Re-viewing

Remember seeing the picture of two profiles that could morph into a picture of a vase if you just looked a little differently? Or the one of the old woman and young woman, merged into one ... until you identify each of them individually? If you've run into these, maybe in Intro Psych, you may have heard them described as examples of reversible figure-ground relationships—what you see, what is figure and what is ground, can shift when you change your focus to a different bit of the picture or change your orientation relative to it. The picture doesn’t change. Your perspective does. You do.

       

                

So, here's my own recent encounter with a reversible figure/ground moment: 

Walking happily along a favorite trail I spotted this stump with a huge hole straight through it, so cleanly through that you could see the contours of the field behind it. I saw it from a distance, and was stopped in my tracks by the improbable perfection of this hole.

So I moved closer, wanting to see how it was done, this huge, precise hole …

and then closer yet ...

Not a hole at all, but the blunt end of a sawed-off branch, pointing straight at me. I've seen this stump a few times since. Each time, I'm first struck by the surprising hole, clean through. Only when I get closer, shift my perspective, do I remember that it's something else entirely.

Recently, I’ve had some of these moments on a totally different plane—not so much perceptual as conceptual and emotional shifts, in my experiences related to difference, oppression, diversity, and privilege.

A couple of weeks ago, we went to see the movie "I Am not Your Negro." The movie traces the experience of  James Baldwin, the noted African American author, speaker, and sometimes activist, as he decides to re-enter the fray—the Civil Rights movement—abandoning for a time his self-exile/ex-pat status in Paris (and sometime Turkey), where he went to escape the racism of his birth nation. I knew of Baldwin's work before, both because of its significance as literature and because of its meaning to the African American and LGBT communities.  But to be honest, I've never read  his work, not even the novel that I know gave voice to many queer folks' experience, Giovanni's Room. 

Joshua Dysart, in an IMDb review, writes of this movie, “a large part of this film consists of clips from Hollywood's rough history of reducing or falsifying the black American experience, often with Baldwin's own criticisms laid on top of them, weighing the clips down, eviscerating them. There are hard juxtapositions here as well, such as the innocence of Doris Day pressed up against the reality of lynched black men and women swaying in trees. By contextualizing these images in new and fresh ways the film is able to paint an impressionistic portrait of American denial.”

American denial. The shoe fits. I used to love Doris Day (and Sidney Poitier, the “good” Black whose acceptance proved we weren’t racist). I used to not think about—not even know about—lynchings.

The film, Dysart continues, “also ties itself to the moment. Images of Ferguson, photographs of unarmed black children left dead in the streets by police, video of Rodney King being brutalized beyond any justification, all of it means that Baldwin's words ring timeless, his call to action not remotely diffused by our distance from him and his time.”

If you have seen the film, you’re likely with me at this point, recalling those scenes and the awful discomfort they stirred. The self-righteous outrage, of course, but also the memory of when these things happened, and how I, personally, watched from afar, horrified in principle, but not moving. American denial.

Among the most compelling moments in the film came during interviews by then-famous talk-show host Dick Cavett. At one point, Cavett invites Baldwin to sort of absolve the US of the continuing sins of racism, appealing to a common argument: Sure there's still work to be done, but we've come a long way, right? Baldwin refuses the bait, noting instead how far we have not come, how much American society/culture continues to use Black people as an object of projection: whatever is bad among us, we attribute to Black people. Cavett is  caught noticeably off guard by this response, frozen except for his eyes, which glance nervously around like he's looking for help—or an exit. It's here that Baldwin utters the line that rang in my head as the credits rolled: “What white people have to do, is try and find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a n****r in the first place. Because I'm not a n****er. I'm a man, but if you think I'm a n****r, it means you need it. . . . If I'm not a n****r here and you invented him — you, the white people, invented him — then you've got to find out why…"

When I heard it, my breathing stopped the way my steps did when I saw the sawed-off branch that had seemed so clearly a hole, clean through. Racism isn’t just an absence—of understanding, of empathy—It’s not just a hole. It’s the sawed-off stump of our own need for something, someone to contain all of the things we fear, all of the things we hate in ourselves. And I’m talking here not just about individuals—those other “others” whom I can dislike and disown because they have bigoted ideas. I’m talking about each of us, and all of us as a collective. A society that has invented, in Baldwin’s words, others to hold our own disowned shadows—the Red heathens, the Yellow demons, the Black n****rs, the Brown “rapists and murderers.”

Heavy, huh? No wonder Cavett was stunned into (at least temporary) silence. So was I. As we were driving home, talking about the film, my partner said that Baldwin was her first anti-racism teacher. I can see why. I've added Giovanni’s Room to my iPad library so I can catch up with the 1950s on my next trip, just 60 years late.

Shortly after that, we attended an event at History Colorado, organized by the Japanese American Citizens League. The occasion was the 75th annual Day of Remembrance commemorating Executive Order  #9066, issued on February 19, 1942, just weeks after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, launching the US into WWII. Order 9066 opened the way for a program of mass eviction that would eventually see about 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry—at least 70,000 of them US citizens—moved from their homes, their jobs and businesses, and their lives along the west coast and imprisoned in concentration camps elsewhere in the US. The ostensible rationale was, of course, that they might prove a danger to the war effort, since any Japanese attack would likely come from the west. Disregarded in this rationale was the fact that only a small proportion of Japanese residents of Hawaii—fewer than 2000 of the 150,000+ living there at the time—were similarly incarcerated, despite Pearl Harbor. Not to mention that infants and people with 1/16 Japanese ancestry were included (remember the “one drop” rule for who was considered Black?). In reality, no person of Japanese ancestry was ever convicted of espionage, treason, or sabotage during the war.

The camps were scattered around the West, mostly in desert or cold mountainous regions. One, called Amache, was in Colorado, in the south eastern plains, near the town of Granada. Not far from Sand Creek, the site of one of post-Civil War America's most horrific massacres of indigenous people (about which I’ve written here before). The Colorado connection tugs at me. It reminds me of this state’s checkered past in matters of racism—the Indian Wars and Sand Creek in the late 1800s, the dominance of the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado politics during the 1920s, Amache in the mid-1940s. It belies my idyllic image of this gorgeous, complicated state, seen in my early years through the eyes of a child born and raised here, sheltered and privileged, oblivious to it all.

The Day of Remembrance, like “I’m not your Negro,” was full of moments of insight and disarming new awareness. A few of these stand out in retrospect. One was when the organizers were making introductions. After recognizing a few dignitaries, they asked, “If anyone here is a survivor of the camps, would you please raise your hand?” Maybe 20 hands went up—I can’t be sure, because my eyes filled with tears. Here, right here in this room, I thought, are people who were forced to leave everything behind—everything, that is, but one suitcase—and climb on buses to nowhere. They survived, and here they are, sitting scattered among us. Still here, still in America. After all that. Later, after the keynote speaker (who was very interesting in a detached, academic sort of way; not exactly what I was wanting at that point), they opened the floor to people’s stories.

Not surprisingly, I guess, there were many stories of the racism that preceded the war—taunting, harassment, overt discrimination in employment and housing, inability to own land, limitations on educational opportunities and professions open to people of Asian descent. So reminiscent of more familiar tales of racism in my own lifetime—especially directed at African Americans—recently 'managed’ by non-discrimination laws and increased social censure for such attitudes and behaviors. Until, that is, the presidential campaign that made it all OK again.

Then there was the story of a man whose family had lived in Peru. The US government went to Peru to pick them up, and transferred them to a camp in Texas (where, incidentally, there were also German and Italian detainees). And the now-90-year-old woman who recalled the kindness of friends and allies who had made it possible for her to go to college. And the woman, an ally, who helped her friend, a Japanese American, whose recently deceased mother had been in the camps, to take care of her mom’s possessions after mom’s death. They found money hidden all around the house and multiple bank accounts, each with a substantial amount of money. Breadcrumbs pointing to lingering fear of being taken away. Again. Though it had been 70 years.

There was no dearth of explicit parallels drawn between those years and today—particularly for people of color, especially immigrants. The threat of profiling, the possibility (however remote it may seem) of similar Executive Orders, similar restrictions, evictions, even camps. The fear of the police, who are helpers to the privileged, but sources of danger to the targeted. And American denial writ large. 

The museum has an excellent online exhibit about Order 9066 and the Japanese Internment. I recommend the whole thing, but especially check out the propaganda video on “Japanese relocation,” obviously designed to convince Americans (non-Japanese, non-German, non-Italian, non-Jewish, etc. Americans) that not only were these camps a good idea, but the people being moved to them were delighted to go. It’s chilling. American denial.

But importantly, another, very different part of this experience was my awareness that this huge room was full to overflowing, and some large proportion of people there were not apparently of Japanese descent. Allies. The room was not sprinkled, but splotched with allies. One of the best moments in the Women’s March—and, by the way, one of the most empowering moments in my partner’s video about responding to this political moment—was the recognition that many, many people really do believe we’re all in this together. 

This morning, I heard a radio show in which one of the guests, who is Jewish, pointed to the oft-repeated caution in the Jewish community: never again. And that means, he said, never again. We must stand up right from the beginning so that what happened in Germany can never happen again, to anyone. I saw a sign in photos from one of the Women’s Marches—in D.C., I think. It evoked the famous Martin Niemoller quote, written after the Holocaust:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— 
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— 
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

but this sign had a contemporary twist:

First they came for the Muslims

and we said, not this time, f***ers!

It was really heartening to see that, almost 4 months after the election, 6 weeks since the inauguration, it is still possible to fill a large room with people who are genuinely interested in and standing with marginalized groups of which they are not a member. 

That, my friends, fills me with hope. Which is hugely different from the emptiness I would feel, the despair at history repeating itself, if I didn’t notice this joyful part.

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2017. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post. 

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Peril and privilege

Last week, I had an unexpected opportunity to learn a bit about the geometric perils of reality as an aging (and not always fully attentive) being. And also, in retrospect, about personal privilege in this physically fraught world.

My first lesson in physics came one evening in the early hours of an ice storm—an event so uncommon in Colorado that I found instant common ground with other Colorado natives in our shared sense of displacement: In Colorado? An ice storm? On the evening in question, I was crossing a street, doing my best to walk carefully—short steps, feet apart, arms free for balance—when I nonetheless slipped on the slanted road surface and landed hard on my kiester, glasses flying off backward into the street. Actually, my experience wasn’t of “slipping.” I was upright, and then I wasn’t. No struggle to regain my balance, no precarious moment when I thought I might be able to fall “correctly.” I was standing and then, without pause, I wasn’t. Two men stopped their respective trucks to hop out and hoist me back to my feet, then help me to the curb—a gesture I both hated and loved.

The fall itself wasn’t remarkable. I’ve since heard from or about several other people who fell that night or the next morning. It’s this extra bit, the “senior bonus” that makes it notable: my very first thought, even as I hit, was “Did I break a hip?” Then, “Did I break anything?” That instant fear of major injury is, at least for me, unique to my aging years. Partly, it’s about osteoporosis, the bugaboo of old women. But mostly, it’s about the many stories of broken hips leading to long, slow trajectories of healing or decline, as one problem yields to another in a body that’s, quite understandably, less resilient than it used to be.

I was lucky, as I’ve been with previous falls (although I have to say, those were less teeth rattling than this one). I was fine. I had a brief headache, and every joint in one arm felt sore. But I was fine in a day or two. I was lucky. This time.

Then, the next evening, I was moving a table—a huge, solid oak, sway-backed monster of a multi-section table—whose legs are loose and swing inward when you lift the table (which, for obvious reasons, can’t be dragged). It takes at least two to move it, and when you set it down, you have to use your feet to carefully move the legs outward so they won’t collapse under the weight of the table. Well, in a moment of less-than-laser-focused attention, I set the table down with a bit of one finger positioned right where the leg would soon make contact with the table top as it landed. When I pulled my searingly painful finger back, I saw not the expected deep red, bluing pinch injury, but a gush of blood. With considerable help, I got it bandaged with enough gauze and enough pressure to stem the flow. Trying for a little humor, I asked folks around me if I was looking pale … they just rolled their eyes. When I got home and took the bandage off, the gush resumed. So we bandaged it tight again, and I headed to urgent care the next a.m. They sewed it up and sent me home with a finger wrapped so as to accentuate my feelings about the political news of the day. 


Later that day, I took a wonderful hike in the snow with a friend, my wounded and bandaged middle digit carefully protected in a surgical glove.

So, I came away from these traumas to my body with minor injuries and good stories. But what if I hadn’t? What if I had broken something when I fell. If someone had suggested calling 911, I wouldn’t have had to think twice about the cost of an ambulance before I said OK. En route to the hospital, I wouldn’t have had to hesitate about whether to refuse any treatment they might suggest. Ditto in the ER and on the ward, if I were admitted. That’s thanks in part to Medicare, but it’s also because I can afford good supplemental coverage, and I can manage to pay whatever deductible is left over.

And when I actually did get hurt the next day (OK, in a minor way), I didn’t have to think twice about going to urgent care or about receiving the preferred treatment because of the cost. I didn’t hesitate to accept a digital block, which let me watch the stitching procedure without feeling it. And I welcomed the plastic finger-tip splint that I’m now wearing, without even asking what I’d be charged for it.

I came away from it all feeling really lucky that none of it was serious. And also really privileged that I never once had to second guess whether I could pay for whatever care I needed.

Amazing what you can learn from a fall and a finger pinch.

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2017. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post. 

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Bungee cords and boiling cauldrons

  

I’ve tried to start this particular blog post several times over the past week and a half, each time dropping it mid-process—either because I had something I needed to do instead or because I just couldn’t find a way to contain what I’ve been thinking and feeling in ordered sentences. Sometimes a linear form just doesn’t work, like when my mind is chaotic, more like a tangle of angel hair spaghetti than a coherent string of words. (As you’ll see, I keep hunting for the perfect metaphor. So far, to no avail.)

Disordered and disheveled. That's how it’s been of late, for me and a lot of folks I know. Highs and lows stirred together in a bubbling goulash of executive orders, determined activism, unrelenting doubt, inspiring words and deeds, politicians’ cowardice, rogue resistance, touching kindness—and always, hovering over this brew, that face and that voice. The specter of four more years of that face and that voice. The culinary image may be a stretch, but it works to describe my state of mind today. It'll soon seem wrong. I can’t find a way to reduce this all to words on paper. Not yet. Maybe not for a while.

To illustrate, here are a couple of bits from my efforts to write about this:

Photo by Lyn Ferguson, sign by Ann Noonan,
ideas and materials from Resonance Chorus sign-making workshop.
Music, art, and collaboration as activism

•         “I feel like I’m tied to the end of a bungee cord. On a hope-fueled high before the election when Hillary was polling so well, plummeting afterward as the ugly realization hit, rebounding fairly well with the encouragement of wise movement folks (summarized in this newly released video) and the commitment to get busy, crashing into the abyss on inauguration day, springing up again at the Women’s March, and then flailing downward in the first awful days of Trump’s manic spate of executive orders and proclamations …” 

•    “Some years ago, friends and I backpacked every spring in the Southern Utah desert. Each time, I had this surreal awareness: when we were down inside a canyon, living there for days on end, the canyon seemed like Reality. ‘On top’ was irrelevant—not just distant, but totally absent from my thoughts. Then, as we drove back to ‘civilization,’ I always had this head-shaking moment looking out over the desert, seeing only hints of all the canyons and washes I knew were there. Now this flat world seemed like Reality, and the living depths of the canyon we just left seemed other-worldly. That’s how this time since the election has seemed to me: two ‘realities” smashed together in a bewildering melange ...”

There have been other, also aborted stabs at the right metaphor—roller coaster, of course, and yo-yo, among others. I abandoned all of them, out of necessity, frustration, distraction, or a sense of flat-out futility. How could words ever capture this experience—so painfully concrete but so amorphous? I’m sure today’s bubbling cauldron would suffer the same fate if I left it for a bit.

In the time since I wrote the two paragraphs above (just days ago, actually), more “moments” have been added to the string of bungee drops and rebounds, canyon ventures and returns to the flat. Lots of mean-spirited decrees from the oval office, their supposed author captured on camera like a child posing with a trophy. These always interspersed with moments that remind me of the best of us—rogue Park Service employees posting now-censored climate data, huge spontaneous pro-immigration (aka anti-Trump) demonstrations at airports around the country, the acting Attorney General refusing to have her office defend the anti-immigration order. And then she got fired (of course). Up and down, this reality and that, back and forth.

On Sunday, I had an experience that made me smile, realizing that this is exactly how it happens. Here it is, in near-real time:

 

I was on an early-morning walk, stewing about all this, and I decided I needed to settle down and do a “be here now” exercise. I slowed my pace, paid attention to my breathing, and looked around at the morning. The trees outlined against the bright morning sky, “barren” and beautiful. Leaves frozen in the ice of a drainage ditch near a park. Dry grasses looking for all the world like a painting of the tall grass prairie. It was lovely and soothing. Until I pulled myself out of this calm moment, remembering that I needed to hustle back because we were going to an event and needed to get there early. I picked up my pace, put away my camera phone, and let my breathing do what it would. Perfect, I thought: just when I was settling into the moment of meditative bliss, I’m snatched back into that other, hectic reality. Still, after the week’s torrent of ugliness, ending with Trump's executive order / decree on immigration, I knew I needed this outing.

         

The event was “Sunday School for Atheists,” a program in the Warm Cookies of the Revolution series. We sang some protest songs, heard a really excellent (perhaps because it was so validating) talk about how non-violent protests ‘work,’ and ate cookies. And donuts and bagels. With chocolate milk, for those who wanted it (unflavored soy and cow’s milk also available). A bungee spring, a transition between canyon and top, another stir of the pot. And so it goes …

So what’s my point in all this? I guess it’s this: I have to get used to this pattern, be ready to manage wrenching shifts that I don’t anticipate and find some sort of sustenance in the good stuff, when it happens, because this is our reality now, and is likely to be for a long time. We can fantasize about impeachment all we want—and it may happen. But more likely, it won’t. So I’m reckoning that I need to find enough internal and external resources to sustain some sort of integrity and stay engaged for four years and enough resilience to withstand the body blows that could knock me off my pins and make me give up.

Like everyone I know, I’ve been reading a lot of interesting commentaries through all this. Some really help me focus on this goal of persistence. One was a piece by Lauren Duca, who wrote in Teen Vogue back in December—before Trump had officially begun his assault on the things I most value. She invoked the analogy of a frog that doesn’t know it’s about to be boiled because the water gets hot so slowly. “The good news about this boiling frog scenario,” she wrote, “is that we’re not boiling yet. Trump is not going to stop playing with the burner until America realizes that the temperature is too high. It’s on every single one of us to stop pretending it’s always been so hot in here.”

And another, this one a New York Times column by Zynep Tufekci 

[I]t is much easier to pull off a large protest than it used to be. … The Women’s March … started with a few Facebook posts and came together in a relatively short amount of time. … This doesn’t mean that protests no longer matter — they do. [But] protests should be seen not as the culmination of an organizing effort, but as a first, potential step. … more like Rosa Parks’s refusal to move to the back of the bus. What used to be an endpoint is now an initial spark. … More than ever before, the significance of a protest depends on what happens afterward.

And this, from Emma Roller, a freelance writer, reporting in the NYT on the Women’s March in DC:

There’s more to activism than protest, and there’s more to activism than only talking to friends who already agree with you. We have to be uncomfortable, for as many years as it takes.

The last sentence reminds me of the old saying about the role of a newspaper (repurposed to define the role of activism): “To comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” And “the comfortable” would include me.

I need to be prepared to be uncomfortable—swinging from that bungee cord, stewing in that broth—for years, and to still remain faithful to the values I purport to hold, not becoming inured to the heat in the pot. As Marshall McLuhan famously urged, “There are no passengers on spaceship Earth. We are all crew.” 

My honest, heart-felt, anxious question: Can I do this?

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2017. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post. 

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The space between The Dream and the dread

What a complicated, paradoxical week lies ahead, bracketed by two weirdly incongruous events, leading next weekend to a celebration of resistance and hope by hundreds of thousands of women (and some men) in locations all across the nation and beyond—a global event that includes around 400 marches in 40 countries at last count.  

The opening bracket is Monday’s national holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Civil Rights icon who is regarded as such a moral leader (despite certain moral lapses) that his image, name, and rhetoric have been appropriated by all manner of groups and causes. And the closing one comes on Friday, when the 45^th president of the United States will be inaugurated, a man who is regarded by many as a rescuer from the swamp, but by few as a moral leader. The contrast was highlighted over the weekend, of course, when the president-elect verbally bashed another Civil Rights activist, Rep. John Lewis, accusing him of “all talk, no action”—as if the scar on Lewis’ head came from couch surfing. It’s telling that Lewis wasn’t baited into a response. That, I suggest, is moral clarity.

Not the person who will be inaugurated this week

This morning, Monday, I heard my partner singing: “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around … I’m gonna keep on walkin’, keep on talkin’…,” words from a traditional protest song, “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around.” I’ve sung it at a lot of events and actions, but this morning, it had an especially poignant feel because I’m feeling so disoriented by the contrast between Monday and Friday. I celebrated King’s work today—and, as important, his iconic moral stature— at a rally and march, as I would if we weren’t in such a mess. Standing in the cold before we took off on our route through downtown Boulder, we sang that very song.

It felt particularly good to be in a crowd singing protest songs. But it felt different from usual, as I looked down the week to Friday. On the one hand, these songs are perfect for this week, this off-kilter time—songs of resilience, the commitment to ‘keep on walkin’, keep on talkin’. But, damn! I hate that they feel so right precisely because of what will transpire at week’s end.

Still, I remind myself that there’s light at the end of the week-long tunnel: the Women’s March(es) on Saturday, designed to put the new president on notice on Day 1. This may be the ray of hope that unites Monday to Friday.

Not long ago, a New York Times column by Susan Chira worried about the costs to feminism of Hillary Clinton’s loss:

This was supposed to be the year of triumph for American women. … Instead, for those at the forefront of the women’s movement, there is despair, division and defiance. Hillary Clinton’s loss was feminism’s, too. … A man whose behavior toward women is a throwback to pre-feminist days is now setting the tone for the country. … Many who care about the place of women in American society are gripped by fears that men will now feel they have a free pass to demean women at home or in the workplace, that women’s health, economic security and reproductive rights will be dealt severe blows.

In what seems like a psychologically apt image, she described the Women’s March(es) as “an apt metaphor for the moment: movement as primal scream.”

The core point of Chira’s column, as I read it, is that feminism is at an existential turning point. It clearly isn’t, and can’t be, what it was in the 1970s. Since then, we’ve had decades of growing awareness of the complex intersectionality beneath the term “women.” There’s no going back from those painfully-learned insights. But we have little idea what tomorrow’s feminism (or whatever we’ll call it) might become—or, perhaps more to the point, we have countless ideas (for discussions of this question, read this and this). The question is how, and whether, these ideas will come together.

So tonight I’m thinking, this situation is just a microcosm of the the working edge of the movement: the marches offer an opportunity to stitch together the two sides of this strange seam in history. The task is simply to simultaneously resist the backward turn to the (distorted) view of the nation as a monolithic utopia before diversity and globalism made it so dang complicated—i.e., resist Friday—and embrace King’s “Dream” of what this nation (and the “women’s movement”) can become when we welcome both of these realities in our vision—i.e., embrace Monday.

No small task, but what better venue for beginning it than in the midst of thousands of fired-up women, many of us wearing defiant pink “pussy hats”? 

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2017. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post. 

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I forgot the tide pools

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In my last post, I mentioned taking redundant photos of Haystack Rock from the beach in Oregon (and I shared a couple). But I forgot to add say that one day at low tide 

... a bit lower than this ...

I ventured across the jagged rocks at the foot of Haystack Rock to snap some photos of the tide pools exposed by the receding ocean. So, to offer a change of mood from recent politically heavy blogs, here’s one with no purpose other than to share amateur portraits of some lovely creatures that inhabit the liminal space between sea and land.

I'm sure there's a message here, too—maybe something about resilience and tenacity in the face of radical change. But I won't belabor it.

              

                              

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2017. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post. 

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Entering 2107

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Not a bad view to welcome the new year, eh? We just got back from a trip to Oregon, welcoming the new year on the coast, and then moving on to Portland for the biennial National Multicultural Conference and Summit (NMCCS), a gathering of (mostly) psychologists—about 800 of them this year—who are interested in multicultural issues. I had originally waffled about whether to attend this conference, but after the election, I knew I needed to be there. Given the state of the nation, it was the perfect way to return from the coastal retreat to the cultural fray.

            

The time at the coast was, predictably, relaxing and rejuvenating. We were welcomed by a rainbow, proof that we were at the right place. Then for three days, we bundled up for cold walks on the beach, ate good food in small local restaurants (which were pretty quiet, once the New Year’s partying was over), took multiple redundant photos of Haystack Rock and some of the beach as it changed colors, and conversed with gulls accustomed to handouts. 

                                    
 

We slept with the window open and the ceiling fan on so we could hear and smell the ocean during the night.

And then, re-entry. NMCCS is something of a haven for people who are committed to diversity work. I think it’s the only place I regularly hang out where I am, along with other white people, in the numerical minority for days. My queer identity is a part of the “multicultural” programming, but the (relative) invisibility of this identity means that my whiteness marks me as an outsider, for a change. An important position to experience occasionally—more often than I typically do.

The beauty of this space is that people collectively assume that those around them are firmly invested in issues of diversity and work against oppression, so it’s never necessary to defend or explain a position that honors these issues as central (rather than peripheral) to how we do psychology and how we function in the world. As a result. it’s a remarkably non-judgmental gathering. People generally trust the good intentions of others, grant space for “mistakes,” and honor growth rather than perfection in understanding the experiences and perspectives that folks bring with them.

I always learn here, and I always feel challenged in realizing what I didn’t know. This year, it had an added impact for me: it was one of several recent experiences that have left me in a reflective mood about my own place in the world—appropriate for a new year. More on that later.

So, let me take you on a quick tour of my time at the conference and some of the insights I gleaned while I was there. I was very aware from the start of the vigilance that folks who gathered for this event are feeling in the wake of November’s election, with frequent references to the incoming administration and the mixture of anger and anxiety that its ascendance evokes. Both the pre-conference reception and the opening plenary began by describing this conference as a place of safety, where “all of your complex identities” are welcome, a place to “enjoy feeling brave,” to “renew your strength, encourage, and be encouraged.” It seemed clear to me that other folks came to this conference guided by an impulse similar to mine: to join with a like-minded community in nourishing energy for the challenges ahead. Sprinkled among these comments were summons to “carry the water, even when it’s not popular” and “speak up anyway.” These words of encouragement reminded me of a Martina McBride song, “Anyway,” which suddenly seems totally suited to this moment in history. Excerpts:

Anyway

You can spend your whole life building
Something from nothin'
One storm can come and blow it all away
Build it anyway

You can chase a dream
That seems so out of reach
And you know it might not never come your way
Dream it anyway

…..

This world's gone crazy
It's hard to believe
That tomorrow will be better than today
Believe it anyway

…..

You can pour your soul out singing
A song you believe in
That tomorrow they'll forget you ever sang
Sing it anyway
Yeah, sing it anyway

I sing
I dream
I love
Anyway

If feeling beseiged, these people were also inspired and inspiring. “Don’t let anyone take away your power,” one speaker urged, “the struggle is as important as the outcome.” More than once, I heard the presidential campaign and election described as a backlash—and this framed as good news: Those who resist diversity wouldn’t work so hard to stifle, deny, and discredit it if they weren’t frightened by how far we’ve come, what a force we can be for change. An empowering perspective that certainly inspires me to more action!

So, besides these general messages, what else did I learn? I’ll just mention a few sessions to suggest the flavor of the conference.

In one session, elders from several indigenous groups discussed their experiences with colonization. Most of the material they discussed was familiar to me from previous events and workshops I’ve attended. But drenched in two hours of references to colonization, this information took on a new quality that changed my gut sense of indigenous experiences, erasing any impulse to exoticize and leaving only the reality of systemic, persistent, to-the-bone deep marginalization. And remarkable resilience. 

Another workshop examined the roles of allies to marginalized groups, couched in terms of using the word “ally” as a verb rather than a noun: to be an ally is to take action, not just to invoke supportive rhetoric or adopt symbolism that carries no commitment to actually do anything.  One woman suggesting the term “accomplices” as a replacement for “allies” because it implies active engagement, even in the face of resistance. This was a challenging discussion for me. I agree with this position, and my agreement is another element in my personal reflections.

And then there was a session on aging. First, we shared hopes and fears about aging. Predictably, the fears were mostly about physical and cognitive decline and about social isolation. The hopes were mostly about remaining vibrant, presumably until the very moment of death. One African American woman who grew up in the rural South, living in a multi-generational home told us that aging and death had never carried any particular stigma because in her world, both were so integrated into life. Her comments led us to the topic of ‘good’ dying (and the book Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. I recommend it highly). From there, we shifted to the ageism implicit in the concept of “super aging,” and from there, we were off on a conversation about daily microaggressions, those well-intended words and acts that are meant to be kind, but are actually patronizing, even infantilizing. I’ve written about this plenty of times here, so I won’t go on about it.

I left the conference feeling inspired by the community and the political power I’d just experienced. Then, the night we got home, I awoke around midnight to a feeling that something was missing in my life. I went back to sleep easily, and just before I woke up the next morning, I had a dream that left me feeling alone and lost, aimless. After a long talk with my partner and some reflective walks, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m hunting for something I used to have and now don’t. I have to find out what it is, and the answer is almost certainly related to this conference (OK, and maybe the beach). I joked with my partner, “Maybe it’s just a dog.” But honestly, I think it’s something more, some sense of purpose. Just what it will look like isn’t clear. But I’ve been here before, and I know a few things about my process at this juncture—words like patience, openness, exploration come to mind. I know I can’t force it, but I also know I have to be actively engaged in the search.

I’m confident I’ll find it, whatever it is. Meanwhile, the process itself brings a sense of meaning that feels good. As the woman at NMCCS said, the struggle is as important as the outcome.

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2017. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post. 

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