Individual vs. group rights: virginity testing in South Africa

From the Washington Post:

"They must leave culture aside," Ngobese said. "Human rights are individual rights, which is not the way for us. We live communally."

8.8.08

In light of today's most auspicious date, I have a few thoughts on China and the Olympics:

I recently (okay, maybe it was about 6 weeks ago) returned from a week-long stint in Shanghai for work. It was probably one of the most interesting experiences I've had thus far. As best I can tell, there are not a lot of solitary black American women running around the hoity-toity foreigner part of Shanghai where we stayed. As I mentioned earlier, I was there on business, and my business involved meeting the head of a Chinese manufacturing company, and visiting some factories. One of the factories was used to having visitors come in and wander around, the other was not. I noticed at both places, I was subject to extra scrutiny as our group (which was about half white and half Chinese, with a couple of South Asians) toured the factory floor and grounds. No one was rude, mind you, there was just a bit more staring and whispered commentary in my direction.

I went to one of the old silk markets with two co-workers, and there, it was even more eerie. People stopped in the street, pointed and blatantly stared. For some reason (please enlighten me if you know) it was mostly older women. Older men and younger people didn't seem to notice, or gave me a passing glance. It was the little old ladies who stopped and stared, or tried to touch me (anyone who knows me will tell you I have an inordinate phobia of strangers in my personal space.)

My conclusion (which may be way off base) was this:
Much like many places in America, the residents of Shanghai are not exposed to a lot black people- in the streets, on television, or otherwise. And much like any sort of cultural thing, the earlier generations tend to have less exposure than the younger generations. Furthermore (I should have mentioned earlier- the factories were 1-3 hours outside Shanghai proper) people outside cities have less exposure than those in less urban areas.

Oddly enough, the whole thing reminded me of something someone (now a very close friend) told me during the first days of my freshman year of college. After a week spent at adult summer camp (drinking and partying to the wee hours, hitting the gym and having hungover meals in the dining hall), she looked at me and said "I've never met anyone like you." I asked her what she meant, and she replied "You're smart, you speak proper English, you don't try to be stupid. Where I'm from, there aren't any black people like that."

Moving onto the Olympics-
I know they're always staged and weird, but it gives me the heebie-jeebies seeing how incredibly staged Beijing 2008 seems. There is a front page article in today's Financial Times about China's massive "weather modification departments"- they employ 37,000 people, and have an annual budget of about $100 million. In that article I came across this quote:

"A senior official from the weather modification office in the northern province of Hubei, which is trying to intercept bad weather before it gets to Beijing, says it is not even keeping track of spending on the effort for the Games. 'Nobody is thinking about this at the moment - we'll consider it after the mission.'"

From the weather, to the displaced people, to articles like this one from the New York Times, detailing how many migrant workers have been ordered out until after the games, the whole dog and pony show creeps me out. Then again, maybe it's because I'm just killing time until football season starts.

In case you're interested, today's Financial Times comes with a great little magazine about the Beijing Games and the business of sport, and last week's Economist has an examination of the same, although less Olympics-centered.

In other news, Georgia and Russia are almost at war over South Ossetia, and Mauritania had a bloodless coup, in case anyone noticed.

[UPDATE: Now it is war.]

When personal and public values collide

Decent people the world over do their best to live their values and work hard at their jobs while following the laws of the land. But what happens when any those three value systems conflict?
Feministe's Jill, in her post on anti-choice pharmacies sees it this way:

Yes, people absolutely do have a right to object to doing things they find immoral or wrong. And in places where people are legally compelled to be — school, for example
— the law should not force them to do things that violate their conscience. But when you voluntarily accept a job in a particular field, you need to be able to do your job. If you’re a pharmacist, that means you need to fill prescriptions — even if you don’t like the drugs people are taking. If you’re a Scientologist who believes, for example, that it’s wrong to use anti-depressants, and you feel so strongly about that belief that you cannot justify being a part of other peoples’ use of anti-depressants, don’t be a pharmacist. If you’re a member of Fred Phelps’ church and you think AIDS is God’s punishment for homosexuality, and in carrying out that punishment you don’t believe that any HIV-positive people should get medication, don’t be a pharmacist. If you’re a fundamentalist Christian who believes it’s wrong to use birth control, and your belief is that it’s also wrong to allow other people to use birth control, then don’t be a pharmacist.

Which I don't disagree with - that said, one could argue that the individual's right to be a pharmacist WHILE practicing his or her religion trumps the pharmacist's professional code of conduct. Being the agnostic child of American Catholicism and French laicite, I still side with Jill, though.

What about Ethiopian factory workers who want to wear their traditional long skirts and flowing scarves near conveyor belts? That does sound kind of dangerous - but mostly it seems to me that everyone involved (including the authors of the article and comments) is confusing Islam with Ethiopian tradition. Muslims of both sexes are enjoined to dress modestly, but there aren't any more descriptions of skirts, scarves, hijabs and burkas in the Koran than there are pictures of blue jeans and pantsuits in the Bible.