A couple months ago I was reading online comments to a political article and was really intrigued by this one: "The problem with white liberals is that they hate white people and can't admit it."
As time went by I couldn't stop thinking about it. It reminded of the time I was flying over London as the Princess of Wales's corpse was being wheeled through the city center and the mid-eastern man sitting next to me said, "You know she was pregnant with his baby. They knocked her off because they couldn't have a Muslim heir to the throne."
Before opening my mouth to say that I thought the idea absurd I remember thinking, "Of course that's what it looks like from the perspective of a brown-skinned man whose religion has been the second class citizen of the world for the last four hundred years." So yes - I get it. I see how one might easily imagine such a theory if one were Muslim. But that doesn't mean it's true (or false).
My fantasy is the author of the white-hating comment is a white male, who is unemployed and wasn't unhappy with the recently-defeated democratic majority in DC. But who knows?
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I remember the day it really came home to me what it means to be afraid of difference. I was at a party where there were a very wide variety of human forms: men, women, gay, straight, brown, yellow, black, white, rich, poor, artists, bankers. And I remember thinking: I LOVE this!!! I LOVE when it gets all mixed up like this!
But I wondered what if instead of pleasure I was feeling discomfort or even fear? And what if that fear were of the same intensity as my pleasure?
Wow! That was a blast! - just trying to imagine that feeling was pretty powerful.
So that's what racism feels like! Whew!
Basically it looks like this:
- I'm a Y, all Y's are good
- All X's are bad
- Therefore I hate all X's
But what I find particularly fascinating in the reader's' scenario is the mental leap that goes beyond the above syllogism. It looks like this.
- I am a Y, all Y's are good
- All X's are bad
- I hate all X's
- You are a fellow Y but you have compassion for an X,
- Therefore you hate me.
Of course I would totally I understand the much more classic:
- I am a Y, all Y's are good
- All X's are bad
- You are a fellow Y but you have compassion for an X,
- Therefore I hate you
This is the adult version of the high school boys who beat up fags. Then one day they beat up one of their own because he actually starts to get to know a fag and finds out the fag's not a bad guy after all. Or the radical Zionists who beat up a fellow Jew because he starts to wonder if the settlements really are a good idea.
You get the picture.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
As a psychotherapist I see that unfortunately for a lot of people shifting out of one mental position to explore another is often a REALLY tough thing to do
For instance lots of folks go to therapy to ask what they can do to change their spouse - (even when their spouse is a fellow Y!). A therapist's job is to invite the patient to do detective work: what do you suppose makes your spouse tick? why do you think s/he responds that way? what was his/her childhood like? what do you suppose makes you respond this way? is one person's way actually better than the other's? how is that?
What happens in therapy is really simple. People start to use their imagination. They use it to wonder about the other's perspective. Then they start to make room for someone else's reality in their mental schema. What I've discovered is that this is often new for folks, particularly men. In many cases they have never been taught how to use their inner world as a way to imagine what it might be like to put themselves in the other's shoes.
The outcome of this type of therapy is that people generally realize they don't need to change their spouse at all, that their spouse is not so bad after all. They discover they can learn to sit with their discomfort and they actually end up becoming more accepting, more loving. Sometimes, in the face of this new, more loving attitude - the other spouse actually ends up dropping the annoying behavior without so much as a nudge.
So why don't most people use their imagination to wonder about other people's reality?
My impression is that for many people it's frightening to imagine what it's like to be poor, to be black, to be bullied, to be raped, to be Jewish, to have cancer, to be a woman, to be evicted. They usually only start wondering about it when they are forced to. I imagine this is why the members of congress who've had some kind of degenerative illness in their family were more apt to recognize some of the fatal flaws in our healthcare system.
But even bigger than avoiding discomfort it because most people actually walk around with an internal pattern that pretty much convinces them that, unless proven otherwise, not-like-me humans want to do some form of harm to them. And if those not-like-me humans happen to have a bit of power....watch out! So they don't want to use their imagination to feel what the other might feel because it's more familiar to cling to the notion that the other is out to harm them.
Which brings me to my BIG question. Maybe I'm a fag but what I personally don't understand is why we don't see the following more often:
- I am a Y
- I look around me and see that my world is mostly made of Y's, some good some bad.
- I'm pretty comfortable being a Y.
- I encounter an X
- I wonder what it's like for an X to navigate a world mostly run by Y's, I wonder what are all the unspoken Y rules I don't see anymore, I wonder how I can help the X better navigate the world of Y's, I wonder if the X has anything to teach us Y's about making our world better, I wonder if the X thinks I'm a jerk because lots of Y's speak disparagingly of X's.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I recently attended a graduation ceremony for adults in an urban professional certification school. The certificates varied but they were all paths to more expertise and a better job or a raise in pay. Most of the graduates were over 30; three-quarters had brown or black skin - not a reflection of the general population of the city we were in. "Pomp and Circumstance" was playing over the loudspeakers, blue polyester gowns were worn, tassels were dangling appropriately. I was really proud of my white, middle-aged mom friend who had recently struggled with bankruptcy and worked hard to complete a nine-month course with honors. I duly yooohooed her when she reached the podium.
But what brought me to tears was when a young lady, walking with difficulty, visibly Latina, struggled up onto the stage to get her certificate. She was closer genetically to the Indigenous people of Central America than to the European populations that came later and she had clearly suffered some kind of physical handicap. I imagine her journey to that point must not have been an easy one and it broke my heart open with a mix of joy and sorrow.
Now maybe my thoughts about this young lady were completely crazy. Maybe her family's been in the US for five generations and maybe they are millionaires and maybe she doesn't speak a word of Spanish and maybe she walks with a limp because she fell one day on her father's 75-foot yacht painlessly but with lasting effects.
But maybe not.
What I am sure of is that my strong feelings for the Latina did not lead me to suddenly disdain my white friend. In the same way when I wish Happy Holidays to people who may or may not be Jewish, Muslim, Shintoist or Buddhist - I don't hate Christians (although some of the louder more obnoxious ones do get on my nerves). When I enjoy speaking the second language I worked hard to acquire I don't hate all English speakers.
I am not saying I am better than anyone else. In that high school gym graduation I was able to have compassion for that woman - other times in my life I jump to immediate dismissive conclusions about people based on things as simple as a sentence, an accent or a piece of clothing.
But as I approach the end of this essay and remind myself that it's customary to offer some kind of solution the conclusion I find myself coming to (much to my surpris) is: Americans need to study more History and Geography. We need more Social Studies. And not just the white-washed, Texas Board of Education version; we need the dark, earthy, Wikileaks version. We need fewer romantic-comedies and more really good documentaries. We need fewer Olbermanns and Becks and more deep investigative journalism.
Because when we get glimpses into, say, the history of the papacy, the truth behind Love Canal, the history of colonialism, the Birmingham riots, the Spanish-American War, the tragic deaths of western-bound settlers in America then we see that humans are more complex than we think and we get to know ourselves a lot more. We get to feel proud of our country but also get to feel shame and disappoint and rage at our country. It's not easy. It's not comfortable. But it's healthier than the black and white thinking.
It's much more comfortable for us to just live in the present and keep wandering around with permanent smiles distributing business cards because every other human is a potential client.
I'd even go so far to say we need to study Social Studies in discussion-format type classes. So we can digest this stuff together, these complicated stories of struggle and victory. We need to learn to think critically about history and politics, to distinguish between slanted and good journalism, to understand power dynamics, economic dynamics, demographic dynamics.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
When I was a young journalist I was on assignment in Jerusalem. I was probably 25 or 26 years old, college-educated and well-traveled. While there I discovered a rather significant detail about Christianity. Despite the fact that I had been raised by a pious Christian family who actively studied the bible, I had never been informed of this simple fact and was actually a bit embarrassed not to know it. Jesus was a Jew! Who knew? Once my anger had passed (since I'm quite sure this was willfully kept from me) I remember thinking: Wow! That makes the whole story SO much more interesting and in my eyes made ole JC a much more likable guy!!
So to get back to the reader's comment. No we white liberals don't hate white people (ourselves or other white people) but we don't glorify them either. We've learned too much about the complexities of the human experience to do either.
And I think this country could use more of that.
December 11, 2010
July 20, 2010
Giving and taking freedoms in America: our national disconnect
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February 17, 2010
Long live freedom of (unethical) speech
While the Supreme Court of the United States was busy on the East Coast deciding that no law should "chill" the free expression of words as a favor to the citizens, the Federal Circuit Court in California was busy witnessing just how the free expression of some words can lead to disaster for certain citizens.
Indeed with the help of conservative lawyer David Boies, expert witnesses described how they managed to get Proposition 8 passed.
Through Boies' simple questions and answers we had the veil lifted on something far broader and more destructive than a simple group of citizens exercising their democratic right to persuade voters. Little by little, we were able to see how with the help of big money, powerful churches, deceptive Web sites, lying medical experts/scientists and simplistic, frightening TV ads, an organization was able to fuel fear and enmity among one group of Californians toward another.
Amazingly these same witnesses who devoutly fought against gay marriage also recognized under oath that most findings demonstrate 1) marriage would be a stabilizing element for both gays and the greater community and 2) hateful language of the type they dabbled in leads people to commit violent behavior on gays (and presumed gays).
But our supreme court believes it is important to allow all citizens to hear ALL the arguments and to decide for themselves - no matter how untrue, how damaging or how hate-filled those arguments are.
In the US there is a law against what the court calls "fighting words" i.e. it's illegal to stand in front of a crowd and scream "Kill the Jews" or "Attack the nigger" because this may cause "imminent danger" but this same Court legally protected a person who burned a cross on a black man's lawn in the name of free expression.
In most rich countries this would be a form of "hate speech" - words or actions which foment hatred against a group of people. Much of the early hate speech legislation was passed in Western Europe after the fall of the Nazi party: a party that was freely elected to power by a starving nation that wanted scapegoats to blame for the fall of their empire. Wikipedia classifies hate speech legislation under censorship.
After centuries of controlled speech it must have been incredibly difficult for these countries to come up with such legislation so dedicated are they to the free speech they struggled so hard to attain. But the war's wound was huge: millions of dead on all sides.
My experience of and contact with legislators from western European countries suggest they have no more contact with minorities or poor people than our legislators in their DC millionaire club. I imagine that like US senators these contacts are mostly limited to hired help. I don't have any reason to believe they are more imbued with empathy or Christian forbearance than are their American counterparts.
No, it seems to me their progressive laws that not only protect citizens from hate speech but also protect them from corporate abuse and offer them government-guaranteed cheap education, healthcare and childcare do not come from the fact that they are more representative of the poorer classes.
However one thing they do have that we seem to lack is a deep sense of and respect for history.... particularly the horrors of history.
This is a vitally important difference.
The Organization for Economic and Cultural Development, a 30 member non-profit that we belong to and pay to study our various social and economic trends released a study on higher education among the member countries. The US was the only country in which the percentage of 25-35 year olds who had been to college was the same as the percentage of 55-65 year olds. That is to say that in 30 years we have not been able to increase the percentage of Americans who graduate from college. What's more we know that fewer and fewer people who are in college are interested in such things as liberal arts and history preferring instead MBA's and technical degrees.
And history itself is such a malleable thing these days.
A few weeks ago on my local PBS station a documentary called the "History of Freedom" was aired. I sat and watched the formulaic talking-head professors with suits and ties go on about various historical moments and their interplay with churches - an interesting notion.
Little by little it became clear this very slick documentary was peppered with bias and downright errors -- the biggest of which was the notion that the French Revolution ended in a massacre whereas the American Revolution (which happened around the same time and was helped by the French) ended in prosperity because we Americans had God on our side. Not so for those bad anti-clerical French leaders who had turned their backs on the church. (By the way, no mention is made of the massive fortunes amassed by the clergy and their uncomfortable proximity with the ruling classes.) The message of this documentary was similar to those of the conservative Christians of the Texas Board of Education trying to strong arm biblical references into the nation's Social Studies books just last week.
A quick Google search connected me with the makers of the film: The Acton Institute, "an ecumenical think-tank dedicated to the study of free-market economics informed by religious faith and moral absolutes". This no doubt venerable institution was absolutely unethical in two ways: 1) by mixing history with their own fantasies of how they wish history had been (for which they can perhaps be pardoned since after all history can be quite subjective since it's usually written by the victors) and most of all 2) by not disclosing to viewers from what perspective they are speaking, from what bias they are presenting history and instead distributing a documentary as science.
I am quite sure that an Indigenous American would not consider the American Revolution to be blood free, nor would a black man shipped here as merchandise.
Our world has a very long history of incidents in which better informed people took advantage of less informed citizens, mostly in the commercial realm. Here in the US my mind immediately goes to the purchase of Manhattan for $27 worth of baubles, the bundling and selling of average Americans' mortgages and the sale of nonexistent swaths of Wild West land to uneducated immigrants who starved to death.
Of course we can always say, "It's just business."
For me, a marker of a civilized nation is one in which those of us who have had the privilege of eating to our fill and accessing healthcare, the privilege of attaining a higher education, the privilege of being able to communicate our ideas in clear ways have a duty to use our knowledge to serve humanity in ways that help her thrive and grow, not in unethical ways that serve only our selfish desires.
But abusive speech and its older brother hate speech will continue feeding violence in America until the day we step out of our naive belief that all speech is inherently good and really take responsibility for the abject damage it has caused in the lives of our fellow citizens.
Indeed with the help of conservative lawyer David Boies, expert witnesses described how they managed to get Proposition 8 passed.
Through Boies' simple questions and answers we had the veil lifted on something far broader and more destructive than a simple group of citizens exercising their democratic right to persuade voters. Little by little, we were able to see how with the help of big money, powerful churches, deceptive Web sites, lying medical experts/scientists and simplistic, frightening TV ads, an organization was able to fuel fear and enmity among one group of Californians toward another.
Amazingly these same witnesses who devoutly fought against gay marriage also recognized under oath that most findings demonstrate 1) marriage would be a stabilizing element for both gays and the greater community and 2) hateful language of the type they dabbled in leads people to commit violent behavior on gays (and presumed gays).
But our supreme court believes it is important to allow all citizens to hear ALL the arguments and to decide for themselves - no matter how untrue, how damaging or how hate-filled those arguments are.
In the US there is a law against what the court calls "fighting words" i.e. it's illegal to stand in front of a crowd and scream "Kill the Jews" or "Attack the nigger" because this may cause "imminent danger" but this same Court legally protected a person who burned a cross on a black man's lawn in the name of free expression.
In most rich countries this would be a form of "hate speech" - words or actions which foment hatred against a group of people. Much of the early hate speech legislation was passed in Western Europe after the fall of the Nazi party: a party that was freely elected to power by a starving nation that wanted scapegoats to blame for the fall of their empire. Wikipedia classifies hate speech legislation under censorship.
After centuries of controlled speech it must have been incredibly difficult for these countries to come up with such legislation so dedicated are they to the free speech they struggled so hard to attain. But the war's wound was huge: millions of dead on all sides.
My experience of and contact with legislators from western European countries suggest they have no more contact with minorities or poor people than our legislators in their DC millionaire club. I imagine that like US senators these contacts are mostly limited to hired help. I don't have any reason to believe they are more imbued with empathy or Christian forbearance than are their American counterparts.
No, it seems to me their progressive laws that not only protect citizens from hate speech but also protect them from corporate abuse and offer them government-guaranteed cheap education, healthcare and childcare do not come from the fact that they are more representative of the poorer classes.
However one thing they do have that we seem to lack is a deep sense of and respect for history.... particularly the horrors of history.
This is a vitally important difference.
The Organization for Economic and Cultural Development, a 30 member non-profit that we belong to and pay to study our various social and economic trends released a study on higher education among the member countries. The US was the only country in which the percentage of 25-35 year olds who had been to college was the same as the percentage of 55-65 year olds. That is to say that in 30 years we have not been able to increase the percentage of Americans who graduate from college. What's more we know that fewer and fewer people who are in college are interested in such things as liberal arts and history preferring instead MBA's and technical degrees.
And history itself is such a malleable thing these days.
A few weeks ago on my local PBS station a documentary called the "History of Freedom" was aired. I sat and watched the formulaic talking-head professors with suits and ties go on about various historical moments and their interplay with churches - an interesting notion.
Little by little it became clear this very slick documentary was peppered with bias and downright errors -- the biggest of which was the notion that the French Revolution ended in a massacre whereas the American Revolution (which happened around the same time and was helped by the French) ended in prosperity because we Americans had God on our side. Not so for those bad anti-clerical French leaders who had turned their backs on the church. (By the way, no mention is made of the massive fortunes amassed by the clergy and their uncomfortable proximity with the ruling classes.) The message of this documentary was similar to those of the conservative Christians of the Texas Board of Education trying to strong arm biblical references into the nation's Social Studies books just last week.
A quick Google search connected me with the makers of the film: The Acton Institute, "an ecumenical think-tank dedicated to the study of free-market economics informed by religious faith and moral absolutes". This no doubt venerable institution was absolutely unethical in two ways: 1) by mixing history with their own fantasies of how they wish history had been (for which they can perhaps be pardoned since after all history can be quite subjective since it's usually written by the victors) and most of all 2) by not disclosing to viewers from what perspective they are speaking, from what bias they are presenting history and instead distributing a documentary as science.
I am quite sure that an Indigenous American would not consider the American Revolution to be blood free, nor would a black man shipped here as merchandise.
Our world has a very long history of incidents in which better informed people took advantage of less informed citizens, mostly in the commercial realm. Here in the US my mind immediately goes to the purchase of Manhattan for $27 worth of baubles, the bundling and selling of average Americans' mortgages and the sale of nonexistent swaths of Wild West land to uneducated immigrants who starved to death.
Of course we can always say, "It's just business."
For me, a marker of a civilized nation is one in which those of us who have had the privilege of eating to our fill and accessing healthcare, the privilege of attaining a higher education, the privilege of being able to communicate our ideas in clear ways have a duty to use our knowledge to serve humanity in ways that help her thrive and grow, not in unethical ways that serve only our selfish desires.
But abusive speech and its older brother hate speech will continue feeding violence in America until the day we step out of our naive belief that all speech is inherently good and really take responsibility for the abject damage it has caused in the lives of our fellow citizens.
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