Majority and Minority Perspectives

I had a conversation with a friend the other night that made me pause for thought. Like many other times this year, I am posting about race, but perhaps with a slightly different perspective this time.

She and I were talking about her experiences listening to minorities talk about racism, and she was the first one to express the majority perspective in a way that made me capable of seeing how very similar the two reactions are, even though they are very different in their expressions. To my friend, it seems as though minority speakers are attempting to marginalize her when they speak out against the ways that minorities have been and continue to be marginalized by the Caucasian majority in the United States. When they speak about how the Caucasian majority should care about the minorities living within the borders of the country, they are passionate, perhaps angry, and almost always frustrated by the situation between the ethnic majority and ethnic minorities in this country. My friend reacted with anger and frustration to the minorities that she feels are marginalizing her in their efforts to raise awareness and compassion.

Her response raised my awareness that one of the big problems in this whole debate is that both sides feel marginalized by the other, and neither side has much of an awareness of how the other side feels. I have been caught in the middle for some time now, but I think my sympathies have tended to live with the minorities because I have felt like the majority groups tend to be the oppressors. While I still think that is true, I realize now in a much more powerful way, how minorities marginalize the majority by making them feel like they are worthless in the same way that they have been oppressed.

In light of my friend’s reaction, and in a desire to attempt to bridge the gap so that conversation on race and oppression can take place in a more fruitful way, let me offer a couple of stories that may help those of you who either are Caucasian or for some other reason don’t understand the importance of the race discussion. As you read each of these stories, place yourself in it and imagine what your reaction would be.

1) You are a white African in South Africa. Your family has lived there for generations, and you are a judge in the court system. You receive word that you are being removed from your post because you are a white African. You are therefore not fit to judge black Africans, so you will be replaced with a black African judge.
2) You live in Zimbabwe as a farmer on a small plot of land. The government decides to restructure the farming land, and your farm is being taken away from you because you are a white African instead of a black African. If you want to continue to farm, you need to leave the country, and you can’t find a job doing anything else because those jobs are now reserved for the black Africans. As a result, you are forced to leave Zimbabwe which has been your family’s home for years.
3) You have recently moved to Spain from England, and you run into people on the streets, in the marketplace, and even in your church who tell you that you need to return to England because you do not speak Spanish, which is the official language of that country. If you want to continue to speak English instead of Spanish, and if you want to teach your children English and speak it in your home, if you want to remember the British victories and celebrations, they you don’t belong in Spain, and you need to go back to England.
4) You are an English-speaking Canadian who moves to French-speaking Quebec. You are told that you are no longer allowed to speak English in your stores, advertise in English, have your children attend English-speaking schools, etc because it is against the law in Quebec.

Each of these stories comes out of the stories of what has been happening around the world lately, and if you can understand and feel the anger of each of these situations, then you understand what it feels like to be a minority living in the United States. I have been told that latinos are a different breed of humans who can’t have the same religion, same values, or same friends as Caucasian Americans. I can’t count the number of times that I have been told that all latinos need to go back to Mexico. The first issue with that is that a lot of latinos don’t come from Mexico in the first place. The second issue is that a lot of the latinos I know are in the US legally or are US citizens, either naturalized or natural-born. I have been told that I don’t have the capability to do certain tasks because of my race. I have been told that my (guy) friends’ parents would never let me marry them because of my race. I have been told by my (girl) friends that I should make sure that their parents don’t know my race because they wouldn’t like me any more. I have been told that I should just get over my feelings about these experiences. When you read the above stories, and if you were in those positions, would you want to be told to just get over it?

Two stories in the recent days have brought to the forefront the issues of race again. After the SOTU, I watched the Daily Show with the same friends. While I wasn’t sure that some of it was in good taste, I wasn’t that disturbed until they showed the response by the LA mayor who was speaking in Spanish as the response to the latino population. As he was telling the people to join in and stand up to work for a better country because we are all one people and all one nation, they voiced over his speech making fun of the fact that he was latino. If they reacted the same way to other responses, I might not have been so angry, but the response they gave to the white responders was based on what they were saying instead of on their race.

The second instance that has disturbed me was an article in Duke’s newspaper about a musical group from sunny Bakersfield, CA (yes, CA, so think twice before you say that racism is no longer a problem in the West). They are targeting 11-12 year olds with the message of White Nationalism because they know that is one of the most influential ages. They have racially based songs, and they model for White Nationalist clothes lines. Do me a favor, and read the entire article and think about how you would feel if you were one of the many non-white people reading this article. Here are a couple of notable quotes for you:

”The name of the band is derived from the family's white Prussian ancestry along with the color of the girls' eyes. The girls have also said the name references a chemical that they say was not found at concentration camp sites. "We think it might make people question some of the inaccuracies of the 'Holocaust' myth," the girls told Viceland.com.”
"I don't think that we wouldn't have criminals, although I believe that black people are more likely to be criminals, but I would just want the races to be separate, and I'd like this to happen peacefully.”
“April said that the media is mistakenly interpreting white nationalist beliefs as racist. "We don't necessarily think that we are the best race," she said. "Asians, for example, are generally smarter than us. They score higher on tests. However, white people are more capable and live better lives. We believe the white population is shrinking, and that we're losing autonomy. We've already lost it here in the state of California. The Mexicans are the plurality here, and it's disappointing to see the majority of a population going to a race that is clearly inferior to almost all other races."
“I laugh whenever people get really mad about us, because I think it just makes the anti-racists look kind of ridiculous."

Someone explain to me how this is not racist?

The one good thing that came out of this article was that it gave me a new perspective on the South. When I told a friend here who grew up in the South about this, she asked me if there were really people in California that needed to hear this message. I said yes, it comes up multiple times a year in the Westmont newspaper, and the two responses are usually broken down into people who are minorities or have close friends who are minorities versus everyone else. The minorities and their friends argue that race is still an issue, and everyone else argues that we have moved past racism and the minorities should get over their feelings and overreactions. She said that it seems strange to her because you cannot grow up with that framework in the South. Race is something you have to deal with because you are confronted with it all the time, and for that, I’m glad.

I guess in conclusion I want to say that yes, minorities should welcome in Caucasians and learn to live in and love their culture. They should learn to communicate with them and be patient enough to sit through their cultural ceremonies, even when they don’t care, in order to understand. But this is a two way street. If that is what the Caucasian population expects from the minorities, then the minorities have every right to expect it of them as well. That means that they need to make an effort to live in and love minority cultures, to learn about the languages and customs of the people, and to make an effort to sit through and learn about the ceremonies and traditions of other cultures, even when they don’t care about that culture, in order to understand those around them.

Reflections on the SOTU

I know that the State of the Union is long over for most people by know, but there were two distinct things that came up for me in the course of watching it and the show afterwards. The first was that I don't care quite as much about politics as some other people do. I watched it with 3 friends, one of whom is extremely passionate in his hatred for George W. Bush. I understand that there are distinct reasons for his passion, and I have heard enough of his personal story to understand some of the causes. At the same time, I am not willing to completely write people off when I don't agree with them. There are plenty of things in Bush's speech that I don't like. I wish he wouldn't distort Scripture for one, or conflate Christianity and politics and allegiance to the country for another. I listened to the speech thinking that some of the things he was saying were out and out lies. At the same time, I was thrilled with a couple of things that he said. The emphasis on more responsible uses of energy makes me happy, in spite of the fact that I wish he would drop the Yucca Mountain/Nuclear energy thing unless he is willing to commit the country to the responsible yet expensive adapting of radioactive waste, so it is no longer harmful to the environment or to humans. As I was watching the speech, I was analyzing various points and agreed with some and disagreed with others. I think that the gentleman I was watching with disagreed with everything Bush said. I realized that I am not so wrapped into politics that I cannot agree with anything a person says. I am capable of analyzing the points and agreeing or disagreeing without simply responding emotionally to the person on stage.

This man is able to disagree with Bush; however, I was disturbed by his characterization of Bush as evil. I have been trained well by Westmont, and I can't say that anymore. First of all, do I think that Bush is intentionally acting poorly? No. I think he is genuinely, and if he acts the way he preaches, probably prayerfully working his way through his presidency. Do I think that means he's done everything right? Not by a long shot. Still, the characterization of Bush as evil seems to assume that he (and half of the country) are not seeking to do good (whether we agree that they are doing good or not!). It also reduces humans as created in the image of God.

Whether we agree with politicians, or anyone else, or not, they are icons to God. Icons function as windows to God. They reveal to us something about our creator. They ARE the image of God for us as they are made in his image. I am reminded of Stan Gaede's chapel talk where he answered the question, "Is it alright if I call you Stan?" In that talk, Stan tells us that we need to remember that all humans are made in the image of God and therefore that should govern how we approach all humans. He read the passage below from C.S. Lewis:

The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations–these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit–immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of the kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously–no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.

-C.S. Lewis The Weight of Glory

How right Lewis is. How right the view of the Orthodox Church that humans are icons becacuse they are made in the image and likeness of God. We have a lot to learn.