Lets say that you were a member of a group that had been treated unfairly. You knew yourself to be the equal of the group that had treated you badly,but they had the legal power to treat your group that way. Your life was less blessed than theirs. Harder. For years, everything had worked to your disadvantage. They had advanced in prosperity, while your group had languished. At some point, the prosperity of the other group became so dominant as to be self-sustaining. At that point, the other group realizes that they no longer need any special rules to keep your group at a disadvantage. Theyve accumulated enough control over things that without those rules that they still have a lock on their privilege. They then generously announce that they will no longer acknowledge a difference between their group and yours. How generous! Now that their hegemony is great enough to assure that your group never gets ahead, they say that they will treat you exactly as they treat anyone. Thats like adding 100 points to one teams scoreboard for free, then, in the final minute of the game, them saying well play fair for the last minute. So claiming you see no difference between the groups isnt magnanimous - its a way of saying: I refuse to see the injustices of the past, and will no longer pretend they exist.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 03:28:38 +0000