Strikingly, many people who claim to have been a victim of injustice owing to the group to which they belong seem to think that it is quite all right to commit wrongs against individuals belonging to the group in question. For example, some women seem to think it is all right to commit wrongs against men because after all, so the argument goes, men have been sexist down through the ages. Likewise, some blacks think that it is all right to wrong whites because after all, so the argument goes, whites have been racist down through the ages.
I dub this mindset: mean-spirited equality. And as the appellation suggests, I regard this line of thinking entirely unacceptable.
What is particularly disturbing about mean-spirited equality is that those who commit such behavior tend readily excuse themselves for their own irresponsible behavior—even when their own irresponsible behavior is very much the explanation for the undesirable situation in which they find themselves.
An example of this comes from none other than Craigslist. Three women got together and out of revenge glued a man’s penis to his stomach. One of the women who did this, namely Therese Zeimann, undoubtedly felt used and betrayed by the man. But which part of “she-acted-like-a-fool-in-the-first-place” does she not get?
She met the man on Craigslist and gave him $3000 for two months so that he could have use of a hotel room. The issue is not whether the man was taking advantage of her. Of course, he was. However, Zeimann stands as a poster-child for the person who puts herself or himself in the position to be taken advantage of by another. Suppose I lend $2000.00 to a perfect stranger who refuses to pay me back. I might very well be angry at the stranger for not paying me back. Alas, I have every reason to be much, much angrier with myself for having lent the money to the stranger in the first place.
It also turns out that the man’s wife participated in the “ritual” of gluing his penis to his stomach. She was understandably angry over his years of infidelity. Alas, she stayed with him although she was fully aware of his infidelity.
Needless to say, if four men were betrayed in a like manner by a woman, the four men gluing her vagina together would not be an option. The moral outrage would be off the charts—and rightly so.
I have seen blacks exhibit a hostility to a piece of infelicitous behavior on the part of a white that is all of proportion to the reality of the moment. This is justified in the name of being angry over past instances of racism.
A simple and profound truth is that racism is a very complicated matter and it requires the right sort of psychological configuration. If I am white and you are black, and I did not get out of your way as you are carrying your child because I in pain over the fact that my wife was just murdered, then my behavior is not racist no matter how much it may look as if I am being indifferent to your situation.
What is particularly significant here is that by and large it is easy enough to see that at the very least that the behavior in question readily enough admits of an explanation other than racism. So the rush to make the charge of racism is none other than mean-spirited.
After all, it is not as if every interaction between two blacks is an entirely harmonious matter. Quite the contrary, blacks sometimes get short with one another; sometimes they fail to get out of one another’s way; sometimes they misunderstand one another; sometimes one is terribly jealous of the other. And so on—although, of course, the explanation for this has nothing at all to do with racism. There is no reason at all to think that this cannot also hold between a black and a white person.
Not all of my students are especially fond of me. Indeed, the fact of the matter is that the vast majority are not. Yet, whatever else is true, racism is not the explanation for this fact.
Racism is such a serious charge that the cavalier use of the term radically cheapens it. Yet, far too many blacks have become quite cavalier in their use of the term racism. This is none other than mean-spirited equality.
This in effect was my objection to the way in which Chancellor Nancy Cantor handled the Hill-TV affair. She did more to encourage mean-spiritedness on the part of blacks than to shed light on the structure of racism. Were the 20 or so students silly and open to criticism in their attempt to emulate the irreverence of Saturday Night Life? Most probably! Did the silliness of the 20 stem from some deep-seated racism? Did their silliness reflect some deep-seated racism across the entire campus? In both cases, the answer is absolutely not.
At most, mean-spirited equality occasions fear. It does not—indeed, it cannot—occasion respect. If this is right, then mean-spirited equality is doing society considerable harm. While there are always some among every crowd who are saintly-like in their behavior no matter how horrible things are, most of us become bitter when we regularly the target of mean-spirited equality.
Over the long the run, the price of mean-spirited equality is none other than equality itself.
Some good arguments – regretfully the example of gluing the penis to the stomach clouds the credibility of the lesson