Tag Archives: children of God

Is This “Freedom of Speech”?

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These are a few of the crude boxes we are sorted into by our society and culture, or by ourselves. The problem with boxes is that they block what we could learn from others.

Not long ago I ran across a children’s book that belonged to my mother when she was a little girl in the 1920s. Merely mentioning the title of the book would be considered racist and offensive today, but it was about little black children. I loved it when I was little—too young to see what some would see in it now.

The little children in that book were a lot like me. They liked the same things I did, got into trouble for the same things I did, were scared of the same things that scared me. I thought I would enjoy playing with them. Of course I could see that their skin was not the same color as mine, but why should that make any difference?

As a little boy, I also had a colorful storybook called Little Black Sambo. The title character was dressed like a young Indian prince and obviously lived in a place where one might encounter tigers. I thought the way he outwitted those tigers was pretty darned clever. I was afraid of tigers—an older cousin had tricked me into believing a tiger might be lurking in the dark in our attic—so I hoped I might be just as brave if I ever met a tiger.

There were few African-Americans around me in the area of South Texas where I grew up, but there were many Latinos. When I had opportunities to play with other children, it didn’t occur to me to think of the color of their skin or their way of speaking English or their family background. Why should that matter?

But something happened to all of us on the way to growing up.

I am reminded of a song sung by the character of Lieutenant Cable in the movie South Pacific: “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught.” The song tells us that we are not born with prejudices, but we learn them from people who are influential in our lives.

As a person of faith, I believe that prejudice is not natural to our spirits—that in spiritual terms it is an aberration. Why should one child of God distrust or dislike another because of something so superficial as skin color? Prejudice and bigotry are worldly, mortal concepts taught and instilled by people who let fear and hate dwell in their hearts.

But we live in a world where hate and fear are strong, and they have created a social atmosphere in which words are weaponized. More and more, government and special interest organizations focus on the differences between us, convincing us that the differences are more important than the similarities we all share. Efforts to remove barriers somehow seem to drive us farther apart.

For some people, the differences between us have become insurmountable obstacles that prevent open discussion of the things we have in common. In many instances, extremists on both ends of the spectrum of opinion control the debate, and they seem more interested in living behind walls than in an open world. 

As an old white man and a person of faith, I feel that in today’s world I might not be permitted to have a dialogue with someone of another race or gender orientation without first agreeing that they are right and I am wrong; I would be required to accept the idea that I am a member of an oppressor group and my religious views are simply the product of prejudice. The choice seems clear: give up my own heritage and my faith if I want to have any common cause with them.

And yet, as a lifelong believer in “justice for all” and “one nation, under God . . . indivisible,” I find it hard to discuss some issues with fellow conservatives. Any talk of breaking down barriers between us and others who see things differently is dismissed with the “woke” label.

I am reluctant to express my feelings openly on social media for fear of reprisal. Some liberal thinkers have said this response is a cop-out, a refusal to face the issues. No, it isn’t. I mean it. I’m afraid. Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has paid a high price for expressing views that differ with others on transgender issues; she has been labeled a hater, verbally attacked, and threatened with rape or murder. She has been villainized for writing of her own experiences as a woman. I realize some will not agree with her opinions, but I have not been able to find any hate in them.

Briefly, I opened a Twitter account, hoping to engage in dialogue on important issues. What I found on that platform was hate, anger, bigotry, and a lot of misinformation that people clung to because it affirmed their biases. Civil discussion on social media seems almost nonexistent.

I don’t know if there’s any way to achieve this given our current social climate, but I long for a day when we might actually talk about public issues with each other as reasonable individuals without retreating behind our shields of self-identification and keeping one hand on our ideological swords or spears. 

Whatever our color, ethnic background, commitment to faith (or lack of it), we are family. Why should we be at war with one another?

Race, Equality, and Talking to Each Other

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Decades ago, in a graduate level class on communications theory, I learned that we rarely talk to another person as he or she really is. Instead, we talk to that person as we conceive the individual to be. We talk to the Other—our concept of who that person is.

In talking with a group, we may speak to the Generalized Other—what we conceive that group to be, based on our experiences with and knowledge of individuals in the group.

This means, in my mind, that the more experiences and knowledge we have in common with an individual, the more likely we are to exchange ideas and beliefs clearly. The greater the gap between us in shared experiences and knowledge, the greater the likelihood of misunderstanding.

I believe this gap in experience and knowledge is at the heart of a lot of our current conflict over racial equality.

As an old white man, I wonder if there is any contribution from me that could be acceptable in trying to close the divide.

I freely admit that I will never face some of the abuse, roadblocks or challenges that African-Americans face constantly because of their skin color. I will never know some of the prejudices they have felt. Because of what people call my “white privilege” I am largely spared those things.

I believe that I recognize racial injustice; I have seen it at work in this country and others. I have always supported civil rights legislation and other legal and social efforts to insure that people of any color have equal opportunity and equal protection in our society. But apparently, believing this and voting for it is not enough these days. Simply saying “I’ve always been for it” could be criticized as “virtue signaling”—jumping on the bandwagon as it is passing by.

Apparently something more is required of me—but what, and how do I approach it?

In all my years, I have had relatively few opportunities to associate closely with black people. That was not by my choice, but simply because of where life has taken me. Except for one long-ago exception, my experiences with black people have all been positive.

I have learned from personal experience that judging others by their physical characteristics leads me into foolish mistakes at best, and at worst deprives me of opportunities to be enriched by other people. I have tried to overcome the human failing of making snap judgments about people based on what they look like; instead, I try to learn more about the individual.

It is very difficult for me to communicate with anyone solely as a member of a group—an African-American, and Asian, a feminist, someone who has a disability, or a militant advocate of any particular cause. It isn’t that I oppose their calls for change, but I don’t like to be judged by someone else’s sense of commitment to a cause, whatever it may be. Sometimes there is an implied challenge: Either you respond to this exactly as I do, or you’re the enemy.

Often I have been approached by ardent activists for worthy causes whose invitation to discussion goes something like this: “We need to talk about this problem—but if you can’t agree from the beginning that I am completely right on certain points and you are all wrong, I say you’re not serious about helping.” That doesn’t put us on equal ground.

If it would help to heal the ugly racial divide in this country, I would be glad to sit down with anyone and discuss the differences in our lives because we are of different races. No doubt I’ve got a lot to learn, and I’m willing.

But what I would prefer to talk about is how we are alike as children of God. How would the world change if we could focus more on our spiritual kinship with each other and with Him?

 

 

 

 

Banning Books, Erasing History

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A few weeks ago, I spent a day helping in a history booth at a street fair in Hannibal, Missouri. Our booth was located just half a block down the street from the boyhood home of Samuel Clemens—American author Mark Twain.

Twain Jul2011 IMG_1303

A sculpture in the Mark Twain museum in Hannibal, Missouri, depicts the author reading as Tom Sawyer looks over his shoulder and Huck Finn feigns disinterest.

Twain has always been one of my favorite authors. Even though he delighted in being an iconoclast and critic of behavior, I have always believed he was basically honest and fair and believed in the equality of human beings—notwithstanding some of his biting satire. (He did not have much good to say about members of my faith, but I am convinced it was only because he never came to know the “Mormons” well enough. Some of Twain’s expressed beliefs are quite congenial with Latter-day Saint doctrine.)

It distresses me to see that his books are banned or criticized by some these days as being “racist” because in his writing he used what we now carefully call “the N word.” Criticisms come despite the fact that in Huckleberry Finn, Twain exposes the evil and folly of slavery, along with the hypocrisy of many Christians in response to this and other faults in the society of their time.

Now, some also oppose the reading of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, again accusing the book of fostering racism. Like Huckleberry Finn in its day, To Kill a Mockingbird was a powerful voice against the evil and stupidity of racism. I first read the book when I was a senior in high school, just when the civil rights movement was gathering its power. For my generation, To Kill a Mockingbird was a clear call to white people that it was long past time to let go of ignorance and prejudice toward African-Americans. The book challenged us both emotionally and logically to see others for who they are as individuals and not as part of a group or category. Perhaps not everyone was swayed or influenced by To Kill a Mockingbird, but many of us saw it as a landmark in the intellectual landscape of our lives.

As people of the early 21st century, we quickly wander into a maze of error, emotionally and logically, when we judge the actions of others in the past by the sensibilities of our current decade or of our social group. Let me offer examples that are both personal and sensitive.

My mother’s parents were wonderful people, both great guides to me. I heard both of them at times use the N word, because that is what they grew up knowing. My grandmother had been born on an old estate in Louisiana that was a slave plantation just 30 years before her birth. My grandfather, having grown up in West Texas and down along the Rio Grande, often spoke of “Mexicans” when he meant Mexican-Americans. But neither of my grandparents ever spoke in demeaning ways of another person. They were about as far from racists as anyone I have ever known.

When I was a small boy, both my mother and grandmother were incapacitated for a time, recovering from a car accident. My grandfather hired an African-American woman named Rosa (yes, Rosa) to help with the housework. One day I complained about Rosa because she had tattled on me to my mother when I did something I shouldn’t have. This led to a discussion with Grandma in which she made it clear in no uncertain terms that I was to treat Rosa like the daughter of God that she was. Rosa, Grandma taught me, had a hard life trying to support and care for her aged mother, and I was never to do anything to make her life harder. Rosa was a person to whom I owed respect, not because she was part of a particular ethnic group, but because she was another human being. I can’t recall that the subject of Rosa’s skin color ever came up.

My grandfather the plumber often hired helpers when I was a boy. I remember a couple of down-and-out Anglo-Americans he hired to give them a new start. I remember a Mexican-American he liked to employ because the man was a good worker. I cannot remember that the subject of ethnicity ever came up in connection with these men’s work. Grandpa wanted workers. He dealt with his employees as people, not as representatives of an ethnic group.

Even when my grandparents were taken advantage of by people from other ethnic groups, I never heard them condemn the group. I learned from them that every individual should be viewed as a child of God worthy of respect and kind treatment, and if some did not live up to that treatment, it was because of personal weakness, not ethnic background.

No doubt there are some who may judge me as racist or say I am likely to be prejudiced based on my color and ethnic background, my faith, my education, the region where I live, etc. People who want to find a reason to criticize will find one. The list of reasons we can find to judge other people harshly is endless—if we are looking for reasons to support our own biases.

I have a very visible birth defect. Because of it, I have been stared at, categorized, shut out of some opportunities in this life, and treated at times as though my mind is probably also defective. I am sure no one else has faced exactly the same circumstances I have faced. Others could never fully understand my situation. And if we all apply this same line of reasoning to our own lives, humanity will be subdivided into nothing more than billions of small, socially and intellectually isolated islands.

But together we are more than that, and we need each other. To me, this is one of the important lessons of works like Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird. Of course we are all diverse, but differences, like skin color, are not nearly so important as the divine heritage that we share through the eternal spirits that inhabit our bodies. We are much more alike than we understand—or sometimes care to admit. Anyone caught up in bigotry sees everyone else as a lesser being in one way or another.

Years ago I spent some time traveling with a performing group whose members were from many different ethnic backgrounds. One of the group’s musical numbers was introduced with the thought that none of us is truly black or white or red or yellow. We are all the multi-hued browns of Mother Earth, and our basic needs and wants are the same. The measure of our worth is always at the individual level, not the group. There is no moral evidence to suggest that God will judge us as members of our group, but He will judge us as the individuals we have become.

Our present-day society seems so divided according to special interests—ethnicity, religion, social status, education, income group, age, etc.—that we are losing the ability to see each other as individuals. No sooner do we meet someone than we begin to search in our minds for the proper way to categorize or label that person. We cannot see the trees for the forest.

The solution to our problems on this small planet in a vast universe is to learn to see each other as brothers and sisters in the family of God.

Impossibly optimistic?

No—realistic.

It is the only way I can see for all of us to survive.