No "Yee-Haws" Please

In the race versus gender discussion, Steve Perry points out that anecdote doesn’t equal science. He’s right. The trouble is that the relative significance of any non-subjective data (rates of violence, longevity, income, status, etc.) all have to be ranked, ultimately, by human beings. Now, I’m perfectly willing to take the position that the question (Do blacks or women experience more discrimination in America?) can’t be answered. That was MY original intent. It got broadened into “worldwide”, which was NOT my intent, but O.K., I guess that’s an even more important question.

But here’s my point: how do we decide which standards are most important? Each and every one of them can be deconstructed, or de-emphasized according to someone’s political or philosophical position, and I’ve either heard or been a part of discussions in which that happened. Here are some for instances:
1) Income. How important is the comparison between males and females? Or blacks and whites? Feminists typically take the position that the raw figures can be taken into account. Anti-Feminists take the position that this isn’t fair, since you aren’t considering time in job, height, percentage of group willing to compete in this arena (and thus available for networking, etc.) Afrocentrists take the position that white women benefit from being married to those high-earning white men. This forces us to talk not about men and women, but SINGLE men and women. And the argument goes on, with people on each side screaming that they’re right.
2) Life expectancy. Under ordinary circumstances, I’d consider life expectancy to be more important than anything other than Infant Mortality Rate. But the infant mortality rate for white males and white females favors women. For the children of white males and white females…well, that’s pretty obvious. Again, factor in “single” and the stats shift, but that wasn’t a part of the original question, was it? Women live LONGER than men, but that’s partially biological, and partially the result of men having more of the dangerous jobs and being more likely to die due to violence. Perfectly natural for women to point to the fact that men COMMIT most of the violence, so it’s natural they should die from more of it. To which a man can reply that men are programmed, partially by women, to be aggressive and power-seeking. And the two sides scream at each other. Racially, black women live a shorter time than white women, and their children die sooner. Oops! That would seem to be pretty strong, considering that the survival of our children is central to every human group, everywhere in the world. But it could be argued (and is by books like BELL CURVE) that this is due to intrinsic differences between the groups (namely intelligence) and not due to racism. And the two sides scream at each other.

Whether you’re talking about deciding on the arenas in which data will be measured, or giving relative weight to the different arenas, subjectivity is involved. Every human group other than black females will have MORE axe to grind here. Sure, they will too. But even the axe they choose to grind is indicative of whatever stresses they have experienced. Unless we have Martians, completely outside the system of black-white, male-female, I think that this one group comes the closest to having clarity.
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Now please note that I’ve worked very hard to keep from coming to a conclusion here, because when it comes right down to it, I don’t believe I can. I am “inside the box” myself, and even my choosing this standard could be somehow loaded. An example is the way I began asking black women this question some years ago. I figured that about ten answers would give me something to average, and an indication of which way the wind blew. I asked about five, and every one of them said the same thing: race.

All right, I said to myself. That wasn’t what I’d expected. I thought that it would be more evenly distributed, and realized that my sample was hardly random. And stopped asking the question. When I decided to do an NPR piece on it, Ellen Silva at All Things Considered asked me to continue canvassing. I combed through my address book, discounting some possibilities (one woman ran a black-themed book shop. I refused to ask her on the same grounds it would have been silly to ask a woman who ran a Feminist book shop), and had a range of ages from 35 to 80, raised all over the country. And I STILL got the same answer.

But I know that my sample is too small, and still slanted. I still don’t believe I can come to a conclusion. But I’ve tried very, very hard to be fair here, I hope you can see. More importantly, Dan Moran hits a nerve (a good thing) when he points out the nature of damage from rape and abuse. I will die and burn in hell before I deliberately cause a fraction of a hair of pain in women who have been hurt by men. Not in this life time. So I stay with the position: “we can’t know. But if we could, there’s only one group that could tell us.” I’m not trying to convince anyone else. Just describing the way I think.
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Muddy meditation this morning. 2007 was the year from heck. Woulda been the year from hell, but after we got the Fox Searchlight papers signed in July or whatever, the stress was all an embarrassment of riches. Most writers would kill to have the “stress” I have in my life right now. I need to keep that in perspective.
Still, I have to be aware of how my brain is processing stuff.
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Note that Obama is beating Clinton handily among black voters. Just six weeks ago, the polls were completely different. The shift is that black voters now believe that whites will vote for him. That’s the big one. My cynical side says that they’re looking for plausible reasons to jump ship without making it look as if race is involved. Because if it is, they give whites implicit permission to vote along racial lines as well—a losing position. Note that Hillary can openly talk about “a woman in the White House” while Obama does not. I suggest that this is because of both his inherently non-dualistic philosophy (which I embrace) and because he knows he’ll lose if he tries it. It’s entertaining to watch the two groups jockeying for position. It’s actually the most fun I’ve ever had watching politics. As long as I don’t become convinced she’s some kind of monster (and frankly, I just don’t understand the venom many people, male and female, feel toward her) it’s kind of a win-win for me. Pop the popcorn. And watch people lying with a straight face. Here’s hoping no one pulls a Howard Dean “Yee-Haw!” although I really don’t understand why that screwed up HIS candidacy, either. I guess I’m just oblivious about these things.
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My body is finally allowing me to jump rope more easily—I’m working on ten minute segments, while tripping over my feel too damned much, of course. But it gets a little better every time.