Tag Archives: prejudice

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?

The Cure for Bigotry

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Bigotry, unchecked, leads ultimately to atrocities like Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp.

Growing up in the South, I was introduced to bigotry early. I heard what we now politely call “the N word” frequently. In South Texas, I often heard the word Mexican used not as a description of someone’s heritage, but as an epithet. When I was a little boy, World War II was less than 10 years in the past, and I rarely heard Japanese people referred to as anything but “Japs,” particularly by those who had fought them in the Pacific.

I don’t believe bigotry is born into little children. It was not so for me. I cannot remember shrinking from playing with another child whose skin was darker than mine. When I was learning to read, my mother would sit me on her lap and help me with the words. One of my favorite children’s books had been given to her when she was learning to read—probably around 1928. It was about little black children, and it would no doubt be considered highly offensive today. But the lesson I took from the book was not that those children were lesser people because their skin was darker, but that they were little children like me—enjoying the same things, getting in trouble for the same things, growing in the same ways, loved by parents and grandparents the same way mine loved me.

There’s a song in an old movie musical, South Pacific, that holds an important lesson: “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught.” We are taught bigotry and prejudice, beginning very young, by the attitudes of those around us. As I grew older, I learned that some families didn’t live in our part of town because there were people who didn’t want to live by them. I learned that some people assigned negative characteristics to everyone of a particular ethnic heritage—whether they knew any individuals from that group or not.

The Texas border town where I lived during my high school years was divided by the railroad tracks next to U.S. Highway 83. Generally, neighborhoods south of the tracks were full of white Anglo-Saxons and neighborhoods north of the tracks were occupied by Mexican-American families. Some of my Anglo classmates seemed to feel they were more deserving of respect or deference because of their family’s ethnic background, position in the community, or prosperity. Some of those Anglos looked suspiciously at me because I enjoyed friendships with Latino classmates. Sixty years on, ethnic background, prosperity, and social status do not seem to have made much difference in the achievements of my classmates. Many, both Latino and Anglo, became great contributors in their communities, noted for their service, but it was not the ethnic or social backgrounds they came from that dictated whether they were successful. Individual effort and commitment seem to have been more influential. What they became was not determined by what someone called them or thought of them when they were younger.

I have lived long enough to learn that bigotry and prejudice are universal; they are present in people of all races and ethnic backgrounds. I have heard African-Americans use the N word against other African-Americans just as viciously as any white person.  I have heard plenty of bigotry toward other races or ethnic groups from my white Anglo-Saxon peers. But I have also heard bigotry toward Latinos and Asians from African-Americans, bigotry toward blacks or Latinos from Asians, bigotry toward Native Americans from those of European ancestry, bigotry against Jews from people of almost all races. 

I have toured Auschwitz-Birkenau, walked through an old slave exporting castle on the coast in Ghana, followed the outlines of a now carefully erased World War II Japanese internment camp in the Utah desert. I know where unchecked bigotry based on race or ethnicity can lead.

Site of the World War II Japanese internment camp in the Utah desert.

There is no excuse or justification for prejudicial practices toward others. From small, daily microaggressions to large-scale genocide, actions of prejudice are usually committed by people who don’t understand the relationship of their fellow men and women to God, or even their own relationship to God. Every great religious faith that I know, in its original, pure form, teaches that we are all children of a loving God. For example, Malachi 2:10: “Have we not all one father? Hath not one God created us?” (See also Ephesians 4:6.) Anyone who persecutes another person is turning against family.

The Old Testament teaches that He is “the God of the whole earth” (Isaiah 54:5). The New Testament teaches that “God is no respecter of persons:

God loves each of us, His children, no matter the color of our skin or where on earth we are planted.

“But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him” (Acts 10:34-35).

The Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Jesus Christ, reaffirms those Biblical teachings: “[H]e manifesteth himself unto all those that believe in him, by the power of the Holy Ghost; yea, unto every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, working mighty miracles, signs, and wonders among the children of men according to their faith. 

“. . . and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile” (2 Nephi 26:13, 33).

When we speak with disdain, with prejudice, with hatred toward other people on this earth, we are speaking against people God loved so much that He allowed His only Begotten Son to sacrifice His life in order to redeem them—to redeem you, and me. (See John 3:16.)

The cure for bigotry is for us to treat each other like the children of God that we are. We must learn to live by the Golden Rule taught by Jesus Christ: “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” (Matthew 7:12). This teaching is found in some form in every major religion and has been taught throughout human history by inspired teachers God sent to bless His children. This cure is simple, yet profound. We stumble over it not because it is hard to do but because we are hard of heart.

People concerned about the effects of bigotry and prejudice in our society have often sought to end it through new laws, amendments, decrees, or government programs. Those may help to some limited extent. But bigotry and prejudice will not end in human societies until we learn to appreciate others as brothers and sisters, as members of our family whose hopes and dreams and eternal development are just as important as our own.

The road to this blessed state of human relationships starts in just one heart at a time—yours, and mine.

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.