speech and respect - College of Social Sciences and International ...

Taking Sides
media quickly fixated on Cooper Hazen, recently fired as a psychiatric
aide for having a post in his pierced tongue, purple hair, five
earrings, and a nose ring; a short Mexican American lesbian who
complained of being "vertically challenged"; and Sara "Hell," who
wore black leather and a dangling skeleton earring and had tatooed
her shaven head to highlight a long lock of fuchsia hair. 44 Similarly,
the Guardian had a field day when a Berkeley waitress refused to
serve breakfast to a man reading Playboy, generating irate phone
calls from male and female soft-porn fans, a boycott, and a "readin"
at the diner, with free copies from the publisher. 45
If the dominant trivialise the harm they inflict, the subordinate
abuse their moral leverage by playing identity politics, claiming
exclusive rights to speak for or about their group. Identity always has
been salient in electoral politics, as evidenced by the ethnic
machines of American cities, gerrymandering, and the gender gap.
Women recently defeated liberal men for the Democratic nominations
for both California Senate seats. Although Gray Davis urged
voters not "to make their choice based ... on a chromosome
count," the California vice-president of the National Women's
Political Caucus promoted Diane Feinstein, asserting: "A man cannot
speak for a woman in Congress." Barbara Boxer, the other victor,
declared: "The U.S. Senate needs a dose of reality, and that dose
comes in this package." 46
Subordinated groups increasingly assert their claims to cultural
territory. 47 Thirty years ago William Styron was condemned for
daring to write The Confessions of Nat Turner and Laurence Olivier
criticised for portraying Othello. 48 By the 1990s only an Asian could
play the lead in "Miss Saigon." When Warner Brothers decided to
produce a biography of Malcolm X it hired Norman Jewison, the
white director of "A Soldier's Story," a highly acclaimed film about a
Southern black regiment during World War Two. After being
deluged with up to 100 protest letters a day the studio substituted
Spike Lee. Although Lee denied orchestrating the campaign, he
acknowledged: "I had problems with a white director directing this
film. Unless you are black, you do not know what it means to be a
black person in this country." Malcolm's former friends and associates
would not have cooperated with a white director. "Most black
people are suspicious of white people and their motives. That's just
reality." 49
Identity, however, is neither necessary nor sufficient for authenticity.
When white jazz critic Leonard Feather bet that black trumpeter
Roy Eldridge could not distinguish black and white musicians
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