Citing Cultural Immobility: A Dangerous Excuse to Be Lazy?

I recently read in a Newsweek article entitled "Uncivil Rights?" (http://www.newsweek.com/2010/12/14/are-gay-rights-civil-rights.html) a number of comparisons and contrasts of the American Gay Rights movement to the country's earlier Civil Rights movement, and found some of the information I read very surprising. For the record, readers should know upfront that I'm pro-gay marriage, but even so, I was almost swayed by some of the detracting arguments made in the article, which I'll detail shortly. However, it was in thinking over how many people's thoughts incorrectly adhere to "unaltered" qualities of a country (e.g., America is white), which we've recently covered in English class, that I came to understand the fallacy in the arguments of the article, which pointed out the beliefs of many that gay rights issues are not as important, or as deadly, or as "serious" as African Americans' civil rights issues.

The argument that struck me as most convincing in the effort against gay marriage was that it is less serious or pressing than the Civil Rights movement of the 1950's and 1960's-- "There are no "heterosexuals only" Woolworth counters where gays and lesbians can protest segregation," and “There are issues of acceptance, but there is no back of the bus; there are no lynchings." This much is almost true. Although gays don't face nearly as much openly accepted heinous violence as many people within the black community did up until and through the 1960's, there are still gays attacked, discriminated against, ignored within the state laws on employment discrimination, and heckled to the point of suicide throughout the country. No, this isn't as blatantly horrifying at first glance as men in the guises of ghosts of dead confederate soldiers burning African Americans on crosses, but the fact is that that activity was not only accepted, but encouraged, at one point in our history. Movies like The Birth of a Nation http://www.filmsite.org/birt.html end up on the 100 Greatest American Movies list http://www.filmsite.org/afi100filmsA.html and enjoyed great commercial success in their time (even to the extent of raising KKK numbers to record levels in the 1920s), regardless of blatant racist messages and themes. And, not to give a history lesson, the Birmingham police sprayed black youth with high-powered fire hoses and sent dogs upon them in MLK's 1963 Children's Crusade.

So no, current discrimination against gays is not as blatantly and searingly hurtful as blacks experienced during the Civil Rights movement. And we should be cognizant and respectful of that. However, the mere fact that such oppositional activity to the Civil Rights movement would be much more strongly rejected and abnormal in the eyes of an everyday American of 2010 reveals a significant hole in the argument that the LGBT community doesn't deserve the same attention as Civil Rights activists: as a country, we've grown a lot since 1963. And the same crimes are not permitted. We discriminate in new ways. And, because we are more sensitive to discrimination of minorities and are held to a higher moral standard both nationally and internationally than that of the 1950's-60's, lighter offenses have greater impact. In 1963, blacks were segregated in many public establishments within the United States while they remained integrated in Canada and European countries. Today, widely Catholic countries like Spain have officially allowed gay marriage; the United States, as a whole, has not. The outward pressure is strikingly similar. The same reactionary groups are opposing reform and rights for "atypical" Americans. The lessons of the Civil Rights movement have taught us that violent discrimination and legal segregation are unacceptable, but instead of helping the plight of the LGBT community, this has rendered the more legal and "subtle" restrictions of their human freedoms somehow less worthy of our attention and sympathy. In the end, the main problem with this argument is that it assumes an unchanging society.

America's growth in acceptance has come to harm its proponents of social reform; the fact that lynchings don't occur as widely anymore means that other hate crimes and forms of discrimination are less serious. But here's the thing: smaller offenses become bigger issues ethically and societally as we become a more mature and just people. The response to lynchings would be a hundred times more angry today than in the past; that shows how we've grown as a society, and that elevates the significance of every other crime against minorities. Whether you think that restricting gay marriage or discriminating against gays is a crime or not is up to you. My argument, in this piece at least, is that regardless of your view, to truly understand an issue your country is dealing with, you have to constantly update the societal reality of your country. Who makes up the minority groups? What roles do all groups play for the advancement of the overall country? Are the beliefs of the "original" constituency of the nation relevant or controlling anymore in a multi-cultural society? What forms of discrimination are taboo now vs. years ago? Has your country's moral system advanced since half a century ago, and why? These are all essential questions to be answered before one assumes that a wrongdoing of today isn't comparable to one of the past.
Discrimination is discrimination. In the end, it appears that it is simply up to forward-thinkers to evaluate whether or not the country is up to date on how much more tolerant it has become. And, if the country is not so up-to-speed, said thinkers must determine how best to remind a nation of how far it has come while simultaneously championing the work still yet to be done.

Humor as an Anti-Discriminatory Tool

I write this post having just found myself laughing out loud at a hilarious French Canadian video on youtube protesting the 2008 move by Stephen Harper (Canada's Prime Minister) to cut funding of cultural events, which greatly concerned the Quebecer people. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFbbwEtrsa8&feature=related. For reasons I'll explain shortly, I cannot upload the video. In addition, I found a very compelling home video from Lebanon, entitled "Being a Domestic Worker: Sri Lankiete Lebanieh." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-dtxEO3GjA&feature=player_embedded. These two videos have an interesting link: they use humorous language as a way to counter discrimination.

I discovered the video about Sri Lankan Domestic Workers in a France24 "observer" article. In French, the video is entitled (translated) "My Sri-Lankan is Lebanese." This tries to bring to light and confront the publicly known and, in many cases, accepted, racist views against domestic workers in Lebanon, who are predominantly Sri-Lankan (in addition to many Ethiopians and Filipinos). So enfonced has the idea of domestic worker-as-Sri-Lankan been in the Lebanese mind, as the Lebanese directors of the film would argue, that in many circles, the two words have come to mean the same thing. A domestic worker is "automatically" a "Sri-Lankan", regardless of his or her origin. The video thus attempts to turn the stereotype on its head: the role of maitresse of the house is played by a woman, who, "coincidentally," is Sri-Lankan, while her Sri-Lankan is actually Lebanese. throughout the film, the trials and travails of a "Sri-Lankan" are depicted, and our Libyan "Sri-Lankan" actually escapes, almost as if from bondage, to remove herself from the discriminatory, derogatory treatment of her maitresse. The directors had hoped, as they describe in the article (which isn't available in English, sorry :[), that the juxtaposition of roles would raise awareness to the maltreatment of domestic workers by the hands of the Lebanese. And they hope that this willl at least begin a cycle of change in the minds of their neighbors. To any effect? It's too soon to tell, but I hope so.

My second video, as I mentioned before, cannot be displayed. I have to be able to say that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there is no innappropriate content in the video. The problem is--and the the video makes apparent--that with ignorance come misunderstandings and conflict. The ignorance called out by the video is that of Stephen Harper (the Prime Minister of Canada), who, in 2008, announced a legislation that would cut 45 million dollars from the government funding of arts in Canada. The innappropriate nature of the video is displayed through the the language misunderstanding of Anglophone board members as they inspect a Quebecer man's guitar/concert business, and whether or not it deserves the Canadian government's money. They misunderstand both the lyric of one of his songs, "phoque" (seal), for an incredibly vulgar English swear-word, and his use of the word "p'tite" (which in Quebecer quotidian French mostly deletes the "p" sound) for the vulgar English word for breasts. The Quebecer man is virtually silenced under a curtain of ignorance of language--the only bilingual member of the board is too limited in his comprehension to adequately translate his sentiment in French, and his pronunciation is overtly stereotypical and offensive--and serves as an example of culture being destroyed by people who cannot and would not appreciate the depth of its value to a society. By example, then, this video tries to demonstrate that judgment and prejudice against the fine arts is ignorant, using a theme of satire much more evident in this video than the Lebanese one.

What about you, readers? Do you have examples of humor successfully changing the minds of prejudicial others throughout the world, or even your own community? Is humor and media as criticism a weak resistance to the discriminating elements of society? And, if so, does that void this method of value?