> Platt then asked August 22nd: > > Maybe you two professors, instead of commiserating with one another about > that awful, file, despicable, inane, stupid, nauseating, polarizing Platt, > could address the issue raised by Pirsig in Lila, namely: > > "Phaedrus remembered a conversation in the early sixties with a University > of Chicago faculty member who was moving out of the Woodlawn neighborhood > next to the university. He was moving because criminal blacks had moved in > and it had become too dangerous to live there. Phaedrus had said he didn't > think moving out was any solution." > > "The professor had blown up at him. 'What you don't know!' he had said. > 'We've tried everything! We've tried workshops, study groups, councils. > We've spent years in this. If there's anything we've missed we don't know > what it is. Everything has failed' " > > ---cut in the text here--- (not mentioned by Platt) > > "Phaedrus now thought that part of the professor's paralysis was a > commitment to the twentieth-century intellectual doctrines in which his > university has had a prominent roll." (Lila, 24) > > So tell us. What intellectual doctrines have changed in the university to > break the professor's paralysis? I'm sure not only me but SA would like to > know. > > Ant McWatt comments: > > The counter-culture of the 1960s happened. The rights of blacks, women, > gays and other "minorities" have changed for the better in the United > States (though there is still a long way to go). That's why you now have > both a woman _and_ a black man planning to stand for the leadership of the > Democrat party while in 1961 such a circumstance would have been > unthinkable. > > The professor that Pirsig mentioned hadn't tried "everything." All the > well-meaning program/mes the professor tried were relatively superficial as > the US in the early 1960s was a far more racist society at an institutional > level than it is now. It requires change at a fundamental level (where the > colour of one's skin becomes meaningless at the social level) to ensure a > black criminal can't play the "racism" card at an intellectual level when > tackled by the police and other social authorities. > > As Pirsig confirms in the next part of Chapter 24: > > Part of the paralysis probably came from the fact that the criminals were > black. If it had been a group of trash whites moving into the > neighborhood, robbing and raping and killing, the response would have been > much fiercer, but when whites denounced blacks for robbing and raping and > killing they left themselves open to the charge of racism. In the > atmosphere of public opinion of that time no intellectual dared to open > himself to the charge of being a racist. Just the thought of it shut him > up tight. Paralysis.
The charge of "racism" is still enough to paralyze intellectuals. In fact, today's liberals are Puritanical about racism. The white race is now often associated automatically with racism. One need only consider the reaction of professors at Duke to the alleged rape charges against the college's white lacrosse players. From the same source comes silence when the NAACP cautions against rushing to judgment in the Vick case. Furthermore, intellectuals pay lip service to racism being evil, but then support racial discrimination with race-based results in multiculturism and affirmative action. All attempts to end such social patterns based on skin color in order to progress towards a color blind society are roundly denounced -- a far cry from the MOQ goal of a morality based on intellectual principles of individual freedom, equal protection under the law, and advancement by merit -- not gender, class or color. Platt Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
