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James is the man... I didn't want to name him speculatively
on-list. I don't know the Ohori's owner, only the original founder
Susan Ohori... I guess she cashed out some time back? It hasn't
felt like her touch for some time. James would have been avoiding
Larry, not you, even though you might have been vaguely implicated
in it. He might even remember you as "Nick" and "from New England"
and "wild eyebrows"... the current circumstances don't have me
"running into him" as likely as in the past, but the discussion is
in the queue for if ever we do!<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Dear Steve, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I would not be surprised if you did,
indeed, know him. Somehow, he worked his way into being
something of a water commissioner up there, mediating the most
difficult issue I can imagine… as a stranger? The whole thing
seemed incredible to me, but a credit, in any case, to the
vibes he gives off. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I won’t tell on FRIAM entire story of how
our last meeting went. I also befriended the then owner of
Ohori’s, a very sweet and generous human, also with LOTS of
life experience, who can easily flip into right wing asshole
or left wing asshole, depending of what is needed to call
attention to himself and create tension in the room. So I am
sitting talking to our tall friend and Larry comes up to the
table and says, “Can I join you?” I want to say no, but Larry
does, after all, own the place, so my Liberal
anybody-can-talk-to-any-body-else thing kicks in, and we’re
off. Larry flips into right-wing asshole, I try to modulate,
and Our Friend stays for a suitably polite interval and then
makes his excuses and leaves. As he goes out the door, Larry
turns to me and says, “Did I say something?” (Larry is not a
complete idiot; he just plays one on TV) <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It goes down as one of the most humiliating
moments of my life. But I am not sure you can repair it. I
guess you could say, if he remembers me, that the bald, lame,
crow-watcher thinks fondly of him, would love to know how the
water thing worked out, and looks forward to running into him
again as soon as I can start going to coffee houses again. I
think his name is James. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I am glad to know he is alive, and
presumably well. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As to you second story, it is terribly
familiar. Both my father and my older brother could, when not
sober, talk about “Jews”. It just seemed to come out of
nowhere. I will reserve my further comment for a FRIAM post
which I will make in a moment. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Thanks, Steve, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Nick <o:p></o:p></p>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal">Nicholas Thompson<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Emeritus Professor of Ethology and
Psychology<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Clark University<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="mailto:ThompNickSon2@gmail.com"
moz-do-not-send="true"><span style="color:#0563C1">ThompNickSon2@gmail.com</span></a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a
href="https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/"
moz-do-not-send="true"><span style="color:#0563C1">https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/</span></a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
</div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<div style="border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1
1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in">
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>From:</b> Friam
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com"><friam-bounces@redfish.com></a> <b>On Behalf Of </b>Steve
Smith<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Saturday, September 5, 2020 1:27 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:friam@redfish.com">friam@redfish.com</a><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [FRIAM] Today's Sermon:: a minor
awokening<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
</div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p>Nick -<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>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. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p>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.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>- Steve<o:p></o:p></p>
<blockquote style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt">
<p class="MsoNormal">Dear fellow congregants,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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 <i>as such.</i>
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. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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. <i>Our
conversations are based on a lie.</i> He disappears from
Ohoris and I never see him again. He would rather eschew
good coffee, than live in my lie. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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). <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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. ” <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A Liberalism that does not free me is not
worth the name.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Nick <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Nicholas Thompson<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Emeritus Professor of Ethology and
Psychology<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Clark University<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="mailto:ThompNickSon2@gmail.com"
moz-do-not-send="true">ThompNickSon2@gmail.com</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a
href="https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br>
<br>
<o:p></o:p></p>
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