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MARCH 2021 Blues Vol 37 No. 3

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MARCH 2021 Blues Vol 37 No. 3

The Double Standard The

The Double Standard The dictionary definition of “double standard” is as follows: “a set of principles that applies differently and usually more rigorously to one group of people or circumstances than to another.” Any time there is a double standard at work in a society, it lays the groundwork for protest, challenge, and dissent. Indeed, the double standard is the bedrock of revolution. The inherent unfairness of the double standard is in and of itself inflammatory and is the fuel for fires — both literal and figurative. The American Revolution was no exception to the double standard principle. The colonists had established a society and culture that was as strong as any in the British Empire, including England herself. The British Crown, however, created a separate standard for representation and taxation that boiled over and led ultimately to the dissolution of the bonds that connected America and the mother country. The double standard so inflamed American colonists that they parted ways with a once beloved king whose descendant is still on the throne today. The double standard as a revolutionary ingredient is not confined to political upheaval, but is applicable to social reform as well. It is in this arena that many revolutions have been launched. In the first half of the 19th Century, the abolitionist movement against slavery was becoming a worldwide phenomenon. England not only abolished the practice, but went further by having the Royal Navy enforce its policy on the high seas off the African coast. Of course, by this time American slavery was fully entrenched and the slave trade between Africa and North America was no longer required to maintain the evil institution. The southern states had an agrarian economy that relied on technology (the cotton gin) and human labor (slaves) to power its economic engine. The South clung to a double standard in such a manner that the repercussions still ripple across our daily lives. The abolition of slavery had finally become an objective of civilized peoples. The double standard of the application of freedom based on the color of one’s skin was seen as, not only morally reprehensible, but simply unfair, as all double standards are. Naturally, the modern Women’s Rights Movement was born in the abolitionist environment. The double standard, of course, is the foundation of any feminist (anyone who believes in equal rights regardless of gender) organization. Procedures, practices, and laws based on gender have been in use since the beginning of time. The division of labor based on gender was present in our earliest periods of history regardless of ethnic or racial kinship. This double standard is the oldest form of differentiation that we know of dating back to the Garden of Eden. Gender was the first natural distinction in our species. It was so easy a caveman could do it! There is a very famous speech made by a woman named Isabella Bomfree at the 1851 Ohio Women’s Conference. She was an itinerate preacher who traveled around America preaching on egalitarianism for everyone, especially women and black people. Bomfree was illiterate, but she dictated her thoughts to scribes who wrote them down. Her most famous speech dealt with the infamous double standard. In her particular case, she experienced a double standard within a double standard because she was a black female. In the speech she pointed out the double standards that she experienced as a former female slave. Men denied women equal rights because they “were not made in God’s image” or because “Christ was a man.” Bomfree’s response to these so-called arguments was “Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.” Bomfree’s speech pointed out how the men’s argument that women need to be protected and related to in a deferential manner was illogical. She said that she never received any deferential treatment for she planted, plowed, and bore the lash as well as any man. Her thesis sentence then popped up, “Ain’t I a woman?” The double standard always falls before the cold hard face of logic. Bomfree was a traveling Christian minister who felt led by the Holy Spirit to speak truth to the crowds. Because of this she changed her name to Sojourner Truth. Her simple logic refuting the double standard is still the basis of any civil rights movement. The double standard is ever present when people feel they have been treated unfairly and is pervasive in any society. It can be society wide or exist in the smallest of our organizational units: the nuclear family. What parent has not heard the outcry of aggrieved children who perceive themselves as having been treated unfairly based on a double standard? “Why can’t I climb on top of the house like Johnny? Is it because I’m a girl?” Mom replies,” Wait, what? Where’s your brother?!” The most pervasive and pernicious of our American double standards is found in the autocracy of political correctness. This occurs when one group perceives themselves to be superior and capable of wielding a double standard because they alone have the moral and intellectual capacity to exercise their substantial power properly. When confronted with this particular viewpoint by slave owners and prominent males, Sojourner Truth replied, “What’s that got to do with women’s rights or Negroes’ rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?” In Sojourner Truth’s day, America was a divided country. Her voice had many echoes across the nation. She was aided by sympathetic newspapers in the North, but the media influence exerted in the 19th Century pales in comparison to the media empires of the 21st Century. No one company or newspaper could dictate the social constructs of our country 200 years ago. That is no longer true. Media empires in conjunction with tech behemoths like Facebook, Google, and Amazon wield unequaled and unprecedented power to dictate public opinion as they act to crush opposing viewpoints. They, and they alone, establish a double standard that enacts a partisan direction using censorship, “fact finding,” and castigating people who dissent. Like all past attempts to validate the double standard, the one being used today is causing great discord in our nation. The people it is being used against have been called “deplorable” and are being told that they need to be “deprogrammed.” They have been told that their rights as Americans under the United States Constitution are no longer guaranteed. They have been ridiculed as rubes, scorned as racists, and ostracized as outcasts in their own home. Their history is being rewritten by ignorant “journalists” and “academics” who don’t know the difference between Shakespeare and Faulkner. If the Left’s logical conclusion is achieved with Big Media and Big Tech leading the way to its associated authoritarian and totalitarian government, who will be there to utter the last cry of a free citizen, “Ain’t I an American?” 34 The BLUES POLICE MAGAZINE The BLUES POLICE MAGAZINE 35

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