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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!tektronix!uw-beaver!cornell!vax135!floyd!clyde!akgua!sb1!ll1!otuxa!tty3b!mjk
From: mjk@tty3b.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: 59 cents and catch-22
Message-ID: <224@tty3b.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 29-Sep-83 18:08:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: tty3b.224
Posted: Thu Sep 29 18:08:44 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 2-Oct-83 03:55:44 EDT
References: <318@ut-sally.UUCP>, <543@qubix.UUCP>
Organization: Teletype Corp., Skokie, Ill
Lines: 29

Steve, what are you really saying?  That there isn't any racial discrimination?
That's clearly wrong.  That there isn't sex discrimination?  That, too, is
wrong.  I can't understand people who simply want to bury their heads in the
sand and ignore that U.S. society, for all its good points, is nevertheless
racist and sexist to the core.  The assumptions we grow up with produce this.
Changes are coming, but they come over the objections of people like you.  
There's always someone claiming that it just ain't so: that separate really is
equal; that housing isn't segregated; that opportunity is the same "if you try,
try and try, try and try -- you'll succeed at last."

White men make the vast majority of important decisions in this country.  The
few token women and blacks are not inconsequential, but to claim that their
presence does anything to the overwhelming influence of white males is 
unbelievable.  The trouble, as someone suggested recently, is that the
contributions on this network are made from people who work in a relatively
priviledged occupation.  We have essentially full employment (my definition of
which is "more jobs than people to fill them") at high wages.  The field is
predominated by younger people, who are often more open-minded.  But do you
really think our personal, immediate experience generalizes so easily?   Is
it really true that if YOU can succeed, anyone, in any profession, can?  Can
you really be so polly-annaish as to think that the ONLY criteria for 
employment in ALL fields is qualifications?  Is that true for store clerks at
a high-class department store in an affluent, all-white suburb?  Is that true
for secretaries to the 62-year-old president of a major firm, who grew up when
blacks were niggers (or at least "colored folks")?  Let's put a little bit of
contemplation into these things before firing off, OK?

MIke Kelly
Teletype