Tuesday, December 28, 2021

Tolerating People Who Happen to Have Red Hair: An Explosive Problem

 

The argument that I am about to make can, to some degree or another, be applied to any minority group and not just redheads. This certainly includes people like myself who are Jewish and on the autism spectrum. There should be no mistake; the argument here is sound but it is undoubtedly a hand grenade that can take out anyone, particularly the person foolish enough to try wielding it. Besides the importance of a strong sense of individual rights, the other important lesson that I would hope that readers take from this exercise is that giving people the benefit of the doubt is an essential value for a liberal democracy.   

When discussing tolerance, it is important to distinguish between individual tolerance and group tolerance. While a happy medium is theoretically possible, any attempt to argue for tolerance for individuals is going to be undermined the moment we begin to think of these individuals as members of groups that are distinct from the political community as a whole.  

Take the example of hair color. Readers may recall the Sherlock Holmes story of the Red-Headed League where the villain tricks his redheaded employer into believing in the existence of an organization that gives money to redheads. This fraud is perpetrated in order to get the employer out of his shop for several hours every day, allowing the villain to dig a tunnel across the street into the vault of a bank. The humor of the story lies in the fact that it is patently absurd that some wealthy person would so identify himself with his red hair that he would leave his fortune to benefit total strangers simply because they share his hair color. 

Imagine that our society would suddenly develop a prejudice against redheads and passed laws that segregated people with red hair into separate schools, limited their employment opportunities, and forbade them to marry non-redheads. Fairly quickly, there would develop a community of red-haired people, who gather together because the rest of society rejects them. Other redheads would attempt to cover their red hair in order to operate within general society. For example, someone like me might diligently shave every day to cover the red streaks in his beard and get a signed and notarized document attesting to the fact that all of his grandparents were pure non-redheads. This would likely create further prejudices against redheads as they would be transformed into an unseen menace attempting to infiltrate "respectable" society. Now, non-redheads, in order to not become "tainted" with redheadedness, must be constantly on guard and check their friends and neighbors to make sure that they are not secret redheads. 

The obvious argument against discrimination against redheads is that there really is no such thing as redheads but only individual people who just happen to have hair with a red pigment. Having red hair does not interfere with being a citizen in a liberal democratic society. People with red hair can make use of their reason to faithfully hold public offices from juror to president and serve in the military. 

This is a powerful argument for legal equality but it comes at a price, mainly that we assume that redheads really are just a collection of individuals who happen to have red hair and that there really is no such thing as a redheaded collective. The moment we begin to suspect that red hair stands as a proxy for actual cultural differences and even for different ways of thinking then we have to ask ourselves whether we think there is actually something valuable about these cultural differences and whether we believe that such people are well suited to operating a liberal democracy alongside non-redheads. 

What can people with red hair do to convince us that there really is no such thing as redheadedness and that they should be granted full rights? Clearly, people with red hair should make a point, as soon as the law and society allow them, of not differentiating themselves from people with other hair colors. An obvious manifestation of this would be large-scale intermarriage. People with red hair should have no objection to marrying people who do not have red hair and be at peace with raising children who do not have red hair and in no way identify with redheadedness. Clearly, people with red hair should not form charitable trusts for the benefit of other people with red hair so no "Red-Headed Leagues." The only exception would be for insisting that people with red hair really are like everyone else and eagerly await the day when the very idea of redheaded organizations will be so unnecessary as to be deserving of parody.  

This lack of redheaded identity should also extend itself to the study of history. While redheaded (name of people who live in the country) history should be taught, it should only be in terms of the history of the persecution of people with red hair and how it came to an end. This history should not be taught in terms of a conflict between peoples of different hair colors. People without red hair should not be treated as villains. On the contrary, examples of non-redheads who worked to fight for redhead rights should be emphasized in order to make sure that non-redheads do not feel guilty and to give them historical figures to relate to. 

Since redheads do not really exist as a distinct group, discussions of the sufferings of people with red hair should be universalized as a lesson on the importance of not judging people based on their hair color. Redheads who insist on remembering their history of persecution and remain mistrustful of non-redheads, insisting instead on redhead solidarity, should be castigated for failing to learn from their own history, making them just as bad as the color supremacists who once persecuted them. Outside of the history of redheads in times and places where they have been persecuted, there should be no general history of redheads. The fact that there have been kings with red hair who lived thousands of years ago in faraway lands (like, perhaps, King David) should be of no interest to contemporary people with red hair. We all agree that people with red hair can become presidents as well as enter into unconstitutional treaties with foreign dictators, sabotage the nation's economy with trade restrictions, and father illegitimate children.  

If redheads are really just individuals with red hair, then there should be no need for culturally responsive teaching for children with red hair. Such kids do not think differently than anyone else as hair color has nothing to do with brain structure. Furthermore, there should be no need for children with red hair to see people who "look like them." The moment advocates for children with red hair start saying otherwise, it stops being obvious why such children should be allowed into regular classrooms in the first place. If these children really are different then, perhaps, they really should be placed in separate classrooms to be with their "own kind."  

To be clear, we can expect non-redheaded people of goodwill to extend redheads some degree of charity and tolerate minor acts of tribalism. This might be out of guilt for the hair colorism of their parents, admiration for redheaded music, literature, cuisine, and comedy, or simply a sense that all of this hair color nonsense will eventually blow over on its own. That being said, at some point, if people with red hair push their tribalism far enough, this spirit of charity will end. Non-redheads will decide that redheads are taking advantage of the liberal nature of the general society, demanding rights as individuals while acting as a tribe and engaging in "reverse hair colorism." 

In essence, any attempt by people with red hair to treat their hair color as something relevant to their lives licenses everyone else to take notice of their hair color and use it against them. The moment someone is different in any meaningful way then the Pandora's Box of better or worse for the functioning of a liberal democracy is irrevocably opened. Think of people with red hair arguing for tolerance as a group as Wiley E. Coyote using a jackhammer on the precipice that he is standing on.   

Contrary to popular belief, tolerance is actually quite difficult in a liberal democracy. In contrast, for example, to a monarchy ruling over a diverse collection of people's running their own day-to-day affairs, in a democracy your neighbor who is not like you gets to vote on issues that directly affect your life. Furthermore, classical liberalism implies a commitment to a set of values that have historically been far from ubiquitous within human societies. A liberal democracy in which there are groups that lack a baseline commitment to liberal values will quickly turn into a sucker's game leading to political collapse. If we do not believe that redheads really support individualism and private property for all people, regardless of their hair color, but are simply using liberal democracy and the tolerance of the general society to advance their particular agenda then we will have no choice but to embrace our own non-redhead identity at the expense of building a country for everyone. 

 

Friday, December 17, 2021

Gone With the Master Narrative

In history, one constantly has to pay attention to who writes a source and what their interests are. This is not a value judgment. All sources have their limitations to some degree or another. This is why we engage in counter-reading. We are skeptical about anything that serves the author’s agenda but we readily embrace anything they say that harms their agenda. In my education classes, which are based around Critical Theory as opposed to critical reasoning, we are being taught something slightly different. We should not only look for the voices behind texts but also whose voices are being suppressed as if authors engage in oppression by the very act of writing. This sets up the concept of master and counter-narratives. 

From the perspective of Critical Theory, it is the job of the teacher to promote counter-narratives to rescue students from the grip of the master narrative. Any teacher who tries to simply do what history teachers have traditionally been supposed to do, mainly teaching facts and how to critically analyze them is guilty of silencing minority voices. It should be understood that, from the perspective of Critical Theory, minority voices are not really literal minorities but the purveyors of Critical Theory themselves, who are supposed to serve as the voice for authentic minorities who have been silenced. By silencing what is meant is that others have failed to fully embrace the assumptions of Critical Theory. In essence, Critical Theory is an attempt by those in power to justify their privilege and suppress anyone who disagrees with them by pretending that their opponents are the master oppressors while they are really the victims attempting to advance their counter-narrative. 

The true power of a master narrative can be seen in its willingness to unabashedly claim the moral high ground of a counter-narrative for itself with every expectation that you can intimidate your opponents into acquiescence. The true master claims to be a victim. If you can claim to be a victim then you implicitly earn the moral right to do all the sorts of terrible things to others that only masters are able to get away with. Real victims know that they do not have power and that it is useless to even speak up and claim to be a victim because the real oppressors will simply use it as an excuse to abuse them further. Morally sane individuals recognize that they are a mixture of oppressor and victim along a spectrum as are their opponents. They try to morally improve themselves in a variety of ways including trying to see things from their opponent's perspective.  

If you wish to understand the logic of a real master narrative, consider the example of the novel and film Gone With the Wind. On the surface, Gone With the Wind’s narrative of the Civil War and Reconstruction is an obvious master narrative. The heroes are literal slave owners and the book is a defense of the Confederacy and the Ku Klux Klan. All of this is true but it misses the fact that the true diabolical genius of the book is its ability to sell itself precisely as a counter-narrative. 

According to the Gone With the Wind narrative, which I find abhorrent and should not be the premise for any history class, once upon there lived a class of white Southern planters. They were a noble group with an interest in the finer things of life like manners and art as opposed to money. These planters were of such an elevated nature that they were capable of "ennobling" even the blacks who worked for them as slaves as this made the blacks part of the South's "uplifting" culture. The planters looked after their slaves as if they were "their own children." Then came the Northern Capitalist industrialists who cared nothing about culture but only for money. The Northerners built a mighty war machine and crushed the peaceful South. In order to justify their pillaging of the South, the Northerners claimed that they had come to liberate the slaves from the oppression of their masters. Many of the blacks believed these lies and turned against their "kind" masters who had treated them so well. In truth, these blacks were not being liberated. On the contrary, they were being enslaved to the relentless power of Capitalism.

The need to preserve a sense of aristocracy as something above money is critical for understanding the role of the Terra plantation in the novel. Scarlett O'Hara struggles to hold on to Terra in the face of Northern tax collectors even though it does not make economic sense. The fact that Terra is not that valuable is precisely the point. As long as Scarlett can hold on to Terra, she is still an aristocrat, someone who can love a piece of land as something that will continue to exist after she is dead, regardless of the dollars and cents involved. Similarly, Ashley Wilkes is tempted by an offer to get a job in New York. Ashley is a smart guy and would certainly do well for himself. The problem is that going to New York would mean that he is no longer an aristocrat but instead just another guy trying to earn a buck with no sense of the larger sweep of history. 

The "poor oppressed" Southerners, "robbed" of their "rightful" place of wealth and influence struggle to bring justice back to the land and join the Klan. In the novel, Scarlett is warned that she should not ride around by herself conducting her business because they are likely to be attacked by one of the free blacks that the Northern occupiers have allowed to run wild. If this happens the Klan, which all the "good" white men of the town have joined, would be honor-bound to retaliate. Scarlett gets attacked and the Klan is "forced" to go after the camp of free blacks. They run into an ambush and Scarlett's second husband gets killed. This leads Scarlett to agree to marry Rhett Butler as Ashley still insists on being faithful to his wife Melanie.     

At one point, Scarlett is forced to confront the "master" narrative head-on in the form of Northerners whose ideas of the South come straight from Uncle Tom's Cabin. Scarlett responds that the novel is full of lies and that they never abused their slaves. She should be believed as she has actual "lived experience" with slaves, unlike the Northerners who have only read about the South in books designed to convince them to hate Southerners. The stakes are high. Either Southerners really did treat their slaves well or at least justly or it was right for General Sherman to pillage his way across Georgia, freeing the slaves and repaying their owners for their crimes. 

It is hardly obvious how Critical Theorists can dismiss the Gone With the Wind narrative out of hand as a master narrative. The narrative is not really that different from the standard Critical Theory narrative. All you have to do is change the labels. Southern plantation owners can be revolutionary intellectuals and the black slaves can be workers who need to achieve critical consciousness. This is accomplished by the workers joining the intellectuals in a farming commune to labor for the "common good." In both cases, the enemy is Capitalism, the notion that people should be empowered simply because of their ability to make money as opposed to elevating those who can transcend such petty interests.

To say that Southern planters were rich and therefore must represent the master narrative fails to hold up. Loads of horrible things happen to Scarlett and she spends much of the middle part of the book trying to keep everyone around her, including her former slaves, fed and with a roof over their heads. Much of Scarlett’s power as a character is derived from her ability to do this while not losing sight of the higher things in life as embodied in Terra. This is critical because it allows us to forgive Scarlett for the pretty terrible things she does to succeed like stealing her sister's fiance (the one who gets killed riding for the Klan) and using convict labor provided by the Northern occupation. In truth, Scarlett being rich should not exclude her from being a counter-narrative. If you can watch Oprah Winfrey interview Meghan Merkle, two of the most privileged beings who have ever lived, without it being obvious that they are perpetuating a master narrative then you should have no problem seeing Gone With the Wind as a counter-narrative. 

From the perspective of Critical Theory, the real crime of the Gone With the Wind narrative is not that it oppressed blacks but that it empowered the "wrong" sort of people. How dare Southern planters claim to be victims and use that argument to justify holding on to power. The people who should be in charge are leftist intellectuals who have educated themselves about the nature of oppression through the lens of Critical Theory. They are therefore the sort of morally superior individuals who are well-suited to decide who is a victim and who is an oppressor. This is such an obvious fact that if you disagree it can only be because you are an oppressor.  

A proper history education should liberate students by giving them weapons to intellectually challenge those authority figures who seek to rule over them. It is important to expose students to brilliant and evil books like Gone With the Wind so that they can learn to see a master narrative at work. What makes Gone With the Wind a true master narrative is precisely its ability to pretend to be a counter-narrative. The heroes are "victims" who are not in the positions of power that they are naturally entitled to. This gives them the right to strike back at the "oppressors" who wrongfully hold a position better than what they deserve. If my students wish to recognize who is ruling over them, the first thing they should look for is who claims that their status of victimhood is an unchallengeable fact and that anyone who voices any skepticism is automatically a master oppressor.