[FRIAM] Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

[Steve Smith]

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
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com>
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>  
>
>  
>
>
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