Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Progress or Dystopia, Part 4

Equal Rights

The last main claim in support of progress is that modern society is so much more tolerant and progressive than “traditional” societies. We ended slavery. We ended Jim Crow. Women entered the workforce. Gays can serve in the military. Let’s pat ourselves on the back.

I addressed some of these claims in my post about issue based change versus systemic change. If you think the U.S. has eradicated its racial caste system, read Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow. If you think modern, industrial societies have successfully dealt with racism, read any comment thread that exists anywhere on the internet. If you think women are liberated, look at statistics concerning rape and eating disorders, examine the gendered division of labor in any industry or organization, and look at the images of women promulgated by the entertainment industry. If you think America (or any other industrial society) is a melting pot, pay attention to discussions (and I use that word lightly) about immigration. You do not need to look hard to find hateful language directed at any particular group of people. In fact, the internet has made it easier to disseminate this vitriol.

The fact of the matter is, all of the social/economic/political processes that demand structured inequality remain in place. It is important to note that the ideological basis of these divisions and prejudices are completely modern:

-The concept of “race” developed in the Enlightenment era as a means of creating divisions among the population of people oppressed by the nascent capitalist system. It has continued to function as a mechanism for segregating interests and obtaining free or cheap labor.

-The relegation of women’s work to the domestic sphere was a product of the new division of labor that emerged when production moved outside of the home and into the factory. Furthermore, the absorption of women into the post-WW2 labor force is a reflection of the need for cheap labor, an expanded labor force and a new market for manufactured goods (dishwashers! washing machines! mass-produced clothes!). The combination of these two forces (domestic responsibility and careers outside the home) has only served to double the burden that women must bear. Now women are expected to do it all.

-Michel Foucault argued that the idea of “homosexuality” (even more, sexuality in general) did not arise until the late 19th century, and has served to make sexual activities definitive of a person’s entire identity and consciousness as a human being. Some scholars have provided evidence that the creation of “homosexuality” as a pathological mode of being was born out of eugenicist fears that white reproduction was not occurring at a healthy rate. It should never be forgotten that “homosexuality” was a scientific/medical concept before it entered popular discourse.

-It can be just as convincingly argued that fears/abhorrence of immigrants, terrorists, Muslims, and the like, are byproducts of colonialism and nation-building, especially the creation of immutable state boundaries, the ideals of ethnically “pure” states, and all the various forms of neocolonialism that produce backlash against the modern world order.

The prejudices that modernity, in all of its enlightened glory, is supposedly ameliorating are the very prejudices created by modernity.

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