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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception 441 passes the first test in that he disvalues it uniformly across individuals, whether it occurs in Tanzanians, African Americans, Native Americans, Indians, Jews, Arabs, Aborigines, or tanning lotion-soaked Californians. This kind of case does not present a problem. The fact that someone is acquitted of being a racist does not imply that his evaluations are therefore admirable or enlightened. Any predicate or combination of predicates that fails the first test is either a rigged definite description of a particular disvalued group, for example, "ova-producing featherless bipeds," or else describes a discriminatory stereotype, e.g. "dark-skinned, dark-eyed, woolly-haired individuals with rhythm." Of course, a person might just happen to disvalue only individuals who fit such a stereotype and not those who violate it. But since this disvaluation would not be independent of anything that might count as a primary disvalued property for such a person, it would not defeat the charge of higher-order political discrimination. Note, however, that the first test does not work for identifying a distinct but related attitude, which we might call generalized higher-order political discrimination, in which a person comes to disvalue some constellation of higher-order properties across the board specifically because of its original association with a primary disvalued property stereotypically ascribed to a certain group. Someone who finds having rhythm vulgar in any dancer, regardless of racial or ethnic affiliation, because she associates having rhythm with African Americans, whom she fears and despises, would exemplify such an attitude. Stereotypes change in accordance with changes in the objects of political discrimination, as different populations seek access to the goods, services and opportunities enjoyed by the advantaged; and primary and higher-order disvalued properties change accordingly. For instance, the anti-Semitic response to the attempts of Jewish intellectuals to achieve full assimilation into the institutions of higher education in the United States frequently found expression in the disvaluative description of assertively ambitious Jewish academics as pushy or opportunistic. Now similarly situated African Americans, Asians and women frequently enjoy that title. Conversely, those with such primary disvalued properties who attempt to substitute diplomacy for assertion are characterized by higher-order political discriminators as manipulative, obsequious, or sycophantic. A second test for ascertaining whether or not the disvalue of some property of a person is to be explained as a case of higher-order political discrimination is to ascertain whether there is any alternative property, conduct or manner, directed toward the same goal - i.e. of gaining access to unjustly withheld social advantages, that avoids or deflects the disvalue conferred by the primary disvalued property. If there is not - if, that is, whatever your strategy, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't, then the charge of higher-order political discrimination is prima facie justified. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
