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. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Comment on this post: 

If you got this blog via email, go to the blog website by clicking on the title at the top of this particular post.
To comment once you're on the website, click on "No comments" (or "2 comments" etc.) below the blog. Comments from "anonymous" welcome.

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. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Comment on this post: 

If you got this blog via email, go to the blog website by clicking on the title at the top of this particular post.
To comment once you're on the website, click on "No comments" (or "2 comments" etc.) below the blog. Comments from "anonymous" welcome.

Ooof. The electoral apocalypse, a week later

(If you received this blog by email, you might want to visit the actual site. The pictures work much better there. 

Just click on the title “Ooof ….”)

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.

-----------------------

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. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Comment on this post: 

If you got this blog via email, go to the blog website by clicking on the title at the top of this particular post.

To comment once you're on the website, click on "No comments" (or "2 comments" etc.) below the blog. Comments from "anonymous" welcome.

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. 

The flood: Take 2

The flood has been very much on my mind this past week—no surprise to anyone who lives in northern Colorado. When I wrote last week, I talked about being amazed by people’s resilience in the face of such tragedy and unending stress. I’m still amazed by that, but I also realize, increasingly, that it may have been the fact that I was not directly impacted by the flood that let me drift into an outsider-looking-in celebration of resilience. Since then, I’ve encountered the flood on a new level. While I still celebrate resilience, I feel like my earlier blog focused on that to the neglect of the awful moments, days, and weeks that people have endured during and in the wake of these floods. Especially, I failed to hear the stories that don’t make the news. The ones we—or at least I—really need to hear.

So, The flood: Take 2.

It’s now being called the 1,000-year rain, the 100-year flood. This doesn’t mean that rain like this comes regularly once every 1,000 years or a flood like this once every 100 years. If that were true, we could prepare for these events. Instead, it means that rain like this has 1 chance in 1,000 of happening in any given year, a flood like this has only 1 chance in 100 of happening in any given year. Either (or both) could happen next year … in fact, the odds for that happening will still be 1/100 and 1/1,000.

These numbers are dramatic descriptions as meteorological statistics go. But more to the point, as the days unfold, I learn more and more about what they mean in human terms.

Over the past week, I have heard a constantly morphing collage of conversations about the post-flood realities that are people’s lives. As we’ve learned more, coffee shop chatter and conversations with friends have changed from how lucky many of us were to talk of just how bad it was. Countless homes were damaged, some beyond repair. Even more basements were flooded—including in “safe” zones well away from streams. Worse, in many of these, the flooding came when over-full sewers surged up into people’s homes. Scores of businesses and public facilities were damaged—libraries with their stores of books, medical facilities with their million-dollar equipment, small businesses barely holding on even before the flood. Homeowner’s and business insurance covers little if any of this, so the consequences will be long lasting—and will spell financial disaster for some. 

The stories from mountain towns are dreadful. Many towns are still shut off from outside travel, although a few key roads were opened late this week. Some folks are taking circuitous routes through the mountains, traveling for hours to get to jobs in Boulder or Denver, where they’ll stay indefinitely. Some towns are unlikely to have any outside connection until next summer. Many people have no home to go back to, even if they could get in.

The worst stories, of course, are those about people who didn’t survive the storm. For days, scores of people were unaccounted for—over 1200 at one point. That number dropped daily as people were able to get out and contact friends or as phone service and cell towers were brought back on line. Still, after a week and a half, the count still stands at 82 people unaccounted for statewide, with 3 missing and presumed dead. The death toll is 4 in Boulder county, 8 statewide.

And then there’s the residual infrastructure mess: roads and bridges, water treatment plants and sewer systems, cell towers, electrical lines, buried cables … the list just keeps growing. Add to that the oil spills. Eastern Colorado is an oil-producing region, and some of those wells were right in the path of this 100-year flood. The spills reported to date are small—especially in the context of millions of gallons of untreated sewage carried by the flood waters. But it’s yet another painful reminder of how vulnerable our human enterprises remain to the capriciousness of nature.

For those of us who felt no direct impact, there are constant reminders of what happened. Trees down, open areas denuded, gravel and debris strewn across lawns. Roads and parking lots still full of mud and debris or bordered by the telltale piles of mud and debris left by graders. Hotels and motels in Boulder and surrounding towns chock full with the cars of local residents seeking temporary shelter, non-local cars bearing friends and family who came to help, and service trucks of every ilk with out-of-state license plates.

Which brings me to the stories that aren’t so widely noticed, that aren’t reported by the media.

One of these is precisely the unusual, sort of weird and complicated presence of so many out-of-town workers. On the one hand, it’s truly wonderful that they’re here—people gathering from miles away to help. On the other hand, it feels creepy—strangers hovering like vultures around the disaster, looking to profit from tragedy. Clearly, it’s good that they’re here—we need them. But it’s creepy at the same time. This morning we heard an ad on the radio for one such company. It convinced me that I wouldn’t call them if I could help it—it was just too sweet, too soothing … too commercialized rescue. But that’s easy for me to say. I don’t need to seek help, accepting it even if it comes from strangers who feel predatory.

I came to realize another invisible impact of the flood through a story on NPR. It mentioned a man who lived in an area that was directly in the path of the flood. When emergency workers knocked on his door, warning him to leave, he heard the knock but didn’t answer. He was afraid it was ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) coming to take him away because he’s undocumented. 

Another experience in a similar vein: I had volunteered to participate in a “citizenship workshop” this past Saturday, a program where volunteers (like me) help people to apply for citizenship. The event, scheduled for just a week after the flood, was cancelled, and no reason was given. I couldn’t help but wonder whether it was because this program draws largely from Latino communities, and those communities were disproportionately affected by the floods. One of the largest Latino communities around here is located in Longmont, the scene of heavy flooding, with parts of town destroyed and other parts cut off by the flood. Other large Latino communities are in areas around Denver, some of which were also severely flooded, and on the eastern plains, directly downstream from these same rivers and streams.   

It was these stories and others like them that made me realize how limited my earlier thinking about the flood had been. Yes, resilience is wonderful, and we need to celebrate it, perhaps especially in the midst of horrors like this. But focusing only on that—and doing so from the perspective of someone who was incredibly fortunate—risks missing something deeper. Something that includes the unseen, often unacknowledged side of disasters of this sort: the people who have little power in the first place and who are faced with huge losses and huge risks that others of us can’t even imagine—that we don’t even think about as we reflect on how lucky we are:

The sense of creepy predatory invasion when we are at our most vulnerable. The fear of deportation and the separation from family, friends, all that life has been. The loss of an opportunity to apply for citizenship. Where do costs like that show up on the ledger of the flood’s damage?

So, more than a week after the flood waters began to recede, I find myself with a very different perspective on the whole event than I had in its immediate aftermath. Still grateful for my own good fortune, but far more conscious of the things I don’t even need to consider in my daily life—things that even color experiences as basic as safety and identity in a natural disaster. That’s a pretty good definition of privilege: not needing to think about things that others must think about constantly.

A lesson I need to learn over and over.

Retirement ... encore (Part 2)

A few days ago, I posted a blog about an emerging view of aging that suggests a new “encore” stage between midlife and old age. The idea is that instead of retiring (in the old sense of taking it easy), a lot of folks are filling their post-midlife years with very active engagement with the world—sometimes including starting new careers. There’s a lot to be said for this new look at aging, and that was the subject of that earlier blog. But I promised to come back with some concerns I have about this model. This, you will no doubt be happy to know, is that promised commentary.

So here are my two concerns:

First, I always worry about any model that talks about “stages” of development. Stages always imply a sort of lock-step approach, where you have to take one step before you can start the next. They’re always accompanied by a nodding acknowledgement that “this doesn’t fit everyone.” But for the most part, the discussion of stages then goes on to assume that the model does, in fact, apply to everyone … except maybe folks who are somehow failing at their developmental task.

So, I’m troubled by the sort of “should” nature of this portrayal of aging as happening in stages. What does this perspective say, for instance, of someone who doesn’t want to add on a stage or start a new career? What about people who are perfectly content building their later life around recreation, hobbies, family, personal pursuits? Are those folks somehow failing to “fulfill their full potential”? Are they abandoning the promise of their generation by making these choices? And then what of the person who doesn’t get an “encore”? The person who, for whatever reason, chooses to (or must) continue in the “old” job/career until they retire once and for all? And what about someone who thought they had a chance for an “encore” until the bottom fell out of the economy? How do we understand their choices within this model?

I think the idea of staying engaged in the world—through a career or other means—is grand … for those folks for whom it fits. But I resist any implication that there’s a “right” way to grow, whether it’s growing up or growing old.

My second concern is that this model makes huge assumptions about the choices that are available to people. Now, this model applies to a lot of retired folks I know. Some have started new careers, lots are very engaged in community activities. But my circle of friends is a fairly homogeneous group. Like the “encore” folks discussed in these writings, most of us have a wealth of privilege—financial privilege, white privilege, educational privilege, geographic privilege—that allows us to live as we do. The fact that we can even entertain an “encore” option points to our privilege. 

The question for poor folks is not whether to frame retirement as a recreational escape or as an opportunity for an “encore” career. The question is whether they can stop working at all. For people without economic resources, the end of working life comes not by comfortable retirement of any sort, but by default, by necessity, due to poor health, economic downturns, outsourcing. (Coincidentally, as I was thinking about this, I also came across a recent study showing that both forced “retirement” and ill health have significant negative effects on post-retirement well-being. What a surprise!)

I have similar thoughts about educational privilege. It’s far easier to consider entering a new career when you have a broad education that allows for flexibility than when you have a limited set of skills that fit a limited range of occupations. It’s easy to say “go back to school” when it’s back to school instead of just to school because you never got much schooling as a child.

To see what I mean, check out the list of possible “encore” careers given in the article I talked about before. The vast majority of them require significant educational background: nurse, nurse instructor, social worker, teacher, child-care worker, yoga instructor, non-profit social media manager, grant writer, pastoral counselor, etc. These may be encore careers for someone with considerable prior education. But they are almost certainly out of reach for someone who previously worked as a clerk, a welder, a nurse’s aide, a bus driver, a domestic worker. Other options listed not only presume that the retiree is well established but that a lot of other (privileged) folks are interested in the retiree’s particular “passion”—yoga instructor, for instance. The few positions listed here that might be within reach of folks who are poorer, less able, and less educated would hardly be considered “encore careers” that promise passion and purpose accompanied by a far-less-important paycheck. They’re more like continuing hard work for low pay: home health aide, solar installation trainer, weatherization installer.

So, this whole idea of an encore career offers us an opportunity to reconsider our privilege. Now, privilege isn’t inherently a bad thing. As Suzanne Pharr has said, you just need to spend your privilege well. This provides  the ideal lens through which we might envision that encore career—as a way to spend our privilege well. From my own particular personal peculiar perspective, that would not include yoga instructor, but it would definitely include teacher’s aide, Peace Corps volunteer, AmeriCorps volunteer, home-health aide. These are jobs, not careers, and they don’t pay well. But for those of us who have the resources to make a choice based not on monetary need but on the desire for passion and purpose, jobs like these would mean privilege well spent. There are other options, too, careers that spend privilege well but that require more education than many retired people can (or will choose to) undertake—social worker, teacher, non-profit grant writer, and others. Or, we have the privilege to simply retire, to rest. To stop and smell the roses. But let’s not imagine that this privilege is available to everyone simply because a new life stage has been designated.

This whole line of thought seems like such a wet blanket. It’s far more fun to tout the joys of aging and the choices we have (as I have done before here). So this blog seems out of character for me. But I want to honor the lives of people who don’t come to aging with anything like the privilege I enjoy. The vision of an encore performance is grand. For those who can do it, it’s a fine testament to the amazing ability of humans to, as old Timex watch ads used to say, “take a licking and keep on ticking.” But whether we have this option depends so much on the the privilege we arrive with. 

Really.