Ethnicity & Sexuality
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We must understand that patriarchal domination shares an ideological foundation with racism and other forms of group oppression, and that there is no hope that it can be eradicated while these systems remain intact. This knowledge should consistently inform the direction of feminist theory and practice. (hooks 1989: 22)
An unexamined double standard looms over thinkers and activists who nod along to quotes like this. The basic flaw is now glaringly noticeable, enough to turn me cantankerous with the willfully blind and accordingly doubtful of my ability to remain sufficiently constructively critical and non-polemical throughout this post. Despite this, my aims are high. More steeply though, concerning the specific quote, the same conviction implicates anyone who traverses racial and sexual (and other group-interest) politics from uniformly reparative angles. This holds regardless of whether the ends of a particular reparative expedition happen to be identical or similar to the ones that this quote by hooks seeks to activate and energize, and regardless of whether the reparation-seekers are at all conversant with the works of someone like hooks.
If a reparative project is anything, it is past-centric and morally transitive. While understandings of reparation can and do vary from theory to theory, all theories hold in common a central premise; their justificatory force calls for a "Past Lives Matter" criterion of reciprocation and rightness. Among other troubling things, this approach sees inter-group reparation advocates under the thumb of distributive schemes which, even in practice, so in direct policy terms, are willing to dethrone strict neutrality when doing so is the only means of securing Intergenerational Restorative Justice. So it would be wrong not to lend greater weight to a past-centered brand of justice over the more customary ideals which fasten legal and procedural neutrality across all non-dead individuals.
It gets worse. To help right past wrongs, members of certain groups are encouraged to view their raw subjective experiences as epistemic leverage for arriving at answers to questions of evidentiary import. The theories encouraging this know to adjust for varying levels of past injustices, meaning some maltreated groups (i.e. visible minorities) are afforded more first-person laxity than other maltreated groups, though this is controversial and inessential for the main tenets to be introduced.
The uncontroversial tenets hold that the more Historically Wronged groups one belongs to, the more first-personal, internally-crafted hardship cred one secures for oneself. The fewer Historically Wronged groups one belongs to, the less first-personal, internally-crafted hardship cred one secures. The upshot is that, for one particular group, no such clout is plausibly on the table. At least insofar as its members live in the West. For them, any admissible evidence and reason-giving is necessarily third-personal, statistical and otherwise non-experiential. And even then, you can't help but wonder about the hidden effects on conflict resolution. Under a selective-leverage regime, the inputs and arguments of western men, no matter how careful and aspirationally third-personal their contributions prove to be, remain open to overruling via the anecdotal tales and antics of those whose membership in one or another officially recognized marginalized group is accepted by all parties. This alone seems to not be worth the price of admission, reparation be dammed.
None of this is to suggest that the traditionally minded opponents of intergroup-reparation are altogether insusceptible to the double standards I intend to unveil here. No one is foundationally immunized from the alluringly uneven leverage oversight, no matter their professed or revealed beliefs. It just so happens that the epistemic blinders and loosened standards I'll be focusing on here are less likely to take hold as traditionalistic dogma enters the fray. How can this be? The reasons are stretchable and mazelike, intended for the diligent and temperamentally mature reader who fires no shots at the messenger and who assesses what the post is getting at incrementally.
It is commonly said that, within private affairs, or in largely depoliticized contexts, inquisitive non-judgmentalism is the best social attitude to have. When a personal choice doesn't linearly harm anyone, the choice cannot be unethical or immoral, even when it is self-indulgent or beneficently avoidant. Here a self-seeking agent's total disinterest in supererogation can at most inspire advocates of social non-judgmentalism to rely on softer terms like morally wanting, but never morally worse or wrong. In turn, voluntary associational selectivity now enjoys a cordial amoral status. And if this freely empowered association doesn't enjoy it beyond the progressive havens of the West, well then it certainly ought to, provided that all such associations are shown to be in unison broadly harmless. This, if social non-judgmentalists are going to have their say.
So when we choose to befriend Travis and avoid Melvin, we are not acting ethically or unethically. Our personal choices are just not apt for this category of scrutiny. These decisions can be prudent or imprudent, leaving them open to a yay/boo feedback mechanism from onlookers; presumably from a small number of people only, like close friends and family members. But even with those we know extremely well, the feedback is (ideally) always cashed out in distinctly non-moral forms of normatively-laced approval or disapproval. A student receiving an A or an F on a test, for instance. The grader, if he is a licensed professional, knows that he has no business casting positive or negative forms of moral judgment on the student for his performance, in line with the student's A or F. In fact, it will not even occur to the grader to overextend ethics and moral sense into this, at least once we stipulate that this grader is well-read on, and is genuinely convinced by, some of the more credible ethical theories around. The same goes for the friendship decision above. There are reasons for pushback or pressure from others, but those reasons take the form of bolstering prudence and skirting imprudence. And it stops there.
Things weren't always this unintrusive. Thankfully, hard-fought lessons have been extracted from the more intrusive days, despite how tediously gradual and drawn-out escaping them has been. But escape those days we did. For this, westerners have generic progressivism to credit, or whichever subsection of progressive politics you feel deserves props for pushing the West away from senseless trad-taboos and delivering us here.
Culturally induced monogamy, therefore, has also had its day. Its replacement doesn't implore widespread support from any dominant culture. Instead, it demands that promiscuous and non-monogamous choices not be condemned the way they were prior to the sexual revolution. As with other types of pursuits, the lifestyle stakes are (said to be) neither good nor bad. They just are, and they ought to be respected or tolerated. Respect and/or tolerance applies to intimate choices when those are assortative as well as when they prove to be post-assortative.
The setup goes something like: There are rights and there are responsibilities. Civic norms operate on the give-and-take between the two. The freer a society is, the more progressive it becomes, the more roominess it affords to arbitrary favouritisms within apolitical domains. Trying to outrun the inescapability of instinct and choice, once all impersonal responsibilities are fulfilled, is a fool's errand. Seek to stultify this progress and be met with reminders that what goes on consensually behind closed doors is no one's business dammit. Alright then.
