* Re: science held hostage to PCness

Topics: Sexism
25 May 1994

From: ervan

>Will cosmetoligsts have to spend equal time on "minority hairstyles"
>by the time this trend is over?

There is an issue of greater significance in this comment than you may
have realized. The item I had in mind is that for a long time the
cosmetology (or whatever) board of D.C. prevented people from
practicing hair styling without their training and approval. This was
a $5K+ plus process. The government, of course, helped protect this
monopoly. Several black-oriented beauty salons that did mostly
cornrows refused to pay because the training course had nothing to do
with their kind of hair styling (not that anyone should have been held
hostage to such restraint of trade, relevant training or no). They
were shut down and heavily fined for daring to 'do' hair without paying
off the local protection racket, i.e. the police acting as enforcers
for the other hair dressers. This particular story eventually turned
out a little better since some court struck down this particular
instance of restraint of trade (though I never heard on what grounds).

The point is this: the nature of government is not to do the right
thing, or the noble thing, merely the politically popular thing.
In the cornrows case, the right thing seemed to be to prevent a bad
haircut, the reality was that the majority's racism was reflected in
the law (tyranny of the majority in action). Expanding the
government's authority, even for 'good' causes, will not work. If
someone thinks it is a good idea that women should be tested more, they
will not get what they want. By feminists' own accusation, the
government is run by sexist white men. They want to give these sexist
white men more power over medical research on the supposition it will
be used to help them? Ha ha!

---Ervan


Home