Questioning Authority

Any sane person knows going in that the education he will receive in the university will be heavily slanted toward the need for change. The person who believes otherwise has no conception of reality, no grasp of the past, and no comprehension of the nature of schools.
Sure, the university is designed to give people degrees. In the process, they want to create good citizens who will make the world a better place. This is a wonderful thing. Furthermore, it is based on part of what makes humanity special...idealism.
Professors traditionally,and perhaps naturally, have been the intelligentsia of any given culture. They are the forward looking prophets, the idealistic dreamers, the people who see the problems of society and formulate plans to make society better.
Is there any more admirable trait? Often these desires are quite philanthropic in nature. If more people had the idea that they should make the world a better place, often at costs that went beyond altruism, great change would certainly take place. We would not recognize the world.
It might be acts as small as giving up a seat on a crowded bus to an elderly citizen or as humongous as fully funding the college education, housing, and vehicular needs of a large families' children...when the funder is a stranger. Certainly such ideals should be propulgated, not inhibited.
At the same time, one wonders if all the problems the students perceive are really as bad as advertised. This is not an argument that inequities, racism, other isms, and so forth do not exist but rather that it is possible the cases are overblown.
Last night a black woman in front of me who had never met me used me as an example. She pointed out that I, by simple fact of being, and being a white male, was racist and sexist. It could not be otherwise.
Now, I am by nature argumentative. But some arguments are so stupid I cannot stand to give them credence by giving debate. I can, however, say the following things without fear of contradiction. No honest, living person can say any of these things are not true.
First off, the assumption I am sexist has no basis in reality. I have many friends of both genders. When I think of them, I admit to grouping them. I group them into things like...people I have seen this week, people I enjoy having a drink with, people I enjoy bowling with, people I enjoy watching a movie with, etc. Gender bears no role in determining my friendship with people, nor does it affect how I deal with them. Over the years I have often had my friendship mistaken, that much is true. In my attempts to be courteous and friendly I treat the girls I know like any other friend. That means I joke with them, might even engage in a playful tap on the shoulder if appropriate, and engage in spirited conversation with whoever I am speaking with. At times this interaction has been mistaken for flirting.
I would argue it has been this way because in many ways, I do not treat them like women. I do not alter my approach because of gender. I treat them as...*gasp* PEOPLE. Human beings. No different, no better, no worse than men. Simply people.
A lot of my friends and family would be startled by that statement. They might include in it other things. I do not mean to intimate there is an identical physiology or physical makeup. Cultural constructs of gender identity preclude an identical mindset for the vast majority of people. From an early age peers, media, and other influences teach men and women to think and act differently. Some men and women overcome this artificial identity development while others, perhaps even most, embrace it. However, those cultural markers of what it means to be a man or woman do not change the foundational fact: man or woman does not matter, they are still a human being.
The racial question is very similar. I have never understood how I can be a racist when race is something I only notice when someone else brings it up to me. When I think of my friends, neighbors, family, coworkers, fellow students, and so forth, I think of them in the context just stated...they are my brother or friend, my professor or teammate. If you were to ask me who I know that is white, who is not, and what race they are...I could not answer that question simply because it is not a factor. Either they are a person or they are not.
Skin pigment, cultural identification points, social constructs of racial identity...these are unimportant in context of a relationship. The real racism is a demand to identify differences.
I cry every time I see a bumper sticker that says "Honor diversity." Diversity is what virtually every conflict centers on. Abraham Lincoln is frequently quoted, although if he indeed said it he was quoting the Bible where Jesus is first recorded as saying it, or perhaps even Aesop and his classic many sticks in a bundle fable, Lincoln is quoted as saying "A house divided against itself cannot stand." This proverb transcends U.S. culture. Somewhere I have a Jackie Chan movie in which he uses the illustration of many sticks to unify the Chinese rebels against their Japanese overlords. (That racial construct is the central division in the movie or I would not have noticed. It could just have easily been the rich versus the poor, the short versus the tall, or the group of people who enjoyed ruling against the group of people who liked to live without rules.)
Unity gives people a common cause that allows them to work together. Ask yourself...who gets more response, the millions of Simpsons fans petitioning the writers to continue another season or teh various splinter groups that object to the show for various reasons? I remember at least four groups that refused to work together that tried for 4 or 5 seasons when the Simpsons first started out that attempted to get boycotts started against it. They fought separately...and while I now have no idea where any of those groups is, the unified Simpsons fans are ever present.
These are the things we should focus on. Instead of celebrating the differences in pigmentation, an easy marker that allows separation and mistrust, why not celebrate the beauty of the music or something of that nature? INstead of celebrating divisiveness, celebrate unity.
This is something my classmate will never understand. She is too full of rage, bitterness, resentment, and a demand for recognition as...something, I am not sure what...that she cannot see that she creates racism by creating and forcing division.
At the same time, the push by the professors for change is both wonderful and sad. The school is overrun with people who are just crushed that so many people are stupid enough to have voted for Bush. Yes, I have heard it phrased that way with great frequency. I would extend my surprise at the number of people who voted for to Kerry, the two major parties, and the third wheel on a bicycle, the Green party or the Libertarians.
At some point, logic should take over. Why, in the largest turnout ever, did more than 50% of the people who cared enough to vote, vote for the Republicans, the elitists, the party of the rich?
I would conjecture it was, at least in part, because they are the elites...and the rich. At some point it might penetrate to these people that the Republicans habitually attain positions of power and positions of wealth. Apparently while being stupid and not realizing how bad they have it.
Is it not possible that many people vote based on the success they see? The Democratic party has complained for years about the Republican Party being for the wealthy...that is pretty good campaigning for the Republicans in my humble yet accurate opinion. If my vote were for sale...if my vote was based on what coin would be put in my pocket...I would smurfing FOLLOW THE MONEY!!!!!!!!!!! SMurf yeah, I would vote Republican in a heart beat. I would vote for them for President, for Congress, for the House of Representatives, for Mayor, Governor, dogcatcher, bill collector, dog poop cleaner, and anything else I could think of. They have proven they know how to create and maintain wealth.
Sadly, the truth is many Democrats have just as much money but are afraid to admit it. Quick test: if Kerry had won, who would be the two richest Presidents ever? Hint: Kerry and Clinton.
Why are they afraid to admit they have money? Here is a guess. They would lose the idealistic vote. They would lose all those students who are trying to change the world.
In class, all we hear is how bad off the country is. We hear how little money is available, how little it matters, we hear about the plight of the homeless and the unwed teenage mothers and the inner city kids and the wilderness farmers and the old people and the young people...why is change so slow?
Possibly because these kids get out there, get jobs, still intend to change the world, but between struggling to make it (To Disneyland again) in their (year old luxury sedan) car with their (private school attending) children, they need time to repair their boat and go golfing with Aunt Merle and Uncle Sid and...well, they are so busy having a good time they keep forgetting how miserable they are. The shame of it all.
The truth is there are many things in the world today that need to be changed. Some of them are changing rapidly, others are changing slowly. Some things will never change. At some point we need to realize that things are neither as bad as our professors would have us believe nor as good as the politicians tell us.
More good is done by taking your neighbor a plate of cookies and going grocery shopping for Grandma Jones, the elderly lady of no relationship that you visit in the retirement center, than is done by all the classtaking and warbling in the world. This seems like a good time to point out that of my three neighbors, I hate two of them.