8. Demonizing the Other
When the U.S. was fighting the Japanese, the “nips” were often pictured with sharp teeth, satanic brows, and, of course, slanty eyes so different from the round eyes that allowed every American a clear picture of the Imperial threat. It’s difficult to hate and kill people like you and me, but if the people don’t look like us, then the job is easier to do. So we create demons (seventy years later, Japan is our fourth largest trading partner—demons are temporary, serving the immediate purpose, nothing more). Demonizing requires some real or perceived difference, some modest imagination, and just enough people to spread negative ideas based upon beliefs to people with little information. There is a long history of this behavior, endured past and present by people who identify themselves as Mormon, Native American, Scientology, Wicca, Jewish, Catholic, Gay, Lesbian, Trans, the School Board, that political party, the list goes on. So what’s the plan? Do we want to stop doing this, or do we keep “demonizing the other” in our back pocket in case we need to win an important fight, or stifle a potentially dangerous conversation?
7. Tourism & Tolerance
People who are not like us probably live far from us, in places that we want to visit but may not wish to live. They’re interesting, worthy of photographs—exotica to bring back home. The buildings are different, the people are different, even the foods they eat and their strange language. It’s an odd situation: on the one hand, visiting other places helps to frame a clearer picture of life in other places of the country or the world, and on the other, we’re not building much of an understanding as we’re served beachside by a native or motoring on an air-conditioned tour bus (however engaging the colorful local guide may be). The Internet and our own travel behaviors are beginning to change the norm. We eat the local food, we sleep in other people’s houses (it’s become a business through airbnb). We go by bicycle or walk, and leave the tourbus for people who require a window to observe the world. When you find yourself with one person, face-to-face, intolerance becomes intolerable. Differences melt away; you’re just two people making your way, sharing meals, observing, trying to understand one another and the world. You might make a friend. You might fall in love.
6. Should the Pope change the rules--and save 200,000 homeless children?
In this instance, and similar instances, the people not like us are people very much like us—with a singular distinguishing difference. Here, the homeless children are teenagers whose parents could not tolerate their homosexuality because it runs counter to church doctrine, and the example is powerful because so many people are involved, young people whose options should be more robust. When a family member or a friend does something inexcusable, where does responsibility end? If there is a rule, or a doctrine or a law, or simply a powerful belief, does it gain flexibility when it is applied to a loved one? Or does love conquer all? From another perspective, rules and laws change with the times. Meanwhile, young lives are at risk; children are sleeping out in the cold; some become prey. Is our best answer, pray?
5. Not Normal
You and me, we’re normal. The others, they’re obviously not normal because they don’t do the things we do. They’re different. Too different. They must be protected from themselves, and so that they do not harm our children. So: what’s normal? Work hard in school and earn a college degree? Sure, in many nations, that’s normal for about half of young adults. Stick to a schedule, take responsibility, be nice, do the things that civilized people do? Makes sense, but not for everyone. Some people need to do it their own way. Malcolm Gladwell discusses Outliers: people whose extraordinary success resulted from internal and external factors, some beyond a reasonable sense of normal. Of course, many people considered to be less than normal (or, more) struggle through decades of disconnection, sometimes with remarkable results, often with less uplifting outcomes. Some endure physical, mental, and/or emotional disabilities. Where does our responsibility begin and end? Are we compelled to define “normal” so that everyone plays with the same rules—or is this the worst thing we can do? Should we devote special attention to those who do not meet our sense of normalcy, or seem to want our help? Beneath it all, there is the lingering question about the true nature of reality and our individual tethering to the normal world. (Maybe she is the one who’s normal, and not me…)
4. Is Jim Crow back--more powerful than ever?
Race prejudice in the 21st century. The old story, come back in seemingly justifiable ways that result in high poverty rates, high incarceration rates, broken homes, broken neighborhoods, lousy education, disempowerment, and no way out. The rallying cry was published in a book entitled The New Jim Crow, written by Ohio State Professor / attorney / civil rights scholar / activist Michelle Alexander. From the Daily Kos: “…a timely and stunning guide to the labyrinth of propaganda, discrimination, and racist policies masquerading under other names that comprises what we call justice in America.” While America’s Jim Crow is an unfortunate exemplar of American democracy in action, the problem is not limited to Black Americans. Too many examples of successful discrimination continue to define race relations in other nations. Why do we perpetuate the cycle?
3. Slavery
Although technically outlawed in every nation, the concept of people as property remains part of the human experience. Human slavery has a long history—it was especially well-organized by the 1600s. It’s difficult to count the current number of child soldiers, domestic servants kept in captivity, forced laborers, forced spouses, or those in profound financial bondage. Current estimates may not be reliable, over 30 million humans are likely to be slaves today, roughly 1 in 200 of us. The roots are deep, and modern thinking doesn’t mask all of them: many people continue to believe that others exist to serve, not to prosper. Our conceptions of superiority to the unknowable “other” are either embedded in our souls or so well practiced that change is difficult to contemplate. Slavery is not something that happens only in far away places; the contemporary version may be uncomfortably close to home. Still, proximity probably isn’t the best way to measure of the range of our responsibility.
2. We Are All Africans
From The World Without Us by Alan Weisman: “It is now known that we walked on two feet for hundreds of thousands of years before it occurred to us to strike one stone against another to create sharp-edged tools…Olduvai Gorge and other fossil hominid sites, together comprising a crescentic that runs south from Ethiopia and parallels the continent’s eastern shore, have confirmed beyond much doubt that we are all Africans…From this place, humans radiated across continents and around a planet. Eventually, coming full circle, we returned, so estranged from our origins that we enslaved blood cousins who strayed behind to maintain our birthright.” Recent research proposes a small number of male and female ancestors who lived in Africa about 150,000 years ago—the original Adam and Eve.
1. Who is not like you or me?
It’s tough enough to identify people like us, and devilishly difficult to develop reasonable borders or boundaries with sliding down a prejudicial slope. Begin with the body: are people with different skin color different from you and me? How about people who can or cannot walk—or run as fast as I can? People who are athletic, or brainy, or creative? People who live in far-off Central African Republic, but not people who live in South Africa? People with a college education, or without one? Those who have children, or people who are children themselves? Those with not enough money, or who killed or harmed someone and now serving time in prison? Someone without a home, or with a devastating drug problem? Those who do not pray at all, or do not pray in the place I choose to pray? Those who have done me wrong? Or will not acknowledge me?
These are the other people, the ones we don't see or choose not to understand. They may live nearby, but they may live differently. They may not speak the same language, look, or behave as we do. They may seem scary or unworthy of trust. They may be poor, or poorly educated, motherless or fatherless or homeless. They may look, talk or move in ways that we do not. Their home may be filled with unfamiliar smells. They may live far away, in places that are difficult to understand: in a shantytown in Mexico City, a tribal village on the Amazon, a cabin off a dirt road. Their belief systems, religions, governments may differ from our own. They may hate us. We may hate them. We may vilify one another, spreading vitriolic propaganda intended to dehumanize the other. We may wish to kill them, or at least incarcerate them for their (and our) own protection. Or, in a thoroughly modern 21st century way, we may get to know them, work and play beside people who are not like us, learn from one another, in order to become friends, or someday, lovers.
4. People Not Like You & Me