There’s something so beautiful about humanity when an oppressed group rises up and refuses to be abused and belittled any longer. The minority takes a stand, demands national attention and speaks louder than the majority who was, until now, ignorant to their cause.
There lies an inherent problem with activism, though. The will to succeed… “by any means necessary.” These means include demonizing and slandering one’s opposition to reach a goal that a group has. And that’s what concerns me.
During the civil rights movement, two prominent black leaders emerged: Martin Luther King, Jr and Malcolm X. Dr. King preached peace and love and talked of white and black people being together in unity. His message wasn’t one of finger pointing, he simply wanted everybody to be judged on their heart and not their color. Malcolm X was less consistent. He, at times, talked of never having met a sincere white person in his life and white people supporting the black movement as “weakening black coffee with white cream.” Now I’m not saying he hadn’t faced years and years of belittlement and that he wasn’t coming from a valid standpoint, but Dr. King had faced the same kind of adversity and still had love in his heart for those that had oppressed him. He chose to pity their ignorance rather than condemn them for it.
We are at a point where people no longer want the news, they simply want to hear about how great their side is and how lousy the other side is. Liberals can go to Huffington Post and conservatives can go to Fox News. You can be told how the Republicans are going to turn the earth into a crater or you can hear about how Democrats are going to make the U.S. a socialist country. There is one reason why these news sources do this: It works.
My question is this: Was there ever a point that we simply wanted to know the truth? Or do we just want to be told that we’re right?
Even though I personally wouldn’t have voted for the guy, I read something recently about John Kerry from the 2004 election. When his campaign manager pressed him to do smash ads, he refused. Kerry didn’t air ads that attacked Bush. I found this to be extremely respectable and showed the heart of what kind of man he was… Even if I disagreed with his politics. Many experts speculate that this may have been what lost the election for him, ultimately. I would most certainly agree (well, that and the ill-advised “I’m John Kerry and I’m reporting for duty”).
Unfortunately, this happens a lot in activism as well. People who claim to want equality really just want to see what it’d be like for their group to be on top. Many Feminist groups attack men, a lot of gay groups attack religious people, a number of black groups attack white people.* Now, don’t get me wrong, a lot of white religious men have done some truly horrible things in just the past hundred years alone, everybody has… The majority just gets more attention because with more people come more problems.
So whereas in the ’60s it was appropriate for a man to belittle a woman, it is now appropriate for a woman to belittle a man. Don’t believe me? Imagine a celebrity woman going on a talk show and saying: “All men are pigs.” It’d be laughed off and nobody would think anything of it. If a male celebrity went on a talk show and said: “All women are sluts,” the news would have a field day and that guy would be making a public apology within 24 hours.
I’m not trying to say that a man should be able to say that about a woman. Both of those statements should be equally deplorable. Or on the other hand, both should be perfectly acceptable. But at no time should one ever be considered more or less than the other.
So instead of demonizing our opposition, let’s try and understand where the other side is coming from and that just because a group is in the majority doesn’t mean that every person in that majority is as bad as the ones that give the majority a bad name.
The most important thing to remember is that no matter what side of the issue you stand on, there’s always somebody more intelligent that disagrees with you.
-CSL
*I don’t mean to say that all of these groups focus on singling out these people, many are like Dr. King and simply want true equality, but I am addressing those that don’t.
