Amp: In the first paragraph you quote from Anderson, that should be Iris Young, not “Iris Voting,” who writes about the five faces of oppression.

Anyone who wants to take a look at Young’s groundbreaking article (and still one of the few philosophical pieces written about oppression) can find it in Iris Young’s book: Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton University Press, 1990).

I’ve been defining egalitarianism as the struggle for universal equality before the law, which doesn’t quite cover it because there are non-legal forms of systemic oppression. (E.g. There’s no law saying captial punishment should be applied disproportionately to African-Americans, yet it is a systemic problem.)

I’ve always hated the “classic” Vonnegut story, “Harrison Bergeron” (penguinppc.org/~hollis/personal/bergeron…) because it’s all about the Egalitarianism = Homogeneity straw man. Had he addressed that point and then moved on to a substantive exploration of egalitarianism, I wouldn’t take it for an annoyingly enthymemetic assertion that all inequality stems from the “natural inferiority” of the oppressed.

Maybe they should start with the assumption that Jefferson was not an idiot, and try to figure out what he might have meant. In fact Jefferson was righter than he knew - it is now, in western culture, such a self-evident truth that all people are created equal, that these folks can’t figure out that that’s what Jefferson meant, and they think he must have meant something else.

The Anderson quote explains the difference more clearly and elegantly than anything else I’ve seen. Thank you for posting it, Amp.

It is going to take time before we realise that we all are the same - in the sense that we are all human, all alive and have loves and favourite foods and favourite colours.

Just because I like blue, and you like red, does that make you better than me? No, they are equally valid selections. Perhaps more philosophy should be taught in schools.