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

To: Neocon who wrote (51156)	6/17/2002 8:55:39 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 82486

Check this out. Applies not only to new graduates. The Problem With Enemies By William Raspberry Monday, June 17, 2002; Page A17 From a commencement address I gave recently at North Carolina State University in Raleigh: Learn the difference between problems and enemies. It's the best and simplest advice I can offer newly minted graduates facing uncertain job prospects. It is in particular the best advice I can give those who would change -- who would improve -- our world. We will find the world a more tractable, more perfectible place if we can learn the difference between problems and enemies. The distinction might bring us nearer to solutions to some of our more vexing social and political difficulties. And yet we refuse to make the distinction. We have been taught not to make it -- if not by our instructors at least by our political and social activists. Give us a problem and we'll find an enemy. Let me give you a recent example. I recently wrote a piece, based on a book by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, in which I talked about the growing trend of childlessness among successful women. Many of the women Hewlett talked to for her book, including many who were happily married, didn't plan to be childless, as they made poignantly clear. It was almost as though childlessness caught them by surprise while they were focused on their successful careers. I thought it was an excellent springboard for discussing something too few of us talk about among ourselves or with our own children: the differential sacrifices women make in comparison to men, the need to think about those sacrifices and to plan around them, even the need to think about the whole issue of blending family and career life. Quite predictably, much of the reader response was from people who read the column as a chastisement of women for having careers (and by implication of going to college to prepare for careers). Hewlett and I were cast as their enemies, and discussion of the problem became impossible. Something very similar happened when I wrote a piece supporting experimenting with boys-only classes, preferably headed by male teachers, as a way of dealing with some of the issues confronting inner-city schools. Among the responses were several accusing me of wanting to discriminate against girls -- even blaming them for the ills of the inner-city schools. How did they get there? If boys-only classes are the solution, then girls must be the problem. I can't tell you how often I've seen it happen, or how sad it makes me. Look at what happens on our campuses. . . . Seldom do we discuss the problem. Each subgroup on campus -- women, Asians, blacks, gays, Hispanics -- will organize itself to fight the perceived prejudice against it. Most often, the grievances they present are real. But their implied analysis is false. They proceed on the assumption that if each group does its best to ameliorate its own grievances, the result will be peace and equity on campus. We know better, of course. Political movements that come into being to fight grievances, and leaders whose political power is grievance-based, tend not to acknowledge progress, even when it happens. They need the grievance to justify their existence. And the result, often, is not greater equity and peace but greater upheaval, as more and more subgroups create (and magnify) their own grievances, chargeable to their special enemies, in the quest for a greater share of power for themselves. I don't say that groups with grievances shouldn't try to get those grievances resolved. But doesn't it strike you how few groups are making it their priority to knit the campus into a community? Doesn't it strike you that many of the grievances would be much easier to resolve if the campus did become more of a community? And doesn't it strike you that, at the end of the day, community is what most of us in fact want? Unfortunately, we can't get to community unless we first learn the difference between problems and enemies. Enemies have to be fought -- and even then they go on being enemies. Problems, on the other hand, can be worked out, often with the participation of those who caused them. Surprisingly often, I have discovered, a focus on the problem rather than on enemies could disclose common interests and lead to innovative solutions. The distinction I'm urging won't eliminate enemies. But it just might keep their numbers down to manageable size and free us to deal mutually with our mutual problems. © 2002 The Washington Post Company