Perpetual Motion
Over the last few days I’ve been thinking a little about perpetual motion. Not in the regular mechanical sense, but in the endless loop sense. As an example: making toast.
Toast is never a task I have handled well. If I put the toast in the toaster, I have two choices. Walk away, trusting that the toaster will pop the toast up at the proper time, or stay and watch and pop it up manually, because I don’t trust the toaster. If I walk away and the toast doesn’t pop up at the right time, I feel like and idiot for being suckered again by the evil toaster. The house also fills with smoke and for the next couple of days everyone who comes over asks about the smell. “Burn some toast?” Yeah, right, thanks a lot. If I take the other course, stay and watch, I feel equally stupid. Is this all my time is good for, watching toast? Why do I even have a toaster if I cant trust it? I try staring into it to make sure the toast doesn’t burn. After a few moments though, the orange light seems to be burning my retina. If I look away I see spots. So then I have to stand there and look occasionally at the toaster, playing coy with it. Im not really noticing you, you’re not going to burn my toast, I am master of my bread crisping domain and no toaster is going to enslave me. Ill show it who’s boss. Boy do I feel like an idiot standing there trying to ignore my toaster because of my insecurities about it. Anyway, it goes round and round like this. Should I stay and watch and feel stupid or walk away and get suckered, again feeling stupid. Perpetual motion. Recursive idiocy. In general I try and not make toast.
Lots of similar situations come up like this in life. My current favorite these days is watching someone argue for affirmative action but insist that it is not racist in nature, or argue for an event that allows only female participation but insist it is not sexist. There is something about watching someone try and say it is ok for them to discriminate, but not for others, because others are racist or sexist and they are not and that no, two wrongs don’t make a right, but yes, its ok to do it because they aren’t racist or sexist even though they like to participate in racist or sexist events. I have no idea why but watching the verbal tongue twisting trying to justify it is always fascinating to me, just as I am sure watching me make toast might be fascinating to them.
Recently Hawaii has been in the news with regard to this. There are all sorts of separatist actions going on over there, from high schools to bills in congress that would essentially let native Hawaiians secede in situ .
Having just spent some time in Hawaii, I got to sit in on a particularly good example of this perpetual motion sort of thing. Two liberals and a conservative were in a discussion regarding Hawaii’s Kamehameha Schools. These were established as part of a trust created by Princess Bernice Pauahi in her will. The schools are funded through this trust and apparently receive no federal funds. There is a common conception out there that the will only set up the schools so as to only allow full blooded Hawaiians to attend. This is actually not the case, but more on this later. All of this is now subject to a lawsuit. The liberals in this discussion were arguing that the schools should be allowed to keep the policy of admitting only Hawaiians. Obviously the admission policy is racist by definition but it was ok with them to have racist policies so long as those policy benefit a group who is perceived to have suffered in the past. I was fascinated watching the evasiveness at even use of the word racist. Clearly the policy is, and if one really had belief that it was logically or morally supportable then I don’t really see why one would object to the term. The twisting and turning trying to defend why it is ok for them to be racist but not others is what fascinates me. Eventually I couldn’t take it any more and pointed out to them that it really was irrelevant whether the school took public money or not (there seemed to be the perception that if one did not accept taxpayer funds, any policy was permissible). The fact is that by any reasonable definition the schools are a public accommodation. As such, the admissions policy would probably not hold up since the race of the students could hardly be argued as essential to the schools function. This is why groups like the Eagles Lodge have recently had to begin admission of women. It is why most private men’s clubs were shut down in New York City in the 70’s. It is why the Boy Scouts are under pressure to admit gay scout leaders. The fact is, rightly or wrongly, you cant set that kind of thing up in today’s day and age. This got some acknowledgment from the parties involved, but still somehow they maintained that the admission policy should stand and wasn’t racist. Perpetual motion. I didn’t have the heart to point out to them that the will that established the schools in fact did not say only full-blooded Hawaiians should be admitted. Here is where you can read the will, check article 13. The fact is this policy is a creation of the administrators of the school, by perverting a clause in a will. Is this yet another case of best intentions gone awry? Is it racism? The reader can decide, but given the incessant use of the best intentions excuse, combined with the overblown and often hate filled rhetoric of those to be excused, it wears a little thin at least to these ears. To be sure, if this harms one, it is no laughing matter, however, it is hard to deny the allure watching or starting the endless recursion of the faulty logic loop of the racists, who aren’t racists, except when its ok to be racists, then its not really racist. You get the point.
I do think that whatever the intentions of various policies like these, they tend to do little but lead to increasing balkanization of the country. Can anyone say that trying to acknowledge and accentuate every single cultural difference between groups unifies the country more than the melting pot approach of years past? Can any group with some egregious wrong in their past, recent or otherwise, be entitled to act in a racist manner because of this wrong? If so, then sign me up. I want my blanket excuse from ever being accused of racism. Not only that, I want anything I do that has even the slightest tinge of racism to be lauded as a noble effort, an attempt at righting past wrongs, done with the best of intentions, gimme gimme gimme. My grievance? Im of Scotch/Irish ancestry, just as wronged as everyone else yet without the advocacy. Reparations? How about paying me a percentage of all the sales of kilts every nitwit is wearing these days. Yeah, rock and roll might have started with blues, and Elvis might have ripped off singing black, but those plaid couches? Those are mine baby and I want my cut.
Want to try it on your own? Here are some self evident bones to throw out, believe it or not some find these statements very controversial. They will start a recursion 90% of the time.
“I think Condoleza Rice is an amazing individual”
“Im not sure George Bush is a racist, he seems to have had a lot of black people in his administration in way less token positions than Clinton”
“If minorities cant be racist because they do not have the power to inflict it on others, then doesn’t it follow that the Congressional Black Caucus could be more racist than the KKK because they clearly have more power?"
“Hey, why do people of Spanish ancestry get any breaks, weren’t they kind of the largest slave holders of anyone? And weren’t they the ones who kind of screwed up a whole bunch of crap down south with that Cortez guy?”
“Ok blacks get screwed, its way harder to make it if your black, the whole slavery thing was real bad. Ill bet its even bad even if you just came here from Africa. Yep, way harder if your black. That’s a given. So, if I just came over from Sudan, where the whole slavery thing is still going on, it would be harder for me, being black. But should I still get a break?”
“If Im from Hawaii, I got a shady deal on the whole state hood thing. Should I get a break because I was wronged or should I not get a break because learning 26 letters is way easier than all those damn Japanese characters, which Id probably be using if those guys with the letters hadn’t been there in the 1940's?”
“Im Scotch/Irish, how come no one aint giving me nothing? I mean we got starved out of our land, then came here and got starved as indentured servants. No shortage of us living in virtual slavery way back when. Even when we weren’t starving, we were eating potatoes. It’s a damn root for God sakes, and those were the good times. Where’s my special parking space at the mall?”
Over the last few days I’ve been thinking a little about perpetual motion. Not in the regular mechanical sense, but in the endless loop sense. As an example: making toast.
Toast is never a task I have handled well. If I put the toast in the toaster, I have two choices. Walk away, trusting that the toaster will pop the toast up at the proper time, or stay and watch and pop it up manually, because I don’t trust the toaster. If I walk away and the toast doesn’t pop up at the right time, I feel like and idiot for being suckered again by the evil toaster. The house also fills with smoke and for the next couple of days everyone who comes over asks about the smell. “Burn some toast?” Yeah, right, thanks a lot. If I take the other course, stay and watch, I feel equally stupid. Is this all my time is good for, watching toast? Why do I even have a toaster if I cant trust it? I try staring into it to make sure the toast doesn’t burn. After a few moments though, the orange light seems to be burning my retina. If I look away I see spots. So then I have to stand there and look occasionally at the toaster, playing coy with it. Im not really noticing you, you’re not going to burn my toast, I am master of my bread crisping domain and no toaster is going to enslave me. Ill show it who’s boss. Boy do I feel like an idiot standing there trying to ignore my toaster because of my insecurities about it. Anyway, it goes round and round like this. Should I stay and watch and feel stupid or walk away and get suckered, again feeling stupid. Perpetual motion. Recursive idiocy. In general I try and not make toast.
Lots of similar situations come up like this in life. My current favorite these days is watching someone argue for affirmative action but insist that it is not racist in nature, or argue for an event that allows only female participation but insist it is not sexist. There is something about watching someone try and say it is ok for them to discriminate, but not for others, because others are racist or sexist and they are not and that no, two wrongs don’t make a right, but yes, its ok to do it because they aren’t racist or sexist even though they like to participate in racist or sexist events. I have no idea why but watching the verbal tongue twisting trying to justify it is always fascinating to me, just as I am sure watching me make toast might be fascinating to them.
Recently Hawaii has been in the news with regard to this. There are all sorts of separatist actions going on over there, from high schools to bills in congress that would essentially let native Hawaiians secede in situ .
Having just spent some time in Hawaii, I got to sit in on a particularly good example of this perpetual motion sort of thing. Two liberals and a conservative were in a discussion regarding Hawaii’s Kamehameha Schools. These were established as part of a trust created by Princess Bernice Pauahi in her will. The schools are funded through this trust and apparently receive no federal funds. There is a common conception out there that the will only set up the schools so as to only allow full blooded Hawaiians to attend. This is actually not the case, but more on this later. All of this is now subject to a lawsuit. The liberals in this discussion were arguing that the schools should be allowed to keep the policy of admitting only Hawaiians. Obviously the admission policy is racist by definition but it was ok with them to have racist policies so long as those policy benefit a group who is perceived to have suffered in the past. I was fascinated watching the evasiveness at even use of the word racist. Clearly the policy is, and if one really had belief that it was logically or morally supportable then I don’t really see why one would object to the term. The twisting and turning trying to defend why it is ok for them to be racist but not others is what fascinates me. Eventually I couldn’t take it any more and pointed out to them that it really was irrelevant whether the school took public money or not (there seemed to be the perception that if one did not accept taxpayer funds, any policy was permissible). The fact is that by any reasonable definition the schools are a public accommodation. As such, the admissions policy would probably not hold up since the race of the students could hardly be argued as essential to the schools function. This is why groups like the Eagles Lodge have recently had to begin admission of women. It is why most private men’s clubs were shut down in New York City in the 70’s. It is why the Boy Scouts are under pressure to admit gay scout leaders. The fact is, rightly or wrongly, you cant set that kind of thing up in today’s day and age. This got some acknowledgment from the parties involved, but still somehow they maintained that the admission policy should stand and wasn’t racist. Perpetual motion. I didn’t have the heart to point out to them that the will that established the schools in fact did not say only full-blooded Hawaiians should be admitted. Here is where you can read the will, check article 13. The fact is this policy is a creation of the administrators of the school, by perverting a clause in a will. Is this yet another case of best intentions gone awry? Is it racism? The reader can decide, but given the incessant use of the best intentions excuse, combined with the overblown and often hate filled rhetoric of those to be excused, it wears a little thin at least to these ears. To be sure, if this harms one, it is no laughing matter, however, it is hard to deny the allure watching or starting the endless recursion of the faulty logic loop of the racists, who aren’t racists, except when its ok to be racists, then its not really racist. You get the point.
I do think that whatever the intentions of various policies like these, they tend to do little but lead to increasing balkanization of the country. Can anyone say that trying to acknowledge and accentuate every single cultural difference between groups unifies the country more than the melting pot approach of years past? Can any group with some egregious wrong in their past, recent or otherwise, be entitled to act in a racist manner because of this wrong? If so, then sign me up. I want my blanket excuse from ever being accused of racism. Not only that, I want anything I do that has even the slightest tinge of racism to be lauded as a noble effort, an attempt at righting past wrongs, done with the best of intentions, gimme gimme gimme. My grievance? Im of Scotch/Irish ancestry, just as wronged as everyone else yet without the advocacy. Reparations? How about paying me a percentage of all the sales of kilts every nitwit is wearing these days. Yeah, rock and roll might have started with blues, and Elvis might have ripped off singing black, but those plaid couches? Those are mine baby and I want my cut.
Want to try it on your own? Here are some self evident bones to throw out, believe it or not some find these statements very controversial. They will start a recursion 90% of the time.
“I think Condoleza Rice is an amazing individual”
“Im not sure George Bush is a racist, he seems to have had a lot of black people in his administration in way less token positions than Clinton”
“If minorities cant be racist because they do not have the power to inflict it on others, then doesn’t it follow that the Congressional Black Caucus could be more racist than the KKK because they clearly have more power?"
“Hey, why do people of Spanish ancestry get any breaks, weren’t they kind of the largest slave holders of anyone? And weren’t they the ones who kind of screwed up a whole bunch of crap down south with that Cortez guy?”
“Ok blacks get screwed, its way harder to make it if your black, the whole slavery thing was real bad. Ill bet its even bad even if you just came here from Africa. Yep, way harder if your black. That’s a given. So, if I just came over from Sudan, where the whole slavery thing is still going on, it would be harder for me, being black. But should I still get a break?”
“If Im from Hawaii, I got a shady deal on the whole state hood thing. Should I get a break because I was wronged or should I not get a break because learning 26 letters is way easier than all those damn Japanese characters, which Id probably be using if those guys with the letters hadn’t been there in the 1940's?”
“Im Scotch/Irish, how come no one aint giving me nothing? I mean we got starved out of our land, then came here and got starved as indentured servants. No shortage of us living in virtual slavery way back when. Even when we weren’t starving, we were eating potatoes. It’s a damn root for God sakes, and those were the good times. Where’s my special parking space at the mall?”
posted by R Huse at 5:12 PM
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