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I just finished Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education. The book concerns the importance of trust in a functional democracy, and the importance of the extra-legal customary habits of citizenship that build distrust and trust.
The author, Danielle Allen, took this picture as the point of departure for her treatment of the extra-legal habits of citizenship. Her point was that though this picture was taken five years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, the difference between the changing of a law and the changing of the attitudes of a people is strikingly important.
Allen's main argument is that we need to rethink about the importance of our extra-legal political habits of speech and friendship, and think carefully about how casual we are with the losing side of any political debate. The "winner-take-all" mentality is antithetical to the virtues of democracy, and breeds anger and resentment that's not easily or rightfully assuaged. If nothing else, the book got me to realize the importance of saying, "Hi" to people on the street.
It sounds like an interesting book. I remember hearing a sermon once by a black preacher who mentioned white women clutching their purses tighter when they walk by. It made me feel so sad and realize that if we as a society are constantly telling young black men, verbally and nonverbally, that they aren't part of us, they don't belong to us, then we can hardly be surprised when they believe us. The preacher was making a completely different point, exhorting the younger members of his flock to behave with more decorum, saying is it any wonder that white women do this if you (speak loudly, cut up, dress in nonconservative ways, etc. etc.) but I drew exactly the opposite conclusion. Kids are always going to be kids and that means acting high-spirited and dressing in ways their parents don't find felicitous. It behooves us all to be inclusive in the way we think and act toward the others in our community.
The political really is on an entire continuum with the personal. This sounds like a good book if it makes this point.
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I'm about as likely to mug you as a lamppost is, but older people used to look at me fearfully when I was a younger man. I'm not even a big guy, either, 5'7" or 8", 140 lbs., look pretty much like a regular white guy. Sadly, or not, I catch myself doing this with younger men now.
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I was so incredibly glad today when we went hiking with Sophie today and, every time we passed someone who caught her eye, she smiled and said, "Hi! How are you?"
It's possibly the first time I've ever felt like maybe I'm not completely a bad example.
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That picture makes me feel like crying, Irami.
We are working through a really difficult consensus process right now in our local interfaith organization. I think many of the members feel all the ways that picture shows.
The ability to move through a consensus process with integrity, trust, and respect for self and others seems so very challenging for just a small community. Trying to apply those principles to a nation . . . *overwhelmed*
How do you shepherd a people through their feelings and fears and hopes and beliefs into a finding a common ground?
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quote: How do you shepherd a people through their feelings and fears and hopes and beliefs into a finding a common ground?
The older I get, the less I think you do. If given the chance, people will dig in their heels and resist change in sufficient numbers to prevent it. The only way to accomplish change is to force it onto people so rapidly that, when their heads stop spinning, they conclude that things are now the way things have always been.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: I was so incredibly glad today when we went hiking with Sophie today and, every time we passed someone who caught her eye, she smiled and said, "Hi! How are you?"
It's possibly the first time I've ever felt like maybe I'm not completely a bad example.
I surprised myself actually the last time I went hiking when I hiked Springer Mtn in Georgia this past summer. Usually I'm not unfriendly, but other than a smile, I rarely say hi to strangers on the street. But during the hike, whenever I passed a hiker, my friends and I all said hi to whoever was walking past, and all of them answered back warmly, some even in song (a bit weird but still enjoyable). Apparently hikers are jolly folk.
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Do you really think so, Tom? I've been trying all my rushed first few decades to slow down enough to give other folk a chance to breathe, too . . . and it seems like folks all around me really need that time to ponder, discuss, bitch and dream . . . and those of us who usually champ at the bit wanting to race ahead to what we "know" is the next right action usually trample these people in our haste to get there . . . I don't want to trample people anymore. It's not worth it.
I don't want them squashing others in their fear, though, either.
Well, if Hatrack hs taught me nothing else, it's that it's okay to hold off on pushing the "add reply" button. That's actually pretty empowering.
*smile*
*still pondering how one shepherds reluctant sheep*
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Don't get me wrong. I think folks appreciate time to ponder. But I think when they have time to ponder, they don't change their minds.
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I think you're right. Time to ponder just allows folks time to solidify their arguments.
I still am compelled by bylaws and directors (and an internal desire that's really tired of quarrels) to do this consensus thing in a way that preserves integrity and safety for folks.
It's very -- different for me.
And for whatever reason, that picture Irami linked to really tapped into something about the difference between the words we say we believe in, and our subsequent actions.
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quote: How do you shepherd a people through their feelings and fears and hopes and beliefs into a finding a common ground?
The older I get, the less I think you do. If given the chance, people will dig in their heels and resist change in sufficient numbers to prevent it. The only way to accomplish change is to force it onto people so rapidly that, when their heads stop spinning, they conclude that things are now the way things have always been.
That is such a sad thought, but it may well be true.
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It kind of reminds me of Machiavelli's thoughts on taking power. He believed that the smartest way to take power was to do all the really harsh stuff you had planned right at the beginning, and then once you get that out of the way, you can be nice.
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That lady, Arthurine Lucy, was being so reviled for having the radical, rude, invasive, outrageous, horrifying notion (at the time) of attending graduate school in library science. This is what boggles the mind. To see the hate plastered across the faces of those well-dressed, carefully coiffed, gentle citizens of the state. Probably those people now are grandmothers and grandfathers. I might see them with their walkers at the local grocery store, being cordial to all around them. I might hold the door for them.
I think the real lesson from the Civil Rights era (and it fascinates and inspires me) is that regular folks, your mom and your friends at school, just plain old ordinary people can harbor extreme outrage and violent objections to something that's perfectly good, right, just, and natural. The way we feel about something deep inside, the emotions that well up inside us with regards to social change, are not reliable indicators of its morality or justice or correctness. That's been truly brought home to me by my study of the civil rights movement.
If you think of it as something other people did, some bigots and racists in a place and time far from you, as something that has nothing at all to say about you and your moral decisions and judgments, then you miss the best lesson we can learn from this amazing transformation of our society that has taken place over the last 50 years or so, in still-living memory.
Witness James Watson's recent comments to the Sunday London Times, many of those old people have still not changed their minds. They go along to get by, but they still harbor their insane (to us) ideas that there is any genetic difference that matters involved with skin color. It's such a shame.
My friend who is 62 moved out of her apartment recently because there were so many Mexicans moving in around her. Before you condemn her outright, though, look from her side. The segment of the Mexican population that is moving in to her apartment are uneducated workers who are far from family and home, many of them. Many of them entertain themselves by drinking a good deal of beer and leaving the cans thrown around. They tend to hang around outside in groups, because many of them live 10 or 20 to a single apartment, in co-ops, so they can't stay in there all the time, it's too crowded. They play music which is unfamiliar sounding to my friend and her group of neighbors who have lived there a long time. They're changing the character of her place.
Nevertheless, what she did is racism. Racism lives at home. It's not something we can push off to people long ago and far away.
When people lament the higher birthrate of Islamic people in Europe, saying "what will happen to our society when we're majority Islamic?" that's racism. It's not about skin color, it's about culture. About changing how people live, taking away the privileges they've enjoyed, of being in the majority, of being only around "people like us".
We had this momentous upheaval of society, this amazing revolution ushering in an era that is so much more enlightened and beneficial to all of society. We really shouldn't lose the lessons of that time. Let's not forget. Let us never forget.
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Irami, could you explain more how the book made you realize the importance of saying hello to people on the street? I think it's the picture that's confusing me. I'm really interested, but I'm just not understanding the connection.
I think that it takes time to change people's hearts, but that you absolutely can. I also think one of the best ways is to set a good example. If people see you being kind and polite to everyone you meet, it will touch them more than if you forced or cajoled them to be kind and polite.
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The picture of is of Elizabeth Eckford trying to gain entrance to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. This is five years after Brown v. The Board of Education struck down the legality of separate but equal schooling. Allen's argument is that legal protection is not nearly appropriate to secure the kind of dignity that Elizabeth Eckford was due, and that a formal constitutional change was necessary both legal and more importantly, by the customary habits of citizenship.
Eckford was sacrificed that day for the sake of the United States, as that picture showed degradation incumbent in trying to assert her legal right to go to Central High school, and the picture forced people to take sides in the issue. The world is better place because of her sacrifice. One of Allen's points is that until we start becoming better about how we deal with the justified resentment on the part of any losing minority party, the sacrifices they make for the viability of the entire democracy, and we learn how to speak clearly concerning the day to day sacrifices history's invisible losers commit for the stability of our democracy-- move from a "winner-take-all society" to a "winner-take-nothing" one-- there will always be a justified distrust between different groups of people that's not consistent with our ideals of community. Allen argues that in order to build trust, there must be consistent and public displays of equity between two groups, especially between majority and minority powers in a democracy. I think that saying, "Hello" is a small gesture of equity.
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I guess one of the perplexing things is that there are so many splinters of folks that are convinced they are in the minority, or that they are being treated unequally. And then there are other folks who are so very tired of the perpetual rallying cry to political correctness for every idea except the one your neighbor holds -- unless it matches yours.
What we seem to have lost in this country is the ability to look at one another with eyes open and willing to see another human being worth being treated with dignity, worth being listened to, who is part of us simply because she or he is part of the human race.
It probably isn't really anything new under the sun. It's just better recognized in all its forms because of the communication systems we operate under these days.
I still don't know how you move groups of people through fear into a different place. Or if it's possible.
Saying "hello", smiling at one another, making those small simple gestures of recognizing one another's humanity -- that is a great start.
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quote:What we seem to have lost in this country is the ability to look at one another with eyes open and willing to see another human being worth being treated with dignity, worth being listened to, who is part of us simply because she or he is part of the human race.
I don't think you lose something that never existed.
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quote:What we seem to have lost in this country is the ability to look at one another with eyes open and willing to see another human being worth being treated with dignity, worth being listened to, who is part of us simply because she or he is part of the human race.
I don't think you lose something that never existed.
*shrugs*
I dunno, Javert. That's a pretty big brush stroke to paint all human beings with . . .
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I mean, at one magical point in our country or our history did everyone look at each other with respect and treat each other with dignity as an aknowledgement of being part of the human race?
Not that it isn't a good idea, but I don't think it is something we had and lost. The only way to make a case for it would be if you left out the institutionalized bigotry in the way minorities and women (for the immediate history) and slaves and foreigners and the lower classes (for the rest of human history) were treated.
I'm all for rejoicing in humanity, but I think we are closer now than we've ever been to universal human dignity.
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I totally agree. And we're still far away from it, but we're closer now than ever before.
For instance, third world people count just as much as first world people do. Why do news reports still say "FIVE AMERICANS DIED!!!!! (oh, and also seven million Indonesians.)" or whatever?
Kids growing up malnourished is a bad bad problem, no matter if they're in the U.S. or elsewhere. Some days I wonder how I can justify any of my purchases beyond the most basic necessities while knowing full well of malnourished children that I could feed instead. It's even very explicitly taught in my religion that large differences in income between people are bad, that we are to give of our substance (not our frivolities but our substance) to the poor, that if we aren't one we aren't His. I know all those things, and still I have a fancy new phone with a keyboard for text messaging. I still have a Y membership that I sometimes don't use, and I buy clothes new still and not from the thrift store.
We could feed everyone if we really wanted to. We have the resources to do that. I think we should. I wish we would.
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quote:How do you shepherd a people through their feelings and fears and hopes and beliefs into a finding a common ground?
Except in unusual circumstances, I don't think any given person CAN change a people on such a large scale by themselves. No person can control society. Change comes on its own, driven by the small actions and shifts in the intuitions of countless individuals. And if someone does trigger such a shift it is usually by setting an example, not by using force or presenting a logical argument. "Be the change..."
quote:What we seem to have lost in this country is the ability to look at one another with eyes open and willing to see another human being worth being treated with dignity, worth being listened to, who is part of us simply because she or he is part of the human race.
No we haven't. If you want to see other human beings as people of worth, all you have to do is choose to do so. Anyone can do it, if they want to. (An easy place to start might be this forum.)
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Irami, you (and anybody else who's interested, like Mrs.M) might enjoy reading, "The Anatomy of Peace" by the Arbinger Institute.
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I wish just saying hi to people on the street would fix the problems between people. But I read this Newsweek article, posted just yesterday, which makes it seem like it is going to take more than just that to make us treat each other like human beings.
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