In which I say nothing about important stuff

It’s funny that I’m having trouble getting my mind around some things that I want to write about, and I’m not quite sure why. Seeing Claire’s comment to my CF posting on women in philosophy and computer science makes me want to write about feminism, but I’m not quite sure if I have anything to say beyond the obvious. Hearing that there is controversy in debate over the use of race theory brings me to the same point. I’d like to say something, but everything I have to say strikes me as belaboring the obvious. Every time I’ve attempted to put down a few words, I’ve eventually given up in frustration. It’s not like me to be what you might call tongue-tied.

While I normally see debate as one of the great solutions to social ills, in that we’re endlessly creating an army of intelligent and articulate young people trained in political philosophy and, presumably, well-prepared to address social injustice, maybe I’m deluding myself. Possibly at the point where social issues are reduced to competitive game-playing we start to lose focus. Shouldn’t the existence of racial and sexual bias be a given in any discussion rather than a debating issue? Our American culture demonstrates gross inequalities every day; more to the point, cultural inequities, by virtue of their being cultural, are if not necessarily built into the system, awfully hard to break out of it. We treat boys differently from girls from day one, because it’s built into our culture. Whites are treated differently from non-whites because it’s built into our culture. Being openly gay in the public arena can be front-page news, because it’s built into are culture. Pick your group: Asians, Mexicans, Moslems. These are people, these are cultural groups, and our (mis)treatment of individuals in those groups is built into our culture.

Maybe the problem for me writing about this stuff is that I find cultural biases profoundly disturbing because I have no idea about how to go about changing them, short of one day at a time, one act at a time, one person at a time. And one at a time is too damned slow. Which is why I’ve thrown my lot in with debate, to have, I hope, a greater effect. If I can process more students who believe as I do, who are conscious of their personal limitations and the limitations of the society in which they live, and who act to remove those limitations as best they can, then we are that much closer to eliminating cultural biases. All that stuff I said I believed in back when I was their age, well, I really did believe in it. I still do.

So I am left at sea on situations where we can proceed in our public forums as if the ills of our society are not a given,where racial/gender/religious/cultural injustice is not a problem to be solved but a piece on the game board to be moved in whichever direction wins the game. How can we possibly be arguing about this stuff? I just don’t know. Maybe I just don't understand what's going on. Which is why I can’t seem to come up with anything to say beyond the obvious.

Sorry about that.