Covering a critique

[undergroundpanther]

The title of Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights borrows from sociologist Erving Goffman’s observation that people who have acknowledged some sort of stigma will still work “to keep that stigma from looming large.” Yoshino observes that this covering -- the way in which people hide or modify some aspect of themselves to fit into the dominant culture -- is widespread, practiced at some level by virtually everyone. Declaring that “the mainstream is a myth,” Yoshino describes the myriad ways people hide (to the degree possible) their deviations from that presumed center.

Yoshino seems to hope the concept of covering can engage those with relatively more privilege and power to recognize a common humanity. This is where his argument is painful in the political sense. Is there reason to believe that people with privilege and power will be moved to see a common humanity through understanding this experience of covering in their own lives? “The explosive pluralism of contemporary American society will inexorably push this country away from group-based identity politics -- there will be too many groups to keep track of, much less to protect.”

Yoshino advocates that the “new civil rights” leave behind this “equality paradigm” in favor of a “liberty paradigm” rooted in the centrality of autonomy. That’s his solution to the courts’ general hostility to group-based accommodations and the society’s ever-exploding pluralism.

While Yoshino’s argument is intriguing, I fear is that it will be diversionary from what should be the core project -- a redistribution of power and resources that can come when unjust systems are transformed through collective action. My fear is that Yoshino’s rejection of equality in favor of liberty as the defining concept for civil rights only further distracts from recognizing the core problem is the oppressive systems: white supremacy, patriarchy, and heterosexism, playing out in a world structured by the hierarchies of corporate capitalism and U.S. hegemony. It’s difficult to imagine much progress being made in the years to come without a holistic left/progressive politics that connects the way in which all these systems of oppression attempt to naturalize a hierarchy of domination and subordination.


http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/%7Erjensen/freelance/coveringreview.htm

(and it's those same systems that oppress us all, that is the true enemy, not furs being included,or transgenders being excluded or gays getting married , it's the Pathocracy ,silly. That is what we all need to see this problem clearly and quit excluding and ridiculing each other to"cover". Look,We all fight the same enemy, no matter what our identity .)
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Time%20for%20change/297