Ooof. The electoral apocalypse, a week later

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So, I’ve been missing from the blogosphere for a long time. Sometime, I may try to pull my thoughts together to explain why. But not today, one week after Hillary Clinton gave her concession speech. A week and a day after Donald Trump became the official president elect. Today, I have to talk about that event, because it pretty much dominates what I’m thinking and feeling as I go through these days. I don’t presume that I have anything novel and newsworthy to say here. Lots of people who are lots smarter and more informed than I have already written volumes. But I’m hoping that writing about this experience will clarify it for me … and maybe speak to someone else as well. Maybe I’ll throw in some pictures, just to break up the ocean of text. Visual notes from a sunnier summer.

OK, how to begin describing the plunge in hope and mood that started last Tuesday evening – an experience I know I shared with many – and my efforts to crawl back to the surface? Background: I worked a lot on the Dem campaign because I knew I had to do something. Otherwise, if Hillary lost, I’d feel awful, knowing I hadn’t done whatever I could. So I started in early September, registering voters. Then in November, I moved on to canvassing, going door to door and encouraging people to vote … preferably to vote Democratic. Let me just mention that this activity is my second-least-favorite pastime in the world, surpassed in its awfulness only by phone banking. I’ve done lots of both over the years, and I hate it. But out I went, into local neighborhoods, clipboard in hand, knocking on doors and checking folks off my list. Each time I got out of my car, I’d take a deep breath and tell myself, “Just do this, Janis. Just do it.” Then I’d put on my friendly face and start knocking on strangers’ doors. I was glad I was doing it.

Then election day, at last. I worked all day, coming and going from the campaign office with a new list every few hours. The mood there was so up-beat, so casually confident, I caught the easy optimism, and left there late in the day, looking forward to going home and cheering as the results came in. You all know what happened next.

I went to bed late, slept poorly, and awoke feeling like I had a sandbag on my chest. I recognized the raw feeling that comes when you realize that a terrible thing happened yesterday, and it’s still there. It wasn’t a dream. I spent hours buried in news stories, hoping for a glimmer of hope, disbelieving what I read. Some moments, I felt angry – at Trump’s very existence, at the people who voted for him, at the media, at the Democratic party, at Hillary … looking for someone to blame. Sometimes, I felt deeply fearful, a bit for myself, but mostly for the very vulnerable people that Trump so actively, egregiously targeted during the campaign. Mostly, I felt depressed. Heavy of heart, unable to move from my computer chair, not interested in … anything. I was hugely relieved when my partner quietly said to me, “It’s not depression. It’s grief.”

            

Grief, I thought. I might be able to manage grief. Struggle through it rather than sink beneath it. I know some ways to keep grief from becoming full-fledged depression. Like getting active, physically and in other constructive ways. The first thing I did was go for a long walk. And on that walk, I began to sketch some thoughts for surviving the coming days of this to-my-core sadness and for getting active as it lifted.

My first thoughts focused, not surprisingly, on this question of grief. I asked myself what I was grieving for, what had I lost? Well, for starters, the possibility of a continuation of relatively progressive politics in this country. The possibility of shifting the Supreme Court toward a more positive stance over the next several decades. The chance to see a woman as president, which would be a remarkable experience, given that I personally remember being unable to get a credit card or a bank account in my own name. But more: I had lost my country. Or, more accurately, my fantasy / beliefs / assumptions about my country. I knew that there were lots of folks who disagree with me on many levels. But  I did not know that there were so many of us who could endorse this man, whose unself-conscious bigotry, ignorance, and meanness you all know too well. And now, I realized that I had just lost that imagined country.

(By the way, none of this was as rational and linear as my description. I cried as I walked, felt simultaneously too alone and very glad for time alone, simultaneously strong and off balance, generally disoriented. And I noticed that I wasn’t noticing my walk – which is unusual for me.)

                   

The walk helped, but that heavy, hopeless feeling was still there. I had to figure out what I could actually do about this state of affairs – my own internal state, and the state of the nation (heck, the world!)  I’m really lucky here, because I know there's a ton of psychological thought and research on how to survive these miserable moments, much of it done by my partner. Years of osmosis have paid off, so I had lots of these ideas at my mental fingertips. For those who aren’t quite that lucky, she just wrote a column for Out Boulder, so you too can have access to this wisdom. If you read it, you’ll spot the influence of these ideas in virtually every step of my own process.

So, following my Wednesday morning walk, I knew that my first step had to be learning  to understand the people who had voted for Trump – not just as bigots, but as people with real needs that they imagined Trump’s presidency could meet. I knew this would be a stretch for me. I was feeling far too fragile to start reading hateful diatribes against Hillary or “big government,” too angry to hear how inspiring Trump is or how he’s the perfect person to save his “fans” from The Machine. But I really did want to understand his supporters, what their lives are like. I needed to do this to interrupt my tendency to demonize and stereotype them. That path gave him too much power over my well-being,  and me too little.

My partner and I began a concerted effort to locate and read information about Trump voters. This turned out not to be too hard, once I got outside the “echo chamber” of people as demoralized and outraged as I. I soon located  a series of articles that addressed just this aim (you can find some of them here, here, here, and here). 

Gradually, I/we began to see and talk about these people in a new light. Not just as white men (mostly) who resented the progress of women and people of color over recent decades, who were suffering from “privilege deprivation.” But as people who have been … are being … genuinely ignored, dismissed, trivialized, discounted, and taken for granted by governmental systems that purport to support them. People who feel isolated from urban centers of power and privilege, and who want their governments, local and national, to “see” them and reflect them. Some folks have described the loss of dignity that people in this situation might well feel. In this vein, I was so struck by a comment made by Arthur Brooks in an exchange with Gail Collins (both of the NY Times): “A few years ago,” Brooks reflected, “I was having lunch with [the president of a progressive think tank]. I asked her to given me a simplest explanation for why some people who never prospered over the past few years nonetheless loved President Obama so much. She said, ‘He gives them dignity.’ I thought that was very profound, and I think that’s a big part of what’s going on today as well with Trump,” he finished. Maybe that was what Trump's supporters heard beneath his hyperbole: a promise of simple dignity.

I could  say much more, but I’ll let this sketch suffice for now. If you’re interested, you’ll find more discussion at the bottom of this blog entry, or you can read more about it in the articles linked above.  

So, with a tenuous handle on my fear, rage, and disbelief, the next step was to manage my sadness and sense of powerlessness. I needed to get myself active. The physical part was pretty simple I happily slid into my now-regular pattern of daily activity. Beyond that, I needed to be politically and socially active. Buoyed by the hope of coming out of this a better human being, I imagined great leaps into activism, sailing forth on a wave of indignation and inspiration. But I knew I’d have to start slowly. Really slowly, as it turned out. Those first days, I managed to write checks to some orgs that I really respect. I considered where I might volunteer down the road. I pondered a lot and read some. I talked to myself and with friends. But actually acting, as opposed to considering acting, was harder.

My first tiny step came while I was walking home from the gym on Friday, three days after the election, I encountered a pile of dog poop left by a pooch whose human hadn’t bothered to pick it up. I added a detour to my walk to fetch a plastic bag, returned to the scene of the drop, picked up the offending pile, and carried it to the nearest trash can. A small act, but it seemed important. I felt like I had made a gesture toward the universe, saying I can make a difference, a change for the better in my world.

The next day, I passed a woman on the bike path whose dog was keeping a careful eye on me as I approached from the rear. I greeted them both and then said, “It’s nice to have someone watching your back right now. The world is more dangerous for a lot of people since the election.” I realized I had just made a mini-ally statement, calling to her attention the reality that for some people, the potential for real danger is greater this week than last. Another tiny step toward showing up.

Then on Monday, my partner and I met with some other folks to help plan an upcoming event related to the election’s outcome, and I agreed to help organize an event in January – although the last time I organized an event, I swore I’d never do it again. More steps. Today, I went to Denver for a rally in support of immigrant families. Small steps. But slowly, I feel more present to life as I go through my days,

This is not to say that it's been a steady path forward. During the past week, I've had moments of progress and enthusiasm, and moments of descent back into deep sorrow. I’ve felt empowered (picking up poop), and I’ve had tears come to my eyes for no apparent reason (stretching in an aerobics class). In the low times, I’ve tried to call up the advice offered in the aforementioned Out Boulder article: to pause and think of what I value, what’s important in my life. It helps me get away from the obsessive focus on what’s wrong and back to what I want to create from this. In those moments of reflection, I’ve realized that writing this blog has been something I’ve valued, for a whole host of reasons. As of today, I’m planning to resume blogging, as time permits. I’ll be good for me, I know. It always was. I’ll try to catch up with some blog-worthy stories from the past year – or at minimum, some pictures. I’ve passed up on so many opportunities. Anyway, here I am, writing a blog. Whether or not anyone reads it, writing this particular post has helped me pull together a week’s worth of struggling to dig out from the sticky post-election morass I sank into Tuesday night. It’s another step.

…

Now it’s Thursday morning, and Nicholas Kristof, a NYT op-ed writer whom I love, has weighed in with a column that summarizes beautifully much of what I hope to take from this week (I told my partner he’s channeling her work). For an added boost in your own process, read it here.

...

Now it's Friday morning, a week after the dog poop incident. There's snow on the ground, and a sunny day ahead. I'll be taking a long walk with a friend's dog, a fun companion for me. And I'll be telling her all about it, sorting it out some more. And waiting to see what happens next, where I need to show up.

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Post  Script:

If you’re interested, here’s more about what I’ve come to understand about the people who voted for Trump.

Many of the people who voted for Trump – especially those in rural areas and the Midwestern “rust belt” (who have historically been reliable supporters of Dem candidates) – are people who work dawn to dusk at back-breaking labor, playing by the supposed rules, who are still unable to make ends meet. Their parents did the same work and were able to get ahead, leaving more to their kids than they had – but now those kids find themselves stuck, with no hope for getting ahead.

They see highly educated people who live in big cities with tons of resources and opportunities – schools, museums, culture, support services, government offices – who are far wealthier than they are, although those urbanites don’t appear to work anywhere near as hard. They see the seats of power located, always, in these cities, readily accessible to city dwellers as sources of information, services, and high-paying jobs. They read about people of color and other minority populations, mostly clustered in cities – unfamiliar to folks living in rural areas, and therefore easily stereotyped and misunderstood, even vilified. They hear about government programs like affirmative action, that (in their understanding – but how would they know otherwise?) – assure jobs for these folks who look nothing like the people they know, whether or not they’re deserving. They see officials of all stripes who never ask them about their lives. Who never visit their homes, never work beside them, never talk to them. Politicians who drop by during the campaign, visit the state fair and eat a corndog, maybe have coffee with locals at the diner, and call that “connecting” with their rural constituencies.

Add to this the implicit biases we all learn just by growing up in this culture and absorbing its mores: racism, sexism, and abelism; xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia; homo-, bi-, and transphobia. We all learned them. But some of us have had opportunities to unlearn them, or at least to temper them. Those opportunities are available almost entirely in cities; anti-racism intensives would be hard to find in rural mid-America. So those of us who have had those learning opportunities condemn those who have not, labeling them bigots – when what really separates us from them is our (often unrecognized) privilege.

Why wouldn’t these people believe that the deck is stacked against them? Why wouldn’t they think that city dwellers – even “foreigners” in the cities – have a better shot at the American dream than they have? Why wouldn’t they believe that they system has left them behind and left them out?

All it takes, then, is for someone to tell them just that: the system is rigged against you. Of course, they shout, Yes! Finally, someone has seen us! Has recognized our distress!

To fire up the enthusiasm even more, that person need only violate all the norms of “polite” (or “politically correct”) conversation – ill-defined norms that are foreign to their lives – by saying the things that they dare not say, have been condemned for saying. We’ve created, in the words of political scientist Katherine Cramer, a politics of resentment. And resentment is a mighty motivator.

In a sense, this isn’t even about Trump himself. It could have been anyone who poked the right tender spots, who saw the distress and resentment of these people and named it, pulled for it, capitalized on it. Who made them feel visible, important, central – and named the system that had previously left them feeling the opposite: their own government. The added energy evoked by allowing them – in fact, encouraging them – to think, to say, and to do the things that are forbidden by “polite” society energized a movement that made them feel powerful, like they could change the system.

It just required someone who seemed not beholden to the system (at least in the usual ways), someone who was willing to thumb his nose, flip the bird at the system. Someone to tell these abandoned Americans that they, like he, are the real Americans.

Deal sealed. No need for millions of demons. Just ordinary people, rendered invisible by the powers that be, plus a rank narcissist willing to use their distress for his own aggrandizement.

Oops. I guess I’m not totally done villianizing yet. Like I said, it’s a slow process …

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2015. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post. 

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Identity talk

Recently, my partner recommended an article about a topic we discuss a lot: identity language—the words we use to name ourselves and our groups. Specifically, this article challenged long-standing professional standards for talking about people with disabilities. I’ll come back to this specific question in a minute, but first, I want to talk about a broader issue that underlies this article: the power of language to prescribe, as well as describe, our experience. This issue is especially important in the area of identity language because it turns out that how we name people—ourselves and others—says a lot about how we view those people. And that, in turn, shapes how those people—we or others—experience the world.

For example, consider the now-discredited term “imbecile.” For a time, it was regarded not only as appropriate but as a precise scientific term for an individual who scored in a particular range on tests that supposedly measured mental capacity. The description/diagnosis was then invoked to confine people to institutions. But it also did more. The word seeped into everyday language as a label for people who were thought to have no place in society, people who were beneath the rest of us. Eventually, it became a term for anyone who behaved in a way that we thought was less than intelligent (which often meant simply that we didn’t like something they did): “What an imbecile!” Over the years, the experience of people who were given this label, the experience of those who used the term, and institutions around the nation were shaped by this word. Of course the same is true of words like “genius” or “gifted.” People given these labels expect themselves, and are expected by others, to achieve at superior levels. Our experience, their experience, and the society we all inhabit are shaped by those expectations.

I would argue that this is true of virtually all language: language creates reality, so it’s never trivial. But it may be especially true of identity language. I think about the shifts that happened when Stonewall protesters dared to scrawl “gay pride” on walls in Greenwich Village, when 1970s feminists  insisted on being called “women” rather than “girls,” and when protests against systemic mistreatment were led by chants of “Black lives matter.” It makes a difference when groups insist on taking control of the language that describes—and also shapes—their lives.

But the power of words can be insidious. Sometimes words have more power than we realize, and we may be taken aback when something we say has an impact we didn’t anticipate. This can easily happen with identity words. Anyone who’s paid much attention to identity language has likely had this experience: We recognize that it’s important for people to be able to name themselves, and we try to use language that’s sensitive to that conviction. We really want to say the right thing, but the “right” words keep changing. We make mistakes, we feel guilty, frustrated, regretful, maybe put-upon by the constantly shifting nature of identity language. We may be embarrassed at the almost inevitable “slips” that occur as language changes faster than our own habits—or even faster than we can track it.

This is a tricky issue. On the one hand, it makes total sense that folks’ sense of how they prefer to be named will change and that new terms for marginalized groups will emerge. Language is nothing if not dynamic, and given that identity-related experiences change all the time, of course the language surrounding identities will change. And to make things even more lively, identity terms may vary not only historically but also geographically, by age group, by race/ethnicity … and on and on. In this ever-morphing morass of identity language, well-meaning people may feel like it’s easier, safer to just avoid conversations where identity language might come up—depriving everyone of opportunities to learn more about this thorny thicket.

There’s no easy answer to this dilemma. The bottom line seems clear to me: people have the right to name themselves; doing so is crucial to their empowerment and their self-esteem. We know from history that depriving people of that right is one of the first steps toward disempowering them, insisting that they be who someone else wants them to be. But it remains a challenge—a healthy one, but still a challenge—to negotiate the terrain of identity language. It requires patience with one another and expansive willingness to stay in conversation about who we all are, how we each name ourselves, and why it matters.

So, how does this apply to the article that triggered this blog?

The article raised exactly this dilemma, but in a professional/academic context. By way of background, the publication manual of my own professional field, psychology, has specific guidelines about identity language, and adherence to those guidelines is required whenever we publish in the field. The instructions are straightforward: (1) Use “person-first” language where possible—first say that you are talking about a person, then describe the characteristic that makes them salient to this setting. So we use “individuals with autism” in preference to “autistic individuals.” The point is that the characteristic described is only one aspect of those persons; everyone is an individual first, and can only secondarily be identified by particular characteristics. (2) Never use an adjective that describes a group as if it were a noun that defines them. For instance, use “people with disabilities” rather than “the disabled.” The rationale: there is always more to a person than any single adjective can convey. Using a term like “the elderly” implies that this single adjective defines everyone in the group uniformly and tells us everything that’s important to know about them.

But wait! Not so fast! The article in question challenged this long-standing, confident analysis of the identity language question. The challenge came from listening to the language of the disability movement and attending to the preferences of that group—letting them name themselves rather than assuming that “we” (in this case, professional psychology) have it “right” on their behalf. That perspective led the article’s authors to question the universal use of “person-first.” Instead, they argued, we should, at minimum, intersperse “disability-first” language.

In concrete terms, this would mean saying “persons with disabilities” some of the time and “disabled persons” some of the time. In reference to particular disabilities, it would mean using “amputees” and “people with amputations” interchangeably. The origin of this suggested change is a movement among disabled people based, as I understand it, on two key critiques of person-first language:

(1) Always putting the person first and the disability later implies that the disability is somehow shameful, so it should always be secondary. The contemporary disability rights movement is based, in part, on the principle that so-called disabilities are a form of human variation that should be respected in the same way that other forms of variation are—not ignored, not dismissed, not devalued. From this perspective, a disability is only a problem if the physical and/or social environment makes it a problem. Using a wheelchair to get around is not a limitation unless physical structures and social attitudes make it difficult. So, if a disability isn’t shameful but is just a form of human variation, why would we hide it behind “person with”? We don’t do that with neutral variations. We don’t say “a person with tallness” or “an individual with English language.” This is a great example of the shaping power of language: by placing the disability second, we risk colluding, if inadvertently, in the notion that it’s shameful.

(2) The use of “with” in person-first language implies that the characteristic is sort of attached to and separable from the individual—like we might say “the kid with the bike.” But in fact, disabilities are not separable; they are present in every moment of the individual’s life. By using person-first language, we risk denying this, implying that the person can (and maybe should) live as if the disability could be set aside, like a child’s bike.

Now, some might suggest that these arguments are stretching the point. No one really means to trivialize disabilities by their language. But neither did we mean to damage lives, develop unacceptable biases, or create destructive institutions when we coined the term “imbecile.” Only down the road, after we had test-driven it a while, did we realize the problems that were created by this presumably descriptive word. Language is a living thing, and we can’t know today what it will grow into tomorrow. So our job is twofold: to pay attention to the impact, not just the intent, of our language (a lesson I learned from my partner’s work in diversity domains) and to be open to challenging and changing it.

This article was a great reminder that none of us has this nailed down. Like the field of psychology, we may have a perfectly good rationale for how we do language—and until that rationale is challenged in a persuasive way, we’ll continue to see it as perfectly sensible. But language is alive, and it will change—despite our sensible rationale. Only when we adopt the new language will we see our old linguistic habits as problematic. And then the new ones will assume the stamp of “correctness.”

Until they don’t.

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2015. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post. 

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Amazing race - Part 2

The other day, I posted a quick note encouraging everyone to visit the History Colorado exhibit on “Race: Are We So Different?” I hope some of you saw it—whether with or without that bit of encouragement. Since then, I’ve come across two columns that spoke exactly to some of the points raised in “Race.” The whole experience—the exhibit, the articles—has been eye opening for me. Even though I’ve thought quite a lot about these issues, I keep encountering new ideas that stretch me.

 First, a few comments on the exhibit, then some reflections.

This was a traveling exhibit created by the American Anthropological Society—which helps explain why it’s so remarkably thoughtful and thought provoking. I was especially struck by how well it avoids the easy slippage into focusing on racial categories in favor of challenging the very concept of race itself. That’s a stretch for any of us who were raised in a culture that categorizes people by race at every turn. And to convey this idea, the exhibit has tons of interactive features and cleverly designed, concrete ways to illustrate the point. But it didn’t avoid challenging concepts in the service of simplicity.

For instance, the introductory video dismantles the notion of race as a real “thing,” explaining in straightforward terms how race doesn’t actually exist, how we have come to believe that it does, and what are the underlying dynamics (economics, power, privilege) that generated and still perpetuate the illusion of racial categories. This isn’t necessarily an easy set of concepts to introduce to an audience many of whom may have little experience in thinking deeply about race—except, perhaps, to be well aware that racial bias is problematic.

The central theme that runs through the exhibit is this: the social and economic differences that we observe today are direct results of our belief that racial categories are real. Those beliefs have fueled actions like these: generations of genocide practiced against Native residents of America, theft of their land, and “re-education” efforts to “kill the Indian and save the man”; wartime internment of Japanese citizens that required them to leave behind their businesses, homes, and possessions; “red-lining” that prevented non-white servicemen from using the GI bill to buy houses in the suburbs, when home ownership in those areas would have allowed them entry to the emerging American middle class. Over time, such differential treatment and its material and psychological toll unavoidably resulted in social and economic divisions marked by “race.”

I’ve known about this train of thought for some time, this argument that categories of people are invented rather than discovered. That once created, these categories have real, concrete impacts on people sorted into them. It’s directly related to my own academic work, so I get it, and I am convinced it’s correct. Still, once in a while, someone presents it in a way that’s especially striking. A few of these moments came up at this exhibit:

You could look at an individual from Kenya and an individual from Norway and easily believe that they represent two different races. But if you walked from Kenya to Norway, there would be no point along your route where you could say, “Here it is—the dividing line where people change from one race to another.” There is no dividing line because there are no actual categories.

Imagine sitting on a bus going to, say, Disneyland. Regardless of who the person next to you is, somewhere around 93-97% of your genes are identical to theirs. Regardless of their nationality, racial or ethnic category, or sex/gender.

We know that the human species first emerged in Africa and migrated from there through the Middle East and into Asia, Europe, the Far East, and the Americas. Only a small sample of the African population made the trip—which means that only a small slice of the full human genome made the trip. As a result, despite subsequent mixing, the largest proportion of human variation is found among Africans—which is to say, Africans have virtually all of the genes of other groups, and those other groups have just some of the genes that Africans possess.

Still, illusory though race may be, these categories have huge impacts on our lives. Some of that impact is seen in privilege, some in oppression. Some of it is overt, some more subtle. Some of it is intentional, some is non-conscious. It’s this latter sort that’s tricky: the “stuff” we all carry around that we aren’t even aware of, biases that we would in fact deny if asked our conscious beliefs. One person in a video at the exhibit called it the “smog of racism.” We all breathe it in and are damaged by it, whether or not we acknowledge it. Acknowledging it, he said, is the first step.

This is where those two recent articles come in. The first was a New York Times column, “Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions” by Sendhil Mullainathan, a Harvard economist. It’s a good, brief article—well worth the read, and you’ll find it right here. Mullainathan summarizes several studies that show inadvertent racial bias, and then points out that most people are unaware that they carry these biases. These attitudes are so well learned that they affect our actions even without our knowing it. Here’s a telling line from the column: “Even if, in our slow thinking, we work to avoid discrimination, it can easily creep into our fast thinking. Our snap judgments rely on all the associations we have—from fictional television shows to news reports. They use stereotypes, both the accurate and the inaccurate, both those we would want to use and ones we find repulsive.”

And the second was another NYT column called “Privilege of ‘Arrest without Incident’,” this one by regular columnist Charles Blow—which you can read here. Blow describes an incident that happened just over a week ago in which a white woman drove around a southern city, shooting at people from her car, then leading police on a chase and even aiming her gun at an officer. The news story reports that she was “arrested without incident.” This is a good outcome, Blow agrees. But, he asks, shouldn’t everyone have the right to an “arrest without incident.” Consider the starkly different fate of black men who have done far less in recent months but have not had that right, that privilege. He notes that every case is different, and we cannot know all the relevant circumstances. Still, he writes, “Police officers are human beings making split-second decisions—often informed by fears—about when to use force and the degree of that force.” Those are the split-second decisions, the “fast thinking” that Mullainathan talks about in his column. 

Hanging out in this topic area for a few days has got me thinking about my own responses, the “fast thinking” moments when I realize that I’m not finished with my own work here, not by far. How often I try to wish away the thoughts I don’t want to have, the things I wish I’d thought to say differently, the tiny actions that reveal my unthinking biases. And how often I must miss those things, not realizing that my actions don’t always match my conscious beliefs.

But smog causes lung damage whether or not we admit it, and I’ve been breathing in racial smog for a lot of years. Acknowledging it is just the first step.

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2014. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post.

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Mandela, reconciliation, and reparation

Yesterday, I listened to some of the coverage of the memorial/celebration service for Nelson Mandela.* From all reports, it was a moving event, with an extraordinary outpouring of grief and gratitude for this singular man. One person described him as “our moral compass.” She was referring specifically to South Africa and the deeply disappointing political landscape there in recent years, so stark against Mandela’s clarity and compassion. But she could have been referring to the world. Her words captured what I wanted to say when I first learned of his death: South Africa and the world – we all lost our moral compass.

It was with this sense of loss at Mandela’s death that I went to three events this weekend that reminded me of how easily we do that, lose our moral way. How easily we—especially those of us who are generally comfortable in the world where we live—get caught up in our own lives, forgetting that our comfort often comes not from following our “moral compass” but from ignoring the hints that we’re off course.

The first event was on Friday night, the day after Mandela’s death. It was a workshop organized by the Boulder Meeting of Friends (Quakers), and it focused on the history of Europeans’ treatment of America’s native peoples. The workshop was perfectly crafted to merge a great deal of information with a very moving bit of participant involvement. Briefly, we were all asked to stand—about 30-35 of us—on blankets spread out on the floor, pretty much filling the room. Then narrators told the history of native peoples in America, with different voices representing Indians, Europeans, government entities, and the historian. As the story progressed, groups of participants were told that they represented Indians who had died during different historical periods—from illnesses brought by the Europeans, in massacres, walking the Trail of Tears—and those people left the blankets to sit around the room. Slowly, as our numbers dwindled, the blankets were folded inward around our feet, shrinking the “land” where we stood even as the population shrank. Finally, by the end of the exercise, only five of us were left standing, and we occupied just a small patch in the middle of the room. Like the others, I stood silent, a bit stunned by what had just happened.

The informational part of the workshop focused on two doctrines: the “Doctrine of Discovery,” an actual declaration issued and then reiterated by various European leaders, secular and religious, declaring that Europeans had the right, even the obligation, to claim all lands they visited and to enslave or eliminate all the peoples they found there. The other document was the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples—an internationally agreed upon document that recognizes the human rights of indigenous people everywhere and directs nations to honor them. I was dismayed to learn that the U.S. has refused to sign on to this doctrine.

It’s not hard to figure out that our nation was created by the general willingness of the colonists and then the “settlers” to abide by the Doctrine of Discovery. Now, I’ll grant people of the 15^th, 16^th, 17^th, 18^th centuries … maybe even the 19^th century … the historical and cultural context that would make such behavior seem self-evidently “right.” But we are now in the 21^st century, and we should know better. Why, oh why, I asked myself, have we not signed the U.N. Declaration that would have to some degree made amends for that earlier, unconscionable decree? Then I read the U.N. Declaration, and I knew why. Let me quote two short sections:

Article 10. Indigenous peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their lands or territories. No relocation shall take place without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples concerned and after agreement on just and fair compensation and, where possible, the option of return. … States shall provide redress through effective mechanisms, which may include restitution, developed in conjunction with indigenous peoples.

Article 28. Indigenous peoples have the right to redress, by means that may include restitution, or, when this is not possible, just, fair, and equitable compensation for the lands, territories, and resources which they have traditionally occupied or used and which have been confiscated, taken, occupied, used, or damaged without their free, prior and informed consent.

Of course we haven’t signed this declaration! To do so would mean we are willing to provide “redress, by means that may include restitution … or just, fair, and equitable compensation” for all the land that the Indians occupied and we took. All the blankets we stood on Friday night.

I was still thinking about this when I went on Saturday to a half-day “CU on the Weekend” class on how unconscious attitudes influence health care. More specifically, we learned about health care disparities (which, interestingly, are called “health care injustices” elsewhere in the world) and the mechanisms underlying them. Which is to say we learned why it is that people of color (poor people, queer people, old people, women … pick a marginalized group) get poorer health care and have poorer outcomes even when all the variables that should affect health care are identical.

The professor’s proposition was that this occurs because of the unconscious attitudes we all carry around with us. She was talking about implicit attitudes, which I’ve mentioned here before. Basically, even if no one intends to treat marginalized groups differently, we are all influenced, in ways we don’t even recognize, by attitudes we’ve absorbed over a lifetime and don’t even realize we have. That goes for health care professionals as well as for the rest of us. It’s also true for patients, who approach health care with their own unconscious biases. And it’s true in virtually every situation we face, to one degree or another. I won’t even try to summarize three hours in two paragraphs. So let me just set this aside for a minute and mention another event that will help bring this all together.

Saturday evening, after this health care lecture, I saw the film “12 Years a Slave.” If anyone out there hasn’t seen it, do. As you all surely know, this film is based on a true story of an African American man who had been a free man and was then kidnapped and sold into slavery. The film is gripping and disturbing, all the more so for the fact that it’s a true story. So many of the horrors of slavery that we’ve heard about are lived out in this story. Watching it, I found myself wanting it to be fiction because it’s just too awful to imagine that people were actually subjected to this sort of treatment. And with no recourse. Absolutely none.

The echoes of that treatment live on in all of us, in those implicit attitudes that we have inhaled with the racism that still floats around in our world. In the attitudes that make for health care disparities and that invite the selective forgetting that lets us think genocide and slavery are history and have no relevance to today. That allow us to refuse, as a nation, to sign the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Over the years, demands for reparations for the mistreatment of African Americans and of Indians have come and gone in this country. Reparation would be one way to fulfill the dictates of the U.N. document … but we haven’t signed it, so we’re not obliged to adhere to it. Besides, when we consider the magnitude of the moral failings to be addressed, it’s easy to see why movements for redress meet with resistance. Partly because it’s hard to imagine how we could ever compensate either group for what this nation has taken from them. And partly because, we insist, that’s history and we weren’t personally involved, so it’s not our responsibility.

And this brings me back, full circle, to Mandela, our moral compass. It will be a great tragedy if, having lost him as a living model of the power of forgiveness, we also lose him as a moral guide, our north star. When Mandela became the first president of his new nation, he could so easily have used his position to punish those who had persecuted him and his people. But he didn’t. He chose truth and reconciliation over vengeance. That choice represented true north, and he never wavered from it, although he could have, he had the power to do so. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission sought exactly what the name stated: open acknowledgement of the wrongs that had been committed and sincere efforts to forge ties between people who had been at virtual war for centuries.  

This, it seems to me, is our task vis-à-vis Indians, African Americans, and all the other groups that any of us continues to marginalize and disregard. We have to—individually and collectively—confront our failure to stay on course, to find a moral path. We have to do our part, individually and collectively, to find ways to acknowledge and then work to reconcile the differences that have kept us so apart. This isn’t an easy proposition, at least not for me. But when I was standing on that blanket, I knew I was being called out. And when I heard the lecture and saw the film, I knew I was in the dock again. Much as I might wish to think of myself as having mastered these issues, I know I’m not done with my work. Not by a long shot.

The morning after Mandela died, I considered posting a blog, but changed my mind. It seemed like everything had already been said. Besides, I couldn’t find words for what I was feeling. In the process of writing it, though, I was reflecting on how Mandela represented something about who we could aspire to be as human beings. I was reminded of a quotation from Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address. It seemed to capture who Mandela was in the world. And it also reminds me of my continuing task, highlighted by the weekend’s activities.

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. – Abraham Lincoln, 1861

_______________________

* Initially, I used the name "Madiba" interchangeably with Mandela. I like that name. It's actually Mandela's clan name, and it's used as a term of respect and affection. But after doing a bit of reading around about it, I realized that my using it would be a form of appropriation ("I like that name. I think I'll just take it for my own use"), implying a close connection with Mandela that I did not in fact have. So, I chose not to use it. In the process, I was reminded again of how easily I can assume that I have a "right" to the cultural artifacts, names among them, of other peoples. Privilege can catch us anywhere if we're not looking. 

People mover reset

Recently, I wrote here about a recurring theme—the idea of a "people mover" that transports folks along through life, with each generation replaced in due course by the ones behind them. That particular post, named "Why we need the people mover," may have left a misperception that I want to correct. So, here's my understanding of what some folks may have (mis)understood ... along with an attempt to understand why my meaning may have been unclear ... all followed by another try at what I really meant to say. Which isn't as complicated as it sounds.

First, here's what I fear folks may have heard/read in my words: "Old people need to realize that it's our turn to rotate off the end of the people mover, pack up our old-fashioned perspectives, and get out of the way of younger folks behind us." In short, I fear that people may have understood me to be saying that life in old age is worthless. We aren't contributing anything worthwhile, and we're just falling more and more behind the times. So we may as well step off the busy route of life and leave the space and the resources to other (younger) people.

This was not what I meant to say. So how did I manage to convey that message?

Well, here's one thing I wrote early in that blog that I realize could easily have given people that impression. "At some point," I wrote, "it’s our turn to get out of the way … as it will be everyone’s turn, with time." Oops! That sure sounds like I meant "it's time to get out of the way," since that's exactly what I said. Poor wording, poor placement. Poorly said.

Now, it's also true that elsewhere in that same blog, I wrote this: "My daily aim is to do what I can to stay engaged, to learn at least some of the skills that the new game asks of me—enough to have fun, even if I don't master it all. Enough to avoid sinking into a curmudgeonly critique of everything that represents 'kids these days'.” And in a subsequent blog, I wrote, "Delving into this book is exactly the sort of experience that keeps me surprised and delighted as life moves forward—a way of staying engaged instead of drifting." 

The problem, it seems to me, is the psychological gap between that first comment ("get out of the way") and the others ("to stay engaged, to learn..."; "surprised and delighted as life moves forward"). That gap is too easily filled by all of the stereotypes about aging that cause the first comment to stand out and the others to fade into the background. Let me explain what I mean.

I've written before about the concept of implicit attitudes—the non-conscious beliefs we all walk around with that shape our experience, even though we don't know it. We all learned negative attitudes about various groups—at least if we were conscious and paying attention. We're sponges. So we all have racist, sexist, abelist, classist, ageist ... attitudes, even when they are about groups we belong to. So, I—like everyone else—have ageist attitudes. I try to be aware of them, try to unlearn them, but they're still there. Lurking to trip me up just when I thought I was safe, like writing my own blog. I suspect it was just these non-conscious attitudes that popped out in my language "time to get out of the way"—even though I didn't mean it in the way it can so easily be taken. Other folks may have been caught by the same goblin, hearing the idea of the people mover as an invitation to check out of life. Because that interpretation is exactly what my language invited.

A listserv I belong to recently featured an article on stereotypes about aging and how those can be self-fulfilling prophecies, how they often disguise subtle forms of ageism. For instance, messages to old people to "get out of the way" and "not use up resources that are needed by younger people" actually convey troubling messages: Old people have nothing to offer, so they're "in the way." Old people do not deserve to have their own needs and dreams fulfilled, so they are "wasting resources" that should go to others.

Honestly, at a conscious, intentional level, this is not what I meant to convey. My actual meaning is clearer in the latter two quotes above—but those got lost as we all stumbled around in the implicit attitudes that my earlier language evoked. So now, let me attempt to be very clear about what I actually meant to say all along:

As I look behind me on the people mover, I see generations of people coming along who see a different world than the one I have known, the one that shaped my life. And I especially notice these differences when I encounter massive changes in how life "works"—things like the ascendancy of online education, the replacement of monthly print newsletters by regularly updated websites, and the reframing of the very meaning of "privacy"—the changes I mentioned in my troublesome blog. But I don't see these changes as bad things at all, challenging though they may sometimes be. On the contrary, I see them as the very positive, very exciting affirmation of the necessary nature of the people mover: There are generations coming along behind us who are re-shaping the world—and rightfully so! It's a good thing that the world is changing. Imagine how sad it would be if it weren't. It is their turn to define how life will look for them. And it's not our place to tell them that it's wrong.

This does not mean that we should step aside. Be silent. Be disengaged. And it does not mean that old people have nothing to add, that the best we can do is watch. In my mind, it's actually a challenge to do the opposite—to live fully, to honor the life I've experienced so far, and to continually construct a new one that draws energy from this new world. That means continuing to learn, staying engaged and forward looking, facing head on the changes that challenge me to change, too. And it means thinking about what I can bring that draws from my own experience, from the "old world" I know so well. It means being open to opportunities to be a model, a mentor, a teacher of sorts.

Margaret Mead, the brilliant cultural anthropologist who changed so much of our thinking during the 20th century, wrote about (among other things) relationships among generations. She argued that in a culture like ours where change is so rapid, the older generation can teach the younger not what they need to learn, but the importance of learning. They can show them not what to value, but the importance of having values. Not how to love, but the importance of loving. That, I think, is our enduring role as we look back from our place on the people mover.

That's a far cry from "getting out of the way" in the sense of giving up and checking out. Instead, it means "getting out of the way" in the sense of letting go of our assumption that we know what the answers are and instead enjoying the opportunity to demonstrate the importance of seeking answers, even when we haven't a clue what they will be.    

Feminism in process … still

My blog muse has been on leave lately. Vanished. Gone missing. And this despite the large pile on my desk marked “blog ideas.” For some reason, I just haven’t felt like writing about anything. Hence, the long (for me) drought in what should be springtime stream of blog entries. In the last few days, though, an idea has begun to germinate, something I need to think more about. It all has to do with the state of feminism these days—in the world and in me. The ah ha moment, the final nudge for me to write about it, came when I made a totally sexist assumption this morning. Here’s the backstory:

First, I’ve been thinking lately a fair amount about the impact of feminism on the world. I thought about it recently when I cruised past Target’s toy department en route to the doormats and was struck by the frank stereotyping—the colors, the toy selections, the virtual absence of any non-gendered toys. And then I thought about it as I read Sonia Sotomayor’s autobiography (more on that another time), which talks at length about her dual battle with racism and sexism and the historical shifts she’s seen in both. And I thought about it again when I read about Obama’s recent “slip” in describing California’s attorney general in terms of her appearance. On the flip side, I thought about it as I read recently about the growth of women’s opportunities in sports—for the first time ever, every country in the Olympics had a women’s team. And I thought about it as I read about Sotomayor’s joining two other women on the Supreme Court—up to three from zero in the '70s. And I think about it every time I see another story about Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Then, a second tweak came at a party we went to last weekend. This comes against the background of the not-uncommon complaint from old-time feminists that “young women these days” don’t appreciate all we did for them, don’t realize how well off they are compared to the barriers earlier generations faced. True, perhaps, but you could argue that this is good news. Feminists worked so hard precisely so that women wouldn’t have to worry about the barriers we faced. So at this party last weekend, this topic came up. The “young women don’t appreciate…” line was raised, and someone—an old-time feminist herself—pointed out how wonderful this is. It got me thinking about this other aspect of feminism—the who claims it, who benefits, who pays aspect.

A third piece came from a recent conversation with my partner. She’s been invited to speak on a panel on “Feminism Today,” and we were talking about that. As I’ve reflected more on that panel topic, I’ve started wondering, why now? What’s leading a major professional organization—not a women’s organization—to highlight “feminism today,” today? What does “feminism” mean to folks these days? What does “sexism” mean these days? How does the challenge to sexism mesh with, say, the push for same-sex marriage (remember the feminist critiques of marriage as an inherently sexist institution)? And how does it mesh with dismantling the gender binary—academic lingo for questioning what “male” and “female,” masculine” and “feminine” really mean anyway? How does it mesh with our barely emerging attention to transgender and intersex issues?

Then, the fourth piece: I’m giving myself the gift of a week off work to attend the Conference on World Affairs, where one of the sessions I plan to attend is called “The Women’s Movement Stalled.” What does that mean? Stalled how? And when? And in who’s mind? Who are these panelists and what will they say? Will they clarify or muddy these questions? Will they be old ‘70s feminists, “young women today” who don’t appreciate, both, neither? How do they know what happened (or what’s happening) to the women’s movement? And why don’t I?

And then, for the final piece, the real corker: not to be outdone by our President, I made a monumental slip myself this morning. A sexist assumption of monstrous proportions, enough to have me voted instantly off the feminist island. It was so regressive, so egregious that it would even get me voted off the ‘70s feminist island … never mind the contemporary island where folks are attuned to implicit attitudes, modern sexism, and subtle bias. Oh, no. This was flat-out blatant. Here’s what happened:

I am considering (actually, I’m pretty much planning on) going to a weeklong Smithsonian-sponsored old-fashioned-style Chautauqua “athenaeum” this summer. A week studying astronomy—I have to assume this is the layperson’s version of astronomy, or I’ll die—with an astrophysicist who is an astronomer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. How does this sound: “Immersed in the inquisitive nature of Chautauqua, you’ll learn how scientists are discovering new planets and considering the feasibility of other planets with life. Explore the Milky Way galaxy and discover how mysterious clouds of dust and gas are giving birth to thousands of stars.” I was so excited, I sent the link to my partner and said something bland like, “I really, really want to go to this!” She came into my study to learn more, and I started telling her about it—including about its being taught by this star astrophysicist. “He’s at Goddard,” I enthused, skimming the description in the text. “Wait,” she said, “Michelle Thaller ... Don’t you think that could be a woman?” Nailed.

I sort of love these moments because they remind me how much there still is to learn—always. They’re humbling, in a good way, because they remind me to be less critical of other folks’ slips. And they remind me how super well we all learned these lessons. Forty years of feminist consciousness-raising and countless lectures and talks on the evils of sexism haven’t erased it from this old head.

This little incident is a great example of the implicit attitudes I’ve mentioned before—but in those earlier posts, I was grousing about people’s implicit attitudes toward me as an old women. This time the shoe is on the other foot: I’m the one revealing my implicit assumptions. Surely, my well-learned stereotypes told me, a great Smithsonian-selected, Chautauqua-sponsored, NASA-employed astrophysicist is a man. The worst part is that it wasn’t even a question I asked … because I knew. I knew so deeply that I read right past her name. “Michelle,” I mumbled to my partner, “could be a man’s name.” Right.

So, I ask myself, is feminism dead? Well, I hope not, because the work sure isn’t done yet. And I don’t just mean the “Lean In” work to help women get a larger share of the power pie. I don’t even mean work against the lingering biases that continue to limit girls and women and hem in boys and men—although I know those need work, too. I mean the homework, the inside work. My own work.

And aren’t I lucky: this morning, I got a private tutorial in sexism 101. Next week, wisdom from the Conference on World Affairs. In June, the Goddard astrophysicist. And who knows what lies beyond. My lessons stretch out before me.

Ageism Take 2

Last week (was it really that long ago?), I talked about an encounter with ageism at a conference on multiculturalism. That particular experience felt especially awful coming as it did in a setting where the appreciation of difference was explicitly the topic of the conference. Granted, the presentation that troubled me was conducted by white, mid-life academics. But they might have called on their experience as women to notice that talking about people without including those people in the conversation might feel yucky. Heaven knows women have had plenty of those experiences (recall “Women’s bodies have a way of shutting down during legitimate rape,” spoken by a man who presumed to know).

Anyhow, this past weekend, I had another such experience. Again, it was in a context where I would hope it wouldn’t happen: the annual “Creating Change” conference sponsored by the (to my mind) premier LGBT rights organization, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF, a.k.a. The Task Force). In my happiest fantasies, LGBTQ people would be so sensitized to oppression that they would never participate in it themselves. Especially folks attending this conference, the most politically active, politically sensitized, broadly progressive conference I know. But there it was. Subtle, mostly, but recognizable—at least from my hypervigilant perspective. The sort of ageism that made me ask myself, “Wait, was that ageist or not? Am I being too sensitive? Where’s my sense of humor?” All of which must sound familiar to feminists, queer folks, people of color, working class people, people with disabilities … all of us who find ourselves questioning whether mistreatment is “real” or “imagined.”

It’s not the first time in my life I’ve had these experiences, the daily barrage of what psychologists call “micro-aggressions.” I first became aware of them during my feminist awakening, then got re-acquainted as I sorted through my sexual orientation and then engaged the world as an out lesbian. I’ve also learned about them through the stories of people in other oppressed groups. But I still expect (or maybe I simply hope) that these micro-aggressions won’t happen when I hang out with the very folks who have been the targets of so many of them. Somehow, I expect them to recognize bias when it happens, to challenge it in others and refuse to engage in it themselves. And that was my expectation of folks at Creating Change.

Unfortunately, few of us are as skilled in this sensitivity toward others as we wish others were toward us—I’m certainly not. For instance, although I try not to say or do things that are racist, classist, adultist, etc., I sometimes find myself saying or doing those things anyway. Heck, I even say or do sexist and homophobic things sometimes. I’m actually happy when I catch myself doing this—enjoying what a friend calls “another god damn learning experience.” For one thing, I’m happy to realize that I was at least conscious enough to catch it (or to “get it” if it’s pointed out to me). Besides, it’s a reminder of how deep this stuff goes and how hard it is to root it all out. When I remember that, I can be more understanding of other folks’ “slips.”

So, bummed as I was about encountering ageism at Change, as we call it, upon reflection, here’s what I realized. One of the great joys of Change is that it is full of youth and their exhausting, limitless energy. That makes for noisy nights in the hotel, but it also infuses the conference with this buzz of possibility and a sense of wonderful forward momentum. When I’m at Change, I don’t worry at all about the future of this movement.

At the same time that I love this youth-drenched energy, I realize that the movement and Change itself increasingly belong to generations that have had little contact with old people and little opportunity (much less encouragement or requirement) to think about ageism. So, the perspective that they bring to this conference is shaped almost entirely by this culture’s pervasive ageism. By the stereotypes and biases that float around in the air, the images we've all  taken in during our lives—and that most of us only begin to really, deeply challenge when they apply to us. These gut-level, ingrained beliefs and attitudes are usually not spoken out loud. Often, they’re so widely accepted and unquestioned that we don’t even know we have them. Psychologists call them “implicit attitudes” exactly because they’re not explicit. We could even call them unconscious.

So, folks working in this area (like, as a random example, my partner) point out that people can’t change these attitudes until they become aware of them and actively work on changing them. Despite our best intentions, these things are so well learned, so … implicit … that unless we take active steps to recognize and change them, we’re basically stuck repeating them. For me, this means that if I really want ageism at Change to change (what a convenient double meaning!), I have to do something about it. These young folks who are flooding into the movement haven’t had any means of learning about this issue. They likely have no idea what ageism is, much less what it looks like in everyday practice—and even less awareness that they are practicing it, big time. It’s not only youth, of course. I heard plenty of ageism from grown-ups (even old ones), too. So, if I want these well-intentioned, generally progressive folks to look at their ageism, I need to try to give them some information that will help them do that.

You can see where  this is going. I guess my task is to develop some sort of program for Change next year that will address ageism. Not that I can single-handedly rescue the movement—or even Change—from ageism. But doing something on this order will serve at last two purposes. First, it may begin a conversation that will help some segment of my fellow Change-rs to notice, think about, and work to change their ageism. That would be way cool. Second, it will help me take some control over my own response to this issue. After a couple of these encounters, I was on the verge of deciding not to go back to Change. That would be a huge loss for me. Doing something positive about my discomfort would be so much better.

I told my partner earlier today that sometimes blogging gets me in trouble (which she reframed  as “holds me accountable”). Last week, it made me commit to writing to the lead panelist from the earlier conference (which I have now done). This week, it leads me to commit to developing a program for next year’s Change conference. 

My response this week is the same as last: thanks for the nudge. Stay tuned ...