I disapprove of what you say,
but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
- Evelyn Beatrice Hall (aka S.G. Tallentyre;
often attributed to Voltaire)
Symbol and substance: they are two different things. What is ironic in this is that were we asked, virtually all of us would say that the substance of something is more important than its symbol. And yet this is not the way we behave....
The recent contretemps emanating from the protest of Colin Kaepernick is a case in point: So many have asserted an untempered reverence for the symbol of the United States and its flag, which they take to be an aggressive assertion of patriotism - that the quarterback protests by kneeling when the National Anthem is played before NFL games - and yet far fewer are or seem concerned about the issue(s) that motivated the protest in the first place: the reality that, in both historical and modern America, rights and opportunities are not respected and/or allocated equitably and that the country is far, far from living up to its professed ideals and creeds for many of its citizens.
But why are so many of our fellow citizens such zealots when it comes to honoring our country - i.e., so attached to the symbol of America and what it's supposed to represent - and yet seemingly indifferent to the reality of our country - i.e., that the experience of the vast majority of People of Color (PoC) and other minority groups is distinctly farther from the American Dream than that of their white counterparts?
While there are many reasons, I'd like to consider three: First, many of our white fellow citizens have little to no inkling of the experience of their compatriots of diverse hues; second, especially amidst seismic societal changes when groups' standings are being redefined, there's a reflexive tendency to circle the wagons, making it distinctly less likely that empathy will be evidenced significantly; and, third, it's easier to cling to the symbol over the substance, to choose fantasy over reality.
With respect to the 'Experience Gap' between our majority and minority communities, numerous studies attest to its existence. One recent study from the Public Religion Research Institute found that the average white person's circle of contacts was 91% white. Of the remaining 9%, only 1% were African-American and another 1% were Latino. Let that sink in for a moment: the average white person who knows 100 people will have among them 91 other whites and only 1 Black and 1 Latino in this circle of acquaintance. With so little experience of each other, it's clear why it would be pretty hard to have empathy for groups whom you really don't know or with whom you don't interact much, if at all.
(By comparison, by the way, the average Black American has 83 Black friends, 2 Latino friends and 8 white friends. One way to read this is that, on average, Blacks have far more experience with whites than the latter do with them, which is not all that surprising given that whites are, for the most part, still the dominant racial group in this country.)
So the first reason that we don't get along as well as we should is that we're still largely segregated from each other socially and thus don't tend to have enough of the necessary formal or informal channels of communication and collaboration built to encourage more harmonious relations. In sum, we are still The Other to each other and though this is changing - the Millennial generation, for instance, seems to have a modestly more diverse experience than do its predecessors - it's not changing enough and fast enough to make group relations smoother at this point.
With respect to the changes in our society, studies indicate that many of our fellows feel that the world - and especially our country - is changing in ways that frighten them. "Good jobs" are being lost to globalization and relocated overseas. Even if they invest in themselves and go to college, they come out with staggering levels of debt. There's an explosion of technology and connectivity from which many of them have been unplugged literally and thus enter this new hyper-connected digital age belatedly and at a decided disadvantage. Muslims are everywhere now, as are Mexicans and a lot of other foreigners. Men are marryin' men and women are marryin' women and we have to share bathrooms with men who used to be women and vice versa. And the President's Black.
I could go on, but you get the picture. And I must say that I don't disagree that many of these changes could be disturbing if not downright startling ... but only if you're mired in so many of the -isms that continue to plague our society as so many of our fellow citizens clearly are.
Why should it matter that the president is Black unless you subscribe to latent or active racism? Why do you care what sex a person identifies with unless you subscribe to latent or active heterosexism? Or that people of the same sex can now marry? (Same cause.) Why does it matter that your neighbors follow a different path to God unless you subscribe to latent or active (Christian) religiocentrism? Why do you think that there are too many neighbors from different countries unless you subscribe to latent or active xenophobia and racism? Etc.
And it's even worse than this, because many of our fellow citizens have gone beyond being upset at the changes to feeling victimized by them. One such (delusional) example is evidenced in a recent study by the aforementioned Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution (and reported by theintellectualist.com) which found that approx. 75% of Trump supporters and 80% of Christian evangelicals believe that "discrimination against Christians is as big of a problem as discrimination against other groups, including blacks and (other) minorities." ... Let that sink in for a minute. ... Yep, a vast majority of Christians in this Christian-dominated country feel that they're victimized as much as African-Americans and other People of Color, the LGBTQ community, etc. I can only shake my head and move on (which'll keep me from screaming "WTF are these people thinking?!?" and experiencing other decidedly unChristian thoughts about how to address this unfathomable situation).
I can only think that the propagation of an alternate narrative and reality by Fox News and others has led to a kind of creeping mass delusion. Facts don't seem to matter as much - or, often, at all - any more. Feelings, reinforced by comforting but unreality-based opinions (or, more accurately, pure conjecture and speculation), seem to hold sway far too often. For example, it doesn't seem to matter that there's not a shred of evidence that (white) Christian evangelicals and/or Trump supporters are being discriminated against in any meaningful way; what matters is that huge numbers of people have chosen to feel this way. Again, the reality that just because you believe it doesn't make it true - an anchoring tenet of being reality-based, admittedly - just doesn't seem to matter to tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of our fellows. Let this sink in for a moment, too. ... How does one dialogue and collaborate with folks who feel no need to be connected to a reasonably objective reality that you can share?
So so-called Christians in numerous states are actively trying to enshrine "religious freedom" laws that allow them to discriminate legally in the name of their religion. Yep, that's another "let's stop and think about this moment": members of the religious majority are trying to make discrimination legal in the name of a Savior who was the paragon of inclusivity. It would be farcical and funny were it not true....
This circling of the wagons will continue as long as so many feel threatened and the level of unreality in this bubble will continue to grow, meaning that the disconnection and divide between us will likely grow rather than ebb. To the extent that many of our fellow citizens are coming into the digital world, they're constraining themselves to media and channels that reinforce rather than challenge their worldview, that promote subjectivity and denigrate objectivity and that spread the -isms rather than challenge, contain and eradicate them.
Why do our fellow citizens - knowingly - cling to their fantastic views and, often, clear fantasies? This answer is unfortunately as simple as it is understandable: Because reality is hard and often scary and certainly harder and scarier than life in a self-soothing bubble. Think about it: it's a lot easier to claim that you're being oppressed than it is to accept that some of your choices aren't working out as well as you expected. Hence, the widespread perception of Christian persecution in this overly and overtly Christian-dominated country. And the continuing belief that President Obama is a Muslim and not born in this country. And ... oh, you get the picture....
So, what to do?
The solution, to the extent that there can be said to be one, is to educate and advocate ... and to listen patiently while suspending judgment. Otherwise, we can't make it feel safe enough for our fellow citizens to share their views and then to pop these bubbles gently by exposing them to a more objective reality while offering support for them to integrate themselves into the larger and admittedly more complex and messier society in which the rest of us live. But, despite the almost inhuman amount of teeth-gritting that this will require, listen and try to connect we must. Otherwise we can kiss our "more perfect union" goodbye for some time to come (if not permanently).
(And it must also be said that those of us who feel that we're not living in a bubble need to check ourselves as well. Moral superiority is quite often and easily misplaced.)
We, collectively, must seek to recapture the substance of our foundational notion of a democratic republic of the people for the people and by the people (which implies and is anchored in the concept of the commonweal or common good) ... or we need to acknowledge that the American Ideal must change. If we're cool with allowing ourselves to be permanently divided, then let's acknowledge this and move on (into a new era of perennially putrid politics). If not, then let's do the hard work of educating one another and moving together into a future that makes ever more of us better off.
America has experienced its greatest success when it pulls together, not apart. If we truly do still believe in the American Dream, this is something that we must try and at which we must not fail ... regardless of who the president is or what she believes or what his sexual orientation is or which path to God she follows, etc. ... and whether or not a quarterback stands of kneels during the National Anthem....
United we stand, divided we fall.
Let us not split into factions
which must destroy that union
upon which our existence hangs.
- Patrick Henry
No comments:
Post a Comment