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The Unfriendly Meme

In PeaceAble on May 24, 2015 at 11:14 am

I was just unfriended by someone over a meme. I bring this up because I was caught off guard by it, and because it is indicative of a couple of related major problems in this country: the substitution of easy imagery for actual thought and the tendency to personalize and over-simplify everything rather than to see the larger picture.

First, the offending meme. A picture of a bucolic rural scene; barn and man on tractor in the background; old Phillips 66 sign; in the foreground one of those roadside message boards, and written on it the words “God Bless the Old America! I sure miss her.”

Now my comment: “Which old America? The one that owned slaves? The one that imprisoned and stole the property and lives of Japanese Americans in an irrational fear response to Pearl Harbor? The one where there was child labor and sweatshops, and where only white men could vote? I could go on. The existence of some idyllic “old America” is a myth. America has always ben a great many good things and a significant number of not so good things.””

Harsh, I know. Too harsh? I won’t try to defend it on that point. I thought it was clear that I was criticizing the meme, not the person who posted it. I certainly never thought she would think that I was suggesting she actually wanted to return to those things. I thought that my last sentence made it clear that I did not think that America was all bad.

I was wrong.

Her response: “I was going to reply to your comment. But it was not worth the effort. With friends like you who needs enemies.”

And because I was wrong, because I had not been clear about the intent, and because my comment was more harsh than I intended, my first instinct was to apologize; not because I believe my opinion of the meme was wrong or bad, but because my choices in expressing that opinion had led to her feeling judged and demeaned. But I couldn’t apologize, or even offer further explanation, because I could no longer post on the thread. She had unfriended me.

There was another consequence to this unfriending, also. Other of her friends (one a mutual friend) could continue to post things about me and my comment to which I could not respond. One response: “It seems David has a big old bitter taste in his mouth when someone says something nice or puts up a photo or a sign of our flag. I guessing he was NOT BORN HE.(sic)” I was, of course arguing that what the meme was saying was not all that nice, so we disagree about the niceness thing; but there was no flag in the meme and if she was trying to say I must not have been born here, well I don’t have a clue how she got to that. As for bitterness, my comment wasn’t, in my opinion, bitter at all. It was, as I said, harsh, but so what? Are we supposed to treat every meme like videos of babies and cute animals?

Perhaps the harshness (which I think anyone who has read my blog or comments on other posts would agree is not typical of my comments about such things) deserves some explanation, however.

We are being told two things over and over by those who would lead us, and by the media which influence our attitudes and help to shape our culture.

First, we are told that we do not need to, and should not think too much about the complex issues facing our nation and the world. Every issue, we are told, can be divided into two distinct opposing camps and we must choose our side; every idea can be reduced to a slogan or a meme or a sound bite, and that these contain all we need to know about it. Ideological purity and adherence to a simplistic and rigid moral code are the only standards. We must be for or against, ally or enemy; there is no room for complexity, for nuance, for understanding the ecological nature of ideas, of societies, of human behavior.

And corollary to that, we are told that we should be afraid. We should fear the “other,” of course. Difference is threat, disagreement is attack, everyone is either friend or enemy. We are sold everything from goods and services to public policies to spiritual beliefs by appeals to fear. We fear our government, our police and military, our teachers, and our religious leaders. We fear our children, our neighbors, our communities. We fear the black people and the brown people and the yellow people, and the female people and the male people; and we fear anyone who does not share our ideas about what God might be like or whether there is one. We fear that science is right and we fear that science is wrong. One respondent to my comment presented the argument, which is a reasonable one given the reality I have just painted, that it is her “perception (that) lately there has been an increase in crime that just doesn’t make you feel safe anywhere.” In support of this she cites school shootings and terrorist bombings, and even the fact that several people she knows have been the victims of minor hit-and-run motor vehicle accidents in the past two years. But how realistic is the generalized fear these things engender? National crime statistics show that violent crime rates are at their lowest in 40 years, that crime over all is down and the deaths of law enforcement officers are at a 50 year low. Violent crime rates actually peaked in the 1990’s.

So why are we afraid to let children walk outside alone, why do we not feel safe anywhere? The Dali Lama was once asked how he could remain so centered and optimistic in the face of all the horrible things being reported around the world. He replied that things get reported precisely because they are not the norm. By the time we saw the spectacle of children killing children at Columbine, children had been dying in the inner cities for decades, but because the national media believed (along with most of the rest of the country) that such things were normal for the cities, they didn’t report it. But when it happened in the privileged communities of rural and suburban America, the story caused schools everywhere to begin transforming into high security facilities. Similarly, we don’t see a lot of “good things” reported simply because those things aren’t remarkable, they’re ordinary, they’re more common than the other. Also, of course, we need to know about the bad things that happen because they represent problems that need solutions; but we cannot find solutions through unrealistic fear, or through a haze of rigid either/or perceptions. Our reality is personal, shaped through the filter of our perception, but society’s reality is perceived through the filter of our cultural messages. The public media have become more interested in creating exciting, vivid and dramatic stories than in the presentation of facts. We not told what is, but how to think about what is. Something called the vividness effect causes us to attach importance to a story based on its presentation rather than its content.

The particular meme I commented about caught my attention because we are now being told by a great many people that America is in decline, that our problems are too great and too urgent for calm, rational discussion, that there is some imagined point in the past that, if we could only return to it, would eliminate all our problems.

There is no such point.

Since the middle of the twentieth century, The United States of America has seen tremendous progress as well as terrible tragedy. There is much work to be done, and there is even some backsliding, but that is the nature of cultural change. It takes time, it’s difficult, and it requires us to be willing and able to work together; we cannot do it by just shouting at each other and retreating into the comforting company of those who already agree with us. America is as great as it has ever been; but we are being told to look over there instead, see the bad things, fear what you see, all else is a lie.

I remember thinking these same things about the proliferation of issues-oriented bumper stickers in the second half of the last century. There was quite a bit of commentary about “bumper sticker arguments” and the danger they posed to rational discussion. But encountering (and actually being able to read) a bumper sticker was fairly random. Now social media has made the meme so ubiquitous that one cannot avoid being confronted with all kinds of foolish, ill-considered, fallacious, manipulative, and even outright deceitful and malicious messages if one is to enter that great modern marketplace of ideas. Technology has given us tremendous tools for communication, interaction, and cooperation, and all we can think to do is use them to drive us apart. My reasonable respondent talked about a rising fever of hate and entitlement. Part of this perception is the result of that technology giving a voice and a platform to people who have never had those before. As a society and a culture, we need to learn how to use the tools, how to act responsibly with all this new-found power; how not to let those who are already powerful use it to manipulate and control us.

The past is prologue, not prescription. There is no such thing as “the good old days.” Memory does not recall so much as it reconstructs the past. We need to replace a false nostalgia for an idyllic time that never existed with a commitment to see the world as it really is right now, at this moment in history; and we need to look forward to how we can do better tomorrow. The lessons of the past cannot be learned through rose-colored glasses, but through a more realistic, albeit sometimes harsh, examination of who we have been, who we have become, and who we want to be.

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You’re an Un-American, Knuckle-Dragging Nut-Job If You Don’t Agree With This! Why We Need to Cool the Rhetoric.

In PeaceAble on April 22, 2015 at 9:23 am

Facts exist independent of us. Truth does not. We discover facts, but we construct truth. Truth is what we find where the facts and our perceptions intersect.

Thus, in any situation, there may be many truths; and since the facts are often harder to determine than our separate truths, it is those that will most often prevail, for we would sooner reject the facts than change our truth.

When we become polarized over issues that might seem easily resolved if everyone just knew the facts, it is important to remember this simple principle. When you attack my truth, when you force me to defend that which is so important a part of me, then you have just lost the battle to teach me the facts which might lead me to alter that truth on my own, in my own time and my own way.

Ask yourself a simple question. How often have you been convinced to change your mind about something because someone with an opposing point of view called you names, ridiculed you, impugned your honesty, your morality and your intelligence, and in various ways dismissed and dehumanized you? In the face of this kind of onslaught did you suddenly have a revelation that, my god, they’re right and I am wrong? Or did exactly the opposite happen and you became even more adamant about rejecting everything they might have to say on the issue and more convinced than ever that you were right?

This is the state of public discourse in America today. And it’s dangerous.

A democratic society relies on the ability of its citizens to engage in active, free, informed, and reasoned debate about issues. And the more critical the issue, the more passionate the advocacy on opposing sides, the more pressing the need for a solution, and the more important it is for both citizens and their representatives to engage in rational, productive discourse. When even the most minor differences of perception or belief become scandals and crises fueled by unrestrained outrage and immoderate rhetoric, then our ability to function as a democracy is undermined; and compromises, workable solutions, and even the routine functions of government become impossible.

As a progressive, I believe that there is a better way, and I think that progressives have a responsibility to set the tone for a future that is more democratic and less confrontational.

First, let’s stop the use of pointless name-calling and characterization of those whose ideas we oppose. Let’s eliminate from our own language terms such as “repugs” or “rethuglicans.” Let’s not make up “funny” names for our opponents, or stoop to characterizations such as “America’s Dumbest Congressman.” And we can stop creating broad classifications of people based on their position on a single issue. A reasonable person can disagree with the scientific conclusions in one area, without being “anti-science” or a “science denier.” We can speak our truth directly, forthrightly and clearly without resorting to fallacious arguments and dehumanizing tactics. If we can’t stand what Rush Limbaugh is doing, then let’s not imitate him. If actual comedians and satirists who identify with the left want to make fun of right-wing ideas and those who espouse them, fine; but let’s not let it become the go-to strategy for every discussion we get into about important issues.

One other consequence of making these kinds of polarizing and unproductive knee-jerk responses our fallback argument is that we make enemies of ourselves. I recently saw a comment on a post about the issues surrounding childhood vaccines in which the writer lumped “anti-vaxxers,” “right-wing nut jobs,” “science-deniers,” and two or three other things all together in a single rant. That isn’t just unproductive, it is flat out wrong. Only the most fundamental extremists are purely one thing or another. When we start to lump all the things we personally don’t like into these kinds of hybrid evil-doers, we forget that people who are just as passionate as we are about some things disagree with us about others. If we make enemies of them over one issue, how can we expect to work with them on others? This happens at both ends of the spectrum, of course. A writer for a sports magazine suggested reasonable restrictions on firearms and received death threats from people he mostly agrees with about guns. If progressives want to create a genuine coalition around our issues, we need to be willing to accept the kind of diversity of opinions about those issues (and the positive discussions those differences can create), we can’t go into attack mode every time someone strays from what we consider the “correct” position.

Secondly, and I’ve said this before, let’s stop talking about every disagreement as a war on something. We cannot, to paraphrase Einstein, both speak like war and work for peace. And this is true about both the things we have characterized as wars and those characterized that way by our opponents. So let’s stop getting into arguments about a “War on Christianity.” Let’s just say there is no such war, and move on. Let’s stop calling it a “War on Women.” It is a systemic cultural problem that limits women’s free exercise of their rights as citizens and denies them equal access with men to full participation in the privileges, opportunities and responsibilities of our society; but who is the enemy except the culture itself? Cultures change slowly, and we can’t speed it up if we start thinking of major portions of that shared culture as enemies. All that does is reinforce their perception that they are under attack. In wars of rhetoric, just as in wars of military engagement, what would happen if someone like Bill O’Reilly called a war and we simply refused to show up for it?

Let’s get in the habit of taking a breath before we jump into an unproductive argument. Let’s just say no to reposting memes or restating simplistic “bumper sticker” arguments without at least checking them out first to be sure we know the full story, the context, whether the facts are accurately and fairly portrayed, and whether we would, on our own, arrive at the same conclusions. We are entitled to have our own experts on controversial arguments, of course, but we should choose them carefully, expect them to be wrong sometimes, be careful of creating confirmation bias, and be willing to change our minds as our knowledge and understanding changes.

Finally, let’s stop calling for extreme consequences for every insensitive word, every distasteful attitude, or every prejudiced or unenlightened action.   If a clerk in a diner somewhere makes the mistake of posting a rant that goes viral, we don’t need to destroy him, his job, his family and his whole life. That will simply convince him of the rightness of his opinions, If someone lives her life in a way that is different from ours, we won’t change that by “shaming” her publically on social media. All that accomplishes is to drive people into opposing camps and increase polarization, which quickly gets unproductive and completely irrelevant to the real issues. Instead, let’s criticize and say what we believe is wrong about a person’s ideas or actions, not turn those whose minds we would change into martyrs for the extremists we stand against.

And let’s encourage those who disagree with us to do the same things. People, generally, are getting tired of a constant state of high alert over everything. They are worn down by the polarization, the vitriol, the self-righteous outrage, and the intolerance that they are inundated with every day in the twenty-four hour news cycle and the ubiquitous and incessant cacophony of social media. They are dropping out. A democracy functions best when its citizens participate. But that participation is most effective when the culture itself encourages reasoned discussion by an accurately and fairly informed citizenry. Every citizen is not just entitled to a voice, but to have that voice listened to and respected. We can help achieve that by making a greater effort, each of us, to listen to and respect those voices with which we most disagree, even as we act in advocacy for our ideals and in committed opposition to what we see as wrong.

I Do Not Want Your Tolerance, Thank You Very Much

In PeaceAble on February 21, 2015 at 12:38 pm

I hate the word “tolerance.”

We should be tolerant, we are told, of those who are different from ourselves; tolerant of those who believe differently, love differently, live differently, look different, have different needs or different habits, come from different places, and make different choices.

This is wrong. Tolerance of the other says that they are inferior to us, that they actually have no right to be different, but there’s nothing we can do about it and so we must tolerate it. Tolerance says that we still think there is something wrong with it, but (look at how mature and superior we are being) we will allow it. Tolerance is the self-indulgence of privilege.

Who are we to allow or disallow, to tolerate or not tolerate? What gives us the right or privilege to judge the other worthy or unworthy?

I do not want your tolerance. It insults me. It seeks to put me in a place that you have chosen for me, so that I do not choose to be where I wish to be; to be who I wish to be.

Accept me as I am. See how I am different and know the importance in that, know the value in those differences. If you cannot do that, then leave me alone.

I do not ask you to love me. I do not ask you to agree with me. I do not ask you to keep company with me; I do not seek your approval or your friendship or your confidence. I seek only to move at large through the common, public places of the world just as you, and to know that my right to be there is not questioned, that tolerance is unnecessary because there is nothing to be tolerated. You are you and I am I and we both belong. I seek also for those private places where I can be at peace, where who I am is no business of yours; not yours to judge, not yours to tolerate.

As for me, I refuse to tolerate the other. I will not be color blind. I will not hold my nose or turn my gaze when I encounter the other, then congratulate myself for pretending not to see what I have seen. I will not celebrate the privilege I claim that allows me to see you as the other, as the different. Because your difference is also mine. Let me see how you are different, so I can know what you have to teach me. Let me see how your difference meets the world, experiences life; give me a chance to see the world with you in it and to see something of the world through your eyes.

Let us honor each other.

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If FB is a Marketplace, Why is Every Aisle Filled With So Much Junk Food?

In PeaceAble on December 10, 2014 at 12:29 pm

Now let me say that this is not intended as a rant. It is more of an observation, a public service message if you will, about the impact of Facebook, Tweeter and other social media platforms on the erosion of our sense of personal and social boundaries and appropriateness in our daily communication with others; and vice-versa.

Allow me to illustrate.

Suppose you were in a public place with a lot of people, some of whom you knew well, others you knew only slightly, and a whole lot of others who were strangers to you but friends and acquaintances of the others in the gathering. Now suppose that someone suddenly, without any provocation, stood up on a soapbox and loudly announced, “Jesus is the only path to salvation! If you agree, raise your hands and repeat this. 99% of you won’t have the guts to repeat it, but I’m proud to be one of the 1% who are real Christians!”
What would your response be? Would you think, “Wow, that’s really inappropriate”? Would you feel embarrassed? Would you think the speaker was some kind of egotistical nutjob with a bad case of verbal diarrhea? Or would you think that this was clearly a sincere believer expressing his devout belief; and good for him?
Before you answer, take out “Jesus” and “Christian” and insert “Allah” and “Muslim.” Does that change your reaction any?
Now imagine that two people in the crowd began a discussion about some current issue of concern or interest; let’s say the minimum wage. Suddenly everyone within earshot began shouting about libtards and repugs, and making derogatory statements about lazy welfare moochers who should get a job and greedy rich people who are trying to destroy America. And let’s imagine that the discussion begins to spread throughout the whole crowd and turns into a shouting match in which every extreme position on every conceivable issue is turned into an obscenity laced rant, even though the obscenities are cleverly muffled just enough so you know what was said, you just can’t hear them clearly.
Now imagine that you are invited to return to the same place with the same people the next day and every day after that with the expectation, even the promise, of more of the same.

This is not to say that no one should ever talk about religion, money, politics or sex on Facebook. All of these are legitimate topics of public discussion, and it is through this public discussion that we all engage in a great ongoing cultural conversation that helps us to understand who we are.
But who are we?
Are we a civilized society capable of engaging one another about our diverse perspectives, experiences, beliefs and opinions? Are we a people who value the importance of honest, informed discussion of the issues that confront our society and require workable well-thought-out solutions? Or are we a nation, a world, of foul-mouthed, bullying, self-righteous, arrogant boors; who want everything our own way or not at all? If our democracy were a sport, would it be more like golf, or more like professional wrestling?
Social media have the potential to be a wonderfully liberating, truly democratic place. But they are also a distillation, a reflection, and an encouragement of all that is the worst of us. When we begin to break down the social boundaries that help us to work together and engage each other in peaceable ways, then the fabric of society gets unraveled a bit more every time we cross a line that our social conventions used to keep us from crossing. And we can see these things happening all around us, not just on line. Our social behavior is becoming less reasonable and democratic, and more confrontational and violent.
Sometimes these boundaries need to be crossed, of course; no fabric exists forever without some fraying, some normal wear and tear; and even the necessary regular laundering and ironing out of the wrinkles can do some damage; but these kinds of things develop the character of a nation, increase its value for us, and give it its history. The danger is that everyone has stopped caring about the fabric itself and we are instead just tearing it apart as we each try to claim it as our own, refusing to share any part of it. We are taking the scissors to it as we try to get rid of all those parts of the pattern we don’t like, as if it were a photograph of friends that includes our ex — to mix my metaphors some more.
Look, the point is this: engagement through social media, like our engagement in society itself, requires that we respect one another’s boundaries, show some restraint and personal discipline in our behavior, and treat others as we would like to be treated. So before we post something, or get caught up in the latest viral reposting of whatever is the latest outrageous meme or pointless hoax someone has decided to drop in our news feed; let’s take a moment to breathe, check our prejudices, check our facts, consider what sort of persons we want to be and what sort of society we want to have; and maybe not hit post or share quite so quickly.

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War as Solution and as Metaphor

In PeaceAble on November 25, 2014 at 12:11 pm

Let’s face an uncomfortable truth about ourselves: war is the default, go-to solution for our problems. From the War on Poverty to the War on Terrorism, we turn to war as both metaphor and action as we seek to address our issues. And both ends and the middle of the political spectrum are all complicit in this. The right has the War on Christmas; the left has the War on Women. And war as a metaphor is a powerful way of addressing problems. It heightens awareness and commitment; it brings people together in common cause; it employs powerful language that stirs powerful emotions; when we go to war things get done. But what gets done in war may not be what we really want to get done. There are times when rational people might argue reasonably that war is the best possible solution to some critical problem, but there are important reasons why we ought to stop turning everything into a war.
War requires us to de-humanize the other, and in the process dehumanize ourselves. In order to go to war, we need an enemy; or more to the point, we need “THE enemy.” And the enemy needs to be as simply and graphically defined as possible. Any weakness in our definition of the enemy makes it that much harder to fight them. But the world is never that simple. Human beings are complex creatures, neither all good nor all bad as a rule; but in order to go to war we need to create stark contrasts between ourselves and the “other.” This does neither of us any good. It’s easy to see how this happens in extreme situations. The atrocities being committed by the forces of ISIS, or ISIL, in Iraq and Syria make it easy to condemn the whole force as purely evil. We don’t want to hear about our own complicity in the creation of the Islamic State; we don’t want to really know what motivates them to act so abominably; because to understand them in human terms makes it harder to say “kill them all.” And since they call themselves Islamic, it is easy to extend that to all Islam and all Muslims and all those who might look Muslim and to all those who come from places with beliefs and customs and ways of being that are different from our own. Tragic and horrific events have this effect, and while that does not justify the dehumanization, it at least makes it understandable.
But even in instances of great trauma, dehumanizing the other has the effect of dehumanizing ourselves as well, in at least two ways. First, dehumanizing the other gives me the cover I need to dig into the darkest parts of myself, to howl and snarl and hunt and kill, and employ instincts necessary to the task. I begin to throw rhetorical magnets in the way of my moral compass so that it will point me the way I already want to go. Even when the task itself, such as stopping a great evil, seems necessary, even noble, the dehumanization goes both ways. And that leads to the second self-dehumanization. When we define the enemy, we define ourselves as their enemy, and we invite them to do to us what we are doing to them. It is not possible to say to ourselves, “because the enemy has done these terrible things, then we must do these same or similar or even worse terrible things to them,’ without becoming, in at least some small way, like them. If we see them as less than human because they see us as less than human, how have we improved things, and what are we becoming? Are we not all becoming dehumanized along the way?
Now see what happens when everything becomes a war. Declare that there is a “War on Christmas” and who is your enemy? Suddenly everyone who chooses to wish people a happy holiday becomes the enemy and is dehumanized. And they in turn lump all those who feel even the least bit of a loss of some specialness, some sense of tradition and continuity, who miss what was, into one monolithic hate group and thus dehumanize them as well. Declare that there is a “War on Women” and it is easy to see men as the enemy, or at least for men to believe that that is your intent, and this lumping together of men as the enemy is dehumanizing; so you get the rise of #notallmen, which seeks to turn those with a genuine concern for the really serious issues of violence and inequity and dehumanization women face every day in a male-normative culture into further dehumanized “man-haters.” And there’s no excuse to be found in trying to decide who started it. The question is who’s going to stop it?
Also, war is a violent metaphor that encourages violent behavior. This should, of course, be obvious. Real war is violence. But even using war as a metaphor implies violent behavior, which in turn justifies violent responses. The violence begins rhetorically. Our language escalates first, and the escalation of language leads to escalation of action. And the drumbeat of war drowns out the discussion of alternative solutions, especially those that require compromise and cooperation. Albert Einstein once wrote that “One cannot simultaneously prepare for war and plan for peace.” The military routinely sends “surplus” equipment, the tools of war, to police departments. When police departments begin to treat the business of keeping the peace as a military operation, then they become encouraged to treat the citizenry as the enemy, to dehumanize them, and to act violently in dealing with them. Historically, this has disproportionately affected minorities and the poor, the disenfranchised, because these groups are already dehumanized by our cultural language. If you own a tank, you feel the need to use that tank; and whom will you use it against unless there is an enemy; and who is the enemy? And if you have a tank and are prepared to use it, then drawing a gun and firing it seems almost insignificant by comparison. And if you are a citizen facing that kind of militarized firepower, is it unreasonable to think that you might have to arm yourself, too?
War prepares us to accept things like “collateral damage,” “acceptable losses,” and “the ultimate sacrifice” without measuring the real cost of those things. Every death in war, every person who suffers injuries of any kind is dehumanized by our investment in war as our primary response to conflict. Soldiers who die are turned into heroes for the rest of us, becoming symbols rather than flesh and blood beings. They are held up as support for the heroism and nobility of war. We honor those whose children die fighting wars, “Gold Star Mothers” for example, as though their grief should be tempered by that heroism and nobility; as though we might choose to have a son or daughter die in war. The children of the other, the enemy, however, are not celebrated as heroes. We find ways to mock the enemy dead, even to blame them for their own deaths. Non-combatants who die are simply numbers. In the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, more than 3000 people died. They were overwhelmingly, but not exclusively, Americans. This event was used, is still used, to convince the American people that we are at war. That war led us into Afghanistan and Iraq, and those two wars have caused the deaths, injuries and destruction of lives for tens of thousands of Americans, mostly but not entirely military; and the deaths, injuries and destruction of the lives of more than half a million non-Americans, mostly civilian. When we count the cost of war we often forget the cost of rebuilding communities, nations, and individual lives. And we don’t want to know. We elect to Congress people who want to spend more money on weapons and war, but less on treating the injuries, both physical and psychological, of veterans.
This dehumanization of all involved in war also celebrates and honors warriors, and disparages peacemakers; thus celebrating and honoring war while disparaging peace and those who work for it without war. We have dozens of national, state and local holidays and observances that honor the military, from Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day to days honoring Robert E. Lee or Confederate veterans, to VE Day, D-Day, and Soldiers’ Day. The only national holiday honoring someone who worked for peaceful solutions is Martin Luther King Day, which is still a controversial holiday. In a few places, a day is set aside to honor people like Rosa Parks, also. This is, by the way, not accidental. We begin calling people heroes as soon as they put on a uniform, pledge our nearly unconditional support for them and whatever they do, and give them benefits unavailable to others. We do this because we need to convince them and ourselves that what we are asking them to do, to risk, is always a good thing. When something turns out badly we either don’t talk about it or treat it as an aberration, something that “happens in wars,” but not actually caused by war itself; as in My Lai or Abu Ghraib. Or we blame it on the dehumanized other, the “enemy,” as when students are killed at Kent State or civilians die in raids against the Taliban or Al Qaeda; or when an unarmed person is killed by a policeman. War itself makes these excuses and evasions necessary, because if war were not a good thing, a thing for heroes and people of noble character, then all our soldiers would be simply mercenaries, willing to kill or be killed if the pay is good and the benefits substantial. We need people who are genuinely interested in doing the right thing, in helping; we need people who will commit to the cause and the solution for honest, good reasons. The other side of that is that we consider diplomats and peacemakers as weak, or duplicitous, because we don’t see them at work, because the results of their efforts are less immediate, less dangerous, and less visible than the work of war.
War never leads to peace, nor to lasting solutions. War encourages us to deal with problems in terms of bi-polar, simplistic, winner and loser results that do not address the real issues. If diplomacy takes more than a few months we are quick to call it a waste of time; but a war that drags on for years becomes its own justification. We can’t stop now, before the enemy is defeated completely, before we can declare victory. Compromise is, of course, impossible in war; we either win or lose. If we begin to call it a “War on Christmas” because people want to say “Happy Holidays” or include the recognition of other celebrations during the season, then we won’t be satisfied with anything less than complete surrender. A “War on Coal” precludes a serious attempt to transform our fossil fuel industries, to address climate change. And the constant refrain of war leads us to fight undeclared wars whenever a new problem arises. We get enraged that stores might stay open on Thanksgiving, but offer no long term, reasonable solutions to the needs of those who don’t get paid if they don’t get to work, the more substantial issues of the simultaneous mythologizing and commercialization of our holidays, the wastefulness and inequity evident in our feel-good drives to make sure that people who starve all year round have an enormous Thanksgiving dinner rather than solving the problems of food insecurity. The truth is that reason is the enemy of war. War is always a desperate solution, not a reasonable one.
The culture of war reinforces and recreates itself through our children. We have created a culture of constant war, of crisis. We see enemies everywhere, even among ourselves. Whatever our position on an issue it is the only correct one, the only patriotic or Christian or liberal or conservative one. Our enemies aren’t “real” Americans or Christians or patriots; but they simultaneously represent all that is evil about the groups they belong to. They are Muslims or socialists or fascists or atheists, and they are all thugs or terrorists or criminals. They are gun nuts or ammosexuals or libtards or repugs or feminazis. We are given stark warnings of the disasters that will befall us if “they” aren’t stopped. And this constant cultural reference to “the War on” virtually everything becomes part of the early vocabulary of our children, whom we require to declare their loyalty and allegiance daily and to learn the virtues of neither questioning nor resisting authority, to follow orders. We teach them to beware the others whoever they are, to distrust science, to treat the myths of history as sacred fact and the facts of history as distractions from the unquestioning loyalty that is necessary for the inevitable war. Our culture tells us that we and our enemies are biologically and psychologically predisposed to war, so war is the only possible choice. If we try to teach our children about peaceableness, about learning to live in peace, through acceptance and compromise and reason, we are defeated at every turn by the overwhelming cultural onslaught of the language of war. And the saddest thing is that we are well aware that children left on their own will trust the other, embrace the other, and accept the other as simply human and worthy of their unconditional love. And while it is true that there is risk in that, that there are dangers in the world, the dangers are never as common or abundant as the good. When every risk is a crisis, when every response to controversy is a war, when even the pacifist finds himself using the language of war to describe the struggle, then it is way past time to step back, take a deep breath, and develop a more discerning perspective, a more nuanced and balanced approach.
We cannot change the culture until we change the dominant language, the common and normative images and references at tell us who we are and what we are like. It is time for us to put aside the language and imagery of war as normal and find new, more peaceable ways to talk to ourselves and about ourselves. One good start would be to refuse to cooperate when someone declares a war on something. Let’s, instead, take the time to say what the issues or problems really are. This is especially important for those of us who claim to be progressive and pacifist. We cannot claim to abhor and oppose war if we use the language of war. It won’t be easy, but it is honest; and it is necessary.

The Limits of Outrage

In PeaceAble on September 9, 2014 at 11:45 am

If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.

 These days everyone is outraged. But It seems more and more as though all that outrage is driving us farther and farther apart and further and further from solutions. Outrage is becoming the default setting for our responses to even minor disagreements. In light of that observation, I propose some things we need to keep in mind when we are feeling outraged.

1. Rage and outrage aren’t the same.
 The origin of the word is in a Latin word meaning “to go beyond.” While modern usages contain elements of anger in their meanings, anger and rage aren’t the same, either. When we are outraged, we need to go beyond simple concern or interest or recognition of the problem. We need to see the problem as significant enough to make us angry, perhaps; but more importantly, to move us to action. Rage is intense anger; it suggests a violence of emotion that outrage doesn’t require. Outrage should move us to speak out about the things we see, to work for understanding of the problems, to engage others in seeking solutions. Rage blinds us to solutions, leading us to strike out, to seek amelioration of our rage rather than solutions to the problem.
2. Outrage can make us vulnerable to the appeals of those on the extremes, who will use our outrage to manipulate us.
We need to be wary of those who seek to tell us what we should be outraged about. If you aren’t outraged about something now, it may be not because you aren’t paying attention, but because you don’t need to be. We will not all be outraged by the same things because we are not all going to see problems and issues the same way. Your outrage about something is a sign of your perceptions and your need, not a sign of someone else’s ignorance or weakness or lack of moral fiber. If you believe others should be outraged, seek to convince them, but remember that it should not be your outrage that will persuade, not your convictions; but the strength of the argument you can bring to it.
3. Outrage can become an end in itself; we can begin to believe that our outrage is enough.
Do you know someone who seems to have an outraged opinion about everything? He will unleash a torrent of loud, obnoxious, often obscene, and abusive rhetoric against all the perceived ills of the world; but he doesn’t vote, doesn’t give to charities or advocacy groups, has never been to a rally or demonstration, has never written a letter to the editor, has never called a congressional representative, has never been to a public discussion of solutions to the problem; has never, in other words, actually done something positive and useful with his outrage. Be outraged by whatever you find outrageous, but if you can’t answer the questions “what are you doing about it,” or so what,” then you need to consider whether your outrage is really about the problem, or just about you.
4. Outrage, especially generalized, unfocused outrage can keep us from thinking clearly enough to find real solutions to specific problems.
What outrages you? I am outraged by inequity and prejudice of all kinds — racial, economic, sexual, ethnic, and religious, to name the common ones – and by the increasingly violent divisiveness that characterizes public discourse. But what can I actually do? I cannot, on my own, find solutions to them; cannot rid the world of all that I find wrong with it. I can, however, discover where my own strengths lie and find specific things I can do. I can write about the issues and my ideas about them. I can contribute to and join groups that have the resources to find and implement solutions. I can speak out about local issues that are part of the larger problems. But most of all, I can learn more about the issues so that I can understand what outrages me. I can try to focus on the problems rather than my own outrage.

5. If you’re not committed to finding solutions, you’re not paying attention.
All of the issues with outrage I have talked about in this essay are really about ego. We pay attention, of course, to those things which are important to us. Things become important to us when we can clearly see that they affect us, especially when they affect us negatively. This is natural and normal. But if that is as far as our thinking, and our outrage take us, then we are missing the interconnectedness of things; we are missing the larger picture. If you find yourself putting more of your energy into being outraged than you are putting into positive action, then it is time to re-focus. Choose something accessible to you, look for a specific problem that addresses some aspect of your outrage and do something about it. We aren’t all going to be major activists, trying to change the world; but we can do one or two things that help to bring about change. And we can support those who are doing more.

6. It’s all right if others are outraged by different things than you are.
One of the best places to look for solutions to the things that outrage you is to look at the reasoning of those who are outraged by the other side of the issue. Nothing positive is accomplished by passing judgment about what outrages others. The search for meaningful and lasting solutions requires that we work together. As long as the other is acting in responsible, reasonable ways, then use their outrage to inform your own, and to help guide you both toward useful dialogue about solutions. This is extremely difficult right now. We are surrounded by hyperbole and willful distortion of the issues for maximum effect rather than genuine dialogue. People are afraid, and our fear is being used against us, to manipulate and control us. We need to fight that fear and find the courage to see ourselves in the other. Other people’s outrage is as important and as valid as our own. Everyone’s outrage represents a problem in need of a solution. Honor your own and others’ outrage. Pay attention.

The Balance Myth

In PeaceAble on July 31, 2014 at 3:22 pm

Today I saw a Facebook meme that contained the following quote: “Every girl deserves a guy that can make her heart forget that it was ever broken.” The site it was linked to had added this comment: “And every man deserves a woman who accepts him for who he is and respects him for his character and not his net worth. Let’s keep it balanced.”
Now, quite apart from whether you agree with either quote, the posting illustrates a persistent problem in our contemporary media culture – the idea that if I say something supportive of one idea or belief or position on an issue or group, then I must immediately make a balancing statement about the opposite side, or I am somehow not being fair. This suggests two things with which I take issue.
First, it suggests that everything is bipolar, with rigid placements for good and bad, right and wrong, positive and negative. If I say something positive about women, I must also mean to say something negative about men. If I say something positive about my personal belief in god, I must mean to simultaneously say something bad about other beliefs. If I say something critical of Israel in its actions in Gaza, then I am required to say something critical about Hamas as well or I will be accused of hating Israel and being an apologist for its enemies.
These are, however, false dichotomies. It is possible for both sides of an issue to be right about some things and wrong about others; and to point out something good or bad about one side is not necessarily related to what is good or bad about the other. It can be simultaneously true that women as a group need something from men as a group and that men as a group need something from women as a group; but stating one without stating the other doesn’t change that. The two things aren’t even necessarily related. In the comment above, for instance, the male response doesn’t even address the issue raised by the original statement; unless we make the assumption that a man can’t be sensitive to a woman’s emotional needs unless she “respects his character.” I’m also not sure what that means. Do women not also need to be accepted for who they are and respected for their character? Are we still living with the idea that women want men for their money? Even if you believe in this idea of balance, the response doesn’t balance the original because it doesn’t address the issue raised. It’s as if I said I really like chocolate cream pie and you responded with, “yes, and lemon meringue deserves to be served, also.”
It also suggests that balance is nothing more than making sure we make equivalent statements. But some things don’t need to be said because they are generally understood as part of our cultural norm. This is the invisible privilege of the norm, and the fallacy of “reverse discrimination.” If, for example, we say that it is well past time for the election of a woman as President, do we really need to “balance” that by declaring that there are also a lot of men who are qualified? If we point out that Eric Cantor, who just lost his primary bid for re-election, is the only Jewish Republican in the Congress, do we need really need to point out that Ralph Hall, a Christian Republican, also lost his primary? In fact, was Hall’s religion even a footnote in most stories about his defeat? The most commonly mentioned of Hall’s traits was his age (91). Having mentioned that should I point out that younger men also lost primary votes? If I wish to make a statement about Black History Month, does “balance” require that I also say that white people have a history, too? There are some things which are so much a part of the norm that we have no need to bring them into the discussion. And talking about achievements outside the norm, therefore, is already providing balance.
Reverse Discrimination is the idea that, as historically disadvantaged groups gain greater power, acceptance and influence, anything they do to achieve those things is discriminatory against the historically advantaged norm. The problem with this is that discrimination – in its meaning as actions which create a disadvantage for others on the basis of their membership in a disadvantaged group – cannot be applied to the advantaged group because nothing the disadvantaged group is doing actually changes the advantaged and privileged status of the norm. One example of this can be seen in the recent #NotAllMen meme, which was a reaction to increasing awareness of the incidence of male perpetrated rape against women that gave rise to the #YesAllWomen hashtag. But even if it is true that not all men are rapists, or that some men are also raped (though more often by other men than by women), or that there are other problems men face that women do not; those things are simply irrelevant to the fact that virtually every woman has suffered some form of sexual harassment or violence, that 1 in 6 women have been attacked by a rapist, and that 9 out of 10 rape victims are female. And pointing out those facts does not discriminate against men.
Cultures generally change more slowly than the day-to-day reality of life within those cultures, and those who represent the norms in a changing culture become fearful of changes that might mean giving up some of the privileges, both visible and invisible, that they have come to see as their right. A male-dominant culture will resist changes that give women more power. A heterosexual culture will resist changes that give homosexuals greater status. A white-dominant culture will see advances by other races as threatening. A culture which defines itself by the tenets of a dominant religion will see the growth of other religions or of secularism as both unnatural and immoral. But the change comes anyway. A lot more can be accomplished in valuing every human being, in meeting the real challenges facing us, and in coping with change if we reject the idea that every statement about an issue must be qualified by some reference to an opposing idea, no matter how irrelevant or discredited.

Truth and Judgment

In PeaceAble on July 25, 2014 at 4:48 pm

We all do it. And when the people we do it to do it, we declare that it is a terrible thing and no one should ever do it. Perhaps it is simply a vestigial trait from our evolutionary past. Perhaps it is one of the things that make us unique in the animal world. Perhaps it is essential to our survival and perhaps it is the thing which may ultimately cause our extinction.
We judge.
Now let me clarify for a moment. Judging, as I mean it here, is not the same as assessing or evaluating. If we look at a person’s actions and perceive those actions to have some fault, and we can address that fault in terms of the action itself then we aren’t judging, we are assessing. An assessment or evaluation may be wrong, but we should be able to somehow express the basis for it. A judgment applies the standards of a personal moral code to the assessment and, simultaneously, to the person or entity whose actions we are assessing.
Moral codes are an essentially human trait. As far as we can reasonably tell, no other creature besides the human has or needs a moral code. But we do have and need one. Because humans have the capacity to ask abstract questions about things like purpose and motivation and intent; questions about possibilities and consequences; and questions about the nature of our own existence and our relationship to each other and the rest of the universe; we need to have some set of standards to guide us in finding answers to those questions and acting on those answers. Some of us have highly personal codes and others have codes that more closely align with the moral/ethical teachings of some agency, institution, group or system of belief outside of ourselves, but nobody has a moral code without uniquely personal aspects.
The problem with moral codes is that they have elements that we believe so strongly that they are treated as Truth (note the capital “T”), and these truths are the core of our moral code. When we encounter others who do not share these truths, we feel threatened by that, and the only way to protect ourselves and our truth is to decide that the other person is wrong. So far, so good. There is no harm in that. But we also have to ask ourselves how the other person cannot see the truth that is so clear and so important to us. And the answer often is that they are somehow lacking something we possess; some ability or insight or sensitivity that allows us to see the truth that they cannot see. And that is the beginning of judgment because it is the beginning of self-superiority.
None of us is immune to this. As I sit here writing this, I am reminded of my very short career (one day) as a door-to-door salesman. What I realized after that one disappointing day was that I was completely unable to convince myself that anyone else actually needed what I was selling. But I am writing a blog and posting links to it because I have somehow convinced myself (though not without regular bouts of uncertainty) that other people might have some need for my ideas . . . for my truth. Also, I must confess that my ability to see this truth and express it make me feel somewhat superior to those who cannot see what I see. Also, the moment I proclaim that I am, at least, able to see and admit that I am so self-aware and honest, I set myself apart from those poor folk who still struggle in the darkness of their own self-ignorance.
I used to tell my students (only somewhat facetiously) that self-help books were designed to tell us exactly how flawed we are and how our awareness of our flaws could help us become more nearly perfect human beings. We could than go forth and tell everyone else what we had learned about not just our own flaws (which we were working hard to correct), but also theirs (which they clearly were not working on); and if they told us that we were mistaken we could triumphantly declare that they were in denial. We, you see, knew the truth.
As our country and our culture struggle through this time of significant social and political polarization, we are seeing people struggle to find some truth of sufficient size and power and certainty to help us feel safe. And there is no such truth. There are too many gods (or, if you prefer, ideas of god) for any one or two of them to provide that truth. And the actions of those who most loudly proclaim their adherence to some godly truth are often so clearly wrong to everyone else that the truth itself is called into question. Science and reason provide one kind of truth, but it is a mundane, manageable truth, lacking the grandeur and mystery and transformative power of (for want of a better word) spiritual truth. We want something more than the assurance that the world makes sense. And we want some reason to believe that we’ve got it right; that more than just the universe, our lives, our very existence makes sense.
I believe that we will only learn how to really listen to one another, really work together to make a more peaceable world, learn to love one another, when we really understand that our truth can imprison us; but it can also set us free. I am not, by the way, saying that we should tolerate one another’s truth. I dislike the idea of “tolerance” as a way of dealing with human differences. Tolerance suggests superiority. We tolerate what we believe is inferior, but we can live with it. I am suggesting acceptance of each other’s truth. We need not and should not, however, accept or tolerate harmful acts of any kind based on anyone’s truth. We need to learn, I think, to evaluate the impact of our actions and the actions of others so that we can mitigate the harm those actions cause, but to reserve judgment.

Cultural Norms and the Invisibility of Privilege

In PeaceAble on July 3, 2014 at 3:47 pm

George Will writing about the privilege that comes from a woman claiming she’s been raped is like the spider writing about the privileges of the fly. Sure, says the spider, the fly is inextricably snared in my web, and there’s a better than even chance that she will be eaten someday, but isn’t the fly’s squirming still just a big show for attention and sympathy, after all?

When was the last time that we specifically celebrated “the first white man” to do something? If you aren’t sure how to answer the question, or if every example you can think of for the first time a white man did something is also the first time a human did it, don’t be surprised. Because the white male is the dominant racial/sexual image in our culture, there is simply no need to identify it specifically. Go ahead. Google a few firsts. If the person was not white or male, it will be mentioned specifically. Specific firsts might say “the first man,” but the usage is more in the sense of “man” as “human,” rather than a concern that you might mistake the person’s sex.
Even when non-whites or females have done something first, we often overlook those events or treat them as anomalies. The “discovery” of the American continents, for instance, is attributed to white European males even though there were great indigenous civilizations here centuries before the earliest white men arrived. When a white man does something first, his race and sex are simply not newsworthy. It is also true that centuries of white male privilege have meant that access to the means to do certain things first was denied to or made vastly more difficult for non-whites and/or females.
Culture defines our expectations for what is “normal” and what is not. These norms of culture are created, reinforced and expressed through our common language and usage, our common images, and our normative relationships with others as we live our lives. This is not to say that we all slavishly follow the norm, but only that when we, or others, don’t do what is normal we know it. It also doesn’t mean that the norm is based on what is most common or likely. The “normal” American nuclear family (a man, his wife, and their natural children) is not now and never has been the most common family structure; and there are more women than men in the general population.
And it is not just the general culture that generates norms. Every co-culture creates norms for its members; and if you, or your status in life, or your behavior, or any other aspect of you is consistent with the appropriate norm in any circumstance, then you are privileged in that instance. If you are, by sex or race or religion or wealth or any other characteristic, consistent with the more general norms of the culture, or if the culture provides you with special privilege because you differ from the norm in some significant and valued way, then your privilege is multiplied. In the same way, of course, the degree to which you differ from the norm in any situation is the degree to which you lack privilege.
I used to ask my students, as an exercise in understanding the effects of prejudice, to identify as many co-cultures as they could to which they belonged, and what benefits or privileges they received from being part of each co-culture. At first, it was difficult for many of them to even recognize that they did belong to any co-culture at all; and once they had identified some, to recognize any particular benefits. But they had little trouble finding examples when I asked them to identify a way in which their membership in a co-culture had caused them to suffer discrimination or disadvantage. It is, of course, natural that we should be especially aware of the things that harm us, but the other side of awareness of disadvantage is the invisibility of privilege. Because certain characteristics are “normal;” and more importantly, normative; we simply do not recognize the privilege that comes from not being “different.”
The privilege of the norm is expressed in lots of subtle and not-so-subtle ways, but the principal privilege is that you, as the norm, are the reference point for any consideration of the other. To be “color-blind” in this culture is to assume everyone is white until you know better. To be “gender-neutral” is to assume that everyone is male until you know better. To be Christian is to be able to proclaim that “God,” with a capital “G,” is simultaneously the proper name of the god you believe in and a neutral term that doesn’t specifically refer to that god. When we say “In God We Trust,” we are saying that everyone is a Christian until we learn differently.
This assumption that the world is like us until we earn that it isn’t gives rise to two dangerous related ideas. The first is that the same things that we accept as our rights we can see as privileges for others. Those who represent the norm try to say that women, or people of color, or homosexuals, or any other group is seeking special privileges when they want the same things that normal folks already have as an accepted right, but we fail to see that those things are either rights for all or privileges for all. And this leads us to the idea that granting others the privilege of access to what we have as a right is to take something away from us. And this is partially true. When we lose the exclusivity of the norm, then we lose our own privileged status. If everyone has a privilege, then it’s no longer special. Privilege defines us in ways that rights do not.
The second privilege of the norm is to be able to talk about “tolerance” of the other. We always talk about tolerance as something to be done about those who don’t fit the norm. When have we ever been asked to be tolerant of those, for instance, who are in heterosexual relationships? We are tolerant if we allow same-sex couples to show affection in public, but heterosexual couples showing affection in public is normal and doesn’t require tolerance. We have been asked to be tolerant, at various times, for all sorts of mixed-marriages, but we would be considered weird if we suggested that we need to show more tolerance for those who marry others who are of the same race, or ethnicity or religion as themselves.
Tolerance, however, is a trap. We should never get too comfortable with our tolerance of others, because tolerance is a judgment of the self-superior norm about the aberrant other. Tolerance at its best is only accommodation, not acceptance; at its worst it’s a conscious insult. Who am I to tolerate you? Would I not be insulted to learn that you tolerate me? How dare you? I am the norm. Tolerance for the other is a privilege of the norm.
This invisibility of privilege blinds us to inequity and injustice, and interferes with our ability to solve the important social, economic, political and spiritual challenges of our time. The invisible privilege of the norm is a barrier to the creation of a peaceable life. There are two solutions to this. One is to acknowledge the privilege and have an honest discussion about it. If, after all, a privilege is justified, then we should be able to say why. This is the reason that the opponents of same-sex marriage are losing that battle. They simply cannot convincingly articulate any reasonable justification for the privilege they are claiming. The second is to unmask privilege wherever we find it hidden, and encourage those who are not part of the “norm” to claim those privileges as their own, as rights. We need to seek self-awareness, acceptance and a new “normal” rather than self-superiority, tolerance and the defense of invisible privilege.

On Naming Co-cultures

In PeaceAble on November 8, 2013 at 4:40 pm

The words we have for things are how we know them. But words have both denotative and connotative meanings and both those meanings change over time, with some denotative meanings disappearing over time, and some connotative meanings taking on the force of denotation. This has implications for how our names for things like race, ethnicity, social class, and so forth affect our ability to deal with important issues.
I have a friend and former colleague who was born and raised in South Africa. He came to this country as an adult, obtained citizenship and still lives here. Technically is he not an African/American? Problem is that he’s caucasian; which is to say that at some point in the distant past his ancestors may have come from the Caucasus region in Europe.
I had a student once who was dark skinned and had a distinctly non-English accent. I supposed that her family had come from the Indian sub-continent, but her name was Northern European. The question of her background came up at some point (I don’t know why, perhaps in a discussion of scholarships) and she told me that she was Norwegian. She had been adopted as a newborn and raised in Norway. Her language was Norwegian. She considered herself as Norwegian/American. Would we want to re-classify her as Indian/American?
A man, whom I read about, has grandparents who came here from the Caribbean. He has never known anything but the U.S.A. as his home and culture. He says that he dislikes being referred to as African/American because it doesn’t accurately describe his actual heritage in any meaningful way and he simply wants to be known as an American.
I have always considered myself, only somewhat tongue-in-cheek, to be a “Mongrel/American.” My European heritage is decidedly British Isles as far back as my family’s genealogy has allowed me to see, but even though my mother’s family was “purely” Irish, I would never say that I am an Irish/American. I have a certain fondness and affinity for the Irish, but I don’t share enough of the cultural heritage or history to truly identify as an Irishman. I also have a smattering of First Peoples ancestry, specifically Penobscot, but again I share too little understanding of that heritage to say that I am “Native/American.” As for “Caucasian,” I’m not even sure that has standing as a distinct culture at all outside of the Caucasus. We use it simply to mean that we are fair-skinned and have ancestry somewhere in Europe.
Because I believe that it is a good thing to be able to acknowledge, honor and even celebrate the many ways in which we are different from one another, I would wish that we could begin to explore new ways of naming those differences that are more accurate and useful, and perhaps don’t have the connotative baggage of the old terms. I used the term First Peoples above in describing my heritage because it is a term many of the continent’s tribes have chosen to replace “Indian” or “native American” because their real heritage is not from India, and “America” is a name imposed on the continent by Europeans. It’s still a little awkward to work it into the flow of discourse, but I like it as a descriptor. The full term, of course, is “First Peoples of the Continent;” much too cumbersome for colloquial use.
Some differences, of course, lend themselves to clearer classification than others; but even there the language can get confusing. Do you prefer “Jewish/American” over “Hebrew/American?” How does it help us to know that someone is “Muslim/American” if we have little or no understanding of what that means and can’t distinguish between Sunnis and Shiites and don’t know that there both conservative and liberal communities within the Muslim faith?
Other differences, like African/American, are so vague as to obscure really interesting cultural and ethnic heritage that is more specific. When we say that someone is “Hispanic,” we don’t mean that she is from Spain, that would be “Spanish/American,” we mean that she speaks, as her first language, one of the many variations of the Spanish language. But that obscures the real cultural and ethnic differences between Colombians, Cubans, Brazilians, Mexicans, and so on.
Some distinctions have arisen from the colloquial terms that really don’t describe the differences at all, and create unintended side-effects. Recently, Hallmark changed the word “gay” to “fun” in the lyrics of “Deck the Halls” on a sweater they are marketing for the holidays. I’m not sure why they felt the change was necessary. The word “gay” still means light-hearted and celebratory. Every time we use it, we do not have to be referring to homosexuals (particularly male homosexuals). Perhaps Hallmark thought that changing the word would make the sweater more attractive to people who are uncomfortable with homosexuality, and would avoid double-entendres. But in making the change, they have suggested that there is something wrong with the word and with its possible interpretation. This further stigmatizes both the word and the sexual identity. Would they produce a sweater that sings of a “snowy Christmas” because “white Christmas” might be interpreted as a racist distinction? Of course not; the analogy is frivolous.
So what might we do instead, if we are to genuinely recognize each other and honor each other as human beings, with all our distinctions and differences? Perhaps it is time, first of all, to take such distinctions out of our discourse except where the differences make a difference, and then to find language that honors those differences. If I am hiring someone and want to know what she is bringing to the position in terms of special perspectives or experiences, then instead of a single list of essentially useless categories, why not have a line where the applicant gets to identify herself in whatever way she chooses, using the terminology that she feels applies and she wants considered? Is this a woman? Is she fair-skinned or dark skinned? Does she have a particular cultural heritage such as First Peoples or Italian or Protestant or German-speaking, with which she strongly identifies and believes to be an asset? Is it important to her that she is in a same-sex relationship? We already ask candidates to say something about their hobbies and interests and associations, why not let them choose what else to reveal?
We (meaning those who fit the cultural norm: fair-skinned males of European descent, for example) might learn to respect the names others choose for themselves, and work with them to find appropriate words. We will probably find that we don’t need nearly so many terms as we suppose to define our differences, and that the things that make us alike are far more important in the long run.