All human beings have their otherness and it is that which cries out to the heart.
― Elizabeth Goudge
I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.
― Walt Whitman
You must let suffering speak, if you want to know the truth.
— Cornel West
Hello.
I am a man.
I am straight.
I identify as white.
I'm middle class.
Should I continue? Yes, I can roll off the white-male-raised-by-conservatives-but-now-liberal-etc. like anyone's business, but...does that truly explain who I am? Or does it explain enough? I suppose it would depend upon who you--yourself, the reader--are. I can confidently say without knowing anything more about any of you that everyone reading this has their own labels attached to them...not only by society, but by themselves. My parents are much more than a label or three, even as they have become more conservative with age, leaving behind the fertile ground I was raised upon that helped set the foundation for who I have become. They are much more than a snapshot of themselves from a prior time, or the result of who they are now. As am I.
As is anyone.
A few others that could be added to that list of mine now are liberal, atheist, college educated...but do these as well really tell you everything you need to know about me? Do they tell you what is important about me to you? Or even what is essential about me? Not very likely. Just reading Hillary and Bernie supporters going after one another here on Kos should show you that being labeled a liberal just ain't good enow to get along all the time.
I think empathy has more to do with it than anything. What most people need to realize, I believe, is that empathy is not simply an emotional response to another person. Empathy takes thought, and enough thought to make the connection between you and someone else. With the conservative disdain for individual thought, it isn't surprising that empathy is not only rarer among Republicans, but actually frowned upon by many.
The opposite can be said of many Democrats and Liberals. Bill Clinton grew up poor with a single mother. Being called America's first black President aside, there is a reason he was identified as such, spurious or not. What says empathy more than I feel your pain? Too, President Obama can be called white as easily as he can be called black. He was raised by a white parent and grandparents, but embraces his black heritage too. His time as a community organizer could have only strengthened his own empathy for others; listening is a powerful skill for a leader.
My mom and dad grew up in Southern California communities where they were part of the majority minority population...whites and Latinos were the largest ethnic groups. They were part of the majority Catholic group, though, and belonged to churches that were thankfully more progressive and embraced the changes brought about by Vatican II. They believed priests should be able to marry and clergy should be open to women. My mother used birth control. When it was my time to learn the facts of life (gratefully when I was ten), they taught me masturbation wasn't a shameful, wicked act. They did tell me that I should marry a nice Catholic girl when I grew up, but that didn't quite work out anyway.
My father was Air Force, and five of my other family have served in the military. I was able to get a nice, well-rounded exposure to other cultures and nations that way. I remember making paper airplanes as a kid with a group of Israeli pilots who were training on F-16s, and shopped at a Toys-r-Us with a friend and his mother who wore a shayla. That fact I lived in a country where I could interact with both and grow from the experience did not occur to me until many years later. What took me many years later to identify was the sense of service my family has maintained as a tradition. Aside from the six military members, there are seven teachers, two firefighters, two nurses, two EMTs, a regional director of the Teamster's Union, and a director for the American Heart Association. Caring about others is something that must be taught, and I am grateful to whatever forebear began this tradition that is not spoken of, but acted upon. It was another ingredient to add to the recipe that grew me into who I am today.
I was one of the few white kids in my elementary school in Kindergarten and 1st grade, while my mom and I lived with her parents and my dad was in Vietnam. I once had another kid tell me, when I asked how he broke his arm, that someone pushed him off of the wall he'd been sitting on because he was white. Not something most white kids get to experience as a minority, which made all the difference in the world to my thinking on it. My parents said something many parents wouldn't say to their kindergarten child that night: think about it. They wanted more than to explain it to me—they wanted me to figure out the answer on my own. More good empathy-building. So when I told them the other kid didn't like the color of his skin, they took the invaluable next step in my growth as an empathic human being, and asked me: why? Six was too young an age to be able to answer on my own, but just placing the ball in my court showed their wisdom in setting high expectations for me as their child. They did their part as dutiful parents and laid the groundwork for me walking a mile in another person's shoes...or at least contemplating it. At least trying to understand. At least trying to attempt it.
Still, racism was, from very early on, something that I despised. I still had my own prejudices to overcome on my own. Socrates' quote that true wisdom lies in knowing that you know nothing is a fine parallel to empathy, and empathy for those suffering racism. It helped that my parents gave me books to read on Harriet Tubman, George Washington Carver, and Toussaint Louverture. I would read about W. E. B. Du Bois and Malcolm X later on my own. But my 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Taylor, herself marched with Dr. King as a young woman, and that and her early introduction of Black History Month as a subject in our class made a very big impression on me. She made enough of an impression on me that I ended up becoming a teacher myself.
My father's mother, who was full Blackfoot from North Dakota, gave me a lifelong interest and love of my Native American heritage, and the number of Native Americans in my grandfather's French Canadian-predominant family reminded me that not all whites tried to wipe out the people who were first here. I can easily remember bawling my eyes out at the tears of Iron Eyes Cody to the litter around his canoe, but it was more than the pollution that connected me with him. Years of my father badmouthing Western television shows and films for their portrayal of Native Americans had built a strong identity with the people of my grandmother. And yet, is one eighth the genetic heritage of the Blackfoot enough to identify with their causes? It should take less than zero to do so.
What is so ironically sad was the racism my grandfather espoused towards so many minorities but turned a blind eye to for his own wife. A signalman in World War 2, he survived the sinking of three ships, with the last ending up seriously wounded. The ship's Filipino cook kept him afloat for three hours until they were rescued...but continued to use the slur flip for them until his dying day. As a child I had more exposure to some of the varied epithets than many of my white friends who had liberal families. Sometimes, exposure to a tolerant attitude is not the most educational—exposure to a tolerant attitude along with a racist attitude is far superior. My dad battled his own father on his racism constantly, in front of my brothers and I, and that courage to do so instilled more than an acceptance of difference—it instilled a desire to act against hatred of what was other.
I can remember when I first comprehended that my uncle didn't behave like other adults I knew. My grandfather told me he was born retarded, and while I didn't quite understand it and loved my uncle regardless, when I met kids who were ridiculed at school because of the same label, it quickly made me an advocate for them. Becoming friends took longer because, well...it takes time to get to know people, and I was taught to judge someone by their actions. So I sat with the boy with Down's Syndrome in my music class in junior high, not just because I hated how he was being shunned like a plague carrier in the class, but because he had several gold medals around his neck. After listening to him, I found out Cory was a skier and won them at the local Special Olympics...which put me in some state of awe, because I had no idea how to ski.
I later found out that I myself am on the autism spectrum, and that revealing that tidbit of information happened to skew many people's opinions of me, most often on the very subject of empathy. I have many times had to explain the difference between autism and sociopathy...but regardless, the fact remains that empathy is something we all learn, and are not born with. I've benefited from a multitude of good lessons on empathy from a good many wonderfully empathic people. As a teacher, I've had a few fairly nasty responses from other people when I tell them I'm autistic—most of which boil down to how can you be so irresponsible to be a teacher if you're autistic? How can you form a bond with your students if you can't understand their feelings?
Pot meet kettle, indeed.
It took me a while longer to snuff out my homophobia. The military culture I grew up in was better at teaching me tolerance of ethnicity than tolerance of gender and sexuality. And while discrimination against homosexuals was rarely given an outright voice, it was implied, as so many prejudices are. There was, of course those outright moments. A teacher in high school once suggesting to several of us that a good idea would be to hop in a pickup with a bunch of baseball bats, drive up to San Francisco, and beat a bunch of fags. The thing was, while I was thoroughly inculcated with the disapproval of homosexuality, the similar infusion into me of tolerance of ethnicity left a bad taste in my mouth at this proclamation. AIDS was just coming into prominence, and gay plague was bandied around, but my rational, scientific mind couldn't hash the idea that this disease was from gays, and only affecting gays. Evidence would bear that out later, but even more than the logical component was the empathic segment of it. Did they deserve such suffering? Of course not.
Two things worked to remove that homophobia permanently: science...and Philadelphia. Eventually learning that homosexuality is genetic and perfectly natural happened to be the icing on the cake, however, compared to Tom Hanks' portrayal of Andrew Beckett as just as human as...me. The montage of photos at the end of the film did the most to connect me empathically to the character, and to the gay community in general, by identifying with our common humanity of childhood. I was an adult by this time, of course, and later gay and lesbian friends in college only expanded my acceptance. Understanding gender and sexuality from a scientific perspective has given me more insight into the hows, but empathy connected me with the whys, and, more importantly, the whos.
I think one more subject has helped me explore the diversity of what lies beyond my own experience and existence, but it lies fundamentally within myself, and not the other of which I have grown to accept unconditionally by now as a part of all of us: my atheism. I acknowledged early on, as a young child, a simple rationalization that, despite all of my family, friends, acquaintances, and authority figures telling me it was so, I simply could not accept the existence of a deity. I hid it within myself, even from myself, for decades. I saw, much like the discrimination against those of different culture, skin, and sexual preferences, that not believing in a god was a threat to the foundational beliefs of those who did. I have clear memories as far back as age three, and even at age four I was not only doubting the existence of a god, but coming to the conclusion that it was all a trick because, simply, I couldn't see, hear, smell, taste, or touch God.
Unfortunately, the very real fear of annihilation and non-existence at death came to me at that age, too, and like any fearful child, I buried the threatening thoughts deep so as to avoid them. What I now recognize to be cognitive dissonance probably played a large role in so many of my other battles against discrimination and prejudice. My own empathy probably had a large part to do with that initial understanding of how different I was than so many others. If I admitted to what I thought to others, I was destined for Hell in their eyes, so I had to hide it well. It took me until the age of twenty to break from the Catholic church. It wasn't until I was nearly thirty and almost died in a car accident that I began to consciously break from religion and spirituality in general, but I didn't openly espouse atheism until I was thirty-two. By that time, I could see how atheists—reviled as they were from my childhood—were the group I thoroughly identified with.
And yet I saw just how reviled they were even in my present. Polls showing atheists distrusted more than pedophile priests and terrorists made a sick kind of sense to me...for those with their personal foundations rooted in belief of the supernatural, a believing pedophile or terrorist who attacked the physical world was less of a threat than an atheist who attacked the very underpinning of their moral and spiritual system. But I knew who I was. I knew I was a moral, rational, empathic human being. Oprah Winfrey notwithstanding, I understood and felt the awe of what Carl Sagan spoke of in the universe, of what Richard Dawkins saw in the biological and evolutionary beginnings of life. Of course, having grown up in an ancient religion, I could see things from the believer's perspective as well. I simply rejected it, but I did not fault them for it. I understood why they felt the way they did. I'd felt much of it myself at one time. Now, as someone who didn't feel it, I wanted to be the one who was understood. Not pitied. Not spoken for. Listened to, and understood. Because, surprisingly enough to me even after all of these years, it took my own feelings of alienation and otherness over my atheism to finally and truly bring full circle my own understanding of empathy. A long journey...but everyone knows a circle has no ending, and my journey will continue.
Now, I stand in the present, the multiple facets of my being making me who I am. I watch with fury the injustices of Ferguson, Baltimore, and countless other communities...fury not because I am black, but because I am human and writhe with outrage at the treatment of my brother and sister Americans. I cheer and feel pride well within me at the Supreme Court decision on marriage equality not because I am a member of the LGBTQ community, but because I have loved myself and burst with joy at love given free reign to be expressed and shared. I feel giddy with excitement at the proclamations of Pope Francis, not because I am Catholic any longer, but because the common denominator of decency and concern for our world resonates through people of all faiths, or no faith at all.
Now I make no claim for anyone but myself. I believe in the idea that we are all nations unto ourselves. We are connected in common cause over many issues, but none so great as our common humanity. So, my question--for anyone still gracing me with their attention after so many paragraphs--is this:
Can you, despite your own suffering, identify the suffering in others, and--most importantly--do something about it by correcting your own prejudices, regardless of what they are?
If so, I'm right with you, brothers and sisters, and brother and sister are the only labels that matters to me.
I will close with two intertwined quotes, discovered some twenty years apart, but irrevocably linked in my own growth as a human being seeking to understand and care for other human beings.
He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not...he is a fool, shun him.
He who knows not, and knows he knows not...he is simple, teach him.
He who knows, and knows not that he knows...he is asleep, wake him.
He who knows, and knows he knows...he is wise, follow him.
--Arabic proverb
The greatest gift you can give someone is the gift of inspiration.
--Cornel West
Thank you, Dr. West.