IIRC Ikki is non-white.
Why are you benchying anyway? I know it's really standard to do it in feminism/racism discussions, but it's still a dick move IMO.
Well, this is one of the more stupider posts I've read.
I am part of a minority and have lived in several countries where I'm sure there are institutional barriers to me getting to a position of real power. I highly doubt I'm about to become Prime Minister of Australia or any brown muslim will any time soon, yet we have had a female Prime Minister. I'm not comparing brown people vs females here; just responding to the notion that I'm not aware of liabilities of being part of a certain subset of people. I'm actually addressing the very core of this problem; that people continually see others in terms of groups and not individuals and because of this we'll go in circles; whether clock-wise or otherwise.
If you can't see that, then mind the forrest.
I think both of you missed my point due to my posting of a smartarse remark instead of actually arguing out my point regarding why it's problematic to be dismissive of group-rights in juxtaposition to individual rights in a thorough fashion. My post had everything to do with, in my opinion, the well-meaning insular naivety of Ikki's post and nothing to do with who was posting it. The second sentence was in specific reference to privilege leading to treating a lop-sided world as a post-feminist one with race and caste used as examples of other occasions it happens as opposed to me saying Ikki has no experience of any prejusidce in my life. I apologize if I unintentionally appeared to be having a race whinge because that was not the case at all. I think it's only fair I explain my position now.
I think it's problematic to be dismissive from groups-rights causes because first, ideologically, there is a certain solidarity that builds up between the sufferers of discrimination, whether you like it or not. It is
their cause and not something which people who don't face the same cannot empathize with, even though they can sympathize with it. For them, people from their groups doing well is a matter of great pride and makes them believe they can do it. By making it in fall under the broad umbrella of individual rights, you're not allowing them to celebrate their own ways of expression, distinctive cultures etc. which society convinces them are under cultures. People who have plenty don't necessarily need a group identity because they can afford to shed it after generations of privilige putting them in a position to. People from disadvantaged positions can't because their group identity is often all they have. For example, a lot of Brahmins in India, and I am partly one, don't need to hold on to their caste tag because they're parents/grandparents were part of the upper middle class+ and they're educated and assimilated into the modern world. It's ironic that caste has become invisible to them almost solely because it afforded them privileges not provided to some other communities. However, for the scheduled castes, their caste through government categorizations, societal discrimination, mockery of the way they speak often as first gen college grads and their cultures being different and considered inferior from the more affluent cultures - their identity and common suffering is all they have and the pride that they take in it is in a "we're as good as anyone else" sense and I think it's really dire to say from an enlightened position that such groups-rights issues are problematic.
Further, by becoming group blind, you're actually unconsciously pushing the dominant culture at the expense of the oppressed cultures because people in positions of power in society from the dominant culture even if they strongly believe in individual rights are shaped by their upbringing which involves an internalization of cultural norms from childhood which they consider 'normal', when they recognize this dialect, behaviour etc. in other people who inevitably are from the dominant culture, they are more likely to provide them with professional opportunities, social contacts etc. because they're seeing behaviour which they in a perfectly well meaning way consider 'normal'. For example, the black accent/dialect/sentence construction is considered less 'intellectual' than the English settler's. For this reason, it's not merely enough to be dedicated to individual rights but you also have to recognize and respect diversity and the various issues groups face because the world we live is not equal and treating it as an equal one would be not for the benefit but rather at the expense of the oppressed because discrimination is very rarely in-your-face and to recognize sub-concious/institutional discrimination, it is imperative to recognize the struggles of groups.
Thirdly, from a pragmatic perspective, placing everything under the broad umbrella of individual rights creates a false change of priorities from addressing very specific ground solutions for issues faced by groups to trying to do a post-racial/feminist enlightenment program of individual rights. Ideally, both should happen but we don't need a shift of the debate from say addressing the police-black people situation in the last couple of years in the USA by creation of racial awareness in specific among the police. You need to address the racism directly and in specific, you can't treat it in the general umbrella of individual rights because it's obviously a groups-rights issue from perpetrator to oppressed. Similar with say, misogyny in the armed forces. What I'm saying is once you narrow it down to specfiic groups rights issues, there are immediate steps you can take in order to create a better situation. The respect to individual rights and the step forward to an equal society should always be there but it has to work in conjunction with groups-rights and not in ignorance of it due to the acknowledgement of inequalities in the world.
