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I wish I could say that I have hope that we'll be embarrassed by this, but I don't have much hope outside of marginal swings in opinion driven primarily by old

I wish I could say that I have hope that we'll be embarrassed by this, but I don't have much hope outside of marginal swings in opinion driven primarily by old people dying off and young people intentionally eschewing the ways of their parents. I have several direct and extended family members that still think Jane Fonda should be publicly executed for treason, think the civil rights act and equal rights amendments were communist plots, and that Richard Nixon was the victim of an impeccably well executed Democratic Party plot to frame him. Amazingly, despite not being alive for any of it and despite the absurdity of the claims, some of their children have the same views. It took several centuries for western nations to realize slavery was bad, but an additional century after that to realize that institutionalized racism was bad enough to publicly address with laws, and we still aren't out of doing it in more nefarious underhanded ways. Running in a marathon was low hanging fruit and got lucky with timing. The rest of your list is going to take a few hundred years before we really feel that way as a unified society.

vidarh 10y ago
I think there is a distinct difference between the things that can be viscerally demonstrated, and those that people can not easily see as a yes/no proposition. This woman set out to prove she could run marathons. Her ability to finish was visceral proof that at least some women can run marathons. The guy that tried to push here provided additional fodder to make it look idiotic to refuse them to try to run. In comparison, many of the others things are not something you can see is wrong with your own two eyes, and can see repeated anytime you care. It's harder to see for yourself that one race isn't better than another, especially not when you're looking at things with a biased starting point. Even when you meet nice/smart/law-abiding people of another race, you can write it off as "but not you - you're different" and hold on to the stereotypes. It takes many more examples to overcome for someone who has first gotten convinced by the stereotypes. A woman running a marathon on the other hand, is such a simple thing to show, and it takes very few repetitions, that can be delivered in a very short amount of time, to prove that it's not a fluke or a single abnormal person. You might write it off as fake if you read about it, but not if you see a marathon go by or hear about female friends running one. And once it's happened a few times it sounds remarkable unremarkable. But unfortunately that means a whole lot of issues are likely going to take a very long time to resolve because they are not nearly as easy to demonstrate.

vidarh 10y ago

I think there is a distinct difference between the things that can be viscerally demonstrated, and those that people can not easily see as a yes/no proposition. This woman set out to prove she could run marathons. Her ability to finish was visceral proof that at least some women can run marathons. The guy that tried to push here provided additional fodder to make it look idiotic to refuse them to try to run. In comparison, many of the others things are not something you can see is wrong with your own two eyes, and can see repeated anytime you care. It's harder to see for yourself that one race isn't better than another, especially not when you're looking at things with a biased starting point. Even when you meet nice/smart/law-abiding people of another race, you can write it off as "but not you - you're different" and hold on to the stereotypes. It takes many more examples to overcome for someone who has first gotten convinced by the stereotypes. A woman running a marathon on the other hand, is such a simple thing to show, and it takes very few repetitions, that can be delivered in a very short amount of time, to prove that it's not a fluke or a single abnormal person. You might write it off as fake if you read about it, but not if you see a marathon go by or hear about female friends running one. And once it's happened a few times it sounds remarkable unremarkable. But unfortunately that means a whole lot of issues are likely going to take a very long time to resolve because they are not nearly as easy to demonstrate.