Friday, 2 January 2015

Paul and the Politics of Difference: A Contextual Study of the Jewish-Gentile Difference in Galatians and Romans,
Jae Won Lee, Pickwick Publications, 2014, page 36

A few pages later, still on the 'difference' track, Jae Won Lee has this paragrapg:

While recognising that the ideal of liberation as the elimination of group difference, especially privileged difference - has been enormously important in the history of emancipatory politics - a politics of difference needs to be promoted rather than the assimilationist ideal. First, "blindness to difference" is problematic, for it "disadvantages groups whose experience, culture and socialised capacities differ from those of privileged groups.

Why is this? Why is blindness to difference such a problem?

This is primarily so because in the assimilationist strategy the privileged groups implicitly define the standards according to which all will be measured.

Of course! If the dominant group defines what is normal and hence acceptable, then difference is by definition unacceptable and excluded. This is why groups with a genuine difference need to have that difference encouraged rather than defined/assimilated away!!