Jesse Daniel Ames Lecture

I thought that the Jesse Daniel Ames Lecture was fairly interesting. The transgendered population is one that is characteristically underrepresented, and it was incredibly interesting to hear an usually quiet perspective. When people talk about equality, usually the groups that come to mind are women, children, gays, not necessarily the rights of transgendered groups. I can see how it would be more difficult to categorize and assign rights to the transgendered group, simply because of the nature of their situation. I think though, that this conflict of established groups and rights is something that can potentially be incredibly beneficial. By not categorizing a group by sexual orientation, gender or any other binary that presents an idea of the “other,” we can start to break down many of the walls of intolerance; rather than labeling people, hopefully we can begin to establish a pattern of looking at people as people, rather than overly simple categorization.   

The idea of state sponsored violence is interesting, because the idea of state sponsored violence indicates a problem at both the governmental and cultural level. To expand this idea outside of the United States, I think that one can look to the situation in Darfur. The government in Darfur essential orchestrates the violence occurring there, perpetuating an all out genocide; the Janjaweed are a mercenary group hired by the government to perform a sort of ethnic cleansing. The government even sends planes in to bomb villages before the Janjaweed arrives. The motive behind this is part economic, part cultural, and part racial, but the racial aspect is what often justifies the ethnic cleaning. This idea of intolerance in the United States is so inherently dangerous because of the myriad of potential, and no doubt harmful, ramifications. In the name of racism and discrimination all kinds of acts of violence and all manners of hatred can be perpetrated.

The idea of a political solution to the problem of discrimination is troublesome, but I feel that it is one of the only persuasive options. Both cultural and political reform must work in tandem to overachieve racism and discrimination; I don’t believe that there necessarily is a particular order to how these levels change, but it is far easier to create political “legal” change, than to change the ideals of a society. That can be seen with the anti-discrimination laws concerning African-Americans and the civil rights movement; the legislation passed far before people’s minds changed. I think that passing legislation is an important first step in acting as a catalyst for cultural change.

I also like that the lecture focused on the physical aspects of discrimination; I think that until we start being open about the differences of the juxtaposed groups (male and female, etc.), we can’t establish any sort off dialogue for fixing the problem.