I’m interested in hearing some opinions on the idea of stopping focus on minority groups and trying to encourage everyone to stop referencing them for humanitarian purposes. This may seem counter-intuitive so allow me to explain my thoughts. In short, a minority group has immediate contrast to everyone not in that group. For example, a black group immediately identifies its opposite as the white group. A woman’s group immediately identifies its opposing force as a mens group. Now, when such groups say they are mistreated, this obviously indicates the opposite as the bad guy. I’m sure we’re all familiar with reverse racism and reverse sexism and the feelings of some white men that they are now the ones discriminated against and treated as minorities. This is not quite where I’m heading with this but it relates. So while I will not argue the concept of White Privilege such that we can say “woe is man” for the discrimination against them, I believe that this causes more trouble for the minority groups in the end. If white man, for example, is identified as the immediate opposite and bad-guy of the minority groups, it throws a lot of people under the bus who might very well be good individuals. These individuals, then, are less likely to be advocates and might even harbor resentment and become “bad guys” themselves; especially if their privilege prevents them from seeing the discrimination. Now, on the other hand if, instead of having feminists for example, we have only humanists, we can easily point at a human who was mistreated by another human and anyone who actually cares about this will not feel thrown under the bus and speak against the action rather than the race or sex of the individual. Do we really need to present the idea that “men abuse women” or simply that “abuse is bad and this guy sucks for doing it?”
I wrote about this a little more in depth as a blog post (linked below) and I submitted a similar article to Free Inquiry to see if it might get published, but I thought I might open the conversation to see what people think and get the conversation rolling.
Thoughts?
http://criticalnincompoop.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-white-male-club.html
That’s a lot to digest. Give me time and I’ll provide my viewpoint.
I read through your blog. You make a lot of statements like:
Men are not going to feel sympathetic toward the feminist movement when the feminist movement often demonizes and blames all men.Wow! I don’t recall either women or blacks ever demonizing or blaming “all" white men, as you seem to suggest. While some surely did, it was not the overriding theme. These two groups were just trying to even things out. As with any attempt to change things for the better, perhaps in some ways they initially overcompensated. I for one don’t see it at all the way you see it. While I wasn’t around during the time before woman had the vote, I plainly recall women getting paid less for doing the same job as a man because the man was the traditional bread winner and a working woman was only a second income. I was around in the 60’s when black’s had to ride in the back of the bus, were not allowed in hotels that served white people and were lynched in southern states when they dared to get uppity. The attitude of resentment that you seem to be expressing sounds to me as quite similar to that expressed by the Ku Klux Klan during the 60’s. I would suggest that if you want to make the point I think you are trying to make, you would back up some of your statements about the persecution of white males at the hands of these minorities with factual examples. The bottom line for me is that the way you state things comes across to me as whiny and full of “poor me". That is my feedback.
I think I get the gist of what you’re saying, though I doubt the solution you propose is realistic.
“Stop building walls and we can stop being segregated. Celebrate humanity. Stand together. United we stand and separated we fall into petty squabbles of color and sex where neither side is any less racist than the other. Equal rights exists today. Use them. Put away the race and sex cards and grab yourself a human card. Make some human groups that I can join and celebrate and fight alongside you. I am your ally. Keep your groups open to me and we can indeed be brothers and sisters. One humanity.”
Human groups aren’t just made up - they exist objectively. All of our group identities are fundamentally part of us (anyone who claims to not feel any group identity is either lying or psychologically disturbed) and can’t be dropped for some enlightened cause.
The straight white male = bad attitude is a real thing, but you’re looking at it the wrong way, IMO.
Actually, if you’re a Humanist, you’re looking at it the only way you can - and my thoughts won’t help you. :-S
I don’t believe that reverse sexism or reverse racism exist. There is only sexism and racism. All white people are not racist. Racist people come from every variety of human beings. Likewise, all sexists are not male, and can come from any sexual identity.
I think your approach to this topic is what throws groups of people under the bus. However, I don’t think you are alone in the way you view these issues.
You haven’t addressed the actual problem. Groups of any kind who are disaffected in any way don’t form because they point themselves out. There are a bunch of “bad” people who do the disaffection first. You can’t tell the “bad” people what to do. You can’t pretend there isn’t a problem and expect them to stop being prejudice.
A quick note: the blog was my first attempt at explaining this and perhaps the language is not quite perfect. So I’m not suggesting that we no longer identify someone as a white person or a black person. Some times those identifications are useful. What I want to recommend avoiding is groups and organizations specifically made to fight discrimination against them which makes the default enemy out of the opposing race or sex. I hope that difference makes sense.
The idea is that it is the default understanding, not the explicit statement. You fit in one of two groups: "man" or "woman" and when a group is made with the statement "women are systemically held back by man", man obviously has to fit into the "men systematically holding back women" group. There's no need to group this way. In fact, think about the recent shooting of the 3 "Muslims" by the "Atheist" man. What happened? Immediately atheists were riled up to defend atheism. This should have been reported as "This guy killed these three people." Killing is bad. Atheists do not need to own it but they felt the need to defend themselves anyway because it was a "crime against Muslims" by an "Atheist."Men are not going to feel sympathetic toward the feminist movement when the feminist movement often demonizes and blames all men.Wow! I don’t recall either women or blacks ever demonizing or blaming “all" white men, as you seem to suggest. While some surely did, it was not the overriding theme. These two groups were just trying to even things out.
I for one don’t see it at all the way you see it. While I wasn’t around during the time before woman had the vote, I plainly recall women getting paid less for doing the same job as a man because the man was the traditional bread winner and a working woman was only a second income. I was around in the 60’s when black’s had to ride in the back of the bus, were not allowed in hotels that served white people and were lynched in southern states when they dared to get uppity. The attitude of resentment that you seem to be expressing sounds to me as quite similar to that expressed by the Ku Klux Klan during the 60’s.So here we have an example of demonizing. The idea that I have expressed has already been related to a white supremacist group bent on killing all black people. Why can't the idea simply be an idea without being bent on the destruction of blacks? Well, perhaps because the white man is the bad guy, right? This person here clearly remembers white man being the bad guy, after all. This, of course, still throws a lot of good white people under the bus. It is unimportant if it is a majority of a group or not; doing something bad is bad. What matters is if people as a whole are identifying with the bad behavior and repeating it because that is what people of their group do.
I would suggest that if you want to make the point I think you are trying to make, you would back up some of your statements about the persecution of white males at the hands of these minorities with factual examples. The bottom line for me is that the way you state things comes across to me as whiny and full of “poor me".That would be rather hypocritical of me, would it not? I will point to a person's statements individually, but I will not point at the "black" person or the "woman" who does such things. But you can use my previous example of how people feel about the groups which is more important to this discussion. My point is that these groups creates "bad guy" and "not bad guy" where people feel the need to own one group or the other. I'm personally not up for owning "bad guy" and yeah, I don't like being put in it. I'm not the bad guy. I'm the humanist guy bent on making the world a better place however I can see it possible that I might help. This is my idea to aid in this. I forget which book I read it in, perhaps Subliminal, but a study showed that indicating that college students drank too much or that litter was too prevalent in an area made college students even more willing to drink and people even more willing to litter. They subconsciously identify with the group they belong to and adjust accordingly. This is one reason we need to remove the groups. The other reason is to stop racism in the other direction. Another is that we do not want this opposing racism to cause even more of the racism we were originally trying to be rid of. (#blacklives matter versus #policelivesmatter anyone?) People identify with groups as another poster here said. It's inevitable. But there are groups we get to choose such as our causes. If we choose a humanitarian cause over a feminist cause then this will help us identify with "humans abused by humans" rather than with "women abused by men." Such a group causes many women to go down the road of misandry or to see evil where it does not exist--confirmation bias. I hope this helps clarify.
I guess I am still a bit confused about what point it is you’re trying to make (and thank you for your patience in responding). To use one example, you said:
This person here clearly remembers white man being the bad guy, after all.Which I believe was in response to my statement:
I was around in the 60’s when black’s had to ride in the back of the bus, were not allowed in hotels that served white people and were lynched in southern states when they dared to get uppity.I didn't say that any of that was a result of all white men being bad. My only reference to white was the people allowed in the hotel, and I was not saying it was their fault that the hotel had such a policy. At most you could say I was pointing at bus drivers, hotel employees and members of lynch mobs (which certainly can't be construed as representing the entire population of white people). Quite the contrary, many white people proved to be "the good guys" in these cases for helping to overturn the Jim Crow laws, become Freedom Riders and go after the criminals who committed the crimes. So clearly I remember some white men being the bad guy and a lot of white guys being the good guy.
Perhaps the best explanation is in the recent example of the Chapel Hill murders (hopefully you’re familiar, but there’s always Google if not :-)). CFI specifically wrote about how atheists were up in arms about it being a parking dispute rather than a hate-crime. But why? Why did they care so much? They cared because it identified their group as the bad guy and they don’t want others to see their group in that light. We can all intellectually agree it was one atheist and, if anything, a single hate-crime in the same way many can recognize that ISIS is one group of people and not all of Islam. But what does that really change? In our minds it clearly changes nothing. We identify with the group “atheist” in self-defense in the same way that men identify in self-defense against feminism and we expect people to place blame based upon the group names so much so that we feel an immediate need to defend them. CFI encouraged the use of “Denier” instead of “Skeptic” for climate change deniers. I think they should do likewise and encourage news, media, and human rights groups to call themselves human rights activists rather than feminists or chanting black lives matter. Of course black lives matter, but the opposite is also true. White lives matter. So do police lives, Mexican lives, etc, etc. It creates a backlash by focusing on one in particular. It should be that human lives matter. And if a particular cop was out of line, we need to band together and say that all lives matter and thus we should punish the cop. It has nothing to do with being black, white, or purple. No hash tags necessary. Turning it into a race dispute draws unnecessary lines and unnecessary debate.
Sorry, can’t keep reading the details. This is simple conflation of actual prejudice with claims of reverse prejudice.
Or, in terms of the logical fallacy, you can say that black people in a certain area have a much higher unemployment rate than whites, but you can’t say that any particular black person from that area has any certain chance of getting a job. The particular person may have an above average parent or a house with lots of books in it or who knows what. There are social cause and affects and there are individual abilities.
I’m not diminishing the problem, I’m just dismissing your solution. The solution is to stop teaching these sociological facts to young people as it means they are screwed for life. The group and area problems need to be addressed without direct concern for the individual, i.e. build a library or do better policing or offer free meals, whatever the situation calls for. Then, at the parent/teacher/mentor level recognize talents, nurture creativity, etc.
It’s a little harder with adults at the individual level, but same idea, address behaviors; punish discrimination, educate about perceptions, and otherwise constrain prejudice regardless of who is being prejudice of whom.
I’ll just conclude that while I think I see your point, it just seems to me to be extrapolating a potential small and radical viewpoint to entire groups rather than the entire group taking on that characteristic or viewpoint.
For example, the Chapel Hill incident you mention. I haven’t talked to anyone who thinks the shooting was because all Atheists hate all Moslems. They all see it as some nut-case, who the news media mentioned was an Atheist.
In the case of women’s rights, let’s look at the women’s suffrage example. Women did not have the vote. This was not due to any living demon-man group but a situation that existed since the Constitution and before. To get the vote, rather than demonize men, they had to convince enough of them that they indeed should have the right to vote. After all, they couldn’t very well vote for it themselves. Evidently they did convince enough men because they now have the vote.
At any rate, you asked for opinions and I have offered mine. Your argument does not win me over. Do with that information as you will. I hope you do not consider me to be a “demon". 
You may not know anyone who thinks the shooting was because all atheists hate Muslims, but that does not mean they do not exist. Many Christians see atheists as baby-eating monsters against religion. This was the argument being played out. It was a “hate crime” because “atheists hate religion and he said religion is bad so he killed them for it”. The atheists do not see atheism this way, but many know that religious people will take it this way.
With women’s suffrage it was indeed a bad thing that women couldn’t vote so the chant should be “Let women vote” not “men are subjugating women, the jerks”. Today, the chat is often “women are objectified by dirty men” rather than “this man is treating this woman like a mere object and that is not right”. It’s a subtle difference much like the Skeptics versus Deniers, but I personally think it’s an important one as I’m clearly failing to explain.
Why would I think you’re a demon for your opinion? If I did that I’d be no better than the many people who assume I harbor prejudice for absolutely no reason.
You may not know anyone who thinks the shooting was because all atheists hate Muslims, but that does not mean they do not exist. It's a subtle difference much like the Skeptics versus Deniers, but I personally think it's an important one as I'm clearly failing to explain.That some people are stupid enough to ignore the entirety of Hicks' profile and focus on his atheism doesn't mean they are right. I think you are explaining the subtle difference, but that still doesn't make your solution viable. It is only hard to tell the difference between a Skeptic and a Denier if you don't know the science. Both use similar words like "peer reviewed journal" or "scientific study" but one uses journals that are setup by people who have preconceived notions and pick studies based on their conclusions and they don't know how to evaluate the quality of a study, the other does. In the case of minority groups, some people use the wrong criteria for evaluating someone, like, "that person uses words that sound like someone else with similar physical characteristics that I don't like". The words that are bothering them might include that they are drawing attention to themselves and their special needs. Or that group might be saying people who look like me are causing the problem. Others use historical facts and sociological data to determine that some groups are getting short changed. They know that skin color and country of origin don't affect intelligence or motivation, so they look to other factors.
That some people are stupid enough to ignore the entirety of Hicks' profile and focus on his atheism doesn't mean they are right.Obviously they are not right. The fact that they do it is my point. The news keeps bringing it up this way and it makes for more wrong people. So move to stop the news from doing it. That's the point.
That some people are stupid enough to ignore the entirety of Hicks' profile and focus on his atheism doesn't mean they are right.Obviously they are not right. The fact that they do it is my point. The news keeps bringing it up this way and it makes for more wrong people. So move to stop the news from doing it. That's the point. Well, there are already lots of fact checking organizations and news outlets that pride themselves on ACTUALLY being fair and balanced. So, other than limiting people's right to free speech, I'm not sure what you can do.
I certainly wouldn’t recommend making it a law. I recommend that groups like CFI advocate that we stop doing it much in the same way they advocated to stop calling deniers skeptics. The mere conversation might go a long way.
Perhaps the best explanation is in the recent example of the Chapel Hill murders (hopefully you're familiar, but there's always Google if not :-)). CFI specifically wrote about how atheists were up in arms about it being a parking dispute rather than a hate-crime. But why? Why did they care so much? They cared because it identified their group as the bad guy and they don't want others to see their group in that light. We can all intellectually agree it was one atheist and, if anything, a single hate-crime in the same way many can recognize that ISIS is one group of people and not all of Islam. But what does that really change? In our minds it clearly changes nothing. We identify with the group "atheist" in self-defense in the same way that men identify in self-defense against feminism and we expect people to place blame based upon the group names so much so that we feel an immediate need to defend them. CFI encouraged the use of "Denier" instead of "Skeptic" for climate change deniers. I think they should do likewise and encourage news, media, and human rights groups to call themselves human rights activists rather than feminists or chanting black lives matter. Of course black lives matter, but the opposite is also true. White lives matter. So do police lives, Mexican lives, etc, etc. It creates a backlash by focusing on one in particular. It should be that human lives matter. And if a particular cop was out of line, we need to band together and say that all lives matter and thus we should punish the cop. It has nothing to do with being black, white, or purple. No hash tags necessary. Turning it into a race dispute draws unnecessary lines and unnecessary debate.The entire concept is impossible. If you weren't humanist, you could be on the right track.
Reading this thread reminds me of Archie Bunker being philosophical on race matters.
Looks like Sam Harris feels the sting of false accusations as well: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-chapel-hill-murders-and-militant-atheism
Looks like Sam Harris feels the sting of false accusations as well: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-chapel-hill-murders-and-militant-atheismI wonder if Harris feels like a minority or "the white man"? I bet it depends on whats most convenient for him at the time.