The Ugly Underside of an Ugly Underside
October 22, 2008
by George Thomas
Talk about concussion patients beating their heads against a wall!
Whole industries and trade relations were established around it. Once, when wars were fought largely between societies of different language and culture, the victorious side took slaves from among the beaten. It has always been a matter of us vs. them. Drive into many small towns in your own country and observe the suspicious stares, or the studied averting of eyes as the guy at the gas station takes his time giving the outsider his change.
It’s a global phenomenon. Experts have become overwhelmed by the need for analysis of past analyses, and have dubbed the phenomenon the dehumanization of “the other.”
“Otherization” is merely a matter of insiders anywhere agreeing that they don’t cotton to no outsiders everywhere. The phenomenon has been developed to a fine art worldwide and, even in the United States, it isn’t simply a matter of black vs. white. Racism and bigotry have become a factor in the November 2008 elections only because an eloquent black has been running against an iconic-if-inflated, proverbial war hero who, by astonishing coincidence, happens to hail from ancestry which we have come to term white.
True, there are other, relevant issues driving this ghost-train to who-knows-where. Why, some pundits and even some citizens of my acquaintance actually cite policy issues and clear differences between platforms supporting John McCain and Barack Obama. There is that old bugaboo “experience,” for instance. In their eagerness for voters to lean toward age, wisdom and experience, McCain points to Obama’s lack thereof, forgetting for the sake of argument that Obama has had some foreign policy experience and George W. Bush had none to speak of. Similarly lost in this issue tangle is the presence of several elephants in Bush’s policy room: several old policy hands with decades of experience, and look at the digging it’ll take for us to climb back out of that hole.
And Sarah Palin, McCain’s pick for VP, doesn’t edify very much. The jury is still out over whether we can attribute both her fundamentalist Christian take on academic biology, and her mistaken understanding of what the job of Vice President entails, to lousy study habits. I’d rather entrust the country’s leadership to people with a bit more thorough preparation, whether they rise to Donald Rumsfeld’s level of experience or not.
Palin’s unveiling moment at the Republican Convention provided one small ray of warm, fuzzy inclusiveness and kumbaya among all peoples. I could almost hear the bell-like tones of Joan Baez in full-throated folk song. Perhaps in error, Palin cited her husband’s Inuit ancestry. Yet ever since then the McCain campaign has allowed functionaries and well-meaning supporters to do them no favors, dumbing down the discourse to white vs. black. Nowhere is bigotry simply a case of white supremacy, and yet moderate Republicans have watched helplessly as rallies revive the ugliness of George Wallace vitriol fests of the 1960s.
About a decade ago a “Pacific Rim” candidate for political office – I have forgotten who it was, where, and for what office – took a Democratic candidate to task for his failure to broaden the racial discourse to include mention of minorities other than the usual black vs. white. Gypsies in Europe (called “Rom” in polite company) have endured “otherization” for so long and so pervasively that even well-positioned social scientists dismiss Rom studies to be less-than-legitimate. (For color-conscious bigots out there, many European terms for the Rom/Gypsies translate as “black,” for hair color).
American “Otherization” survived a long history as well. Slaves were taken in war, and people were respected or deprived on the basis of language and custom. It wasn’t until the Anglicization of North America that skin color became the primary criterion for how humans were classified and cubby holed.
Today’s Hispanic population and, for that matter, other Native American descendants, cannot be placed in one such hole, whether pigeon or cubby. North American Indians have issues different from those to the south. Additional issues stemming from the reservation system suggest deep-seated internal conflict between the need to marginalize Indians while simultaneously providing real estate and special government support. Others in society, black, white, Hispanic, or other “others,” adopt the Hollywood stereotype toward reservation Indians with many of the expected non-complimentary generalizations. And of course Mexican-Americans exchange ridicule with Dominicans, Cubans and Puerto Ricans, and the love fest parties on.
It remained for the special social histories of the United States for the symbiotic cycle of bigotry to be completed. Today, blacks, Hispanics, white supremacists and…. Who have we left out unintentionally? exchange ideas for use in ridiculing some other “other.” Indeed if one reads classic studies of (or has actual experience observing) “The Nature of Prejudice” at work, one sees that our neighbors often operate by means of social defenses developed through generations. I have heard many Hispanic Texans fight back against exclusionary American Black politics. Some of my Hispanic relatives hold advanced degrees and have successful law practices, yet refuse to vote Obama based solely on race. Some Hispanic declarations against Obama sound every bit as racist as the Jim Crow sentiments reminiscent of the worst of deep southern white supremacy.
It’s all learned behavior, and the trick this election year is to determine how we learn such rubbish. Can one blame people for their upbringing? Their socialization? The prejudices they have learned and nurtured through the funny-mirror and wavy-glass lenses of experience? Yes, but only if everyone had access to accurate interpretation of what’s in their libraries, learned how to search the internet critically, or developed a balanced perspective on what’s learned vs. what’s inherited. If such were possible, I suppose bigotry could be something to blame on the bigoted. But we don’t all have opportunities to search farther afield for information. Many are stuck with the prejudices they have learned, and enter the work world lacking the critical tools necessary for dealing with the usual cast of idiocies.
And Sarah Palin couldn’t even name a newspaper she reads.
We are all damaged goods to some extent. Maybe the secret is to read all those self-help books in which the author became financially independent telling us how to deal with difficult people. Maybe we victims and victimizers should remain open to why a boss of different “ancestry” than YOU, seems to be leading in a direction unfair to YOU. Maybe it’s his or her lack of fairness and perspective. Maybe it’s YOUR lack of fairness and perspective. Maybe it’s both. But somewhere in the pot of savory menudo lie generations of hideous learning, the need to fight back, and to manage human relations, workplaces and elections defensively.
AND……
They vote. So do I. And for some, bigotry will drive their vote. As one of our politicians recently pointed out, we’re a nation of whiners, so deal with it.
Now, how do we go about figuring this beast out?
Comments
Comments »
-
Bob's Bail Out Plan by bobl-tlm
-
How Do You Like Deregulation Now? graphic politics by Dicky Neely
No comments yet.