Other (re)reads have included Moby Dick, Zen and the Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance, The Woman at Otowi Bridge (Edith
Warner), a biography of Maria Martinez (potter), the biography
of Mabel Dodge-Luhan. Not only do these books read
differently the second time around (decades later) but in the
light of a new (2+ years) partner whose backround and
perspective is radically different. Mary is much more
attuned to the Civil Rights issues than I... she grew up in
her own version of remote (a tiny college town, Chadron NE
near the Pine Ridge Rez) with a mother who was a strong civic
member and Democrat amongst mostly Republican farm/ranch
folks... her father was probably a Republican if he voted...
her brothers all rode to Sturgis, voted for Trump and are
likely to again, etc. but/and she loves them, even if she
won't speak her mind openly on those topics with them.
My sister who dated her African American friend for a time is
now in her mid-60's asking her children, my children and even
Mary and I for "something she can read to understand 'all
that'"... She and her husband voted for Trump but probably
won't again, and in her defense, lived out-of-country in Spain
and Chile for most of their adult lives, as part of the
colonialism of American Mining interests overseas. A previous
boyfriend was of a Mexican-American family in the border town
whose circumstance and status was somewhat higher than our
own... most of the merchant and professional class were the
grandchildren of Mexicans who lived there when it *was* Mexico
(pre Gadsden Purchase). My parents had a similar (though
more muted) reaction to him... that surprised me as well since
well over half of our friends and classmates from 1st Grade
has Spanish surnames. They may have also questioned her more
Anglo-Normative boyfriends along the way, maybe they were just
overprotective?
Rattling on about my sister and her family, they volunteer
with Central American refugees in Tucson because they are both
fluent in Spanish and just in the last year acknowledged that
maybe Global Warming was real AND anthropogenic and maybe they
should try to recycle or carpool or something (snarky,
sorry)...so there is hope...
Yes to "context and perspective"...
Steve,
Your story, like so many of your stories,
cuts to the heart. If you haven’t already, I recommend you
read Go Call a Watchmen, the pre-written sequel to
To Kill a Mockingbird, in which Scout discovers
that, at least from seen from a Northern perspective, is
actually a flaming racist. That perspective thing, as Glen
keeps reminding me, is so important. I would love to know
what you (-all) think of that book.
Nick
From: Friam [hidden email]
On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2020 1:27 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Today's Sermon:: a minor
awokening
Nick -
I think I may well know the man of whom you speak... he is
in my "second order circle" so I only see him while visiting
certain friends or at events we all share or the occasional
criss-cross in a public venue. I will try to remember to
ask him if he remembers YOU... question is which
stereotype might I appeal to to describe you to him? I
won't speculate on what forms that might take as I explore
my own stereotypes, or worse yet, my projections of what
*his* stereotypes of you might be. If we are talking
about the same person I doubt he would have "avoided you"...
he has been fairly politely blunt with me a few times and
then resumed the jovial conversations we were having. He
seemed very practiced at navigating (not so) hidden
judgements and assumptions about him.
My own mother had a modest amount of self-awareness,
growing up in KY fairly proud of being a "Yankee" in the
sense of north of the Mason-Dixon and from a subculture that
was too poor to have ever risked owning a slave or having a
close relative who did. She lived with her aunt in the city
of Frankfort during the school year in the depression for
lots of reasons. She was therefore raised as an only
child, her cousins having recently grown and moved out of
the family home. She tells an anecdote of having developed
a friendship with a girl who lived *somewhere* between *her
school* and her aunt's house... she would pause to play with
her every day after school until it got to where she started
being noticeably late home... when she told her aunt why she
was late, she said "why don't you just invite your friend
home next time and you can play here!"... she asked her
friend who resisted for about a week and then finally came
home (her aunt married a Scottish Doctor, so their home was
very meticulous and in a nicer neighborhood, but they lived
crazy-frugal anyway) and after the first day, her aunt very
politely told her not to invite the friend back, and in
fact, was forbidden to play with her anymore. The little
girl was apparently the first black person she had ever met
and it was years later that she guessed that that was what
it was all about... her aunt was too "polite" to make a
deal about it and too "authoritarian" to be questioned.
Later her mother gave her a family heirloom which was
referred to colloquially as a "tar baby" which her mother
explained to her had been a type of doll that young girls
were given to "play with" in the style and memory of how
their ancestors had been allowed to "play with" the slave
babies. Her mother explained how wrong *all* of it was,
from the slavery to the treating even the babies as
property, to replacing them post-emancipation with effigies,
etc. I learned this when she was unpacking from one of our
moves and it showed up in a cardboard barrel amongst her
mother's (our aunt's) china that we never used... my sister
saw it and was intrigued and "wanted to play with it"
whereupon my mother tried to explain all of this to us and
then declaring that "the best thing I can do is get rid of
it, it is just a reflection of a bad piece of history". I
don't know if it went in the burn barrel with our other
trash or if she figured out some more respectful disposal
method... I would like to think she knew of a historian or
similar for whom such an artifact could be made
meaningful. This and other similar instances made me think
that my parents were the least prejudiced people I knew,
until at 19 my sister who had a small group of friends from
college, one of who was African American... my parents
liked him a lot, he was a very sociable and interesting
person (his father was career military and his mother had
died when he was young and he and two sisters were raised by
"help"). But at some point, the friendship drifted into
the boyfriend zone and they very sternly, albeit
embarrassingly disabused me of the thought that they were
not prejudiced. I don't remember the exact conversations
but it was clear that they were very much against the
relationship, even if they didn't quite try to forbid their
(adult) daughter from continuing. I think they even
enlisted one of their (more openly) racist friends to have a
conversation with her. It did not sit well at all with me.
But made me realize how hidden some of these judgements,
stereotypes, opinions, etc can be. I'm sure I'm laced with
junk like that.
- Steve
Dear fellow congregants,
One of the things we talk about is our
bemusement at Trump supporters. One expression you often
hear these supporters say is that they admire him because
“He tells it like it is!” They can say this while
acknowledging that almost everything he says is false.
So, if he is lying most of the time, what is he telling
the truth about?
I think I know. As I keep insisting, I
am not a boomer. I am from the Silent Generation, the
Lonely Crowd. My mother’s life hero was Eleanor
Roosevelt. It was I, aged seven, who brought the news of
the President’s death to my parents, and I was startled to
seem my mother burst into tears. Crying was not her
thing. My folks were publishers. We had black, Jewish,
gay, lesbian, working class, authors visiting the house.
But – and here is the point – when they visited, they
visited as such. Not that I was told as a child
explicitly, but it was conveyed to me as a child, somehow,
that these folks belonged to a different category. And my
education, in Massachusetts, in the 40’s, was devoid of
any explicit contact with anybody in any of these
categories.
Ok, fast forward 70 years to Santa Fe.
I befriend at Ohoris an extremely tall black man,
grizzled, slow moving, thoughtful, with an intricate,
international biography full of remarkable connections and
coincidences. He fits in every conceivable way my
childhood stereotype of the “old wise black man”. I sit
in rapt attention to his stories. I look up to him, which,
given his height, is my only choice. But, as we continue
to meet, a tension begins to rise between us that is
coming largely from me, but I cannot control. He becomes
aware that I am seeing him through the stereotype of the
old wise black man. Because I cannot admit to it, he is
imprisoned by it. Our conversations are based on a
lie. He disappears from Ohoris and I never see him
again. He would rather eschew good coffee, than live in
my lie.
This is what Donald Trump is truthful
about. He tells the truth about his own stereotypes. He
is truthful about himself. That what he believes is FALSE
is irrelevant to his base. He admits to thoughts which
they know many others find distasteful. It is hard to
live in a world which has moved on from one’s childhood, a
world in which others find one’s basic categorizations
distasteful – in fact, a world in which one finds one’s
own basic categorizations distasteful.
To break Trump we need to come to a new
understanding and acknowledgement of type-isms. There are
always going to be type-isms. We human beings do that
sort of thing. Raised in a particular way, at a
particular time I see a tall grizzled black man as wise,
and everything he says and does is read through that
lens. That’s abduction. This person wears a dress, this
person is a woman, this person is gentle, that ‘s
abduction. (Well, it’s abduction-deduction, but let that
go.) Human beings naturally form identity groups that
trap ourselves and others in false abductions. So we need
to design our society to counter these. (Libertarians
beware. Here come Nick’s white vans, again) In this case
the white van takes the form of aggressive taxation of
the rich and aggressive education of the poor, and of
institutions that promote the random mixing of our
citizens (like public universities and armies – or
conservation corps).
Could my friendship with the tall black
guy have been rescued? Could we have laughed about my
stereotypes? Perhaps I should have said, early on, “Look,
I’m sorry, I keep seeing you as Uncle Remus. I am sure,
as I get to know you better, I will get over it. Please
be patient with me, and please call me out whenever you
feel confined by it. ”
A Liberalism that does not free me is
not worth the name.
Nick
Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and
Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
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