 |
| The Most Polite Debates on Record |
The conversation I had a few weeks ago prompted me to pull
out the soapbox. As I’ve made obvious in my many status updates on Facebook and
the material I published in the Op Ed pages of various newspapers, I detest
inequality and the suppression of humans based upon some mythological
superiority system. It may make me sound socialistic, and of course I *am*
socialistic on many fronts, but the truth is that I’m simply humanistic.
Demographically, being an old, Caucasian male, I fall into the most common category
of the oppressor. Life would be so much simpler if I was to just go with the
flow and be just another echo chamber WASP… but I can’t do that.
We briefly discussed the role of women in society. The person
with whom I was speaking felt sad that her friends, two long term progressive
judges, lost their jobs to primary opponents. In a way it’s a shame, because
they *were* quite progressive, but I still feel that raising the profile of their
female and minority opponents should be a prime concern. The way to defeat
Stone Age thought is to drive the Stone Age thinkers back into the caves from
whence they emerged. The old, white, male, while progressive, were… well… they
were old, white males. They lost to primary winners will have a larger effect
on our society… if they manage to get elected… just because they are female and
of minority origin. The day will come when that won’t be as important, but
today… this election… is not that time.
It is very, very important to advance the historically
oppressed into positions where they cannot be oppressed. Women and minorities in
the background won’t get it done. We’ve got to get those demographics out front
and center. Women, Hispanics, LGBT, the disabled, the non-dominant religions,
and anything else that isn’t old, white male. The status quo has got to be
busted down. If you don’t understand why, pull up any major newspaper’s web
portal and read the comment to the articles and editorials.
In that conversation we also briefly talked about minorities
in science and technology. Let me ask you, if you were forced to come up with
the names of 10 female or minority scientists, could you do it? 10 white,
usually European male scientists would be easy, but it seems the
accomplishments of minorities are either kept quiet or usurped by a white male
colleague. As an example I offer the Pythagorean Golden Ratio. This simple
mathematical principle has been used by scientists, engineers, architects and
artists for centuries and Pythagoras gets the credit for its discovery. But did
he really discover it? Look up Theano, Pythagoras’ wife and see what the math
historians say about it. Why do we not already know these things? Why are the
accomplishments of women and minorities buried?
Other unheralded minorities have accomplished fantastic
feats, developed vaccines, eliminated plant diseases, designed large buildings,
made great advances in medicine, and generally contributed to our human
society… all in relative anonymity. Had they been white males there would be
books written about them. The list below was gleaned from Smithsonian websites.
Each of these people made large contributions yet still suffered persecution
for the crime of being different.
Sind ibn Ali – 7th century Muslim, developed the
first known astronomical charts
Bertha Parker Pallan-Cody – Native American archeologist
Doris Cochran, herpetologist and Doris Blake, entomologist.
Lesbian lovers married to men.
Janet Bashen – First black female software developer to
receive a patent on a web-based application.
Harlean James – landscape architect and huge promoter of the
National Park System
Valentina Tereshkova – Russian Cosmonaut.
George Edward Alcorn Jr. – Black male who gave us the Xray.
Libby Hyman – Textbook author and zoologist with the
University of Chicago. She couldn’t get any other job because she was Jewish.
Keith Black – Black male who was doing neurosurgery before
Ben Carson
And then there is Penelope Jo (Maddy) Parsons. She is my age
and won the national Science Fair as a teenager with an amazing demonstration
of mathematical aptitude. Four years later she was awarded some kind of
recognition by a European group, and then she disappeared into the crowd never
to be heard from again…because she is a woman… and women don’t do science.
I’ll summarize by saying that mankind has managed to shed
many of the chains that have bound us to the past, but we still have a few we
must address. The knuckle-draggers, perhaps fearing a loss of power or stature,
have made an astounding resurgence over the last half-century (Taliban,
Evangelical Christians, Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, Fox News viewers).
From my perspective those efforts are going to backfire and
right now the time is ripe to push back. Minority children being born today
should, by the time they reach my age, be enjoying equal stature with white men
of the same age… with 100% equality… and no foolishness about some kind of
supremacy based on stupid reasons. Society should be able to look back in shame
at the way we treated our fellow humans over these previous decades, just as
many of us do now with the genocide of Native Americans, slavery and civil
rights.
President Obama shattered the myth that kept blacks held down…
now is the time for Hillary to break the next barrier. In 30 or 40 years… who
knows? Maybe a transgender, black, Muslim, woman will be judged on her merits
as a leader and not considered inferior because she isn’t an old, white male.
Signed:
An old, white male who refuses to hate someone simply
because they are different than me.
Posts
