What is discrimination, bigotry, racism, ageism, and sexism (and more) but variations on this theme of not respecting who people are? It’s all basically saying you don’t approve of that person as they are. You want them to change to be more like those you approve of. In other words, you want them to be more like you.
Expect my Resistance
I am going to assume for a moment you are reading this from a comfortable, non-threatened existence. Think through what what would happen if the tables were turned and you were the one being shown disrespect for your very existence. What would you do? If there is enough power arrayed against you, you might just get along as best you can, not cause trouble, not raise a ruckus, choosing to preserve your life and family over the conflict that would surely come if you stood up.
But what if this went on for decades and centuries, always finding a way to rear its ugly head no matter what supposed progress was being made. What if the disrespect was so violent as to actually threaten your existence and not just yours but your family, your tribe, your culture. Then what would you do? It’s the impetus behind every struggle for freedom and equality in the history of the world.
Whose Side Are You On?
If you do this thought exercise of putting yourself in another’s shoes it’s not hard to finally understand why people who have been threatened in this way are standing up and fighting back. The question is, are you on their side? Do you respect their existence, not as you want them to be but as they are?
“So I had the weirdest dream, do you want to hear it? Ok, I was in the middle of a pandemic and then it turned into some sort of protest over a guy who couldn’t breathe and I tried to explain that they were both about not being able to breathe but all of a sudden I was in a fire and couldn’t breathe when a woman in a mask brought me to safety and I was surrounded by black people saying they couldn’t breathe and I was so scared I couldn’t breathe but they all smiled and said ‘just breathe’ and then I woke.”
I used to say both these things. Now I am older and wiser and don’t say them anymore. I don’t for at least two reasons. One, they weren’t (and aren’t) true and two, they didn’t (and don’t) help anything even if they were true.
So, why did I think they were true? Because I didn’t do anything immediately and concretely racist. I was consciously not racist as far as I could figure. I accepted people of any race as I met them in my work, my school, my church or anywhere else. If we got along it wasn’t because of race and if we didn’t get along it wasn’t because of race either. It was because of some other reason, some other compatibility. That proved I wasn’t racist, right? In my mind it did.
In the New Testament there is a passage where the Paul speaks of now seeing through a glass darkly but one day seeing face to face. That is how I feel about my understanding of race in America. I used to be so sure of my ‘non-racist’ lineage that I didn’t realize how little I really saw in that glass. But then, little by little, I experienced, listened, heard, read, thought, discussed, watched, wrote, created, and met. And, while sometimes I argued with myself and others about these things, I wasn’t so invested in my own opinion that I wasn’t able to eventually see some deeper realities.
Reality 1a – I cannot know the totality of the Person of Color experience. I should not pretend I do. Reality 1b – I can however, use my creativity to imagine if I was someone else what that experience might be like. It’s not total understanding, but it is a starting point for empathy and understanding. But it is just a starting point.
Reality 2a – I can admit I have both residual racism from my past and current racism from my present in me and not condemn myself for having either of those things. Reality 2b – I cannot however, live with this knowledge and not act to change it within myself and in others around me. If I don’t step up to do that then I am deserving of condemnation. At that moment I become complicit.
Reality 3a – Being ‘color blind’ is a virtue. We want to be color blind when we work, play, interact. We want to treat everyone as equals. Reality 3b – Being ‘color blind’ is NOT a virtue. It is akin to an ostrich putting its head in the sand, looking around and saying ‘everyone looks the same to me.’ They look the same because you aren’t in a position where you can see anyone at all, you are blind. We want to see color, because seeing color is a starting point for acknowledging the history of others and society. It isn’t enough of course, you can’t just see a person’s color and make a definitive judgment anymore than you can judge a person to be physically beautiful or handsome and then projecting that they must be good and wholesome. We all know that is not true. It is the same with color. It tells us something, but it doesn’t tell us everything.
Reality 4a – This is a river you can sit beside and watch flow by. It is unlikely to overflow its banks most days and as a result you can just witness it from a safe vantage point. You never have to dip your toe in, you can just watch. Even if it does overflow, chances are you can climb up the banks to your patio and still be safe, or so you think.
Reality 4b – This is a river that is asking you to step in. That step means risking getting swept away. It is dangerous and once you are in the flow you can’t get out at the same location you first dipped your toe in. It will tumble you through rapids that will bruise your ego and jostle your pre-conceived notions. It might even cause you to leave some friends or family behind for a while as you move to a new destination. It can be scary. But make no mistake, taking that trip down the river will change your life, and the lives of many others (of all races) for the better.
Like I said earlier, I see through a glass darkly at this point. I know my revelations are pathetically inadequate for some and at the same time they may be profound for someone else. Isn’t that the truth about this issue in general? Don’t we have to allow we are all somewhere unique? This person is on the bank of the river, fearful and angry. This other person is in the deep swirling water at the roughest part of the river and needs a hand. That’s why we need to be merciful and helpful to all in our efforts to understand and change, to move our nation and the world forward little by little.
This past weekend showed an utterly disgusting and dangerous side of America, that of the white nationalist and white supremacist. It’s easy to throw up your arms in outrage and frustration saying, ‘who are these people and why are they so angry and filled with hate?’ It’s a good question, especially in light of the fact that they say they are celebrating ‘heritage not hate’. So, let’s talk about this, shall we?
One of the young men who got a lot of attention was Peter Cvjetanovic, of Reno, Nevada. He is 20 years old. He is quoted as saying, “I came to this march for the message that white European culture has a right to be here just like every other culture.” He says he is not a racist yet he is at an obviously racist rally.
This got my attention for a number of reasons. One, I too am of European heritage. If I could choose to go anywhere on my travels, I again and again find myself wanting to go to Europe. It’s where my ancestors came from and it’s what I feel connected on a very personal level. But I don’t feel anything like what he feels. why is that? This is an exploration of why. Two, I am an old guy compared to him. I want to talk to this young man like I would talk to a son or daughter. I want to help him understand things just a little bit deeper if he will listen.
So, with that in mind here is my open letter to him.
Hello Peter,
Here are 5 ways you can love their heritage and not be a racist.
1. Learn it to Love It
Don’t be fooled by a simplistic, outdated and false narratives about your people and your culture, or any culture. You might be under the illusion that Europe did all the great things it did (and it did some pretty amazing things) because it’s people are genetically superior. This is not true. I suggest you read the book ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ by Jared Diamond for a very thorough and insightful story of how history comes about. It will open your eyes to the advantages Europe had in many areas that allowed for its development, advantages that have nothing to do with genetics or the superiority of it’s people.I would then suggest you read up on the science of race, In particular how race was defined centuries and decades ago in ways that are no longer valid, how those divisions still cloud your understanding of a separation where none actually exist. It will be eye-opening.
The point is, of course, to educate yourself. Once you do that, your love for your heritage will be more complex, tinged with sadness at the terrible atrocities committed in Europe and by Europeans elsewhere, but also tinged with pride at the many amazing, loving and positive things Europeans have done as well. If you are going to have a relationships with the past, it should be like any deep relationship, achieved by really knowing the good and the bad.
2. Be Cultured to Know Culture
If you want to take pride in a culture, you must be cultured. That means you need to know something about the art, music, architecture, philosophy, literature, food, commerce, business, languages, history and religions of that culture. You can’t take pride in something you don’t know. You are in college now, nothing is easier to learn in almost any American college than western civilization. There are likely courses dedicated to every element I mentioned above. Study those things, immerse yourself in those things. Find out about the sweep of art from the Greek sculptures to the Abstract Expressionists. Learn why Beethoven was considered such a genius. Discover the difference between Wagner and Verdi. Look into the split between Luther and the Catholic Church.
When you do these things you will be amazed. You will also be enlightened, not just by ‘The Enlightenment’ (read Voltaire, by the way) but by the profound level of hate and anger that many of these artistic, cultural and religious geniuses endured as they put forth their vision. It should teach you that courage is about love, not hate. People don’t create lasting value in their culture by hating someone or something. They create it by following an idea they love. Focus on that.
3. Go There to Know There
If you want to love your heritage, go there. Instead of spending your money to go from Reno to Charlottesville to protest, take the money and go to England or France or Italy or wherever you feel your roots are. Go with your mother, father or better yet a grandparent, and together see where you were from. See the amazing structures, fantastic discoveries, and outrageous creativity of your ancestors. That is all good. But don’t just look at what is popular. Go search out what isn’t so great. Look into the slave trade that took hold in England and the Netherlands. Look at the treatment of people from different social classes and the extreme poverty so many lived in, look at how women and children were treated during the industrial revolution. I don’t say you should do this so you will feel bad about your heritage. I say it so you will fully know your heritage.
4. See that the River Has Many Sources
My wife, daughter and I once sat on the banks of the Mississippi river in New Orleans and I remember wondering where all that water came from. Years later we were up in Colorado and we went rafting on the Arkansas River. It wasn’t wide or majestic, but raw and wild. I remember realizing how it was the same great plains river that flows no more than 3 miles from my home in Oklahoma and it was part of that huge river I sat next to in Louisiana.
Your culture is like that. It may seem to be all about Europe, but it’s sources come from all over the world. The Greeks and Romans took inspiration from the Middle East and Egypt. The beauty of so much of Spain’s architecture has its roots in the Islamic religion that prevailed for hundreds of years on the Iberian peninsula. The Impressionists created some of their most iconic compositions as a result of the influx of Japanese prints. Genghis Khan and his empire from Mongolia spread ideas about politics, trade and commerce into Russia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East that had never been seen before.
Next, get your DNA researched. You will be amazed at how complex and convoluted the genetic path to you really is. It could be you are mostly European like I am, but you could also have African-American heritage like I do. You could be connected to Asia or Native America in ways you never could have guessed. It will get you out of your pre-conceived notions of who you are and where you came from. Check out this wonderful spot that explains it in ways I never could.
5. Repress Judgment, Express Curiosity
I like to think of myself as an amateur ‘expert’ on the Revolutionary War era in America. What that really means is I have read a lot of books on the subject. But recently many of my ideas about the personalities of that era have been blown apart by reading ‘Alexander Hamilton’ by Ron Chernow. It goes into much more detail about Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Adams and Hamilton than any other book I have read. The information has made me reevaluate all my settled opinions of these people. I could refuse to believe Chernow’s information, accuse him of lying about these characters I like so much, and be done with it. But I didn’t do that. I was open-minded to what I might find because I focused on learning and curiosity instead of judgment.
That doesn’t mean I don’t have opinions, but this book is a reminder that I need to hold my opinions lightly. If I really am going to be an ‘expert’ on something, then I need to be willing to learn new things about that thing and I can’t do that if I am constantly judging and proclaiming I already know everything about it. Do you want to really know your European culture? Then you have to be open-minded and curious, with as few assumptions and prejudices as possible for that to happen successfully.
Where To Go From Here
Now, look back at these ideas. Which one of these would make you a racist? None of them. None of these ideas will create hate in you for other cultures, other races, other individuals. As a matter of fact, they should lessen the fear you have and strengthen the love you have, both for your culture and for the amazing strands of ideas, art and humanity that led there. It should free you to see that yours is not the only culture deserving of interest, admiration and respect.
In the end I wish for you this realization. Your true heritage is both European and beyond that. It is Human. You can live side by side with someone who is not like you and you can learn and teach instead of fear and hate. If you do that I promise that feeling of hate will turn to love. And that is really where you want to be, right?
This week a vile thing happened to a friend of mine. Kristen Howerton is a Blogger and Professor in Southern California. She and her husband have 4 children. Two of them are adopted African-American boys and two of them are daughters born to them. Kristen and her husband are both white, of european descent. I know her professionally as a fellow blogger and have followed her for years.
Here is a screenshot of her twitter page @kristenhowerton
The Attack
Recently a white supremacist, Lana Kokteff, posted a Youtube video in which she used several photos and videos of Kristen and her family without her permission. She did this to mock and condemn Kristen’s attempts to make sure her sons were not isolated from their African-American heritage.
As a result of this video Kristen received a slew of tweets attacking her and her family in the most vile way possible. Not just disgusting words but manipulating images of her sons and daughters to say these things.
She in turn started reporting these people to twitter and asked her friends to do the same. I am asking you to do this as well.
Trust me, I would not request this of standard boorish, ignorant behavior. This is well beyond that, as you will see if you go to her twitter feed. It’s not pretty. It is ugly, vile, disgusting, perverse and beyond the pale.
Periscope
You can see the Periscope live streaming video I did yesterday discussing this topic. The discussion was quite intense.
What You Can Do
Here is what you can do. Go to her twitter feed, @KristenHowerton, and scroll down until you get to the offending tweets. Kristen has retweeted them so you might see a retweet, not the original. That is ok. reporting the retweet will actually report the original tweet. You will be reporting anonymously so there is no need to worry about the attack going your way.
Remember, do not report a tweet if the person is simply disagreeing with Kristen. While you may disagree with that person’s statement, it is not likely to lead to the person being blocked or the tweet being removed. Look for the tweets that say things that are harassing, attacking, threatening, malicious. Don’t worry, they are not hard to find. When you see them click the ‘…’ at the bottom of the tweet. Click Report. There will be a series of questions asking why you want to report the tweet. Go through the questions until the end and click done. It takes a bit of time, but it is worth it.
Here are the choices I made, even for the tweets with images since the images themselves were for the purpose of harassing in my opinion.
The Goal
Kristen has requested you not engage in discussions with those who sent the offensive tweets, it gives them publicity and escalates the conflict. The goal is to have their accounts suspended and to stop the harassment, not get them more riled up.
The Virus Among Us
It is disheartening to see this sort of filth in 2016. But some in my scope and elsewhere have said, “You will always have racism and racists.” When I hear that I always get the distinct impression that the unsaid next sentence is “So don’t try to fight them.” That to me is like saying “We will always have viruses so don’t try to fight them.”
Racism, sexism, ageism…these are terrible viruses among us. They aren’t to be ignored, they are to be fought. If remnants remain, so be it. But that doesn’t mean you don’t fight.
Thank you and feel free to share this post to gather more to fight the virus.
What is an absurdity? It is something that is not believable IF you are paying attention and thinking it through. You have to purposely ignore evidence that is easily in reach and you have to have a pre-existing (even if unconscious) desire to believe the absurdity for it to persuade you.
How does it lead to atrocities? If you believe, as people of many races have over the centuries, that people of other races are not fully human, then denying them rights (or killing them) is easily rationalized.
If you believe, as people of many religions have over the centuries, that people of other religions are eternally damned, then treating them as less than human (or killing them) is easily rationalized.
If you believe, as people of many political persuasions have over the centuries, that those who don’t believe in the same way of governing as you do are evil and corrupt, then keeping them from being politically involved (or killing them) is easily rationalized.
If you believe, as people of both genders have over the centuries, that women are less intelligent and able than men, then oppressing them (or killing them) is easily rationalized.
Where did those actions come from over the centuries? From believing absurdities.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” – Francois-Marie Arouet (Voltaire)
Can anyone think of anything more stupid than to hate someone because
of the melanin level of their skin? I have.
Some competitors for the Stupid Hate Award are:
The language they speak
Their accent
The amount of wrinkles they have, or don’t have
The specifics of their genitalia
Where they were born
The clothes they wear
Their job or career choice
What do you think? Is the list accurate, what else would you
add or subtract and why?
Give your opinion and you will be helping me out by testing
my comment box. I think it is working well but I need people
out on different machines and browsers to check it out for me.
“Racism is man’s gravest threat to man – the maximum of hatred for the minimum of reason.” – Abraham J. Heschel, Jewish theologian and philosopher, 1907- 1972
“He Who Accepts Evil Without Protesting Against It Is Really Cooperating With It.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
The easiest thing in the world to do is to sit back and do nothing.
But it really is true that if we want ‘evil’ to diminish we must not just hope it goes away, we must actually speak and act against it. I am not talking just about the big protests or letter writing campaigns you can be part of (I don’t do well in either of those categories either). I am talking about standing up for what is right with the person right in front of you.
The courage to confront someone who cuts someone down because they have a disability, or are of another race or nationality. The willingness to defend someone who isn’t there when they are talked about. The desire to stop innuendo or rumors in their tracks when you hear them. Those are the real day to day work of changing the world to be a better place. That is what defeats evil right where you live.
For those of you who worry about ‘confrontation’ or what my friends will think, then there is no easy way around it. You will likely lose a friend and have a confrontation. But if you practice speaking the truth in love, with a kind heart towards those who said the offensive statement, you can often become closer and more of a friend to the person, not less.
In the end, confrontation or none, you will become a person you and others can be proud of.
One thing I have learned over the years from reading a lot of global and personal histories and biographies and witnessing 50+ years of them myself is that there is ALWAYS a rationalization.
It doesn’t matter how ludicrous the idea might be, how completely untenable or self-destructive, how mean or violent, how opposite of logic or sanity it is, if someone believes it, they will rationalize it. Most all of Germany rationalized Nazism. Mao and Pol Pot rationalized their ‘cultural revolutions’ that killed millions and left their countries destitute. Individuals rationalize addictions and violence and control and gossip and destructive machinations against others. They make the most absurd of conduct make sense in a perverse logic they are depending on.
Always watch out for that in your own life, it is insidious and no one is immune from it unless they have intellectual safe guards against it. What are those safe guards? Solid and proven principles that will keep you safe from outrageous and absurd claims, beliefs and behaviors. What are those principles? There isn’t one set. There are many and it is up to each person to find them for themselves. That is a topic for another blog posting though.
“The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light it gets, the more it contracts.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
That means you have to shine your light on them. It also means you have to be willing to have light shone on yourself since all of us have something we don’t understand or see correctly. We all have things to learn and areas in which we can grow and the first step in that is being open minded about new ideas and new ways of looking at things.
It is like Jesus said ‘Don’t worry about the speck in your friend’s eye until you get the log out of your own’.
