*The Help

After having watched this movie, which I recommend to all, I am struck with the socialization and the construction of disgust in its use as a method of discrimination.

We are well aware of our conceptions, and for some obsession, of cleanliness, purity, and sanitation. The opposing state of these things is what we find disgusting, dirty, and thereby deem them morally wrong. Society has progressed in some ways with respect to its sensitivity of civil rights and equality, justice, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. However, as Malcolm-X once put it: you can't stab a man in the back 10 inches pull it out 4 and call it progress. What is needed is a critical look at our prejudices and how we may derive insights from the past. 

One of the pervading memes throughout this movie was the sanitation act of separate but equal toilets. The initiative by white upper middle-class women, who wanted to install separate toilets outside of their homes for their African-American maids to use. The motivation behind this initiative was disgust and a germ-a-phobia of sitting on the same toilet as colored folk. There are two forms of morality involved here. One that involves the dynamics of respect/authority, which is also involved with another dimension of in-group/out-group bias and notions of loyalty. The other is the notion of disgust and purity. With respect to the former, I think we are all quite familiar with in-group clicks and feelings of exclusion. This extends to sports, tribes, societies, religions, and forms of racism such as the KKK and the Black Panthers. All contain an element of hierarchical authority, levels of respect with those hierarchical structures and degrees of in-group/out-group intensity. During the time of this movie, the policy of separate but equal was popular. Prejudice and discrimination was rampant.

The second form of morality is an extension of the first one I just mentioned. The dimensions of disgust and purity. Most notably, one of the women was very conscientious about germs and did not like the idea of sharing a toilet with her black maid. Therefore, she drafted an initiative to have toilets built outside people's houses, separate toilets, for the black maids to use. The motivation behind this is disgust and notions of what is pure and sanitary. She didn't mind sharing a toilet with her fellow white people. But she cringed at the idea of sharing one with a black lady.

What really came to mind in terms of this dynamic of disgust and purity, is that how much what is disgusting has changed over time and differ from culture to culture. Pork was disgusting, and many consider as such still. Killing people in an arena was entertainment. Genocide and the systematic execution of persons was ok during certain periods of time for a certain people. North Korea and other countries in Africa, still do it. Wearing cloth of two different material was considered unpure. In other countries, eating grasshoppers is ok. In others it's disgusting. The same can be said of frogs, horses, cats, rats, and dogs. In some cultures they are considered not disgusting and in others. Any physical excretion is deemed disgusting (urine, feces, semen, menstrual blood). In other countries boys are supposed to drink "men's milk" as part of an initiation process into manhood. Other countries would deem these as disgusting. Cannibalism is a sacred ritual in other places it is not. Incest is also another category of invoking disgust. During the medieval times and other ancient civilizations, incest was encouraged within families to maintain the royal blood line.

The notions of disgust and purity have changed over time and have differed across cultures. These are based on sociological reasons and norms of a society and their own emotional reactions to things or how they have decided to manage and interpret their emotional reactions to things.It is dangerous to attach notions of disgust, sanctity, and purity as standards for prejudice and discrimination. How we reason about things we find disgusting and the reasons we conjure to create certain forms of behavioral normacy bleeds into the terrain of how we should consider our emotions in reaction to other cultures and other persons.

The justification of right and wrong, must be considered carefully. We must establish principles that support the virtues and values that we can, as a global community, uphold across the world. The Human Rights charter is a start. The second is how do we maintain and uphold the integrity of these Human Rights values across nations without the corruption of greed that undermine the values we seek for all of humanity and the dignity of life.