Reflections on Little Rock (Hannah Arendt)
January 23rd 2009 01:51
Given who the author was, the position was surprising. "Like most people of European origin I have difficulty in understanding, let alone sharing, the common prejudices of Americans in this area... I should like to make it clear that as a Jew I take my sympathy for the cause of the Negroes as for all oppressed or underprivileged peoples for granted and should appreciate it if the reader did likewise."
So why did she want to allow segregation?
The argument, in a nutshell, goes like this.
There is this basic right called freedom of association, which is something like the freedom to form groups with whomever you like -- and, suggests Arendt, it carries with it the freedom to exclude whomever you like. If three children are in the playgound, two want to go off by themselves, and the third wants to come with, freedom of association means that the two can decline.
In the public/political realm, equality is more important than freedom of association. Trains, buses, hotels, restaurants belong to the public realm, because they're services that everyone needs in order to lead their lives. Segregation is impermissible here.
But things are different in the the social realm. "If as a Jew I wish to spend my vacations only in the company of Jews, I cannot see how anyone can reasonably prevent my doing so... [T]he right to free association, and therefore to discrimination, has greater validity than the principle of equality".
This is even more true of the private realm, which "is ruled neither by equality nor by discrimination, but by exclusiveness." Here we choose, and should be allowed to choose, "with whom we wish to spend our lives, personal friends and those we love; and our choice is... not guided, indeed, by any objective standards or rules -- but strikes, inexplicably and unerringly, at one person in his uniqueness, his unlikeness to all other people we know."
The final step in the argument is that schools belong to the private realm. "The state has the unchallengeable right to prescribe minimum requirements for future citizenship... All this involves, however, only the content of the child's education, not the context of association and social life which invariably develops out of his attendance at school... [S]chool is the first place away from home where he establishes contact with the public world that surrounds him and his family. This public world is not political but social... To force parents to send their children to an integrated school against their will means to deprive them of rights which clearly belong to them in all free societies -- the private right over their children and the social right to free association."
Image of Elizabeth Eckford, one of the 'Little Rock Nine' (Will Counts, 1957)
***
Notes
-- A description of some of the leading American cases on the freedom to not associate.
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Comment by Anonymous
Comment by Damo
Freedom Not to Associate is an interesting term but I wonder if it could ever truly be defined without resorting to prejudice as it justification.
We could rephrase the term Freedom to Alienate Others.
Comment by BigCountry
Another point; Didn't the Nazis have places they called "Judenfrie"? Meaning free of jews? I bet Hannah would have fought against that.
What it comes down to is that if I have a party at my house and I don't want black prople or Jews there then I can not invite them. But that is a private affair in my home or whatever. School, work, things like that should be open to all, sorry. I think Hannah was trying to justify her own bigotry. Hannah is also wrong in the assumption that school is a private thing. Here in the US of A school is a publicly funded institution, and is therefore, as it should be, open to all. If parents don't want their children to "associate" with certain kids or types of kids, then home schooling is an allowable option.
Comment by Anonymous
I am a admirer of philosopy, most of my writings are based on combination of pholosophy motivation. Like your style, will be back soon to read more.
Thanks
N S
Really Long Link
Comment by Andrew K. D. Smith
But, for state-owned schools, the argument doesn't follow. The government has a responsibility to ensure that citizens are offered the full rights of citizenship - and that doesn't just include education, but also social inclusion. To reject this requires marking those excluded as either sub-citizens or sub-human, the latter being unsupportable, the former being unconscionable.
Comment by Anonymous
Comment by Anonymous
Comment by Anonymous
Comment by Anonymous
Arendt's thought is characterized by an unwillingness to consider "the social", which to a substantial extent at least, determines the political.
I was no co-incidence that those who were segregated against their will in public schools also had a hard time voting, or even riding the public bus. MLK-A plus, Arendt: F