Staff Columns: What about support for social disease?
Bumper stickers can tell a great deal about the owner of a car. This week, as I was taking a walk around campus, I noticed a car with two common bumper stickers. The first one I noticed was a common ” W 04″ campaign sticker and the other was a Relay for Life decal. I see these stickers all the time, but this time, I saw something more. This time, I was struck by the ever-so-subtle irony of an apparent conservative embracing advocacy.
On the surface, there is no contradiction between these two stickers appearing on the same bumper. Both are very common, and many cars sport both campaign and advocacy stickers. Isn’t it logical for a person who donates money to politicians to also donate resources to community-based organizations raising money to fight widespread diseases like cancer and muscular dystrophy? More than logical, it is laudable. Citizens in a democracy should take an active role in politics by supporting the candidates of their choice, and we should all help fight diseases that we each may one day face.
The subtle irony lies in conservatives’ usual aversion to activism. Conservatives rail against “activist” judges and liberal protesters. They preach against pluralism, multiculturalism and relativism. Webster’s even defines “conservative” as “disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.” Activism seeks change. Hence the irony of an apparent conservative supporting the activism of Relay for Life.
Supporting any kind of activism requires one to acknowledge the existence of a problem. A conservative who also supports Relay for Life, March of Dimes, or MDA must acknowledge that these diseases are inherently unjust-they strike people with no regard of their social or moral status. Once a person realizes a problem exists, the only logical course of action is to take some action. So once someone has realized that diseases are not fair, is it that far of a jump to acknowledge that other problems are not fair, like poverty, discrimination and social injustice?
It appears so. No one could ever possibly say, “I don’t think that it’s a problem that people die of cancer everyday.” No one would ever say, “I think that more children should be born with birth defects.” However, it is permissible, even popular, for conservatives to say, “Poor people should just get a job,” “Affirmative action is discrimination against whites,” or “Gays should not have the same rights as straight people.” No one can deny that cancer is a problem, but conservatives frequently rationalize or deny the social diseases that unjustly doom millions to lives of poverty or oppression.
Why is it unacceptable to say that children should be born with birth defects and permissible to question whether social tumors even exist? Isn’t suffering in poverty-unable to afford housing or healthcare-while slowly dying in a minimum wage job just as horrible as getting cancer and living with chemo?
Perhaps one explanation is that everyone can relate to the injustices of disease but it is more difficult to understand the nature of poverty and discrimination. We all know someone who has had some form of cancer. However, the vast majority of students on this campus do not know what it is like to walk into a class with no one else of the same race, sexual preference, or income level. It’s difficult to understand and empathize with the plights of minorities and the poor if one hasn’t had much exposure to these people. Neighborhoods and subdivisions are often racially and economically homogeneous. Housing projects are not built next to mansions, and if they are, the mansions often move.
If it isn’t ironic, then, for a conservative to support activism against cancer, it is odd that the conservative does not also support universal healthcare. Medical diseases are equitable in their unjust treatment of the rich and poor. Social diseases, however, are not. Should all those Relay for Life laps paid for by middle class donations buy a cure, it will become the property of the drug company that discovers it. So once it is found, how much will it cost? Unless it is free (meaning that we create universal healthcare), the poor will still die of diseases that the rich can afford to cure. This is the ultimate injustice.
Brandon Holcomb
Graduate Assistant
The Colonnade
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Apr 22 2005. Filed under Opinion.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0.
You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
