Thursday, February 02, 2006

Any Thoughts?

My friend's girlfriend bought me a shirt that reads, "Liberals in the military?" and on the back, "We do exist."

It's a great shirt, and I love it...I wear it to the bar on Thursday nights...I don't, however, wear it around the barracks. I don't think it would be right to bring my own politics into the workplace. Sure, it's a difficult line to mantain since I live where I work, and, step into my room for just a moment and you'll be baraged with Liberal books, stickers and whatever else I'm allowed to have. Anyway, my friend wanted to wear the shirts tonight to dinner...I said no since we have formation and the freshman would see it. Here was our conversation:

Him: do you have a costume for tonight, or do you wanna make the dual debut of the shirt?

CaliCdt: I don't think I'm going to wear the shirt around much in the barracks. I wore it to the Cow Club...but I figured it'd be just as inappropriate for me to wear a hard core Bush shirt in front of hte plebes, you know...mantain neutrality as much as possible...

Him: i guess it seems diff. since libs are in the minority, kinda like a subversion of power thing

CaliCdt: ha ha...argh...you and that argument, being a minority doesn't give us the right to play by different rules

Him: i'm not saying it does in this case, it's just that i feel less guilty about, but in general, when a group is marginalized, it should have more of a right to things, as a way of equalizing.....that's why affirmative action's ok, or black guys making white jokes but not white guys making black jokes....or black power ok/white power not

CaliCdt: sorry, totally disagree with you. you can't subvert respect and expect respect back


Any thoughts? Does being a minority somehow give us different rights or expectations than the majority?

2 Comments:

Blogger Michael said...

I think my opinion on this should be obvious - no way. There's a reason why it's called "equality."

7:39 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

when a group or groups has/have lived in a state of inequality for so long and still do, it requires certain actions and systems of inequality in THEIR favor in order to equalize the state of affairs.

The majority race has had an upper hand for a very long time and it continues today. Simply giving "equality" in economic, social, and educational environments doesn't give justice to those that are still at a disadvantage due to their race and ethnicity.

6:30 AM  

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