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

Sat Sep 5 17:43:34 EDT 2020

It appears the title of the book is actually "Go Set a Watchman" (see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Set_a_Watchman).

On Sat, Sep 5, 2020 at 4:27 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith
> *Sent:* Saturday, September 5, 2020 1:27 PM
> *To:* friam at redfish.com
> *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
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
>
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
>
> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>
> - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20200905/5f60e840/attachment.html>