An oft-heard argument in response to a grievance about
perceived inequality between two groups of people, hence the injustice
one of them suffers, goes something like this:
I'll grant you that these groups people are indeed different from each
other, but that's no cause for concern. Their differences are not a
liability. Rather, they enrich each group's experience, and make each
group unique and special. The injustices you perceive as a result of
these differences are not really there. Instead, society treats these
two groups differently because these two groups are
different. This is inevitable and the natural state of affairs. In the
end, all the differences balance out. Each group has its own
advantages and disadvantages. Vive la différence!
This argument and its many variations, I call the "different but on
equal footing" argument, or different-but-equal for short. It is a
widespread and attractive line of attack against those who protest
about a particular injustice in society. There are many reasons why an
individual would like to uphold the different-but-equal
reasoning. For one, because it appears to be a liberal and
open-minded position to have. Not only are we recognising the
differences, so that we cannot be accused of distorting the truth to
suit our needs, we are furthermore celebrating these
differences for the benefit of all parties considered. Second, it
endorses a very desirable society, where each group's particular
difference contributes to the greater good, like specialised ant or
bee colonies with their workers, their foragers, and their queens. A
final point of attraction is that it negates the very unpleasant
accusation of injustice against a particular collective.
It is precisely these points in favour of the different-but-equal
argument that make it so dangerous. It is very easy to fall into its
trap, close your eyes to the wrongs of the world, or even to believe
in a justification of these wrongs. Beware. Hardly ever is it safe to
uphold the different-but-equal argument without aggravating the evils that oppress a group.
In literature, the different-but-equal argument is frequently
satirised and attacked in dystopian novels. George Orwell famously
states it as "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than
others" in his singular retelling of the Russian revolution and its
aftermath. The pigs in Animal Farm justify the privileges they give
themselves over the rest of the animals by saying that their
particular difference, their natural gift for brainwork, burdens them
with labour even more fatiguing than the physical labour that the
other animals must endure, and thus entitles them to certain
privileges in compensation. In Brave New World, each class of
Aldous Huxley's carefully stratified society constantly repeats the
message that they are in the best possible stratum, because higher
strata have unpleasant mental tasks, and lower classes have equally
unpleasant manual labours (not to mention that they are ugly and
stupid). Huxley presents us with a society where the
different-but-equal argument actually works, via a macabre mechanism
of mind control and with a grisly outcome. Even
H. G. Wells jumps into the fray with The Time Machine, warning his
contemporary supporters of the "necessary" class differences of early
twentieth century English society. He tremendously exaggerates those
differences until they become the dystopic Eloi and the Morlocks many
centuries into the future.
It is a sad situation that these literary appearances of the
different-but-equal argument are reflections of real instances of it
in the world. Under Stalin, communist propaganda did indeed attempt to
infect all Soviet citizens with a belief in a different-but-equal
argument, much like in Orwell's story. During the late nineteenth century and up until the civil rights movement of the sixties, in the
southern United States the argument was stated as
separate-but-equal in justification of racial
segregation. The argument can take a different twist as in the case of the "don't ask, don't tell" attitude towards homosexuality. Yes, they accept you're different, so they are granting you the privilege of loving who you will in spite of that difference. (Just don't tell them about it.) Sorry, this is not equal footing. If this is their best intention, it needs improvement.
In places with a stark separation between a working class
and a bourgeois leisure class, the argument often makes an appearance
sometimes in the form that the working class is genuinely satisfied
with its difficult position à la Brave New World,
other times in the form that a working class is necessary and natural
for the entire sustenance of society, and that it should be proud of
its servile position. All around the world, the
argument is also a particularly popular explanation for the different
tasks and positions men and women occupy in society. Not even the
most liberal of countries with the longest history of feminism are
free of struggle with different-but-equal. It still rears its head now
and then, and must be dealt with accordingly.
So how to deal with it? Sometimes citing the very real harm that
ensues from preaching it isn't enough to convince its proponents
of its faults. They will dispell these injuries as inexistent, necessary,
or compensated by other benefits. Here I favour the counter argument
given by Marxist feminists as formulated by the
Combahee River collective. It rests on the simple observation that
those who hold the different-but-equal view are hardly ever members of
the group that contests the fairness of the current makeup of
society. Therefore, unless you find yourself in the unlikely situation of
being able to belong to both groups whose equality is in question, you
have no grounds on which to declare them to be truly on equal footing
despite their differences. It is not fair to attempt to silence a
person who yells in pain with any kind of rhetoric, because pain is
subjective. Similarly, the complaints of a particular group need no
validation beyond the complaint itself. Do not attempt to silence the
victim just because you cannot feel pain yourself.
This has to be qualified somewhat, since sometimes a group
pretends to represent more people than it actually has. In the
situation of Marxist feminists, the liberal feminists such as Betty
Friedan through The Feminine Mystique mostly speak about
white, middle-class American women. In trying to include all women
under a single voice, they end up unwittingly silencing groups such as
women of African origin. For this reason, lower-class American women
defected to Marxist feminism during the late sixties. It can
sometimes happen that a group who fights against a different-but-equal
argument ends up committing the same fault against another group.
The reverse can also happen when a group tries to include too many
people under its banner. Aggressive labour unions may force some
workers to go on strike when they really are content with job
conditions and do not feel that their differences with management
truly put them at a disadvantage. Another possible situation is
that a group actually does exaggerate its victimhood and makes
unreasonable demands. Perhaps giving Canadian First Nations special
privileges because of their peculiar history and present is not the
right choice and everyone should be subject to uniform laws in the
interest of justice, perhaps the privileges are worsening the
situation, and they would benefit from equal treatment. Or perhaps it is the
right choice, because they are not different-but-equal.
Nothing is ever clear-cut. There are grey areas for everything. I
cannot exhort anyone to always reject a different-but-equal argument,
because it does have its points of attractions. Oh, how I wish that it
were true that despite our differences, we are all on equal footing!
Fairness is a beautiful thing, and differences make us
interesting. Unfortunately, the world seldom works that way. Be on
guard. Next time you catch yourself making a different-but-equal
argument, take a moment to ponder if you are not making the situation
worse for someone, despite your best intentions. Don't pave a road to
hell.