20190317.0430

Today, of course, is St. Patrick's Day, for those who celebrate such things. People of all sorts seem to be expected to wear green or be subject to assault (because putting your hands on someone who's unwilling is assault, folks, and this does seem to be a "If you didn't want to be attacked, you should have worn something different," which is problematic for reasons I should not have to explain but probably do) and to claim descent from or affiliation with a nation-state welded together by external oppressions, whether the claims are legitimate or not--and to get uproariously drunk throughout the day, because that nation-state is somehow perceived as being given to excessive consumption, among other generally denigrated traits.
I know that my framing things in such a way will sit ill with a great many people. "It's all in fun," such people say, or "You're overthinking things again; relax and enjoy, for once," or they will ask "Can't you take a joke?" Given recent events, in which horrors have been perpetrated yet again as a result of normalization of stereotypes in public discourse, and in which violence is beginning to erupt again in a place where it had been thought to have been finally ended after decades of terror on both sides, I find such things dangerously oblivious at best--and I am not generally inclined to believe the best of people, as those who know me know. Every such thing, every such bit of "fun," every such "joke" conduces to an environment in which people are immersed in the kinds of ultimately dehumanizing rhetoric that does not allow for atrocity but does make it easier to carry out. And that kind of thing needs to have every hindrance put to it that can be done; it will not stop all such acts from happening, of course, but it will reduce their number and frequency. They will not be the daily or weekly occurrences that they have been, coming so often that they barely attract attention anymore.
Certainly, cultures and heritages should be celebrated. Those things in them which are good should be lauded and extolled. But those things should also be understood more fully than they typically are; the celebration, to be sincere, should be more than putting on a different shirt for a day and affecting a bad accent to justify bad behavior. They should be put into the broader contexts of their cultures, however; there are unpleasantnesses and worse in each and every, and we do a disservice to those we would purport to honor not to acknowledge that those things are there and to understand them better. That does not mean that the bad should necessarily outweigh the good, but it should be noted--not emulated, even when true. And it must not be used to justify the kinds of things that have been seen too often and too recently in such places as Christchurch--though they all too often are, to the diminishment of us all.