a[n ultra-garbled] rant on social injustice... and chess
(note: the 'we' terms in this are meant to express/mock group opinions, not necessarily (and usually not) my own. also, this is very ranty and cynical and mocking, so sorry if it's not at all PC)
"You're special," they tell you. And there begins the lie of exclusion-disguised-as-meritocracy that is White America.
"You're special. The best of the best." Read: You've learned European History, the Presidents of the United States, the story of David and Goliath, how to read and write in English according to our style and conventions, how to play Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven on the violin, how to dress and smile and speak in all the ways and places and styles We do.
Translation:
You have grown up with this game your entire life. Your parents know the rules, and, sometimes to your frustration but eventually to your general benefit, they pass them on to you. Your neighborhood, your teachers, your friends look and act a bit like you, and likewise know the rules of the game and are expected to adhere to them. There are others with different surroundings, upbringings, lifestyles, neighboorhoods, friends, expectations. Other places, there are other games and other rules.
But you, rather than they, will always come out on top. "You're special," people tell you. "You're smart, you're deserving, you worked hard, you earned it, you're the best and the brightest." Or maybe you just happen to have been raised playing the same game as the judges.
You know chess, you know the White Middleclass lifestyle and values, and Grandma is there breathing down your neck making sure you don't forget them. Your opponents are skilled players of Backgammon, Parcheesi, Mancala, Battleship... But the game on which you're being judged is chess. Lucky you.
You wouldn't stand a chance at Backgammon? Well, lucky you again, because you'll never have to stretch yourself outside of your little sphere of comfort, because you will likely never have to be judged by your Backgammon skills.
But the Backgammon players, now aren't they a bunch of retarded failures, that bunch. They're losing at our games of chess, and fast, although they'd never played and we give them no instruction manuals and mock them to their faces for not knowing how.
Even worse, we expect them to learn our game, and pronto. "You're behind! You're stupid! You need remedial help! You'd better catch up, close the education gap, get your lazy asses out of this losing streak, learn our game!" We brand as losers those who we have never given a real chance.
"Oh, but we've given them plenty of chances! They could rise to the top if they wanted, it's a free country, and they're just lazy." Not to mention the fact that we look at them and see them immediately as losers of the game. Who cares that they are brilliant at Backgammon; we are so arrogant as to think that our game is the only one that could possibly matter--the ultimate standard. In our minds, they are not Backgammon players or potential chess players. They are chess losers. They will always be losers.
'You're just losers,' we say, and brush away the guilt that might come with the fact that we are judging them without giving them any input into the standards and rules, without giving any regard to their identities, and without really helping them along.
'We will always be the winners because we are smart, dedicated, ambitious, perserverant. It is earned, merited,' we tell ourselves, to justify our lofty, luxurious positions in the face of others' hardship. We think we've earned it because we want to have earned it, because we can't stand the idea that we would get our asses whooped off if we had to try Backgammon. 'Oh, but we aren't advantaged, we aren't inherently better, we just work hard and earn it.' Priviledge and undeserved, blind advantage are never apparent to those who possess them. It always seems to us that others can rise to our positions, but we forget that we are the ones making the rules and then winning our own absurd self-defined game.
'And when somebody beats us at something, it couldn't possibly be because they worked harder and merited it.' Jesse Owens in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and so many black athletes after him, were written off by white people as being "inherently, biologically disposed to being good at sports." 'They didn't deserve it, they cheated and got away with being inherently, undeservingly, genetically different, so they didn't really earn it and we couldn't help losing at their game.'
Genetic studies showing there is more genetic diversity within races than among members of different races dispels any validity that claim could have. Humans are the most genetically-similar, homogenous species in the entire world (two fruit flies may be as dissimilar from one another as a human from a chimpanzee; penguins have twice the amount of variability among species members as we do).
Over the course of geographical separation and regional short-term evolution, only the smallest, simplest portions of the genetic code have mutated, changed, and been selected for. As populations change, all regions of the genome are subject to mutation, but the most of the changes that will have an effect on the population are those which 1. do not present any major large-scale changes;
We are incredibly complex beings, and there are mutations, variations, different alleles for everything you can imagine. Our population is chock-full of variety. There are, however, only a few things simple enough, regulated by a small enough number of genes, that they could actually have mutated and been selected for in different regions over this small amount of time we've been separated globally. It just so happens that these few simple things, selectable over shorter periods of time, are the most superficial physical traits--eye shape, hair texture, skin color. Other variations--mental, physical--are completely uncorrellated with race. Any indication to the contrary is a product of nothing more than class and society.
But The System exists because people believe in it; it is self-perpetuating to the point where even the oppressed learn to see themselves, judge themselves by the oppressors' standards. The label of Loser becomes mixed with the label of Backgammon Players' Group. If a few of the Backgammon players happen to learn chess, they have participated in the Chess Players' world. They're sell-outs to the Chess Players' game. Their fellow Backgammoners no longer accept or identify with them because they seem to have compromised their identity.
So the Backgammoners learn to not-play chess. Not just not play, but not-play, not-learn. Deliberately. It is their identity, their world and family and kinship that is on the line. If they buy into the chess game, they forsake their Backgammon friends and world. The system has made them self-oppressing.
We congratulate ourselves at the lack of discrimination in today's world, because, for us, discrimination does not exist. This apparent lack of discrimination is not truth, it is the illusion we have been born into and mentally extend to the rest of society. It is easy for one who never experiences discrimination to say, and even truly believe, that little discrimination exists. Perhaps the biggest privilege is that of never needing to realize how privileged we truly are.
And we congratulate ourselves for being special. For winning at our own game, for oppressing people by our own blind priviledge and arrogance, thirst to come out on top and to define the game.
TJ and the world telling us we're special has been one of the greatest disservices I can imagine. We define ourselves now by that game, because we're good at it, and we like the winning-high. We forget there are many other equally valid and interesting games, and even more importantly, that Life is not a game, and does not have rules and points, winners and losers.
I'm embarrassed to be privileged and white.
"You're special," they tell you. And there begins the lie of exclusion-disguised-as-meritocracy that is White America.
"You're special. The best of the best." Read: You've learned European History, the Presidents of the United States, the story of David and Goliath, how to read and write in English according to our style and conventions, how to play Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven on the violin, how to dress and smile and speak in all the ways and places and styles We do.
Translation:
You have grown up with this game your entire life. Your parents know the rules, and, sometimes to your frustration but eventually to your general benefit, they pass them on to you. Your neighborhood, your teachers, your friends look and act a bit like you, and likewise know the rules of the game and are expected to adhere to them. There are others with different surroundings, upbringings, lifestyles, neighboorhoods, friends, expectations. Other places, there are other games and other rules.
But you, rather than they, will always come out on top. "You're special," people tell you. "You're smart, you're deserving, you worked hard, you earned it, you're the best and the brightest." Or maybe you just happen to have been raised playing the same game as the judges.
You know chess, you know the White Middleclass lifestyle and values, and Grandma is there breathing down your neck making sure you don't forget them. Your opponents are skilled players of Backgammon, Parcheesi, Mancala, Battleship... But the game on which you're being judged is chess. Lucky you.
You wouldn't stand a chance at Backgammon? Well, lucky you again, because you'll never have to stretch yourself outside of your little sphere of comfort, because you will likely never have to be judged by your Backgammon skills.
But the Backgammon players, now aren't they a bunch of retarded failures, that bunch. They're losing at our games of chess, and fast, although they'd never played and we give them no instruction manuals and mock them to their faces for not knowing how.
Even worse, we expect them to learn our game, and pronto. "You're behind! You're stupid! You need remedial help! You'd better catch up, close the education gap, get your lazy asses out of this losing streak, learn our game!" We brand as losers those who we have never given a real chance.
"Oh, but we've given them plenty of chances! They could rise to the top if they wanted, it's a free country, and they're just lazy." Not to mention the fact that we look at them and see them immediately as losers of the game. Who cares that they are brilliant at Backgammon; we are so arrogant as to think that our game is the only one that could possibly matter--the ultimate standard. In our minds, they are not Backgammon players or potential chess players. They are chess losers. They will always be losers.
'You're just losers,' we say, and brush away the guilt that might come with the fact that we are judging them without giving them any input into the standards and rules, without giving any regard to their identities, and without really helping them along.
'We will always be the winners because we are smart, dedicated, ambitious, perserverant. It is earned, merited,' we tell ourselves, to justify our lofty, luxurious positions in the face of others' hardship. We think we've earned it because we want to have earned it, because we can't stand the idea that we would get our asses whooped off if we had to try Backgammon. 'Oh, but we aren't advantaged, we aren't inherently better, we just work hard and earn it.' Priviledge and undeserved, blind advantage are never apparent to those who possess them. It always seems to us that others can rise to our positions, but we forget that we are the ones making the rules and then winning our own absurd self-defined game.
'And when somebody beats us at something, it couldn't possibly be because they worked harder and merited it.' Jesse Owens in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and so many black athletes after him, were written off by white people as being "inherently, biologically disposed to being good at sports." 'They didn't deserve it, they cheated and got away with being inherently, undeservingly, genetically different, so they didn't really earn it and we couldn't help losing at their game.'
Genetic studies showing there is more genetic diversity within races than among members of different races dispels any validity that claim could have. Humans are the most genetically-similar, homogenous species in the entire world (two fruit flies may be as dissimilar from one another as a human from a chimpanzee; penguins have twice the amount of variability among species members as we do).
Over the course of geographical separation and regional short-term evolution, only the smallest, simplest portions of the genetic code have mutated, changed, and been selected for. As populations change, all regions of the genome are subject to mutation, but the most of the changes that will have an effect on the population are those which 1. do not present any major large-scale changes;
We are incredibly complex beings, and there are mutations, variations, different alleles for everything you can imagine. Our population is chock-full of variety. There are, however, only a few things simple enough, regulated by a small enough number of genes, that they could actually have mutated and been selected for in different regions over this small amount of time we've been separated globally. It just so happens that these few simple things, selectable over shorter periods of time, are the most superficial physical traits--eye shape, hair texture, skin color. Other variations--mental, physical--are completely uncorrellated with race. Any indication to the contrary is a product of nothing more than class and society.
But The System exists because people believe in it; it is self-perpetuating to the point where even the oppressed learn to see themselves, judge themselves by the oppressors' standards. The label of Loser becomes mixed with the label of Backgammon Players' Group. If a few of the Backgammon players happen to learn chess, they have participated in the Chess Players' world. They're sell-outs to the Chess Players' game. Their fellow Backgammoners no longer accept or identify with them because they seem to have compromised their identity.
So the Backgammoners learn to not-play chess. Not just not play, but not-play, not-learn. Deliberately. It is their identity, their world and family and kinship that is on the line. If they buy into the chess game, they forsake their Backgammon friends and world. The system has made them self-oppressing.
We congratulate ourselves at the lack of discrimination in today's world, because, for us, discrimination does not exist. This apparent lack of discrimination is not truth, it is the illusion we have been born into and mentally extend to the rest of society. It is easy for one who never experiences discrimination to say, and even truly believe, that little discrimination exists. Perhaps the biggest privilege is that of never needing to realize how privileged we truly are.
And we congratulate ourselves for being special. For winning at our own game, for oppressing people by our own blind priviledge and arrogance, thirst to come out on top and to define the game.
TJ and the world telling us we're special has been one of the greatest disservices I can imagine. We define ourselves now by that game, because we're good at it, and we like the winning-high. We forget there are many other equally valid and interesting games, and even more importantly, that Life is not a game, and does not have rules and points, winners and losers.
I'm embarrassed to be privileged and white.