Covering and Cheating

Fascinating article over here, about cultural homogenity/assimilation and "covering". A couple interesting bits:

The new civil rights begins with the observation that everyone covers. When I lecture on covering, I often encounter what I think of as the "angry straight white man" reaction. A member of the audience, almost invariably a white man, almost invariably angry, denies that covering is a civil rights issue. Why shouldn't racial minorities or women or gays have to cover? These groups should receive legal protection against discrimination for things they cannot help. But why should they receive protection for behaviors within their control - wearing cornrows, acting "feminine" or flaunting their sexuality? After all, the questioner says, I have to cover all the time. I have to mute my depression, or my obesity, or my alcoholism, or my shyness, or my working-class background or my nameless anomie. I, too, am one of the mass of men leading lives of quiet desperation. Why should legally protected groups have a right to self-expression I do not? Why should my struggle for an authentic self matter less?

I surprise these individuals when I agree. Contemporary civil rights has erred in focusing solely on traditional civil rights groups - racial minorities, women, gays, religious minorities and people with disabilities. This assumes those in the so-called mainstream - those straight white men - do not also cover. They are understood only as obstacles, as people who prevent others from expressing themselves, rather than as individuals who are themselves struggling for self-definition. No wonder they often respond to civil rights advocates with hostility. They experience us as asking for an entitlement they themselves have been refused - an expression of their full humanity.

Civil rights must rise into a new, more inclusive register. That ascent makes use of the recognition that the mainstream is a myth. With respect to any particular identity, the word "mainstream" makes sense, as in the statement that straights are more mainstream than gays. Used generically, however, the word loses meaning. Because human beings hold many identities, the mainstream is a shifting coalition, and none of us are entirely within it. It is not normal to be completely normal.

If the Supreme Court protects individuals against covering demands in the future, I believe it will do so by invoking the universal rights of people. I predict that if the court ever recognizes the right to speak a native language, it will protect that right as a liberty to which we are all entitled, rather than as a remedial concession granted to a particular national-origin group. If the court recognizes rights to grooming, like the right to wear cornrows, I believe it will do so under something akin to the German Constitution's right to personality rather than as a right attached to racial minorities. And I hope that if the court protects the right of gays to marry, it will do so by framing it as the right we all have to marry the person we love, rather than defending "gay marriage" as if it were a separate institution.

A liberty-based approach to civil rights, of course, brings its own complications, beginning with the question of where my liberty ends and yours begins. But the ability of liberty analysis to illuminate our common humanity should not be underestimated. This virtue persuaded both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X to argue for the transition from civil rights to human rights at the ends of their lives. It is time for American law to follow suit.

The article is pretty well written and intelligent; it's "adapted" (whatever that means) from his book, which I might pick up when it comes out...which brings me to the cheating part of this post. I stopped by Barnes and Noble today, and as I frequently do when I pop in there, I bought far too many books and started in on one of them. I'm sorry, but there's only so much, "Sir So-and-so smote Sir So-and-so who was revenged by Sir So-and-so who smote Sir So-and-so such a buffet on the head that he voided his horse who then dressed his sword and foined and such" that I can take before I start getting kinda bored, especially since I have like 450 more pages of that to go. So, the current booklist looks like this:

1. The Complete Poems, Anne Sexton
2. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
3. The Sonnets, William Shakespeare
4. Le Morte D'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory
5. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby

It's really good so far; I saw the movie relatively recently. Actually, my purchases have quite the adapted-as-a-movie theme, with that, Sideways and The Shipping News all fitting there. The lone exception, and probably the one I'll read next, is Kafka on the Shore. So, while I may not be able to eat much over the next few weeks, at least my mind will be well fed. Or something like that.