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Reblogged: Banning the Veil?

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Yes. Absolutely.

Ok, prove it. Use any tool you'd like, except physical force, to subjugate someone.

Referring back to an historical case of actual slavery, the fact that the chattel slaves in the United States were almost uniformly Africans or descendants of Africans and so were an obvious 'black' minority in a 'white' majority population made such outward marks and signs of ownership as uniforms or jewelry unnecessary. The black-white distinction was an incredibly useful enabling factor in perpetuating the slave system

I didn't ask if something is an enabling factor, I asked if it's a tool to subjugate someone. Is skin color a tool one can use to subjugate someone.

If it is, please, go ahead and find a black person, and try to use his skin color to subjugate him. Just as an experiment, see how it goes. You'll be OK, don't worry, there are no laws against using someone's skin color to try and make them your slave. At worst, you'll get laughed at.

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Yes. Absolutely.

Ok, prove it. Use any tool you'd like, except physical force, to subjugate someone.

Referring back to an historical case of actual slavery, the fact that the chattel slaves in the United States were almost uniformly Africans or descendants of Africans and so were an obvious 'black' minority in a 'white' majority population made such outward marks and signs of ownership as uniforms or jewelry unnecessary. The black-white distinction was an incredibly useful enabling factor in perpetuating the slave system

I didn't ask if something is an enabling factor, I asked if it's a tool to subjugate someone. The day we start legislating based on people's idea of "enabling factors" is the day anything can be made illegal. Is skin color a tool one can use to subjugate someone?

If it is, please, go ahead and find a black person, and try to use his skin color to subjugate him. Just as an experiment, see how it goes. You'll be OK, don't worry, there are no laws against using someone's skin color to try and make them your slave. At worst, you'll get laughed at.

Edited by Nicky
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I didn't ask if something is an enabling factor, I asked if it's a tool to subjugate someone. The day we start legislating based on people's idea of "enabling factors" is the day anything can be made illegal. Is skin color a tool one can use to subjugate someone?

Skin color was used to identify who was a slave, an essential indispensable step in keeping a slave. The fact skin color was not even a man-made tool but an inborn attribute and natural feature just makes a stronger case that confining the scope of the laws reach to manacles and chains is irrational.

If it is, please, go ahead and find a black person, and try to use his skin color to subjugate him. Just as an experiment, see how it goes. You'll be OK, don't worry, there are no laws against using someone's skin color to try and make them your slave. At worst, you'll get laughed at.

14th Amendment, equal protection clause. Because it is of no use outlawing slavery with the 13th amendment if the laws do not apply to alleged nonpersons such as blacks.

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This is my favorite paragraph from the initial post:

Hence, I doubt that to ban the jewelry would be a violation of rights — or perhaps, it’s a minor and temporary violation of a trivial right for the sake of securing the fundamental liberty. A person must be free of slavery — free of forcible domination by the will of another — before he can be free to choose anything else, including what to wear.

First sentence's meaning: It's perfectly okay for me to violate what I arbitrarily and unilaterally deem to be others' "trivial" rights, as long as I arbitrarily and unilaterally claim that it's a "minor and temporary violation," and as long as I declare that I'm doing it for the altruistic purpose of securing their "fundamental liberties."

Second sentence's meaning: A person must be free of forcible domination by the will of another, by which I mean that a person must be free from others' use of force but not from mine -- I reserve for myself the power to use forcible domination. Besides, I'm only proposing violating others' "trivial" rights, so it's only a "minor" violation and doesn't really count.

This is my second-favorite paragraph from the initial post:

Similarly, millions of women living in Muslim countries and enclaves elsewhere exist in virtual slavery to their fathers, brothers, and husbands at present. Some women embrace that subjugation, yet it’s still indefensible. The veil is part of parcel of that slavery: the veil is a symbol of subjugation, as well as a means of isolating women from the broader culture in which they live. Many women are forced to veil themselves, under threat of violence.

How can something qualify as "subjugation" if it is "embraced" by those who are being said to be "subjugated"? Do words suddenly have very flexible meanings when we're discussing proposals to violate others' "trivial" rights?

Anyway, Objectivism places very high value on logic, no? So wouldn't it make sense to test the "argument" by putting it into the form of a syllogism?

How's this:

Slavery is bad.

Some slaves are forced to wear veils.

Therefore the wearing of veils is slavery and is bad.

Seriously?!!! This is being pushed as professional-quality thinking?!!!

J

Edited by Jonathan13
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Skin color was used to identify who was a slave, an essential indispensable step in keeping a slave.

I'm afraid this might drift the thread, but you're wrong here. The fact that slaves didn't necessarily have dark skin color is central to the plot of Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson, and you can find plenty of cases, like that of Mary Todd Lincoln's dressmaker, from real life. Apparently lighter skin in a female slave was particularly desirable, I think you can do the math on why that would be. There's a scene in Gore Vidal's Lincoln of a slave auction where a light skinned young woman is progressively stripped to get her price up. Whether that ever really happened, well, seems likely huh?

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I'm afraid this might drift the thread, but you're wrong here. The fact that slaves didn't necessarily have dark skin color is central to the plot of Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson, and you can find plenty of cases, like that of Mary Todd Lincoln's dressmaker, from real life. Apparently lighter skin in a female slave was particularly desirable, I think you can do the math on why that would be. There's a scene in Gore Vidal's Lincoln of a slave auction where a light skinned young woman is progressively stripped to get her price up. Whether that ever really happened, well, seems likely huh?

Sure, lighter skin was desirable in certain slaves but not white skin. Caucasian slaves couldn't be kept from escaping into the general population, and their very existence would blow up the rationalization that slavery was justified because the slaves were subhuman.

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Grames,

I was wondering if you'd mind slowing down a bit and going back and rereading your exchange with Nicky, starting at post #24. You appear to have completely missed Nicky's point. He is making the distinction between symbols and force, and rejecting Hsieh's very poor and transparent attempt at blurring the distinction. He is saying something like, "If we remove the initiation of physical force from our scenario, is there any way to use what is left -- symbols, language, colors, etc., -- to subjugate someone?" And his answer is "no." And therefore the attempt to associate, link or equate the intiation of force with anything that is left when the initiation of force has been eliminated is misguided at best. Understand? Nicky's not asking you about the historical significance of skin color in regard to the issue of slavery. He's simply trying to get you to grasp the fact that anything minus physical force cannot be a tool of subjugation, including skin color, manacles and veils.

J

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Sure, lighter skin was desirable in certain slaves but not white skin. Caucasian slaves couldn't be kept from escaping into the general population, and their very existence would blow up the rationalization that slavery was justified because the slaves were subhuman.

That rationalization was being progressively undermined, that's history. It calls to mind a great quote from Alexandre Dumas, who was answering some racist critique: “My father was a Creole, his father a Negro, and his father a monkey; my family, it seems, begins where yours left off”.

Dumas_by_Nadar%2C_1855.jpg

I'm afraid this is all off-topic, but isn't interesting enough for its own thread.

Edited by Ninth Doctor
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