up a registry and then not telling people about it unless they ask.
Other cultures just give money, which seems impersonal to us Australians but I imagine they see the giving of gifts we don't want or need (and the giver didn't even pick out!) as an absurd pantomime with no purpose.
Some give larger presents (so small and thoughtless!) some larger (so inconvenient and grasping!) while of course the amount we spend just happens to be exactly right.
And while I can see how those other traditions have their advantages, I am much happier with my own.
On the other hand, my dad is 100% australian and yet thinks gifts are pointless unless you happen to hit apon the Perfect Gift and tends not to give or want them. But he still wouldn't be happy in America, since he disagrees with so much else in their culture :)
Consider the death penalty. Like most australians I find it abhorrent. What's more worrying is the way that we paint asian countries as incomprehensible savages for doing it..but not Americans. Since we've all grown up consuming a lot of american media we can see the cultural context, the fact that their morals are not monolithic or simple, and the other good points of their society. The problem with most other societies, is that we don't know those things, so all we see is the (to us) incomprehensible and morally bad practices out of context, and see them as a homogenous society with no good points. Which is not to say we wouldn't still disapprove even with a more nuanced understanding, but you wouldn't get the "That whole society clearly sucks" knee-jerk reaction.
Another example is "Female Genital Mutilation". I am totally not saying it's good, but it is unfortunately just part of the continuum of unnecessary gynecological procedures performed on women and children either without their consent or after huge social pressure which happens in most societies. So why do we focus so much on it (and it comes up lot) instead of labiaplasty or forced sterilisation or Involuntary sex assignment? Because in all those cases we know the context, so it doesn't seem as incomprehensible or wrong, and we know how complicated it would be to change things, and that this behaviour is just a symptom of entrenched issues. Also, we're aware that there are people within the society working against it. But we can rail against the "strange" practices of other cultures without having to question our own values, society, and complicity, and we can happily talk about how those societies should just "listen to reason" and "simply" change their behaviour. Noone talks about sending the UN into America to stop girls being pressured into plastic surgery.(I came across a really good article about this but have lost it. Here is some discussion of the issues)
Another example is wearing headscarves: for your typical non-muslim western woman, it would feel oppressive, so it's easy for us to imagine it being equally oppressive for mulsim women. But afaict for them it's more like I would feel about covering my chest, just a natural form of modesty, and not wearing it makes them feel under-dressed and uncomfortable. Beyond that, you have the dodgy power balance of women from a non-white culture being told by white people that they don't know what's good for them and having their autonomy taken away, which ties into a long history of racism and colonial oppression, so wearing it becomes a sign of solidarity and self expression (I know, some muslims are white and some people who are against head-scarves are not. As always this stuff gets fuzzy and complicated)
I'm not saying we can't disapprove of other cultures behaviour, but it's very important to try to understand what's really going on rather than having a simplistic knee-jerk response based on limited information. And if we want to work to change other people's society (and that's a pretty problematic thing to do, so it's important to think hard about our motives), we should do so by supporting those within the society working towards our goal rather than coming in from the outside and messing everything up. And really, shouldn't we be working to fix the injustices we perpetuate before telling off other people for theirs?
This is discussed further within the context of religion and atheism Towards an Intersectionality of Atheism and Race.
Why I see cultural intolerance as racist: VERY few people in polite modern western society are explicitly racist in the "I hate everyone with dark skin" way. I tend to use "racist" to mean any tendency in society which consistently and unfairly discriminates against people of a particular ethnicity, even though most of these justify themselves using cultural rather than explicitly racist ideas. If you scratch the surface, a lot of the time these ideas are being applied arbitrarily or inconsistently and it really is about race after all.
I covered the basic ideas in Why you can't trust your values, so this is just a "few" *cough* extra things.
I mean you can't help but have values and judge other people by them, and since you don't grow up in a vacuum chances are you're going to end up seeing people from your own culture as being (on average) better since they follow your values more closely. But you have to be very careful about thinking about where those values come from, and if you're applying them fairly, and what consequences you bring from them.
Short version:
It's ok to say "I don't understand why more americans don't oppose the death penalty, though I guess I can see how it ties in with the emphasis their society tends to place on justice"
It's not ok to say "All christians are a bunch of bloodthirsty savages, just look at the bible and the way they all support the death penalty"
A lot of "obvious" moral situations are actually incredibly subjective, and what seems incredibly harmful and unnecessary is often deeply tied up with everything a member of that culture values so to ask them to change is a lot more significant than it seems.
Also, all cultures are complex and heterogeneous, with every tradition and opinion tying into all the others in complicated ways, and every member of that society having their own unique perspective. The borders and intersections of any given culture/religion/ethnic group etc are complex and fuzzy too. There's a lot of statements here which to be accurate should have "mostly" "in general" etc added in but this post is long winded enough as it is :D
To give a trivial example: wedding gifts. In Australia, everyone gives a gift, and it costs $100ish and is usually homewares, and everyone is told about the registry. That seems perfectly logical to me.
In America, people only give gifts if they feel like it, and so it's considered incredibly rude to assume they'll give you one.
Thus they think we're unbelievably selfish and grasping for so brazenly telling everyone about our registries and assuming a gift, while we think they're illogically coy and etiquette driven for setting up a registry and then not telling people about it unless they ask.
Other cultures just give money, which seems impersonal to us Australians but I imagine they see the giving of gifts we don't want or need (and the giver didn't even pick out!) as an absurd pantomime with no purpose.
Some give larger presents (so small and thoughtless!) some larger (so inconvenient and grasping!) while of course the amount we spend just happens to be exactly right.
And while I can see how those other traditions have their advantages, I am much happier with my own.
On the other hand, my dad is 100% australian and yet thinks gifts are pointless unless you happen to hit apon the Perfect Gift and tends not to give or want them. But he still wouldn't be happy in America, since he disagrees with so much else in their culture :)
Consider the death penalty. Like most australians I find it abhorrent. What's more worrying is the way that we paint asian countries as incomprehensible savages for doing it..but not Americans. Since we've all grown up consuming a lot of american media we can see the cultural context, the fact that their morals are not monolithic or simple, and the other good points of their society. The problem with most other societies, is that we don't know those things, so all we see is the (to us) incomprehensible and morally bad practices out of context, and see them as a homogenous society with no good points. Which is not to say we wouldn't still disapprove even with a more nuanced understanding, but you wouldn't get the "That whole society clearly sucks" knee-jerk reaction.
Another example is "Female Genital Mutilation". I am totally not saying it's good, but it is unfortunately just part of the continuum of unnecessary gynecological procedures performed on women and children either without their consent or after huge social pressure which happens in most societies. So why do we focus so much on it (and it comes up lot) instead of labiaplasty or forced sterilisation or Involuntary sex assignment? Because in all those cases we know the context, so it doesn't seem as incomprehensible or wrong, and we know how complicated it would be to change things, and that this behaviour is just a symptom of entrenched issues. Also, we're aware that there are people within the society working against it. But we can rail against the "strange" practices of other cultures without having to question our own values, society, and complicity, and we can happily talk about how those societies should just "listen to reason" and "simply" change their behaviour. Noone talks about sending the UN into America to stop girls being pressured into plastic surgery.(I came across a really good article about this but have lost it. Here is some discussion of the issues)
Another example is wearing headscarves: for your typical non-muslim western woman, it would feel oppressive, so it's easy for us to imagine it being equally oppressive for mulsim women. But afaict for them it's more like I would feel about covering my chest, just a natural form of modesty, and not wearing it makes them feel under-dressed and uncomfortable. Beyond that, you have the dodgy power balance of women from a non-white culture being told by white people that they don't know what's good for them and having their autonomy taken away, which ties into a long history of racism and colonial oppression, so wearing it becomes a sign of solidarity and self expression (I know, some muslims are white and some people who are against head-scarves are not. As always this stuff gets fuzzy and complicated)
I'm not saying we can't disapprove of other cultures behaviour, but it's very important to try to understand what's really going on rather than having a simplistic knee-jerk response based on limited information. And if we want to work to change other people's society (and that's a pretty problematic thing to do, so it's important to think hard about our motives), we should do so by supporting those within the society working towards our goal rather than coming in from the outside and messing everything up. And really, shouldn't we be working to fix the injustices we perpetuate before telling off other people for theirs?
This is discussed further within the context of religion and atheism Towards an Intersectionality of Atheism and Race.
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-02 05:55 am (UTC)Unless you run into a person who is genuinely opposed to the death penalty in all cases and thinks the Americans are also incomprehensible savages (on this matter at least) for doing it...
no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 03:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-04 01:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-05 02:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-02 07:10 am (UTC)I would say it is essential that you have values and judge other people by them. The way you phrased that makes it sound like having values is an undesirable trait. I also think that societies can, to an extent, be measured by their attitudes towards "basic" or "universal" human rights... while that is perhaps a Western concept, I believe it is based upon sound reasoning. Others might not agree, which is why I think it's important that people realise that there is no such thing as an objective judgement.
On a related note, I find the attitudes towards human rights in American society to be incomprehensible and savage in many areas, including their use of the death penalty. Every society has failings in human rights, and that is inevitable... but at the same time, some societies have more problems in that regard than others, and I have no problem with criticising them for it. The old rebuttal of "You can't criticise my faults because you have faults too" is the stupidest and most logically misguided argument possible (not aimed at anyone in particular, that line of reasoning just bugs the crap out of me because I hear it all the time).
Forced sterilisation can be justified in cases where it improves quality of life (hoo boy, there's a subjective area). However, in cases where it can't be medically justified, it's viewed as being easily as reprehensible as female genital mutilation - the forced sterilisation of Jewish women under the Nazi regime is commonly presented as one of the most monstrous aspects of their campaign. Consent is the issue that separates it and female genital mutilation from labiaplasty; regardless of whether that consent can really be said to be informed, it's still an important distinction, which is why plastic surgery isn't as big an issue. There's a world of difference between choosing to conform and being forced to conform.
And really, shouldn't we be working to fix the injustices we perpetuate before telling off other people for theirs?
I don't see why it's a problem to do both. Your point on the colonialist mindset is very important, though. Change should come from within a society, not without. It's okay to help change, but not to force it.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 04:35 am (UTC)Oh, yes, I think there's LOTS of things wrong with american society, from the death penalty to the lack of preferential voting. I'm not saying we can't criticise america, I'm saying that we can do so without forgetting the good points and complexities of their society, and tend to frame it as wanting those parts of America which agree with our values to prevail rather than wanting to take them over and convert them. When we criticise other countries we aren't always so nuanced, and that is what I think is bad.
The thing is, according to an article I read a lot of what's seen here as "female genital mutilation" is consensual, done because the girls feel it's a necessary part of being a "proper woman". So apart from the poorer medical situation it is pretty equivalent to labiaplasty. Which isn't to say I'm in favour of it, just that's it's complicated.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 04:57 am (UTC)I apologise, my understanding of female genital mutilation is limited. I was under the impression that it was generally performed on children, and was intended to make sex more painful. That seems far removed from cosmetic modification (which is not to say that the promotion of labiaplasty is a good thing).
There's an interesting grey area: how informed do you have to be before it's okay to criticise? Also: how many roads must a man walk down? :P
no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 05:25 am (UTC)My understanding of FGM is pretty limited too, and I think it varies a LOT depending on region etc.
There's an interesting grey area: how informed do you have to be before it's okay to criticise? Also: how many roads must a man walk down? :P
42 :D
But yes, it's hard. I mean we have to make judgements about all this stuff (foreign policy, the environment, politics in general etc) and if we go by the crappy generalisations of popular culture we'll probably make the wrong decisions, but it's not feasible to get a really detailed understanding of EVERYTHING. This is why I try to identify better crappy generalisations, and good rules of thumb like "it's better to let people within a country create their own change than force it from outside" but then the information I make those judgements based on is itself flawed...
Basic point: philosophy > cultural studies
Date: 2008-10-02 11:10 am (UTC)What about the flipside of the coin? What about cultural tolerance? I mean, it's ridiculously simple to argue that people finding elements of other cultures praisworthy is racist. Orientalism, for instance, grew almost entirely out of the belief that the "peoples of the Orient" were much more "exotic" and "rich" and "developed" and "mystical" than those in the Occident. Similarly, you'll see the same kind of construct going round about "spiritual wholeness" and "bonding with the land" in relation to pretty much indigenous group in the world. And I've seen it argued exceptionally well that that is just as detracting to views of a full and complete humanity for the people involved. Isn't this just as powerful argument when used to suggest that you should never find anything good in other people?
Re: Basic point: philosophy > cultural studies
Date: 2008-10-02 02:35 pm (UTC)This is from a whole one lecture thing we had in Geography though (which I can't find my notes on because I'm on a different computer). So I think it was just from Said(??) or something. Anyway it only proves your point. Even if you're glorifying the other, it still can be racist.
I do like how only indigenious groups (and to a lesser extent I think farmers can) can bond with the land. Doesn't matter how many generations of your family/or how long you've lived near/on "the land" you obviously can't derive any sort of spiritual satisfaction from it, to anywhere near the same extent, no matter how important it is to you. Heh look at that, I'm getting bitter now, and so it's probably a good idea to stop rambling :P
Re: Basic point: philosophy > cultural studies
Date: 2008-10-02 02:41 pm (UTC)This is tangential but still pisses me off, and you made me think of that.
Re: Basic point: philosophy > cultural studies
Date: 2008-10-03 05:01 am (UTC)Re: Basic point: philosophy > cultural studies
Date: 2008-10-03 05:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 07:23 am (UTC)Anyway, on with the debate. I don't think you can argue that it isn't wrong to have opinions about other cultures, and still hold that there are opinions that you need not be aware of, that are wrong to hold.
In the examples of love and stalking, or domestic violence and loving sado-masochism, for instance, you can actually define categories or orders that separate the two from each other (i.e. love). It's a category error to assume that love and stalking or abuse are relevantly similar. But it's fundamentally unclear that you can draw a distinction between "having and positive/negative attitude/opinion about a culture" and "having a positive/negative attitude/opinion about a culture and being racist" if there is no way of constructing racism other than in a manner that makes extensive reference to the opinions that you hold. And I'm not sure that there is. And I think your comments along the lines of "it's a bit vague" or "it's complicated but" indicate this confusion: it's doesn't seem like there are any good paradigm cases that can be used.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-05 03:20 am (UTC)Anyway, other than that I'm not sure what you point is: racism is fuzzy and subjective (true, but so are most things) so..what? We shouldn't discuss it or fight against it? Personally, while I think people might argue about whether or not a specific action is racist, and it's often hard to judge that sort of thing without going into a lot of messy specifics, I think the general nature of racism, and the sort of patterns of behaviours it creates, is fairly straight forward. And "It's complicated" is part of the point: that people like to oversimplify other cultures down too much.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-05 04:30 am (UTC)Things that are both "fairly straight forward" and "often hard to judge" aren't usually the same kinds of things at all. Or, even really things at all. And if you have an argument that starts from the premise that something is all quite simple, and leads to the conclusion that it's all very complex and is potentially impossible to identify in reality, then I think you have a problem, because I think that it means you must then accept that the thing you're looking for may not exist. It's a very powerful argument against the existence of racism/sexism/etc. to just say "oh, well, it's only a subjective claim about subjective wrongs." Or to say "well, you just think that because your beliefs are subjective and wrong." And I don't think you'd like that to come out of your arguments at all.
If I were to look for an analogy, I would say it would be akin to saying something like "it's very simple: there is a luminiferous ether" but "sometimes what we think is the ether isn't, and sometimes what we think isn't the ether is, and the things that fill the roles of realising the ether may change randomly and at any moment depending on what I decide." The most obvious conclusion to draw from someone who proposed this would be "there is no ether."
I think it's a lot neater to just identify types of beliefs that are wrong, for whatever reason. I like Garcia's "vicious disregard for the welfare of groups of people" for example, but that's at least partially because I'm a fan of virtue ethics, and it preserves a lot of the fuzziness I like to keep in ethics. And then sticking to them, until you find a better system. Because how else can you actually try and give yourself a foundation for action than taking something that provides you with values and motives to act from?
I have similar problems with a lot of fields, and quite often come down on completely the opposite side of the debate. I'm big on queer theory, for example, but realise that it's, in most cases, completely useless for any kind of dialogue about rights and justice. Because how do you go beyond something that effectively argues "there are structures"?
re: love. Depends on the theory of love you adopt. I like Rorty and Sartre, so I'd say stalking isn't love, because it has nothing of historicity of dynamic permeability about it, and abuse and stalking aren't love because it's an example of a situation where there's a massive objectification going on, which destroys the presence of any kind of connection between individual consciousnesses. Loving S&M is a bit different, but I'm willing to venture that it's possible for it to be love iff the participants are both sadists and masochists, and aware of the potential for the reversibility of roles. Admittedly, this would probably not be common.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-09 04:11 am (UTC)If I were to look for an analogy, I would say it would be akin to saying something like "it's very simple: there is a luminiferous ether" but "sometimes what we think is the ether isn't, and sometimes what we think isn't the ether is, and the things that fill the roles of realising the ether may change randomly and at any moment depending on what I decide." The most obvious conclusion to draw from someone who proposed this would be "there is no ether."
The thing is, most scientific theories are like that to some extent, and the fact that it's flawed doesn't mean it's not the best description so far. Most of the alternative explanations I've heard about how racism works ("It's just individual bad eggs" or "Really, black people control everything now") match up even more shoddily to reality.
Also, my first thought would be: that person does not understand what they're talking about. And that's pretty much the issue here: I'm still very much figuring out what I think, and do not have an arts student brain so find it a bit tricky sometimes. I used to not post about race for this reason, but people seem to enjoy my posts on the whole and it leads to less issues where people suddenly realise what my opinions are mid-conversation.
Something I tend to blur, though, is the difference between widely-agreed upon anti-racist principles and my own opinions. Assuming that the wikipedia page on "virtue ethics" gives the gist of what you're talking about, I tend to place more emphasis on the consequences of actions (though I don't think they're all that matters!), but I'm sure you could figure out a way to frame the same basic ideas in a more virtue ethics-y way. I mean, I guess I think you should work from the motive of considering what effect your actions have :)
no subject
Date: 2008-10-06 06:26 am (UTC)argh, sorry, my ' button is playing up
no subject
Date: 2008-10-07 02:41 am (UTC)Why the death penalty
Date: 2008-10-03 01:35 am (UTC)(1)"The Death Penalty", by Romano Amerio, a faithful Catholic Vatican insider, scholar, professor at the Academy of Lugano, consultant to the Preparatory Commission of Vatican II, and a peritus (expert theologian) at the Council.
www.domid.blogspot.com/2007/05/amerio-on-capital-punishment.html
titled "Amerio on capital punishment ", Chapter XXVI, 187. The death penalty, from the book Iota Unum, May 25, 2007
(2) John Stuart Mill, speech on the death penalty
http://www.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/web%20publishing/Mill_supports_death_penalty.htm
(3) "Catholic and other Christian References: Support for the Death Penalty", at
www.homicidesurvivors.com/2006/10/12/catholic-and-other-christian-references-support-for-the-death-penalty.aspx
(4) Immanuel Kant, "The Right of Punishing", inclusive of the death penalty
http://web.telia.com/~u15509119/ny_sida_9.htm
(5) "Capital Punishment: A Catholic Perspective",
by Br. Augustine (Emmanuel Valenza)
www.sspx.org/against_the_sound_bites/capital_punishment.htm
(6) "Defending Capital Punishment" by William Gairdner
http://www.williamgairdner.com/defending-capital-punishment/
(7) "The Death Penalty", by Solange Strong Hertz
http://www.remnantnewspaper.com/Archives/archive-death%20penalty.htm
(8) "Capital Punishment: The Case for Justice", Prof. J. Budziszewski, First Things, August / September 2004 found http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles4/BudziszewskiPunishment.shtml
(9) Just Violence: An Aristotelian Justification of Capital Punishment
http://www.csuchico.edu/pst/JustViolence.htm
Re: Why the death penalty
Date: 2008-10-03 03:17 am (UTC)(a) From now on, please sign your comments, even just with "anonymous", otherwise I don't know that you're (at least claiming to be ) all the same person
(b) No being rude to other commenters
(c) I uh..I totally can't figure out your point here. That lots of smart people have been in favour of the death penalty for complicated thought-out reasons? Wasn't that part of my point? And no, I can't be bothered reading all those links without knowing what I'm even supposed to be drawing from them :P