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InjusticeUSMilitaryVsJohnBrown 18 - 20 Mar 2012 - Main.WilliamDavidWilliams
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| | Due to the lack of understanding regarding John Brown's actions, I ask the question:
If the government sanctioned it, would that make it right? | | | -- MichelleLuo - 19 Mar 2012 | |
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> | "Justice delayed is justice denied." - If you can sense that being moderate would cause a significant number of people to miss out on justice or redress, then you should be radical. You can be radical and ruffle feathers, but you can also do this with respect.
In addition, the people who you have close relationships with should be able to understand if they really care about you.
-- WilliamDavidWilliams - 20 Mar 2012 | | | William David, responding to your point about using our legal education to fight social injustice, (and this is a point that I'm sure you're already aware of) I think that in order to be effective lawyers, we have to understand that the law is very limited in changing social perceptions:
I was an anthropology major in undergrad and spent a term in New Zealand studying Maori culture and activism. I became particularly interested in the Maori tribe Ngati Whatua's unprecedented victory in fighting colonial land confiscation. For decades, the government manipulated land ownership and evicted Ngati Whatua from their ancestral lands. In 1977, Maori activist Joe Hawke led a landmark protest against subdivision of land at Bastion Point. This demonstration and others publicized the injustices against Maori people and encouraged tribes to pursue legal action against the government. Since the 1980s, public hearings and lawsuits have compelled the Crown to return land to Ngati Whatua and various other tribes. Many of my professors in New Zealand were members of Maori tribes and many were heavily involved in ongoing litigation for indigenous rights (one of my professors was the chief negotiator for her tribe for treaty settlements). I took kapa haka (Maori war dance) classes, volunteered at the Ngati Whatua's meeting house, toured Bastion Point with Joe Hawke’s brother, and protested Waitangi Day (a contentious national holiday commemorating the transfer of Maori sovereignty to the British). |
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InjusticeUSMilitaryVsJohnBrown 17 - 20 Mar 2012 - Main.MichelleLuo
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| | Due to the lack of understanding regarding John Brown's actions, I ask the question:
If the government sanctioned it, would that make it right? | | | -- KippMueller - 14 Mar 2012 | |
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< | Wow, very thoughtful posts, guys! Thank you for sharing such personal experiences. I have so much I want to respond to, but I'll focus on one point for now and continue posting later this week. | >
> | I can relate to Toma's description of her personal retreat to the moderate position. Growing up with conservative parents, it was definitely more convenient to stay quiet while they flipped out about my best friend in high school being gay. Discussions about politics inevitably turned into screaming matches and I became convinced that you can't influence people's opinions when they've already made up their minds. When I kept quiet, I thought I was taking the higher ground ("rationality, compromise and restraint", as Toma put it). In college, as I found more support for my positions on social issues (science, anthropology, personal experiences), I began challenging my parents' beliefs more. It was definitely inconvenient and frustrating and confrontational, but I'm grateful for those arguments. Although I disagreed with their arguments for why homosexuality is immoral, listening to their rationale helped me better understand how people come to take certain positions and how to communicate my views in a way that they would/could hear. My dad still doesn't "get gay people", but I think partly through our conversations and through the fact that I inevitably pick up gay friends wherever I go and he has to interact with them at some point, he's now for gay rights because he's come to see that his moral views shouldn't restrict what other people can do. Of course, none of what I've just described is being radical. I still used a "moderate" approach of picking and choosing fights and conceding issues I could push harder on.
Toma and William David's passages that stuck with me were:
Toma: "Moderate positions allow society to move the fulcrum closer toward justice, without demanding it outright. But in a lot of instances this simply means allowing injustice to persist in a slightly dampened way.”
William David: "It is not necessarily wrong though to share a middle ground about an issue. What is problematic is when you see corruption and do not do anything about it because you want to be safe and not "ruffle any feathers."
Courage demands radicalism. Courage occurs when someone does something that is either highly criticized, never done before, and/or poses incredible risk."
I agree with these statements, but I guess I'm struggling with when and to what extent being radical is the most effective approach. It's difficult to change people's views and particularly tricky to "ruffle feathers" with people you have close personal relationships with.
-- MichelleLuo - 19 Mar 2012 | | | William David, responding to your point about using our legal education to fight social injustice, (and this is a point that I'm sure you're already aware of) I think that in order to be effective lawyers, we have to understand that the law is very limited in changing social perceptions: |
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InjusticeUSMilitaryVsJohnBrown 15 - 18 Mar 2012 - Main.SkylarPolansky
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| | Due to the lack of understanding regarding John Brown's actions, I ask the question:
If the government sanctioned it, would that make it right? | | | -- MichelleLuo - 12 Mar 2012 | |
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> | Regarding your point about the "inferior" kids from day 1 being cruel to the "inferior" kids on day 2, despite knowing what it felt like to be tortured particularly interesting in light of Professor Moglen's point at the end of class last month about how remarkable it is that there were almost no retaliatory killings by black people after slavery was abolished. After years of cruelty, murder, and mistreatment, freed slaves did not lash out once given the opportunity to be free. This might be because unlike the children in the video who were given the opportunity to be in power, freed slaves were not given any sort of powerful roles in society, but were merely given the opportunity to be free. It could be that the children in the video only experienced cruelty in the short term, as opposed to slaves who experienced cruelty over many years; maybe after experiencing injustice and discrimination over such a long period it takes away the lust for vengeance. Or maybe (as a combo of my above two hypotheses) when discrimination is in place for such a long period time, when people are liberated from it they don't feel power or equality, but merely relief at not being discriminated against anymore. Even more reason to act/go to the streets sooner rather than later, before discrimination becomes institutionalized and wipes away the ability of those discriminated against to feel not just free, but powerful.
-- SkylarPolansky - 18 Mar 2012 | | | I heard about the blue-eyed/brown-eyed experiment, but the video really put it into perspective. This is basically the "subconscious" losing of your identity and replacing it with the ideals of the corporation/organization that you have become part of that Arnold discusses in The Folklore of Capitalism. The experiment hits me hard because that has been my life experience.
My mother told me that my late grandmother had scraps of food given to her to eat by the white family that she worked for as a domestic. The family thought it was proper for her to eat them. As a child, I couldn't figure out why so many African Americans were deemed as "criminals" or "savages" that only could participate in athletics or something else artistic (e.g. rap). Going through school, people were surprised I was so focused on academics. What they didn't know is that I didn't give in to the propaganda. I remember reading how "scientists" did skull studies and concluded that blacks were the least intelligent race. Watching the Jane Elliott experiment when the commentator reported that kids who were deemed as superior "always did better on their tests," made me think about how people attempt to condition society to think that African Americans are not qualified and unintelligent. |
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InjusticeUSMilitaryVsJohnBrown 14 - 17 Mar 2012 - Main.WilliamDavidWilliams
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| | Due to the lack of understanding regarding John Brown's actions, I ask the question:
If the government sanctioned it, would that make it right? | | | I left New Zealand with the same passion for social justice that compelled me to visit but less certain of the best way to achieve it. Graeme taught me that there are distinctions to be drawn within any social struggle. One component is a very specific struggle to combat a set of rules and practices that treat a group unfairly. Another is a larger struggle to readjust subjective norms. The Maori people of New Zealand have largely, albeit not entirely, accomplished the former through legal and political means. But like Graeme, I don’t know how they will achieve the latter.
-- MichelleLuo - 14 Mar 2012 | |
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> | Michelle,
Thank you for sharing this interesting insight into your life. Changing society through law is one piece of the puzzle, albeit a big one. However, the law can only take things so far. The people have to believe in the law, and also that they are entitled to the rights that the law provides. Your experience with Graeme and Maori culture reminds me of this quote in The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson:
“If you can control a man’s thinking, you don’t have to worry about his actions. If you can determine what a man thinks you do not have worry about what he will do. If you can make a man believe that he is inferior, you don’t have to compel him to seek an inferior status, he will do so without being told and if you can make a man believe that he is justly an outcast, you don’t have to order him to the back door, he will go to the back door on his own and if there is no back door, the very nature of the man will demand that you build one.”
I believe the Maori have been stigmatized for centuries under laws and societal practices, whether explicit laws or not, to a point where many like Graeme have come to believe that their "place" is at the bottom of society. Their experience of centuries of mistreatment is similar to the experiences of Native Americans and African Americans in this country. There comes a point, where despite what the law says, a person that has had to undergo this treatment will give up the fight or will not advocate for much because of a fear that "acquired" rights could be taken away from them.
Part of changing those subjective norms is developing the power of persuasion. Becoming a lawyer helps you fine tune this persuasion,and enhances your credibility in society. This alone will help you work to change subjective norms. In many instances movements start only with a few people unified toward a goal who are not afraid to reach out and create networks for social change. Especially when a movement has a leader that a galvanizing affect, people are willing to follow despite past injustices.
I think you would appreciate some of the programs the Black Panthers had in America, despite how the media labeled them, to convince African Americans that they had power and deserved the right to be educated and to receive proper medical care. Although many of their leaders were killed, they definitely were a shining light in the civil rights movement of the 20th century.
I can understand what you went through there and how Graeme feels. Moving forward, I know has to be tough. Ngati Whatua, to do so, need to visibly voice their concerns and not give up. Tribal members need to see each other "take to the streets" and voice their concerns. Even for Graeme to communicate his personal beliefs at a tribal meeting would start this process of community awareness and mobilization. Then, if other communities observe what the Ngati Whatua are doing, maybe they will begin to support them as well. Since they have been mistreated for so long, they would need others to see their efforts and begin to advocate on their behalf.
The NCAA basketball tournament this weekend has been a prime example of how a movement can begin. There has been one team that particularly intrigued me: Norfolk State. They were the number 15 team in a regional playing against the #2 team. Out of all the people filling out NCAA brackets, less than 2 percent picked Norfolk State to have a first round upset. Despite only four number 15 seeded teams being victorious over #2 teams in over 100 NCAA tournament games, they had a sense of confidence that surprised me going into their game against #2 Missouri. They believed, despite all of the experts and the rest of America saying that they would be an easy out and were clearly inferior to Missouri. The game went back and forth, akin to a prized, heavyweight fight. As people saw that Norfolk State was a real threat to win, more and more fans that came to support other teams started to support them. They won the game, the crowd, and America's will.
The law is supposed to reflect the will of the people. Once we work to get this will, the law will just be a reflection of that reality.
Ok. I'm going to leave you with another link to more words by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that are never quoted. Take care and don't give up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWqeQf135qM |
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