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NORMAL AND VALIDATED; AND THAT’S THE PROBLEM.

In PeaceAble, Politics on November 22, 2016 at 10:08 am

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign did not validate or normalize racism, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, white supremacy or the violence, both verbal and physical, that so many people are afflicted with. What the campaign did was to show us just how normal and validated those things are and how little progress we’ve made in changing that.

Norms are a function of the dominant culture, and the culture always changes a lot more slowly than any era’s current attitudes might suggest. We have been riding the pendulum swings of cultural attitudes for a very long time without actually changing that much of the culture itself. There is one simple reason for this: the dominant cultural group, the normative identity of the culture, has not changed. We have tried to bring change from outside that group rather than from within. We tend to see social change as something that has to be done to or in spite of the dominant group, rather than something they have to do.

In America, the dominant cultural group, the normative identity, and therefore what has to change, is straight, white, Christian, capitalist, warrior men.

How does our culture genuinely work for peace, genuinely counter the argument that the way to deal with our enemies is to destroy them utterly when our language is full of the metaphors of war and violence, when so many of sports and games are microcosmic wars, when our entertainments are so predominantly about superheroes defeating supervillains in dark Gothams full of despicable characters?

How do we become a less violent society when men with guns who take over and trash public property are treated as heroes, while peaceful Native Americans protesting the actions of a private corporation are maced and beaten and arrested? The mythological westerner embodied by fictional characters such as Roy Rogers and the Lone Ranger and John Wayne and (in anti-hero guise) the vigilante loners portrayed by Clint Eastwood is alive and well as a cultural norm.

How do we work toward economic and social equity when our culture portrays desirability, success and power as the unfettered accumulation of individual wealth beyond what any one person actually needs; and calls those who have less than that losers, weaklings, and takers? How can we make the best use of our resources when everyone hates to pay taxes because they focus only on what they don’t want to spend “their” taxes on rather than working for the things they do want; without recognizing that they aren’t paying nearly enough in taxes to cover any of it all by themselves. How do we learn to share the resources in a culture that teaches us that whatever someone else gets is stolen from us?

How do we overcome racism, sexism, homophobia and all kinds of bigotry and become a truly vibrant diverse society as long as there are so many accomplishments that have to be identified by hyphenated qualifiers because they are the accomplishments of the “others:” the first woman this, the first African-American that, the first Hindu-American other thing, the first openly gay American whatever?

The veneration of the Confederate battle flag and the Confederacy it represents has been normalized and validated since the Civil War ended, and we have only just recently begun the task of trying to remove it from the norm.

The truth is that all those things that the Trump campaign brought out of the woodwork are us. They are the norm.

We have tried for more than a hundred and fifty years to overcome the abomination of slavery, to create cultural and social equality for women; and yet our first non-white President greeted with an unending onslaught of racism, hatred and obstruction; and a female Presidential candidate was vilified for things that were never questioned when the candidates were male, and her opponent was elected despite his appalling treatment of women.

Hatred, fear and distrust of immigrants is as normal as apple pie.

Despite the enormous gains that our LGBTQ+ citizens have made with respect to public acceptance and specific issues such as marriage equality, we can see just how fragile those gains might still be. Heterosexuality is not just the norm, it’s a virulent, defensive, self-righteous norm.

Despite the fact that the U.S. Constitution expressly forbids the establishment of a national religion, the broad and very diverse Christian religion is seen as normative. We often find it necessary, even in situations where it can have no relevance whatsoever, to announce that someone is Jewish, or Muslim, or Hindu; or worse yet, a “self-described” something, like Deist or Atheist, or Agnostic, or the new category of “Non-Affiliated.”

So how do we change this? We either have to convince white, heterosexual, Christian, capitalist, warrior men to change because it is in their interest to do so; or we have to take the power of cultural normalizing away from them. We do that by changing our participation in the things that are keeping the norms in place. What are you buying for Christmas ane what is your holiday greeting? What movies are you watching, what TV shows? Do you forgive them their violent or sexist content because they are “well-written” or have “outstanding acting?” When you are watching sports, do you hope for the brawl, the injury; do you want to see the star quarterback on the other team not just sacked, but knocked completely out of the game? Do you think that professional wrestling is family entertainment that you want to bring your 9-year-old to? Do you still laugh at jokes about dumb blondes, do you think the recent rash of memes featuring a grotesque Mexican caricature are great fun? Do you talk about “the war on” things you want to defend, and do you celebrate warriors as heroes but don’t think very often of the heroism of peacemakers?

Keep in mind that something can be the norm of a culture long past the time that it actually represents anything more than a minority of a society’s citizens. A norm is not the reality of things, it is the yardstick by which we measure what is different and who is the other. As long as we say to ourselves at any level “that’s just the way it is,” or fail to recognize that our own otherness is the result of our seeing some norm that is not us or some different other that does not share some norm of ours, then we will tinker at the edges of the culture.

Now I should note that the culture is never going to change to suit all of us or any one of us completely. There will always be norms and there will always be exceptions to those norms. That may be the most important normative idea of all.

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The Zero Sum Politics of Scarcity Consciousness

In PeaceAble, Politics on November 9, 2016 at 10:27 am

As I reflect on the reasons People are giving for electing Donald trump to the Presidency, a single theme emerges.

They mention foreign workers taking our jobs; they make reference to variations on the drugged-up, slut of a lazy welfare mother having kids and asking us to support her with our taxes; the unemployed and homeless who want us to take care of them instead of getting a job; the immigrants who are coming here with their customs and religions that they want to force on us; the foreign terrorists disguised as refugees who won’t agree to keep their wars in their own countries instead of coming here to harm us.

Now, all of these things have long been shown by hard evidence to be false, but I it’s not my intention here to argue about them. Instead I want to point out something they have in common that is not often talked about.

They are each a variation on a theme of personal ownership and public scarcity; the idea that any acquisition or benefit or bit of power someone else gets takes something away from me. And if I can strongly identify with a group of people like myself we can declare ourselves collectively robbed.

“If a “foreign” worker comes here and gets a job, that job actually belongs to me or someone like me and has been stolen.” The same thing holds true for someone of a previously disadvantaged group; “Black people are taking white people’s jobs.” “Women in the workforce are taking jobs away from men.”

“If gay people are allowed to marry, then my marriage is less special, less uniquely blessed; so I have been robbed of that blessing.” And, corollary to that is the idea that if same-sex relationships are normal and acceptable, then the natural normality and specialness of my heterosexual relationship are diminished.

“If God can be worshipped in a multitude of ways and all those ways express valid and meaningful understandings of and relationships with God; then I am being robbed of the special righteousness of my relationship with God.” This is the “if everyone is right then no one is right” argument.

And the next step in this reasoning process is that if someone is taking something away from me then that is an attack on me.

“When people say ‘Happy Holidays” it diminishes the specialness of my “Merry Christmas,” so that’s an attack on Christianity itself.”

Now the problems with these arguments should be obvious, but let me state them as clearly as I can.

First, your sense of ownership and entitlement is based on a myth grounded in unacknowledged privilege. Put simply, you don’t own what you think you own. They are what Thom Hartmann calls the “commons.” This isn’t your country any more or less than it is mine and everyone else’s, and I want things for it that are different from what you want, but my desires are no less valid or important than yours.

They aren’t your taxes, they’re mine, too; and some of the things you don’t want to spend them on are things that I do want, and vice-versa.

You don’t own any job; and the fact that you now have to compete for it with people you used to be able to exclude from the pool takes nothing from you except a privilege that is not yours to claim in the first place.

You don’t own marriage or any other social or legal contract between people that does not include you.

And you certainly don’t own God; to think that your truth is the only possible one is arrogance and self-righteousness that is especially ironic in a religion that supposedly teaches you to be humble and leave the righteousness to that God.

Secondly, there is actually no scarcity of most of these things. There is more than enough of being an American for all of us and a great many more.

There is a limited number of jobs, but that’s not the fault of the people who have them. Economists argue that a certain percentage of people need to be unemployed at all times or the economy will suffer. (A side note here: The wealthy don’t invest or start businesses in order to create jobs. They do it to create more wealth for themselves and jobs are seen as a cost of business, not a reason for it.)

There is plenty of love and marriage and sex to go around, and each marriage is equally special for its participants. My marriage does not diminish yours any more than yours diminishes mine. And any of the benefits I may get from my marriage, such as health insurance, clear inheritance of property, lower taxes and so forth, do not reduce the availability of those benefits for you.

And if you can’t allow that there is plenty of God to go around, then the god you believe in is not as great as you claim. Why does it not make sense that a truly universal and all-powerful deity would speak to different groups of people in the ways that they will best understand? Isn’t that part of why you now accept religious texts that are written in English rather than learning to read them in Aramaic or Greek?

America has become a culture filled with people who don’t want to share, don’t play well with others, and act out, throwing a tantrum whenever they don’t get their way.

And that is really what the rise of Donald Trump has given voice to.

And it is a cultural trait that affects us all, because virtually all of our most important cultural traditions reinforce it. Ask yourself if, in fact, you have to actively decide, against your instincts, to reach out to people you’ve been taught to fear, to show compassion to people who make you uncomfortable, perhaps even disgust you. Ask yourself if, in fact, you have an inventory of things that you are protective of and hesitate to share. Be honest. And if you are the normative group of the culture, by which I mean white Christian heterosexual men, then do you not find yourself having to think about the things you do that challenge the norms and privileges associated with that?

This is why we all need allies. The truth is that we are all in this together. And we will either make it work together or destroy it together.

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What Will We Do Tomorrow?

In PeaceAble, Politics on November 8, 2016 at 10:06 am

It’s election day in America. Now it begins.

What’s that you say? You thought this was the end of the election? Well every ending is also a beginning, and in America elections are always the end of one cycle of governance and the beginning of a new one.

It’s important to remember, also, that what happens on election day is in many ways less important than what starts to happen on the day after.

I am both hopeful and confident that Hillary Clinton will be the next President of the United States. Some of you reading this are hoping she will not. One of these hopes will be fulfilled tonight. So what will you do tomorrow.

Consider this: after the U.S. won our revolutionary war against England we had a major advantage in getting our new democracy to work the way the founders wanted it to. The people we defeated left. We didn’t have to figure out how to include the royalists and British sympathizers into our new republic. Anyone who didn’t want to be part of this country could simply go home to England.

But we nevertheless set up a system of government that would require us be inclusive of dissent. And to agree both that the people whom we do not elect would step aside and become the loyal opposition to those we do.

We are in danger of losing that. And if we do, we are in real trouble.

Too many people in this election cycle are talking about running away if their candidate loses, or even more frighteningly, taking up arms and preparing for revolution.

The first idea is just silly, really. First of all, it’s not all that easy to emigrate. It’s more complicated than just saying you’ve decided to be Swiss now. Other countries have the same kinds of requirements for citizenship that we have. It can be time-consuming, expensive, and sometimes unsuccessful. More importantly, politics around the world this year have shown us that there is no democratic country in the world where you can escape the need every once in a while to confront politics that dismay or even frighten you. There is no democracy in which you will not have to sometimes learn how to live with a government whose philosophy and policies you despise.

That’s how democracy works. Karl Rove once spoke of establishing a permanent Republican majority. He couldn’t do it. A few Democrats have suggested that Donald Trump’s candidacy might give them the opportunity to establish a permanent Democratic majority. I sincerely hope that they are wrong. I even hope that we can shake off the idea that an either/or Democratic/Republican majority is the only possibility.

The second idea is dangerous. Revolutions make enemies of us all. It has been 150 years since the Civil War and we still haven’t figured out how to deal with the people who lost and integrate them fully into the national identity. All movements, including the Neo-Nazis, the “Patriot Militias,” the Tea Party, the Black Lives matter movement and its often insensitive imitators, the Occupy movement, and the protesters at Black Rock are motivated by a desire to be heard above the noise, to have their needs and grievances addressed. They feel disenfranchised, marginalized and oppressed. They need to be heard.

That doesn’t mean that the country needs to give them everything they say they need, or even anything they need, depending on what they are asking for. But we have to include them, we have to validate their existence even if we need to vigorously oppose their ideas.

There are people I know who are planning to vote for Donald Trump. These are good people. Their votes are sometimes based on fear or anger or ignorance; sometimes their vote is based on one or two issues of importance to them, local issues, even personal issues, personal experiences. Often they simply have a different understanding than mine, a different moral compass; they are coming from a different place. I can both disagree with them and respect their choices.

I need to do that or I risk forgetting something important about a democracy: they aren’t going away, and sometimes they will win. And if they do win, I will want to be respected and included and listened to.

Democracies all over the world have elected demagogues and dictators who refused to give up power. Democracies have succumbed to revolutions or been undermined by insurgencies by those who have lost at the voting booth. It rarely ends well. It is hard enough to bring people together after an election in which everybody is invested in making it work. When we lose that, when we stop trusting the agreements that are inherent in our Constitution, we risk our democracy, our culture, our national identity, and our safety.

I am confident, as I said, that we will be looking at a President Hillary Clinton tomorrow, so let me address those who will vote for her. Use this as an opportunity to look inward. You believe, perhaps, that the Trump campaign has validated LGBTQ bigotry, sexism, xenophobia, jingoistic nationalism, racism, religious intolerance, and extremism of all kinds: and you are probably right. But please take time now to look inward. These are aspects of our culture that have infected us all. They are both symptom and cause. How have you worked to mitigate or eliminate their influence on your own life? How can you begin to work now to understand the fears and injuries that keep them in place for others. How can we address them in ways that recognize and validate those fears and injuries without validating the bigotry, or participating in the violence?

There is clearly a lot of work to be done in this country to move our culture away from the entrenched privilege of wealth, whiteness, and the masculine; there is a need to work toward the elimination of all kinds of bigotry and toward a diverse and vibrant and just society. None of that will be fully accomplished in the next four years or the next eight. It won’t proceed uninterrupted or unchallenged. There are powerful forces arrayed against it. But unless we recognize the need to engage with, include, try to understand, and address the needs of all our citizens, even the ones whose ideas we find hateful, it won’t happen at all.

If we want to succeed, we need to lead. If we want things to change we have start with ourselves, if we want to end the divisiveness we need to stop dividing. If we want elections that aren’t predicated on hate, anger, fear-mongering, misinformation and disinformation, gossip and innuendo, then we have to stop buying into them.

In a democracy, voting isn’t the end, it’s the beginning. It’s not just whether you voted or how you voted, it’s what you do after the voting is over that really counts.

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OUR HYPERBOLE IS LITERALLY KILLING US!!!

In PeaceAble on July 26, 2016 at 9:17 am

Let me be clear. That meme you’re so excited about is not going to DESTROY Hillary Clinton. That factoid you’ve just found on your favorite FB page doesn’t mean that TRUMP WILL NEVER BE PRESIDENT if “everyone” shares it. Despite the proclamations of right-wing hyperventilation, Hillary Clinton is not a TRAITOR who is about to be INDICTED because of that YouTube video she DOESN’T WANT YOU TO SEE. And the latest LEAKED MEMO isn’t going to be the SCANDAL that will bring down whatever. In the same way, the latest overnight poll numbers are not PROOF TRUMP WILL BE OUR NEXT PRESIDENT, just as yesterday’s numbers don’t show HILLARY CLINTON POISED FOR HISTORIC WIN THAT WILL DESTROY REPUBLICAN PARTY.

So chill. Please.

One of the consequences of the country’s polarization, and some of the best evidence of its influence, is that everybody is writing terrifying headlines in all caps every time one of the candidates or their supporters sneezes. GOLDENROD ALLERGY DESTROYING BERNIE SANDERS NOSE MUCUS! REAL REASON HE CAN NEVER BE PRESIDENT!

So let’s stop. Now. Really.

Because this level of hyperbolic shouting at one another is both cause and a symptom of some other disturbing trends.

1. THE “OFF WITH THEIR HEADS” TREND:

This is both figurative and literal. There are actual members of Congress telling their constituents that Hillary Clinton ought to be shot for treason. There are actual real delegates to the Republican Convention (not to mention their nominee) who are tweeting out messages calling for death to Muslims, abortion providers, protesters, and rival candidates. There are Democrats who are calling for a revolution to bring down the Democratic Party even if it means Trump gets elected because maybe then we’ll all “wake up.” There is a growing sense that winning a debate or an election isn’t enough, the opposition needs to be completely vanquished, done away with and destroyed.

This is not how our democracy is supposed to work. No party is supposed to have, as Karl Rove dreamed it, a “permanent majority.” Winning an election is not supposed to be a mandate to obstruct and posture and refuse to work with the other parties. And losing an election means you are supposed to step aside willingly and let the winners take office. We cannot afford to develop into a society that threatens the press, punishes political opponents and encourages violence in our rhetoric and especially in our daily interactions. Shooting policemen will not solve the problems of police violence. Beating up random Muslims or burning mosques will not solve the problems of Islamic radicalization.

And the idea that violence and revolution are good ways to bring about social and political change is what leads to things like assassinations and domestic terrorism.

2. THE SUPERHERO FANTASY TREND:

Superheroes are big these days. Whether we are talking about the classic DC and Marvel costumed crusaders or larger than life military characters, or James Bond and Jason Bourne superspies with a license to kill; people are flocking to watch good defeat evil.

But there are two problems with this.

First, superheroes don’t really exist. And the more we admire them and look for them, the more likely we are try to create them out of the actual flawed human beings we are asking to help us solve our real human problems. And when we do that we are setting ourselves up for failure and disappointment. Electing Barack Obama as president did not mean the end of racism, did not heal our racial wounds. No one man can do that. And electing Hillary Clinton will not miraculously open the doors of power for women everywhere. The president who follows Barack Obama will be white; the president who follows a Clinton presidency will probably be white and male. And it is highly likely that the president after that will also be white and male. And there is no superhero we can elect who will single-handedly change that. We all of us have to do the work, together, slowly, day by day, in small ways and large, in order for problems to be solved and change to be made.

Second, superheroes require supervillains. But supervillains don’t really exist any more than superheroes do. And we are far too busy right now creating imaginary supervillains for our imaginary superheroes to do battle with. If Trump is your superhero who is going to make America great again; then Clinton and the “liberals” have to be sinister and evil supervillains to be defeated in epic battle. If Sanders is your Superman then the big banks, the wealthy one percent and the oligarchy are transformed into Lex Luther and his minions. The Republican Party is drawing dark illustrations of America as Gotham City; the Democrats have a slightly rosier picture of America as Metropolis in the comic books of my childhood: essentially sunny, but with always the risk of a supervillain or an alien being threatening the quietude.

But nobody expects their neighborhood superhero, whether friendly or deeply brooding, to snatch up jaywalkers, arrest petty criminals, or rebuild a crumbling infrastructure. And all the problems are fixed quickly and dramatically with no cost to the taxpayer.

  1. THE SELF-EVIDENT RIGHTEOUSNESS TREND:

Here’s a clue: if millions of people disagree with your position, in whole or in part, then the truth of it is clearly not self-evident. It is, in fact, not even indisputable on the evidence. This doesn’t mean that you are wrong. It merely means that you cannot make your case once and be done with it. You have to keep persuading, keep arguing, and keep working; even after it seems you’ve finally won. Forgetting this means two things.

First, there will be backlash, there will be backsliding; and thinking you’ve won and the argument is over may leave you unprepared to deal with those things. Roe v. Wade did not secure the right for women to choose what to do with their own pregnancies and their own bodies for all time; and it can be argued that thinking it had is part of what allowed the rise of the right-wing anti-choice movement to erode those rights. The civil rights movement and Affirmative Action clearly did not establish for all time that people of color are equally human beings deserving of all the same rights and privileges as white people; and the failure of comfortable blacks who had achieved a significant measure of success and self-satisfied whites who wanted to be released from cultural guilt to continue the battle for that equality can arguably be said to have allowed the new racism and racial divisions to fester and then erupt.

Second, your self-righteousness will be evidence, for those who disagree, that your position is in fact wrong, and that you are de facto an extremist with whom they don’t have to actually argue about the ideas. If you are a self-righteous radical they can simply call you names, dismiss your ideas as “out of the mainstream,” and wall themselves in with their own self-righteousness to defend against yours.

  1. THE VOLUME AS TRUTH TREND:

It is entirely possible for large numbers of passionate, committed, and energetic people shouting at the top of their lungs to be wrong. We are all aware of this when it is a large number of people we disagree with marching in the streets and shouting passionately. We are not so sure when we are doing the marching and shouting. This is because being a member of a large, loud, passionate and committed group is enormously empowering. When we sit in a packed auditorium or stand among a couple of thousand people on a city street; when we see ourselves and all those other people on the evening news or trending on social media, it is easy to believe that we are standing at the vanguard of whatever brave new world we envision. All these people gathered like this, all this passion, all this power can’t be wrong; and anyone who can’t see the rightness of it, who don’t share our vision will surely be swept aside by the irresistible force that is us.

But of course they won’t be. And in a democracy they aren’t supposed to be. In a democracy we live with the idea that majority and might do not make right; and we live also with the risk that what is right will probably take time.

This is not to say that large numbers of passionate and committed people is never a good and important thing. It is. It can be a catalyst for change. But it can also be a catalyst for anarchy. Just as it can empower people to create change; it can also empower those who won’t change to create oppression. When volume, in numbers or in tone, begins to substitute for reasoned argument and measured change, we move toward polarization, division, and confrontation.

Too often these days, it seems that people have forgotten how use their indoor voices, how to type in lower case; and how to listen to the ideas buried beneath the rhetorical cacophony.

We are losing our ability to function as a representative democracy, as a government of, by and for the people because we are losing our idea of “the people.” “The people” isn’t just “us,” it’s “them” also. Our shouting and cursing and name calling and apocalyptic pronouncements of doom or hyperbolic declarations of imminent greatness are threatening to drown us all. It’s time to take a breath, calm ourselves down, and begin again quietly; tell each other in reasoned tones what we fear, what we need, what we believe, and why we’re hurting. And then we need to listen carefully for clues to the way forward together.

 

Shh . . .

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There is No Such Thing as an Isolated Incident

In PeaceAble on July 18, 2016 at 8:24 am

Nothing occurs in a vacuum. Life is an ecological system. And in the age of ubiquitous social media we are ever more aware of how events are interconnected.

Whenever something terrible happens we naturally look for causes; but there is a tendency, especially in the current atmosphere of divisiveness, to look for causes that suit our various agendas. And there are some usual suspects for us to assemble: racism, out-of-control police, protesters, “he shouldn’t have resisted, had a gun, had a record,” “she was dressed provocatively,” gun control, lack of gun control, and so on ad infinitum.

And as soon as we get enough people to agree that something specific is, indeed, the cause, a chancy prospect at best, then we vow to do something about it; and sometimes something specific to the agreed-upon cause is in fact done. But the problems, of course, aren’t actually solved.

First, let’s try to be honest with ourselves. We have not solved or erased or outgrown or moved into eras of post-anything. Our culture continues to harbor and express deep systemic strains of racism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia, religious fanaticism, militarism, and economic inequity and oppression. And that is not an exhaustive list. And let us also recognize that these are the diseases of the privileged and the powerful, but the symptoms are most notable in their effect on the disenfranchised and disempowered.

So, when a Muslim gunman shoots up a nightclub that caters to homosexuals and we try to decide if the cause is “radical Islam” or homophobia or mental illness or the American relationship with guns, or whatever; the answer is “YES!”

And when a clearly disturbed white man shoots up a church full of people of color and the pundits weigh in on whether it is properly an instance of mental illness or racism or right-wing Christian fanaticism, or (again) issues of gun control, or a media narrative that is helping to create an atmosphere of violent rhetoric and violent action, or any of a dozen other proposed causes; again the answer is “YES!”

What we are seeing are not isolated instances of any one of those things, they are the meeting points of them all, and a whole raft of others that we haven’t even thought of.

And the truth is, I believe, that we all know this. We all know; and our cultural messages through our media and our general behavior confirm it and reinforce it every day. The American culture, as defined by the norms it establishes, is dominated by a white, male, Christian, oligarchic, individualist, and nationalist voice.

And all attempts to counter that voice are met with suppression, dismissiveness, deliberate misrepresentation, and polarized divisiveness. Because all of those problems are things that challenge the cultural norm, and cultures are built on power, and power does not yield itself easily, and cultures change only very slowly.

But cultures do change. And they change most rapidly (for good and ill) when the masses of people subject to them begin to make the changes and insist upon them.

But does that mean we should not try to determine proximate causes and correct them? Do we have to say to ourselves that none of this will change until we change the whole culture? Of course not.

But is necessary that we be careful not to get too caught up in one or another cause; that we should be careful and deliberate in our analysis of every incident – both major traumatic and catastrophic events and the smaller events of our daily lives – and see the broader picture as well as the immediate exigencies.

Keeping people on a no-fly list from purchasing guns won’t by itself prevent future mass shootings (or at least we won’t really know if it does, since one can’t prove a negative), but without a careful look at the very existence of a no-fly list and its relationship to our collective fear and easy suspicion of the other and the erosion of our basic civil liberties and the reality of the risks and dangers that we face, both from “others” and ourselves, it has the potential to make things worse. What, in other words, will be the cost to all of us if we get it wrong?

Arming police departments like military assault units and deploying them against citizens not only doesn’t solve the problems of violent confrontations, it exacerbates them.

“All Lives Matter” isn’t a statement of inclusion and acceptance, it’s a failure to recognize that “Black Lives Matter” identifies a particular area of special need, and it attempts to diminish the very real and special importance of that need, and in doing so it makes the need greater and the problem worse rather than better.

The positive aspect of all this is that cultural change is always within our personal grasp. It is, in fact, the only place it’s ever been. But it requires us to strive consciously to practice every day what we claim to want in the world.

Do you want less violence? Avoid the use of violent language, violent metaphors, and even small violent actions.

Do you want a more equitable world? Stop holding onto what you don’t need, examine the degree of excess and privilege in your own life and try to spread a bit of it around to others who have less.

Do you want us all to “just get along?” Pay attention to how your own actions and language create or encourage or unintentionally support bias, prejudice and discrimination (including in what you find funny or what click bait you chase, for example).

Would you like to see a healthier world, the end to the terrible diseases that affect people? Examine where in your own life you choose to support unhealthy practices, and give some of your junk food money to health-focused charities or to support legislation and legislators fighting for better and less expensive heath care.

Do you want to reduce the effect of hate in the world? Examine your own feelings of hatred and look inward for compassion, acceptance, forgiveness and love. Ask any question about what change you would like to see and look first at your own life to make those changes.

Once we begin to realize how challenging it can be to make the small but significant changes in our own lives, we can begin to see what needs to be done to bring about those changes in our communities, our nation, and our world. Perhaps we will see that the answers aren’t out there somewhere in the hands of a super hero who has the power to change it all. And perhaps we can see that most of what passes for solutions is at best just using a teaspoon to drain the ocean, and at worst, throwing gasoline on the fire. Because everything is connected, everything makes a difference, there are no isolated incidents and we are neither alone nor powerless.

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The “Joke’s” On Us

In PeaceAble on February 29, 2016 at 9:56 am

It has always been true that a society’s entertainment is one of the primary voices of its cultural norms. As a society’s focus shifts, its popular music, movies, literature, television and advertising reflect that shift. The entertainment media reflect more often than they create the rise is certain attitudes and behaviors. When a society feels especially afraid, for instance, or defenseless against large, terrible, uncertain dangers, there will be a rise in super hero movies, in television shows about heroic police, and ads that use those fears to sell everything from home alarm systems to pharmaceuticals to bullet-proof backpacks; not to mention guns. Because normative cultural messages reflect shifts in how we see ourselves and reality, and because social media have become so prominent I the dissemination of those messages, I am disturbed by the appearance of certain memes on my Facebook feed. Two recent “humor” trends illustrate the problem, but they are only the tip of the iceberg.

The Blond “Joke”: I thought we had settled this 30 years ago. There is nothing inherent in being a young, blond female that makes you dumb. And there is no joke, whether basically funny or not, that is made funnier by making the central character a dumb blond female. Yet I keep seeing the “jokes” popping up as click bait. Many of them seem harmless enough in the few sentences visible before you click on them, but it quickly becomes apparent that the authors feel comfortable once again in using this sort of irrelevant, pointless and insulting image as a basis for “humor.”  At a moment in history when we have a woman as a front runner for election to the presidency we are also seeing a resurgence of attacks on women’s right and women’s health, and the return of the dumb blond female “joke.” This is not a coincidence.

The “Funny” Mexican: As Donald Trump has been fanning the flames of racism and xenophobia in his presidential campaign (and his success has led his rivals to head down the same pyromaniac path), I have been seeing a Facebook meme that consists of a picture of a grossly grinning “Mexican” in a clownishly stereotypical serape and broad-brimmed hat, with various punch lines about how “Mexicans” speak English. We are being told that it is once again okay to use racial and cultural stereotypes to get laughs at other people’s expense. Again, as we try to engage in a national conversation about immigration, this is not a coincidence.

The argument being made by those who post such things, of course, is that everyone is too easily offended, and they are not going to be “politically correct.” You can fertilize an 18-hole golf course with those arguments.

If we seem to be more easily offended it is simply because we are becoming more conscious of the offenses. Before people pointed out that blackface on white people was offensive, there were already people of color who were greatly offended. Long before the Washington Redskins were being told that their team name and mascot were offensive, there were already First Nations people who were greatly offended. Long before Reese Witherspoon was “Legally Blonde,” generations of young blond women had to endure the offensiveness of such jokes. The only reason the rest of us were not aware of these offenses is that those who were offended were also marginalized, discriminated against, and shut out of the cultural messaging that was creating, reflecting, and perpetuating the offenses.

“Political Incorrectness,” like religion, is a refuge for scoundrels. The truth is that political correctness is a Loch Ness Monster. There will always be people who will believe in it and others who will be sure they’ve seen it, but it probably doesn’t really exist. Asking that we, as a culture and as a society, not do pointless, insensitive things that are hurtful and offensive to others is not political correctness, it’s maturity. As individuals we are expected to grow out of certain behaviors. Things that are cute in a 5-year-old are disgusting and immature in a 30-year-old. A society that continues to think that stereotyping of entire groups of people, discrimination against the “other” of the day, and the perpetuation of racist, sexist, xenophobic images and ideas is funny isn’t “politically incorrect,” it’s immature.

Now let me ask you. Are you someone who has reposted these sorts of memes and materials? Did you do so because you found them funny? Are you now feeling uncomfortable and perhaps, dare I suggest it, offended? There are times when every one of us might be reasonably offended by something. There isn’t anything wrong with that. If I were poking you with a stick, you would be right to feel pain. And you will feel that pain even if I do not intend to be poking you and I am not aware that I am poking you. You aren’t being “too sensitive.” And if you tell me that I am causing you pain, you would be rightly angered if I kept poking you because I thought it was funny, and even angrier if I told you that it was your pain that was wrong, not my behavior and I refused to be “Painfully Correct.”

There seems to be a growing sense in this political season that being offensive is a sign of honesty, of “telling it like it is,” and “speaking one’s mind.” In reality, it is a sign that we are regressing culturally. And we are easily made complicit in this regression. When we long for simpler times when the stereotypes of non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual and/or foreign people were fair game; when the objects of our humor were expected to simply recognize that not being white, male, heterosexual or American was justification enough for us to make fun of them; when “I was just joking” was legitimate cover for our insensitivity and offensiveness; then what we are really missing is our own culturally normalized superiority.

And as I close this argument, let me say that I am equally disturbed by those who make jokes about Trump supporters or Tea Party supporters as “Southern Hicks” who hump sheep and marry their cousins; or any “humor” that reinforces the polarizing, prejudicial attitudes that keep us from finding common ground on the high ground rather than the low. We can make a point of not telling these kinds of jokes, not laughing at them when others do (not even politely), and speaking up in protest against them. We are all responsible for the voices that define and reflect our culture.

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Five Reasons I’m a Feminist

In PeaceAble on January 28, 2016 at 3:15 pm
  1. Because claiming I’m a humanist isn’t enough.

Feminism is not a subset of humanism. And humanism is not an umbrella term that excuses me from taking a specific position of advocacy with regard to the particular needs and concerns of women. I can, and feel that I need to be both a humanist and a feminist. The former says that I value and honor the human experience in its many and varied manifestations. The  latter says that I recognize that there is, nonetheless, within that human experience a significant degree of inequality, inequity, discrimination, disenfranchisement, and abuse directed at more than half of humankind as a direct consequence of their sex and their gender; and if I genuinely value and honor the particular experience of women, I need to work to change those things.

 

  1. Because claiming that I am an ally isn’t enough.

When you are someone’s ally, you stand beside them, you fight with them against a common enemy. There is nothing wrong with that; though, as a male I might be more properly called a collaborator than an ally. But one is an ally for the “other.” Being an ally suggests that I will fight alongside you, but I am not like you. And that can only take you just so far. I will certainly be an ally for women. I will do what I can to further the causes of women in this culture and in the world; but feminism requires that I not only support those things that will benefit women. It also requires me to understand that I am not really separate from them or those causes. As an ally I can empathize. As a feminist I must identify. I must see that there is no “other.” We are all the “other.”

I cannot escape the fact that I am a man. I don’t want to escape it. My life’s experience is shaped by the perspectives and influenced by the privileges and responsibilities that that fact embodies. It is likely that, in trying to explain my feminism or practice it, I have gotten some of it wrong. I know that I have certainly at times gotten things wrong with respect to the women in my life and my relationships with them. Part of the task of being a feminist is to make the effort to become more aware of those things and sensitive to them; to work to change in myself what I would change in the culture.

 

  3. Because I know the difference between “feminine” and “female.”

Slightly more than half of us are females by biological birth. I have no idea what percentage are female by personal identification. I do know that no one is fully feminine or fully masculine. The qualities we associate with the feminine are not the same as being a male or a female. This matters because when we discriminate against women it is at least partly because we associate the female with the qualities we have chosen to identify culturally as feminine and we are devaluing those qualities.

When I identify as a feminist, I am saying that what we do to women, what harms or benefits them, what diminishes them or elevates them has the same impact on us all. To discriminate against women is to discriminate against that which is feminine in me. To devalue women is to devalue the feminine in me. To honor and celebrate and work for equality for women is to do the same for the feminine in me.

Ours is a male dominant, male normative culture. The male/masculine voice is the dominant voice of the culture. As a male, I benefit from the privilege that dominant voice gives me. It is my responsibility, therefore, to use that voice to change the culture where I see that it does not function for the best interests of all; and to encourage the elevation of the feminine voice to its rightful, equal, place.

 

  1. Because there is power in the words we use.

Language is important. When we talk, for instance, about the Academy Awards and there is a best actor and a best actress, we know which is the more important award, because the words themselves tell us that “actress” is the diminutive form of “actor.” But if we were to call them the “best female actor” and “best male actor” there is at least the opportunity to see them as equally valuable. An actor is simply one who acts, regardless of sex or gender; and designating separate awards for a female and a male simply recognizes that each brings something slightly different to the endeavor. When we allow the term “feminism” to be marginalized, to be made to seem as though it only represents a small, radical group, then we can also marginalize the very real problems faced uniquely by women. Claiming the title for oneself, therefore, constitutes a small, but important act of affirmation that those problems are real and in need of resolution.

I am a humanist. I am an ally. I am a feminist. Each describes some different aspect of who I am in the world. Being one does not preclude my being another. I am a feminist because the culture is masculinist. I will be a feminist until it is possible to be both in equal measure.

5. Because it’s personal.

I have had a mother and grandmothers. I have had wives and daughters and sisters and nieces. I love some amazing women. And I know that statistically far more of them than I am aware have been raped, abused, and harassed. All of them have suffered some kind of discrimination because they are women. I have seen the impact of these things in the women whose stories I know. I know that the pain this causes me is not even close to what it has caused them. I also have a brand new granddaughter and I want to see the systemic sexism and misogyny of our culture end, so that being a woman is no longer a disability or a danger.

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‘Tis the Season

In PeaceAble on November 27, 2015 at 12:12 pm

Yesterday I went out for a Thanksgiving dinner to a very nice restaurant (there were a great many open, but this was the only one that said a cancelled reservation would allow them to seat our party of three), where every table was filled with happy patrons, and an excellent chef and kitchen staff prepared some wonderful food, a delightful waitstaff brought out our meals quickly and pleasantly, the service staff kept tables cleared and dishes clean, and the managers oversaw everything with efficiency, good humor, and a warm and welcoming attitude.

On our way, we stopped to fill up the gas tank; and passed doughnut shops where we might have gotten coffee, and convenience stores where we might have picked up a few things for later.  In an emergency, we knew that we could count on emergency services, hospitals, police, or firefighters to be available.  We briefly considered whether we might forego the big dinner and just get a pizza; but were a bit disappointed to find no pizza places open.

We also passed places where some people less selfish than ourselves were providing Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless or impoverished, or for those who would otherwise be alone and without family or friends to share a meal.

And I wondered why there is always so much controversy about which big box stores would be open that afternoon to start their Christmas season sales. Why do so many people care if WalMart is open, but simply expect to be able to find places to get gasoline or some last minute items for their own celebrations? Why do they worry that some people might have to work, but simply expect that others will? How do they sit down to all the things they say they are grateful for, but not understand that having a day off may mean for others that they don’t get a day’s wages or a bit of overtime pay, and that may make the difference in whether they make the bills this month; and others may want to work so that they don’t sit home alone wondering what to do with themselves? Why do they not see that such complaints are privileged, first world problems; that forcing big box stores to close would not do very much to solve the real problems that other people face? Why do we all take so much for granted on a day when we are proclaiming our gratitude?

Is it simply because if we don’t need or want something then we assume that it is unnecessary for everyone? Is it because we assume that if we don’t desire something, or dislike it, then that feeling must be universal, or at least the norm? Do we assume that if we have something, like a loving family and plenty of food, and we value those things, that we can speak from our position of privilege for the needs of everyone else? Or is it even more selfish than that? Are we afraid, perhaps, that we will miss out on something? Someone else will get the really big deal, save some money on something we might have to spend more for later if they go to the stores and we don’t. Someone else will beat us to the punch somehow. Are we afraid that if the stores are open we might somehow be unable to resist their siren song?

Like so many things we argue about, the arguments about shopping on Thanksgiving are really about choices: what choices are available to us and to others; who decides; who’s in control; and what difference does it all make? Is my Thanksgiving made less enjoyable, less festive, less meaningful because someone else chooses to keep a store open or go shopping; but not affected at all by the knowledge that I am consuming in excess of what I need while others starve, holding court in a warm and comforting home while others struggle to survive, enjoying the pleasant company of family and friends while others huddle close to keep fear and violence and despair at bay?

There is nothing wrong with celebrating our gratitude for what we have. We have no need to feel guilty about that. For all the things we have that we know are not guaranteed us, we should be thankful; and setting aside a day to make that thankfulness manifest is a good and honest and even honorable thing. So do that. Make it real. Make it your own. Choose to spend the day however you wish. And let the rest go. In your gratitude for what you have, why inject unnecessary outrage about things that really aren’t about you? Maybe spend at least a few moments contemplating what you might do to make things better for those who do not have nearly as much to be grateful for.

All through the long fall and winter holiday season, we see all kinds of pointless complaints and imagined controversies erupting. Halloween celebrates the Devil. People might have to work on Thanksgiving. There’s a war on Christmas. People are saying “Happy holidays.” Everything is so commercialized (When is it not in our capitalist economy?). When is Hanukkah, anyway; and what the heck is Kwanzaa? Why can’t we put a cross or a crèche anywhere and everywhere we want? And once we’ve spent weeks in anger and outrage and spewing violent rhetoric, we will all proclaim our desire for peace on earth.

Maybe instead of looking for things to get in a twist about, we could begin to celebrate the season by actually doing things that promote that peace we say we so fervently hope for.

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What is it with Americans and Bathrooms? And Sex? And Bathrooms and Sex?

In PeaceAble on November 10, 2015 at 11:17 am

Remember the ERA? That was a simply stated proposal to amend the Constitution by adding the idea that: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” Somehow, the idea that a person’s biological sex should not be a barrier to full protection of the law became a discussion about bathrooms.

The ERA opponents convinced large portions of the populace that the amendment would require, not just allow but require, men and women to use the same bathrooms. At the same time. And the ERA, which was intended to pave the way for women to be protected equally under the law, had to be defeated to protect the womenfolk and, let’s not forget, the children. Now the same arguments are being used to deny transgender folk from using bathrooms that correspond to their gender.

What are we defending them from in both instances? Why, men, of course.

Think about that for a moment. We cannot do things to protect the rights of women and females because such laws would interfere with our ability to protect them from men. That’s right. Women and children need to be protected from men. And the only thing that can protect them is also men.

We have been raising generations of boys to believe that to be a man is to be powerful, being powerful is the same as being dangerous, and respect is the same as fear. This is the fundamental idea behind every militaristic, male-dominant cultural norm we are now struggling with.

The whole concept is rolled up in a neat package of “natural” or “God-given” law. Even people who claim that evolution is bunk and we are definitely not related to apes will proclaim that male-dominance in other species is proof that men are supposed to be in control and use their manly power to keep things together and ensure the survival of the species.

We cannot, of course, separate this natural dangerousness of the man from the fact of the male sex organ. It is more than a vessel for depositing semen and sperm into the vagina, it is a blunt instrument; a weapon for, literally, invasion and conquest. The consequences of this mind-set permeate our culture and poison our attempts to reach for equality, justice and fairness.

And the converse is also true. Power is seen as male. The female is weak. A woman who seeks power has to make it in a man’s world, be more like the men she has to compete with, learn how to wield the masculine; at which point she is open to the charge that she is not feminine enough. Michelle Obama shows off her muscular arms and expresses herself in powerful ways and she is called a dyke and a “tranny.” Hillary spends a political lifetime showing how tough she can be, how willing she is to loose the dogs of war; and may lose the presidency because she is seen as too much like the men we have been electing for the past 200 years.

Authority is seen as male, also, and that is why we are told to accept it as dangerous. Just do what the police officer tells you to. Everything would have been all right if you had just complied. Don’t question, don’t resist. You should know that it is dangerous and so deserve what happens to you.

The simile of the gun as phallus is real. Guns are rigid projections that ejaculate bullets. They are tools of invasion and conquest. They are powerful and dangerous and masculine.

But such power is not the same for everyone. Its special power is reserved for the privileged. A white man walking around with a gun is a patriot expressing his second amendment rights. He’s a good guy with a gun and we should be thankful that he is there because he is powerful and he will protect you against the danger posed by other guys with guns. A non-white man walking around with a gun is dangerous, a terrorist, a thug. He is the dangerous bad guy we need the good guy to protect us from. The power and the danger of the black male, which are to be feared, are rooted in the mythology of the black man’s physical and sexual prowess. The white man’s power is good because he is seen as civilized; the black man cannot escape his image as a savage in need of subjugation and control. If the black man is allowed his power then he becomes, perhaps, more powerful than the white man and more dangerous to the white man who fears not just his power but his savagery.

As a nation, we are woefully, and perhaps willfully, ignorant about the differences between sex and gender. And, it would seem, between sex as a biological trait and sex as a behavior. To be a male, biologically, is to be born with a distinct combination of chromosomes that cause the development of external genitalia. We can fairly easily identify certain physical traits that are male. But to be masculine is to exhibit certain behavioral traits, including traits of emotional and psychological behavior that society identifies as masculine. These are not universally or exclusively associated with being male, but the confusion exacerbates the problems.

Gay men are seen as dangerous because the object of their sexual desire is other men. We cannot get past the idea that sex is masculine and powerful, which necessitates the weak and feminine as its complement. We cannot conceive of two men in a relationship of equal power because we cannot conceive of a man and a woman in a relationship of equal power. The feminine is weak and someone has to be the woman; or what does it mean to be the male, the powerful one? We are not as bothered by two women being sexual because they are no threat to the power of the masculine; unless they are lesbians, which directly challenges the necessity of the masculine power in the relationship. One of them has to be the man, but how can she? She lacks the necessary equipment. Transgender women are dangerous as long as they retain their masculine sex organs, but no one is afraid that transgender men will infiltrate men’s rooms and be a danger to the biological males. Even if a transgender man has sex-change surgery, we can tell ourselves that it isn’t a “real” penis, so it isn’t really powerful or dangerous.

If we have any hope of developing a more peaceable world, of achieving greater equality and justice in all our institutions and relationships, we need to move away from this masculine model of power and develop a model that includes the feminine.

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How To Tell If You’re Privileged In America

In PeaceAble on July 4, 2015 at 4:09 pm

(This may be the most uncomfortable thing I have written to date, and if it makes you uncomfortable as well, I apologize for that; but I hope you will stay to the end, regardless.)

There has been quite a bit of talk lately about privilege; and a lot of folks who have been privileged don’t necessarily understand what it means to say they’re privileged, so they don’t understand how other people can say that they are. Now, first of all, it’s important to understand that the privilege being talked about isn’t about any particular individual, it’s about classes of individuals who benefit in sometimes subtle and sometimes obvious ways from privilege they may not even recognize they have. So here is a list of basic rules you can refer to in order to decide if you are a member of a privileged class in America.

  1. You began to feel outraged and attacked as soon as you read the headline to this article, because you were sure it was going to be about you.

The truth is that most people who are privileged (as well as those who are prejudiced, though the two don’t necessarily go together) know at some level that they are privileged; but they are uncomfortable with the idea and don’t want it pointed out to them. The kind of privilege I’m talking about here isn’t earned, it’s inherited by those whose parents have it. We know how lucky we are not to have been born “the other,” but want it to be a good thing, not something for which we are criticized and attacked. But all this does is put us unnecessarily on the defensive and make it even more likely that we will be seen as uncaring, self-important, prejudiced and undeserving of the privileges we have.

  1. You have never needed to hyphenate your citizenship and no one else has ever done it for you.

In other words, you have a choice about your own identity. You can be simply an American; or you can choose to identify some other aspect to include, such as Irish or Italian or Polish. But you won’t have that identity superimposed over your American-ness by other people in order to classify you as somehow a different kind of American. You are the standard by which “the other” is measured and to which it is compared.

  1. If you accomplish something no one feels the need to qualify what you did by some unrelated detail.

You are the CEO of your company, not the female CEO or the African-American CEO; and no one even notices that there is anything missing. While it is true that if you do something others have done before you, you don’t get the chance to be the first, but at the same time there is no apparent surprise that you did it at all. And the barriers to your doing it are fewer and less systemic than those encountered by other people who don’t have your privilege.

4. You think that things you consider a right when you do them are a privilege if other people are allowed to do them.

Until the Supreme Court’s recent ruling about same-sex marriages, every straight person in America knew that they had a right to marry whomever they chose, based on whatever reasons they wished to use. They married to have children, or to get security, or to establish a social or even an economic bond. They married so as not to be lonely, or because it was expected of them. And they often married because they had a bond of love and sexual attraction with their intended spouse. But when same-sex couples asked for the same right, they were told that they were creating a “special privilege” to which they weren’t entitled.

  1. You think that “tradition” is an unassailable argument for continuing to do something.

This is actually a specific and very common logical fallacy. It is the argument that because something has always been, it is supposed to be and should continue. But that simply argues against all change and all progress. Tradition is always the argument of the status quo and the status quo is the creation of the privileged. Our culture is defined by norms that are defined by those with the most power and the most privilege, and when those norms begin to change, the powerful and privileged feel threatened. “Tradition” is a way of saying that regardless of the objective merit of a change it is outweighed by the need to keep doing it the old way. This also keeps us from simply no longer doing something that doesn’t work simply because “we need to do something” and this is what it’s always been.

6. You think that “privilege” means “never have any problems,” so you resent someone saying that you’re privileged.

Let’s face it, even within the privileged classes there are problems and not everyone is treated equally. Often this is because privilege is multi-layered. The very wealthy have access to privilege that others don’t have, for example; but poverty is more likely to be a problem, or a much greater problem, for those who also lack other privilege, especially as part of a class that they cannot choose to enter. It is possible to get rich through hard work or luck, but if you’re Asian-American (note the hyphenization mentioned above) you can’t stop being that. For some people it might be possible to hide an “otherness” for a while, but it exacts an enormous psychological toll and the risks involved when your “other” identity is discovered can be enormous.

  1. You think that “privilege,” means “always get your own way,” and you don’t; and when you don’t get your own way you don’t understand why not.

If you are a Christian in America today, you get to have the name of the god you believe in included in public life from the national motto to the nation’s money to the Pledge of Allegiance; and you can simultaneously claim that the term refers to some generic god while knowing that virtually everyone is imagining your god when they see it. As a result, it is easy to imagine that the god you worship is the nation’s god or ought to be, and when others stand up and say “no” to that, you feel attacked and disempowered; which is exactly the way non-Christians feel every time they are required to use the name of your god in a public way. One of the unintended consequences of Affirmative Action was that white people became convinced that every time they lost out on a job or a college placement to a non-white it was because of color alone, not other qualifications. But this assumed two things that weren’t true. The first was that the white applicant must be more qualified than the non-white, a claim that was made even by objectively less qualified people. The second was that they were only competing against the non-white. I once had someone tell me that he had failed to get into college because the system favored non-white applicants, even though the percentages of non-white applicants and acceptances werestill far below their representation among all applicants and the general population.

  1. You still don’t really understand why you can’t discriminate against others, but think it’s reverse discrimination when you’re told you have to stop doing it.

I once joked that it took white men hundreds of years to come to the conclusion that discrimination against others was wrong, but no time at all to agree that no one should ever do it to them. Affirmative action is not an assault on the rights of white people, but it is definitely an assault on their unquestioned privilege. If we say that a long history of discrimination has been a bad thing and we aren’t going to allow it to continue, we cannot just say that we will begin today and everything will be fine. What has gone before has created conditions that continue to create problems unless we correct for them. There is no reset button that erases the systemic effects of prejudice and the disempowerment, disenfranchisement, discrimination, violence and abuse that it caused. There were always consequences for those who were discriminated against, and the consequences of correcting for that are not anywhere near as terrible. Nothing that the privileged are being asked to suffer in order to give all people access to that privilege and those rights will ever amount to anything close to the suffering that the others endured.

  1. You have ever used the phrase “those people,” or something like it when an individual does something you don’t like, but when someone like you does something bad you rush in to proclaim that #notall(peoplelikeme) do it.

This is the confusion of the general with the personal. Most rapists are male and most victims are female. Stating this is not a condemnation of all males, but a recognition that women, in general, have to deal with something that men, in general, do not. It is also a recognition that the problem is one that all men have to confront if the situation is going to change. It is not enough to say that I, personally, am not a rapist; I also have to look at how I, as a male, in a male-dominant culture, have some responsibility for changing that culture. My maleness gives me privilege, and that privilege gives me power. I can use that power either as an ally or an impediment for change.

  1. You are a straight white male.

This is the toughest one for a lot of people, especially straight white males, and a lot of the other rules perhaps help to explain this one, but I’ll begin with some basics. Straight white male is the cultural norm in America. Everything is ultimately about you, both for good and for ill. Whatever anyone else does, it is compared to you. In spite of the fact that there are more people in this country who are not straight white males than are, most positions of power, wealth and influence are held by people like you. The laws reflect your needs more than the needs of others. Because people like you wrote the Constitution, it has had to be revised, amended and reinterpreted over the past 200+ years in order to specifically include and meet the needs of those who are not like you.

Plus: You get to be a hero for doing very little.

Are you a straight white American male? Want people to praise you and hold you up as a model of progressive thought? It’s simple. Write something self-deprecating in praise of women. Put on a rainbow-flag shirt and attend a Pride parade. Vote for a woman for congress or the presidency and tell everyone else to do the same. Proclaim yourself an ally and correct people who express prejudicial opinions. Or do what I’ve just done and explain just how self-aware you are about your privilege. It’s easy. The truth is that I am writing from the same privilege that I am describing and there’s nothing I can do about it except to acknowledge it. The privileged don’t actually deserve a lot of praise for doing things to extend that privilege to others. It’s really just the simple, decent, moral thing to do, and only the privileged can do it. The heroes are those who have fought for decades and centuries and longer to reach the point where the privileged can now have the additional privilege of being praised for simply offering to share that privilege. Don’t hate me for being a straight white male, but don’t make me a hero for it, either.