Whale Hunting: a Tradition at Crossroads

As the world modernizes, there are often conflicts between indigenous people and foreigners seeking to impose their way of life on the rest of the world. This is the case in the Faroe Islands, where the Faroese people’s traditional grind, a pilot whale hunt, that feeds the people and connects them to their Faroese culture, has come under fire by marine conservation groups, such as the Sea Stewards, who go to the Faroe Islands coasts to get into physical alterations with Faroese hunting boats. These people who oppose the grind are both hypocritical and misguided in their attacks on the Faroese.

The hypocrisy of the marine conservation groups is ironic: they condemn the direct killing of a few pilot whales while indirectly killing the pilot whales themselves. The boats that they stand guard in, the airplanes that they took to get to the islands— all use fossil fuels, which contribute to a host of environmental problems, like increased global temperature and ocean acidification. The changing environment is far more detrimental to the pilot whale population (which isn’t even endangered) than a whale hunt that occurs, at the most, a few times a year. For their part, the Faroese are careful about over-hunting the pilot whales by tracking them with devices and recording the numbers killed each year. The Sea Stewards would do well to consider the environmental impacts of their own actions before pointing fingers at the Faroese people.

Another reason why some people condemn the grind is because of the gore of the whale hunt. The whales are killed in the Atlantic Ocean, tainting the water red. However, many of the people are queasy about seeing the slitted whales lying by the shore think nothing about eating shrink-wrapped, perfectly portioned meat from the supermarket. There is such a disconnect between consumers and their food that people often forget that commercial meat often comes from cruelly treated animals who are injected with hormones, packed into facilities, and may never see sunlight or have room to walk around in. In contrast, whales living freely in the wide expanse of the Atlantic Ocean live dreamy lives. They are killed instantly by locals who use up all parts of the whale, who view them as local, non-commercial subsistence.

In light of the urban movement to eat local foods, the opposition to the grind is foolish. If the Faroese were to import food, the imports, along with undermining self-sufficiency, would be financially and environmentally costly. And importing food, not even vegan food, is without consequences. For example, in Bolivia, natives are being priced out of quinoa, a local staple, by trendy hipsters in affluent countries. By being self-reliant, the Faroese are doing themselves and poor people in other countries a favor.

It is laudable that the Faroese people are standing up for the grind in the face of foreigners, running on emotions rather than logic, who seek to bring down a long-held tradition. The Sea Stewards’ viewpoint reeks incorrect environmental ideas and imperialism.

Rachel Dolezal: Racial Identity and Cultural Appropriation

The idea that a Caucasian woman in the United States would try to pass herself as black is laughable, especially in the light of recent events such as the McKinney incident, yet Rachel Dolezal has done exactly that. The president of the Spokane, Washington NAACP chapter, Ms. Dolezal has masqueraded as a black woman for about eight years, and was recently outed by her parents.

There is more to her lie than just claiming a (false) African-American ethnicity. In her Eastern Washington University professor biography, she claims to be a victim of eight racial hate crimes, which is untrue. It is sickening that she would claim victimhood when she has no firsthand experience of racial bias. By faking these racial hate crimes, she trivializes the true suffering of African Americans who have experienced the things that she lied about, including envelopes with death threats and nooses tied to trees. She has exploited African American struggles in order to further her own personal and professional gains.

Cultural appropriation is wrong, no matter how the person feels about the race that he/she is mimicking. Although Ms. Dolezal champions African-American rights, she does not have the power to assume that identity as her own. Assuming a racial identity comes with it the responsibility to bear the negative baggage that goes with it: racial discrimination, history of suffering, and stereotypes. She cannot truly know the struggles of being African American because she does not have slave ancestors and or suffer the effects of previous discriminatory government policies. A change in hairstyle and an overuse of bronzer does not make a white person black. By donning a stereotypical look of an African American, she is committing blackface, even if her intent is not to mock African Americans. Black people, who are discriminated by the police, media, and people in society for being black, do not get to be white just because they want to. When Ms. Dolezal appropriates a minority ethnicity, she is using her white privilege to take what is not her's to boost her own power. No matter the intentions behind her deception, her lie undermines the civil rights cause and propagates cultural appropriation of black heritage.

Self-centeredness and the Tragedy of the Commons

When I read Lawrence Ulrich's New York Times article, "With Gas Prices Less of a Worry, Buyers Pass Hybrid Cars By", I instantly thought of the tragedy of the commons. Due to lower gas prices, people do not see as much economical benefits by buying hybrids over conventional cars, so there has been decreased demand for environmentally-friendly cars. This avarice is an example of how people care more about themselves than the well-being of society.  When individual benefits are greater than individual costs, people continue depleting a common resource for their own gains. However, by doing so, people fail to factor non-monetary benefits and costs.

There is intrinsic value in protecting the environment because as stewards of the earth, we must take care of the planet, not just because of economical benefits, but because it is the ethical thing to do. As individual, we levy tremendous power over other people and species. Man-made effects on the planet include: habitat destruction, acid deposition, and increase in tropospheric ozone formation. All these problems not just affect the individual person who created it (i.e. the lumberer who cuts down a tree), but on every living thing, albeit in a very small way. However, when everyone has the mentality of “what’s one less tree in the scheme of things?”, all the small actions accumulate and cause impactful damage. Most environmental problems, such as the aforementioned ones, arise from human greed and a tendency to place individual gain over the common good. In the case of the New York Times article, people who bought conventional cars instead of hybrids put temporary monetary benefits (we all know that gas prices never change) ahead of protecting the environment. This avarice and disregard for the future state of Earth is irresponsible, and everyone sees themselves as minuscule influences when we are really all catalysts that irreparably alter the planet’s composition.

How do we protect public resources from our own individual greed? Garrett Hardin’s The Tragedy of the Commons proposes governmental interference in breeding, noting that commons can only be preserved when used by a low-density population. While that idea is extreme, limiting population growth is needed in order to maintain our standard of living. One way of achieving that is through education, which will pave the way for economic opportunities. Furthermore, higher wealth is correlated with less children. By limiting the population, we can ensure that commons are not depleted and can be passed onto future generations.

Defining Gender

Elinor Burkett’s New York Times piece, “What Makes a Woman”,  is thought-provoking in the way it raises questions about transgenderism and what comprises gender. It articulates my thoughts about gender roles that

so long as humans produce X and Y chromosomes that lead to the development of penises and vaginas, almost all of us will be “assigned” genders at birth. But what we do with those genders — the roles we assign ourselves, and each other, based on them — is almost entirely mutable.

Society’s rigidness in regards to gender is dangerous that it causes people to be boxed into labels. I wear polos and khakis just as much as I wear dresses, but I am not any less of a girl whether I dress in “girly” clothes or not. The dichotomy between females and males should not exist, because very few (if any) people are hyper-masculine or hyper-feminine. Rather, gender should be thought of as a spectrum, with people lying somewhere between the two extremes.

Transgenderism plays into gender stereotypes by insinuating that a person who does not conform the social gender norms of their sex should change into the opposite sex. However, there is no biological basis for why society designates pink for girls and blue for boys and assumes that boys like math while girls like art. These assumptions that society holds, and subsequently, foist upon children, causes people to question their sex if they do not fit in with social expectations. It is worrisome that people feel the need to trump nature in order to fit into some arbitrary molds that society sets for females and males. In order to decrease the amount of people who turn to self-mutilation and artificial hormones to switch to their “true self”, there needs to be a shift in viewpoints, a movement that accepts people’s choice of expression, such as their dress and activities, regardless of whether it fits into the traditionally male and female stereotypes. Only then will people be able to become truly free from the constraints of gender roles.