Re: SCS controversy, etc.

Sorry we disagree!   But I look forward to seeing more from you.

Dan

On Sat, Mar 2, 2019 at 1:16 PM Mark Davidson <[email protected]>
wrote:

> I have no sympathy with Mary Frances Williams or her views whatsoever, but
> that doesn't mean I have to agree with Dan-el Padilla Peralta either.
>
> Padilla Peralta wrote in his Medium article:
>
> "While also well intentioned, compliments for 'grace' and 'composure' under
> fire only serve to underscore the domestication of brown bodies..."
>
> So he's complaining because he was complimented for grace and composure and
> maintaining his dignity.
>
> But what if people had said the opposite? What if they had said that he
> should rather have showed anger and started shouting? Then he would be
> complaining that he was being urged to fit a stereotype because he's black.
>
> What if everyone had studiously avoided saying anything to him? Then he
> would be complaining that his decent behaviour was ignored because of his
> race.
>
> In fact, is there anything whatsoever that people could have said or
> refrained from saying that he wouldn't somehow twist into victimhood? Just
> wondering.
>
> Later in his article he says something that made me do a double-take and
> then a face palm. He says:
>
> "I *should* have been hired because I was black: because my Afro-Latinity
> is the rock-solid foundation upon which the edifice of what I have
> accomplished and everything I hope to accomplish rests; because my black
> body’s vulnerability challenges and chastizes the universalizing
> pretensions of color-blind classics; ... That scholarly merit can, even in
> the minds and hearts of supporters and well-wishers, be decoupled from the
> fact of my Afro-Latinity is why the rage will continue to burn brightly."
>
> Um... so he's angry because he *wasn't* hired because he's black? He says
> he was hired on merit, but he's angry because of this - he *should* have
> been hired merely because he's black.
>
> I have to wonder why, in that case, he found Mary Frances Williams'
> suggestion that he was hired because he was black insulting?
>
> There seems to be an utter lack of logic to what he is saying. But perhaps
> we should all just smile and nod, and give him a pass... because he's
> black...
>
>
> I also wasted my time reading the introduction to the book that Dan
> Tompkins recommended, The Rule of Moderation by Ethan H. Shagan.
>
> Far from being ground-breaking, it seems to me that the author's arguments
> are trivially true.
>
> He says that a certain degree of variation in religion, culture, etc. was
> tolerated, but the state came down hard on anything outside those limits.
>
> So what? Moderation doesn't mean anarchy. All states have laws and limits
> and repress people who act outside those limits.
>
> The moderation of 16th and 17th century England lay in the wide range that
> was tolerated - far wider than practically any other country at the time.
> Any number of examples of the state harshly repressing things outside that
> range go to prove nothing new.
>
> Mark D
>