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I just got back from the worst lecture I have ever attended.
My school, Mary Washington College, proudly presented a lecture tonight by Dolores Huerta, pictured below as part of their celebration of Women's History Month.
I normally wouldn't have attended this lecture, as the topic - inequality among social groups in America - doesn't particularly interest me. But since I had nothing else to do, and since my roommate had to go to it for a class he is taking, I was persuaded to attend.
For those of you who don't know who Dolores Huerta is, I envy you. She's this woman (click on the image to read a short biography):
After sitting through over and hour of the most overtly racist, sexist, and downright asinine rhetoric I've ever heard from someone not wearing a white hood, I am firmly convinced that she is the single stupidest individual I have ever encountered.
Her thesis, as far as I could discern through her broken English, seemed to be that white, male, and/or upper-class individuals lead advantaged lives within our society as a direct result of the residual effects of past discrimination - and furthermore, that the best way to remedy these "inequalities" was, you guessed it, more discrimination!
However, her lecture covered a wide variety of topics. She started out by talking about racially inequality, spouting off a list of statistics and drawing broad conclusions from them (which seems to be a popular cop-out from actually having a rational argument). Essentially, she claims that the reason that blacks and Hispanics in particular don't have as good of an education on average, or as well paying jobs on average, as white people is because of, quote, "continuing institutionalized racism in America" - whatever that is supposed to mean.
After that passionate diatribe, she moved on to everyone's favorite topic for "women's history month" - namely, how the depiction of women as "sex objects" in the media is responsible for the fact that women get paid slightly less on average than men, and why there so few women in Congress. Scratch that - she didn't talk about how the depiction of women in the media causes these phenomena, but merely claimed that it does (without providing any evidence to substantiate her radical hypothesis).
At this point in time, I can honestly say that I felt physically ill at the notion that there were people who actually took this person seriously. But I had no idea what was to come, for it was at this point which she dropped her ultimate bombshell:
She claimed, in no uncertain terms, that the United States of America would benefit from modeling its political and social institutions after those of Cuba. I kid you not. After rambling on about Cuba in utopian terms for five minutes or so, one individual in the crowd who I've met a few times interrupted her to ask the question, "If Cuba's political and social institutions are so much better than the United States', why does Cuba have such an inferior standard of living?"
Her response, unsurprisingly, is that it was all America's fault. You see, if it weren't for the economic sanctions the United States has placed upon Cuba, they would be doing just as good as us today, if not better. Apparently, in Ms. Huerta's mind (and I use the term "mind" loosely), it's America's responsibility to cooperate with Cuba economically, and that if we fail to do so, then Cuba's inability to sustain its own economic growth is not a failure of Cuba's institutions, but ours. At this point, I was refreshed to see about twenty people from the audience, including the guy who asked the question, simply get up and leave.
But, masochist that I am, I decided I might as well stick it out, and it wasn't long before she moved on to her last topic. She ended her lecture by talking about how, since all white people, men, or the wealthy have benefited from historical discrimination, we ought to pay back this advantage in the form of reparations to groups including, but not exclusive to: blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, and women.
Having finally finished her inane ramblings, she decided to grant us a question and answer period (or at least a question period as it would turn out). I finally got my redemption for having to sit through her horrible lecture when I was permitted to ask the following question:
"How do you respond to the criticism that your argument, namely that statistical inequalities apparent in modern American society are the result of historical discrimination, is a textbook example of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy?"
To which she responded:
"What do you mean?"
So, realizing that I was foolish to presume that an individual this stupid might have had an elementary education in logic, I tried to explain to her the problem with her argument by rephrasing my question as such:
"Although you have established that there are statistical inequalities among various social groups in modern society, and although the existence of historical discrimination cannot be denied, it doesn't seem that you have provided any evidence to suggest that the historical discrimination is actually the cause of contemporary inequality. Do you have any such evidence, or is your thesis nothing more than baseless conjecture?"
At this point, heroically, the professor who had invited her here to speak ran up, grabbed the microphone away from her, and announced that we would have to move on due to time restraints. I can only hope that everyone else in the audience found this as amusing as I did.
So, that just about sums up this rant. I honestly wonder sometimes why people this stupid are allowed to live, much less speak, much less masquerade as intellectuals. But at least I got the chance to embarrass her - it almost makes it worth the agony of listening to her "thoughts."
Until next time,
Arbiter
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