US AND THEM

One of our more endearing characteristics is our ability to bond with each other. We bond with our family members and our friends. We identify ourselves as being a part of our neighborhoods, our states, our nations, our races, our religions, our ethnicities, and our socio-economic classes. Our first loyalties are to our families and our friends. The other people who inspire our loyalty are the people with whom we associate. Which usually means people of the same race, religion, ethnicity, and socio-economic class. We think of those people as being like us. When a bigot waves the flag in celebration of our nation he or she is really celebrating white, Anglo-Saxon, America. As you can see, the people who we identify as being us can be rather exclusive. The more bigoted you are the more people you will define as being them. Defining them is antithetical to bonding. It is the other side of the coin, and we all know that coins have two sides. Two things have brought this to mind. The first thing was the arrest of Professor Gates by officer Crowley. The other thing was Ken Burn’s documentary on Mark Twain. I will explain the connections in a moment. First I want to tell you something about my background.

I was born and reared in Pasadena, California. It was a racist society, and there was de facto segregation. The target of the bigotry was not restricted to race. Believe me, I heard many anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic comments as well. If bigotry can ever be called polite, it was that in the Pasadena of my youth. What I mean is that bigoted comments were never made in front of the people who were being discriminated against. This was rather confusing when the discrimination was based on religion. It was not like the children in my elementary school carried signs identifying their faith, and my parents never told me not to play with this kid or that. The other kids attending my elementary school became my friends regardless of their faith.

Discrimination was an abstract concept until I reached junior high school. It was an incident in my gym class that first changed that. Jerry and I got into a dispute. The shouting escalated into insults, followed by shoving. It might have resulted in fisticuffs if another boy had not interfered. We were studying Shakespeare in our English class, and this boy told me to call Jerry a Shylock. Frankly, I was stunned. Jerry was not a Jew, which is to say he was not one of the bad Jews people talked about. For the first time the target of anti-Semitism had a face, and it was the face of a friend. All the fight went out of me. Whatever Jerry had done to make me angry did not matter. I dropped my guard. Jerry gave me half-hearted shove, and he looked into my eyes. He then turned and walked away. I really dreaded seeing him the next day. I should have said something to that other boy. I should have called out to Jerry and apologized. The next day Jerry acted as if nothing had happened. We should have talked about it, but we did not do it. I guess neither one of us knew what to say. I will never forget the hurt in Jerry’s eyes when that boy made the anti-Semitic comment. It was a wakeup call. My youthful innocence was replaced by the realization that prejudice hurts good people.

This brings us back to the arrest of Professor Gates. I have been following the reports of the incident, but I cannot say I really know what happened. The best I have to offer is a bit of food for thought by telling you what I think is likely. I can well imagine that Professor Gates has been the victim of racial prejudice and profiling in the past. I think we also have to bear in mind the fact that he was in his own home. I can also imagine Officer Crowley behaving the way cops behave. Police officers are taught to take control of the situation, and they are quick to react to any perceived challenge to their authority. I do not know if race was a factor in the arrest, but I suspect that it was.

My suspicion brings up the subject of Mark Twain because he had something very instructive to say about racism and slavery. The Ken Burn’s documentary included a discussion of Huckleberry Finn. What struck the people discussing this book in the documentary was the same thing that struck me when I first read it. We thought about how horrible it was for Huck Finn to actually believe that he would go to hell if he did not tell the master where the master’s slave had gone. The thing is that a child will believe the things he hears adults saying.

The prejudicial statements and actions a child witnesses or is taught during his or her formative years form a toxin that lodges itself in the unconscious mind. This poison then dulls reason and manifests itself in the form of ugly emotions. I am going to get personal about this. Because of de facto segregation I did not know any African-American children during my formative years. This meant that I did not have the face of a friend to serve as an antidote for the racial poison I was being fed. There were some African-American kids at the junior high school I attended, but this was after my most impressionable years. Furthermore, forming close bonds with people of other races was discouraged. The result was not pretty. To this day the statements of African-American leaders will occasionally trigger an adverse emotional response in me. I then have to take a deep breath and let the logical part of my mind kick in. I have to take into account what those leaders have experienced, and I have to carefully consider what they are saying. I think my adverse emotional responses have become less frequent and less severe over the years, but they are still there. I really hate to admit that. I am doing so because I think it is important for us to understand and help each other. We cannot do that if we are not being honest.

I believe there are too many people who have the same emotional responses I admit to having. I believe those responses are the last and most difficult barriers to making our society what it must become. President Obama was correct when he told the NAACP there are no excuses. This holds true for all races. It particularly holds true in regard to our relationships with each other. I have really struggled with the terms of African-American and black. Any term we use, no matter how polite it may be, is still making a distinction. It still indicates that we are thinking in terms of us and them. We must work to eliminate the concept of them. This is not something the government can do for us. It is the responsibility of each and every person to work on it individually and collectively. It does not help when there are people who will try to use the racial divide to their own advantage. It really makes me angry when I hear them call President Obama a racist. The people who are doing this should examine their own hearts and what passes for their minds. I know I said I would try to avoid politics in this blog, but racial issues transcend politics. If one of the major political parities does not realize that, then it is time for that party’s demise. Hopefully, another party will emerge to offer reasonable alternatives in regard to solving the other problems facing us.