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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (15760)	6/6/2001 12:29:36 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Do you have a definition for a "Complaint Filter?"

To: The Philosopher who wrote (15760)	6/6/2001 1:46:09 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 82486

My mother taught me, simplisticly perhaps but Mothers tend to be simplistic at times, that respect is not a right, it must be earned. Our society seems to disagree -- it seems to feel that being respected is a right, and being disrespected is a wrong, sometimes even when disrespect has been well earned. That reminds me of a transaction that occurred between my father and me when I was a teen. I remember throwing that line at him (followed immediately by a hamburger, which splattered all over the wall). My father seemed to think that he was entitled to respect from me simply because he was my father. Imagine that! I think that there is something between respect and disrespect--a neutral zone. I agree that people have to earn respect. But just because they haven't earned respect doesn't mean that disrespect is warranted. Seems to me that you should have to earn disrespect, too, not receive it gratuitously because you haven't yet accumulated enough points in the respect column. When we walk down the street, we accord a certain human dignity to those with whom we share the sidewalk. They haven't earned respect or disrespect. We don't even know them. But we make certain assumptions about them. We assume that none of them is going to stick his leg out and trip us. We hold doors for people with packages. We take the initiative to keep out of the way of children who aren't watching where they're going. We smile back at those who smile at us. We accord all these strangers their human dignity. What we accord them is less than respect, which they haven't earned, but we avoid treating them with disrespect because they haven't earned that either. Now, say that someone on that street is a young black man, or fat, or wearing a turban, or deformed, or carrying a Bible, or speaking another language. Do we still smile back? Do we still open the door for them? If we don't, we're showing them disrespect that they haven't earned, which, IMO, is not the sort of behavior we want to encourage in our society. If one of these people on the street cries "ouch" and grabs a body part, we instinctively react to his cry. To ignore people is to reject their humanity. Our second thought may be to back off for whatever reason, but our first instinct is to respond positively to the cry. For a long time, I agree, the majority ignored legitimate complaints of a wide range of minorities (the term not used racially, but society, to include any small subset of society with a common condition or situation). But the pendulum has swung way too far the other direction, to the point that some minorities are diverting far too many scarce resources to their benefit at the expense of the majority and of society as a whole. That pendulum just keeps on a-swingin'. I think mine has swung further than yours. As the pendulum has swung, the stakes have escalated. Every slight has become a Federal case. I think that excess has provoked a backlash that causes those on the power side of the equation to automatically assume that the aggrieved is just whining--just as the aggrieved used to assume that every frown that happened to come in their direction arose from bigotry. I'm not talking about laws or lawsuits. I don't want to debate the ADA. I'm simply talking about how we react to those people we pass on the street or who move into our neighborhoods or share our place of business. Do we think about how our behavior affects them? Or do we just light up and their asthma be damned? Karen