There is a glaring contradiction in the rhetoric of social equality and I haven't really found a way to express it although I see its manifestations in multiple ways. To put it a blunt way, you cannot have multiculturalism and social equality because the moment you establish a level of acceptable cultured behavior that isn't materially identical, you set up an arbitrary equation of equivalence.
I want to let that sentence stand on its own so you can consider the implications, because they are also true of class and gender, sexual persuasion and all other categories many Americans have stared at for too long in recent decades.
Now on the whole, I say this is a luxury because human experience is broad and varied. Which is an acknolwedgement that life isn't fair. I thought about it yesterday in the context of performance. If you ask anyone who claims to be up on their Ps and Qs in the latest social sciences, they will likely be familiar with the term 'stereotype threat'. If you're not, nevermind it. It's basically social flinching. Try this. Stand in fron of your daughter, quickly raise your right hand as if you're drawing back to slap her face. If she flinches, then to a certain degree she is oppressed. IE she knows to expect a slap in the face. This only happens to girls who have been slapped in some way, and it's entirely reasonable for them to flich defensively. But in another way, it is a burden. There is a part of her world that is slowed down by the fact of the tragic experience. And so it goes through all of life. One cannot expect equality when experience dictates otherwise. But we adjust for that by changing expectations.
Imagine a world in which social class did not exist. I say this is an improper utopia. A classless society forces everyone into the same expectations. If the king is not allowed to curse, moan and whine, then so a pauper could not. If a knight could never flinch from the anticipated battle, neither could the knave. In our society what we should expect is that people may aspire to the class of their choice, indeed class mobility should exist. But then people must take on the expectations of those classes and stick to them.
So this is an argument that is pro-class, and formalist. Let the denizens of Sherwood Forest luxuriate in their laziness. We don't expect anything more from them, nor anything less. Let the high and mighty not sneak off to Vegas to indulge in vulgarities. There is high and low. Acknowledge them, because life isn't fair and experience matters.
BTW, Weiner has outed himself, so put him in his place.
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