A10 Voices
Friday, December 14, 2012
Is ‘social justice’ really just?
HEARD on the
w The Granite Bay Gazette
BAY
What is your fondest winter break memory?
“Getting presents.”
freshman
Bill Nguyen “Going to San Francisco to go shopping.”
Gazette illustration/EMMA GRACYK
What began as a way to stop appropriation has spiraled out of control
sophomore
S
“Dinner with my family.”
junior
Corey Consunji “Having a white Christmas when I was younger.”
senior
Sara northam
Thumbs down: Homework… “Going bird hunting with my boys.” AP and Honors homework…
staff
haley massara
Thumbs Up Thumbs up: One more week of school until Winter Break!
John MacLeane –Compiled by Hayley McAvoy
Commentary
Thumbs Down
Shelby McPhail
guy writing laws that was before the real top me if you’ve heard this one: decide who pays for her crusaders started Check your (insert adjective) birth control. A person popping up. privilege. of Native American Racism, sexism Now, I’m a purebred, blue-blooded descent probably doesn’t and the like are the Jewish liberal, and I’m content with love seeing hipster biggest topic for a that identity. I’ve attended my fair girls wearing feather lot of SJ activists, share of gay rights protests, I’m headdresses like they’re and rightly so – you appropriately offended by whatever some cute vintage hat, piggish bureaucrat’s off-color comments don’t need to be rather than a sacred eight different kinds are making headlines this week, and symbol. Privilege was of minority to know I’ve preset a frequency to NPR on my coined to help these there’s discrimination parents’ car radios. people understand why in the world. But there’s this one nagging thought I what they’re doing And so the more keep having. It started as just a fleeting might be offensive – and zealous preachers judgment, and gradually, as election why they don’t have of the SJ cause season degenerated into the usual hmassara.gazette@gmail.com the moral high ground partisan bloodbath, it metastasized into a have collectively if they simply claim it figured out a way to full-blown opinion. isn’t. delineate the truly oppressed from the What I’m about to say is a liberal But as the SJ movement spreads, mere complainers. anathema. I’ve been holding it in for so too does its message, and like an It’s a concept called months now, but I overblown game of telephone tag, privilege. You have confess: I’m sick with each manifestation, it mutates and it, I have it, and to death of political distorts itself. theoretically, everyone correctness. But as the SJ There are so many ways to be with a pulse has it. It’s For the uninitiated, movement spreads, anything beyond your privileged that it’s nearly impossible to the spidering, account for them all – so if you try to immediate control that amorphous thing so too does its discuss any vaguely taboo subject and gives termed “social message, and like an automatically you’re not the most mightily oppressed you some kind of legjustice” (or SJ for short) can best overblown game of up in modern society. sad sack on the North American You can have privilege continent, you can expect to be told that be defined as a telephone tag, with for being white, for you’re a bigot of some sort and to kill largely internetbased movement each manifestation, it being male, for being yourself. What began as a legitimate tool to financially well-off whose stated goal mutates and distorts – all the things you fight appropriation and cruelty has very is the promotion nearly become another way to spread might expect. of civil rights and itself. it. It almost feels as though there’s this But the deeper you societal equality unspoken contest within SJ circles to see go into the SJ world, for minorities. Its who can be the most underprivileged – the more nitpicky primary strongholds that somehow, a non-binary pansexual you are required to be have traditionally demiromantic otherkin person of color’s about your various privileges. Free of been sites like Tumblr and Reddit, but opinion is much more valid than mine. major illness? Health privilege. Think its tactics and messages have gradually Anti-racism has started to degenerate of yourself as a girl, if you’re female, been working their way into the into reverse racism (which is still or a boy, if you’re male? Cisgendered mainstream (remember Kony 2012?). discriminatory), in these extreme little privilege. Able to read this sentence? At first, I, like a good little corners of the internet. Feminism is Literacy privilege. progressive, passively supported the fermenting into misandry. The very I don’t mean to imply that having SJ bloggers in their noble quest. All same people who were once praised for these privileges isn’t a genuine they required of me was the occasional their efforts to raise awareness about ‘like’ or ‘share’ to make me feel morally advantage in the world. But every depression and anxiety are now told they minuscule thing that doesn’t make your superior. can’t have it, because they live in nice life worse can be privilege. And the Photos of angry feminists holding suburbs and were born with the right more you have, according to those on signs to protest victim-blaming in genitals in the right spots. the crazier end of the SJ spectrum, the cases of rape? Sure! Posts explaining And this weird reverse-discrimination less your opinion should matter in any how to address a transgendered person thing has trickled into the offline world, kind of political setting. correctly? Great! A link to a fundraiser as well. I find myself panicking over I think I get what the intended to help an oppressed group in some my college applications because (on point of all of this was, I really do. faraway country? There’s no way I’m top of all the normal, GPA- or time A disadvantaged female SJ activist donating, but hey, points for effort! management-related reasons) I’m not an – understandably, I believe – likely That’s how it started, at least. Very especially sympathetic individual. It’s doesn’t want a middle-aged white benign, very well-intentioned. That
Thumbs down: One more week of finals, tests and finishing college applications.
not a pretty truth, but it’s the truth – if I weren’t ethnically boring or financially solvent, my chances of being accepted to a competitive school would be slightly better, ignoring all of my academic qualifications. That’s a scary thing, even for a liberal. My point is twofold. First, as far as the SJ movement goes: No one will ever take you seriously if you equate cheeseburgers to genocide and the “Are you a boy or a girl?” prompt at the beginning of a Pokemon game to erasism. Pick your battles carefully and knock it off with the hyperbole. The goal of all your campaigning and awareness-raising is still one worth fighting for, so long as you don’t let your ideology get diluted with useless antagonism. Otherwise, you can expect people like me – and internet trolls who are much, much less courteous – to simply mock you, rather than take the time to listen. And secondly, to people of the Real World – I know I’m going against the liberal grain by saying all of this, but just consider: are the scholarships, job offers, and the like that preferentially seek out the disadvantaged or underrepresented among us really less discriminatory? Or do they simply change the age-old pattern of rewarding those born into luckier circumstances into one that rewards the unlucky? I can’t answer that, but I have no more control over my demographics than anyone else, no matter their race, gender, orientation or yearly income. This is not a comfy place to be in. But I’d rather be honest, in all my disillusionment, than blindly reblog, repost or repin whatever SJ-related debate happens to show up on my screen. You don’t have to agree with me. Heck, I know a lot of you won’t. But so long as you really think critically – as long as you don’t let the mob-mentality of the Internet or the guilt-tripping and conformity of party politics squelch your well-meaning doubts – I’ll never respect you any less for it. I might be in the wrong, but at least I’m genuine in my wrongness. *** Haley Massara, a senior, is a Gazette co-editor-in-chief.
Thumbs down: I have to share my car with her.
Thumbs up: My older sibling is home from college!
by Hayley McAvoy, green screen editor. Gazette photos /SUMMER HAENNY