Verily, when the lens of label privilege is applied to the phenomena that drive our understanding of social justice and equality -- it unequivocally narrows our scope of examination to specific injustices and specific inequalities that further specific label agendas at the unqualified expense of justice for all and equality for all.
For how do we identify social injustices and inequalities? By label. How do we classify victims of social injustice and inequality? By label. How do we institute policies that remedy social injustices and inequalities? By label.
What if...
We remove labels from the lens by which we examine these phenomena?
Verily, what if we identify social injustices and inequalities without labels? What if we classify victims of social injustices and inequalities without labels? What if we institute policies that remedy social injustices and inequalities without labels?
Then...
What would constitute a social injustice or inequality? Would social injustices and inequalities... change? Would victims of social injustice and inequality... change? Would the policies that we implement to remedy social injustices and inequalities... change?
Indeed, the crippling bias of label privilege is so vehemently defended, so vastly entrenched, and so ardently sanctified, that the mere idea of exploring social justice and equality without labels... is extraordinarily preposterous.
Is it not?
Frankly, it's absurd because our understanding of social justice and equality is wholly predicated on labels. (Not to mention, that our understanding of social justice and equality is also wholly polluted by the rampantly deleterious exercise of label privilege.)
However -- if social injustices and inequalities really matter -- if we are truly committed to scaffolding a milieu that enhances the lives of all of us -- don't we deserve an examination of social justice and equality sans privilege? For hasn't the history of humankind across time immemorial substantiated time and time again that bias and privilege of any kind unequivocally impairs the pursuit of justice for all and equality for all?
As long as we ignore -- the intended and unintended, personal and global, inconsequential and unremittingly significant -- consequences of label privilege in pursuit of social justice and equality -- we will fail to examine social injustices and inequalities with meaningful verisimilitude -- opting instead for the pursuit of disproportionate considerations and preferential advantages to the incontrovertible demise of all of us.
For the exercise of label privilege in order to further specific label agendas via the examination of specific label injustices and specific label inequalities -- while aggrandizing us through our label privileges, concurrently exploits us through our label privileges -- to legitimize, sanction, and uphold ideologies of justice and equality that are unambiguously unjust at best and objectionably immoral at worst.
- M.
Addendum
Who are we fighting for?
Ourselves? Our label compatriots?
Who are we fighting against?
Others? Our label antagonists?
When we take sides -- we fight each other. When we fight each other -- we justify injustices and rationalize inequalities in the name of righteousness -- for our interests supercede all others, because our interests are more just and more moral than all others. When our interests are more just and more moral than all others -- we do more than fight. We propagandize our selves and each other in order to justify our injustices and rationalize our inequalities in the name of our superior morality. And when we propagandize our selves and each other -- we renounce that which makes us inviolably equal -- by transposing our humanness for labels that unequivocally actuate intolerable differences that perpetuate injustices and inequalities upon our selves and each other in the name of [fill in the blank: #race, #socioeconomic status, #age, #gender, #national origin, #religion, #marital status, #educational attainment, #sexual orientation, etc.], ad infinitum.
Thus, side-taking, in and of itself, is the realization of injustice and inequality. Hence, when we take sides in pursuit of social justice and equality, we chose the side of injustice and inequality no matter which side we're ostensibly on or for.
Which begs the question...
Is this what we're fighting for? Injustice and inequality by our hands? The indefensible defense of the unbridled exercise of label privilege in relentless pursuit of unearned entitlements and unearned advantages, including but not limited to, disproportionate considerations and preferential treatment?
- M.
Note
Case in point:
Why do we see Islam's immurement in the Middle Ages as a pathological refusal to let go and progress forward... whereas the similarly pathological refusal to let go and progress forward from the dark period in American history characterized by slavery and rampant white supremacy... is virulently sanctioned as righteous and obdurately upheld as just...? (Notwithstanding that other vilely dark periods in American history are largely invisible within the public consciousness and subsequently absent from public discourse.)
Shadow of a bloody past: For centuries, Islam and Christianity were locked in a brutal conflict most have forgotten. The horror, a top historian argues, is that for jihadis it's as real today as it was in the Middle Ages (by Tom Holland for The Daily Mail 11/20/15)
Is our label privilege so crippling... that the mere possibility that label zealots may, in fact, be jihadis for labelism... is categorically inconceivable? Furthermore... is it any wonder that label zealots the world over, are warriors and martyrs for crusades and wars in the name of [fill in the blank: #race, #socioeconomic status, #age, #gender, #national origin, #religion, #marital status, #educational attainment, #sexual orientation, etc.]?
When justice and equality are nothing more than empty props for label driven agendas... we fight for tyranny masquerading as freedom, absolutism masquerading as virtue, and privilege masquerading as authenticity:
Let's stop pretending that America is the land of liberty (by Ryan Cooper at The Week 12/4/15)
So:
What vanquishes tyranny, what tempers absolutism, and what unmasks privilege?
And if not what... who? And if not now... when?
- M.
