Within minutes of first reading Strahilevitz’s new book Information and Exclusion, I started to have problems with it. In the Introduction, he begins with a discussion of how fraternities and sororities choose new members. He describes how in a pre-Facebook era people had to rely on such “shoddy” signals like handshakes and small talk to “separate the wheat from the chaff,” but then just assumes that by “substituting a five-minute perusal of a Facebook page for a five-minute conversation, the fraternity member can do a better job of evaluating those attributes he deems relevant for admission purposes” (p2). Speaking as someone who unfortunately has experience with online dating websites, a person’s listing of likes and dislikes, contrived descriptions of themselves, and often misleading profile photos, has never given me an accurate impression of a person. I’d rather have five minutes face to face than unlimited time reading data online to get any type of feel for what a person is really like. And as for Strahilevitz’s emphasis on likes and dislikes, as the wise younger sister says in (500) Days of Summer, “Just because she likes the same bizarre crap you do doesn’t mean she’s your soul mate.”
While this assumption may seem a minor one, and the author uses what I consider better illustrations such as residential exclusionary devices, the Introduction does reveal a way of thinking I fear is dangerous in a world involving accessibility of information and exclusion based on categorizing. Using information to exclude is a natural and necessary action in a world with limited resources. For example, in the author’s discussion of visa allocation, one recognizes that the government can only do so much investigation into potential new US entrants. Facts like country of origin and occupation serve as proxies to determine who is appropriate to let in. But such discussion is still disturbing to me. Racial profiling is a contentious issue. And saving the discussion on equality and fairness issues, I’d like instead to focus on the fallout from such a practice. Racial profiling to me seems to fuel racism. After 9/11, the treatment of people of Arab descent was horrifying. And while in the name of national security it was pragmatic to scrutinize those from certain countries, it only seemed to fuel the hysteria in society at large. And what about its effectiveness? In that time period, I remember reading news articles about how Al Qaeda started using white women in its operations, since this group of people were under such lax security relative to others.
This focusing on exclusionary measures via the trees instead of the forest is also noteworthy in the author’s discussion of Megan’s Laws. About a year and a half ago, Newsweek ran an article where one of the main lobbyists for the laws no longer supports the legislation he fought so hard to pass. There are several problems with the sex offender registry restrictions various states use. One problem the author mentions is that while it focuses on sex offenders, it neglects to protect people from what may be considered more troublesome and violent criminals such as murderers. In Florida, the sex offender restrictions were so severe it left very few places where offenders were actually allowed to live. Pushing sex offenders to the outskirts of society led to many being homeless, bringing huge policy concerns. The article discussed how pockets of homeless communities comprised entirely of sex offenders, such as the Julia Tuttle Causeway (near Miami’s Biscayne Bay). This homelessness only makes moderating sex offender whereabouts that much harder, and may do more harm than good as who knows where these people even go during the day.
In addition, the term “sex offender” is given a certain social meaning with such laws in place. Don’t get me wrong, they’re an unsympathetic bunch, but placing a label on anyone, be it “golfer” or “sex offender,” tends to shape a person’s perception, and not always in a helpful way. Just as not all golfers are rich old white men, not all sex offenders are the demons who prey on innocent children that society often paints them to be. I had a client this summer who was a sex offender, because he stole a car that he didn’t realize had a child in the back seat. As soon as he started driving, he realized this, immediately stopped the car, and tried to flee on foot. He was convicted not only for the theft, but for kidnapping, even for the few feet he drove, and in Illinois kidnapping automatically gives one a sex offender label who is not related to the child kidnapped. There are other sex offenders who earned the label from public indecency or nudity, or who committed statutory rape, and who are not innocent or even sympathetic, but who do not fall under society’s perception of them but still face such consequences.
My point is that by excluding based on objective factors, by placing people in categories, we lose the holistic evaluation of a person as a whole that could lead to a more accurate observation of the world. By trying to take shortcuts, by seeing if a potential sorority member likes the same movies or listens to the same bands, one can too easily lose sight of the fact that in person she’s a bore or a bitch or whatever. And subjective factors are tainted by objective facts that negatively alter overall perceptions, due to society’s forgetting that certain types of information don’t mean what we necessarily think they do. I don’t consider myself a luddite (though I have been called one in the past), but I do feel that information available online can only reveal so much, not just about a potential mate or fraternity member, but about everything. In Good Will Hunting, Robin Williams explains how Matt Damon’s character could read all the art books ever written, but it doesn’t replace standing in the Sistine Chapel and looking up at the beautiful ceiling, how being able to quote sonnets on love doesn’t give any knowledge on what it’s like to be in love, and how just because he’s read Oliver Twist doesn’t mean he knows the first thing about how hard Will’s life has been because he’s an orphan. My worry is that with the more objective information becomes available online, the more we lose sight of the forest for the trees. And with the acceptance of the exclusionary measures the author describes, be it coed campus housing, housing units subsidizing Catholic universities, or bouncers keeping unattractive people out of clubs but not bars, the power of stereotypes only seems to get stronger and more harmful. Strahilevitz spends a lot of time discussing the different types of exclusionary mechanisms, which ones work, which ones don’t, how the law treats each. But instead of focusing on the efficacy and legality, I think it is important to recognize the message such actions reveal and how this signaling transforms society as a whole.
Comments