| |
My son just pulled down an unheard of 12 out of 12 on his SAT essay. He was lucky, they happened to ask a question he was passionate about. It had to do with the philosophy of “The Other.” At different times in different places human beings have reacted in different ways to “The Other.” There are loose definitions and exact definitions, but it comes down in the end to those who are not like “us” in a myriad of ways. In the example given, I do fit one of the criteria. I am not a man and I am not gay, but I do have green eyes. Therefore, Jill and I are automatically “other.” Is it an ‘otherness’ that counts? Is it one that we will be able to ignore, or one that will change both of our lives? Is it one that our society has begun to get past, or one that is still huge and blocking? Is it one that will define one of us as a “sinner”? Is it one that will mean we must automatically distrust each other?
Prejudice, intolerance, bias, partiality, damage; all of these words contribute to the way we feel about and treat ‘the other,’ in degrees, stages, magnitudes. I have a poem on my Blog about Martin Luther King - about skin. I am old enough that I remember a time when it was perfectly acceptable to pass laws which said that people could be treated as second class citizens because of the color of their skin. I remember being really baffled by the explanation that “WE don’t do that, but THEY do.” WE being people from the Western part of the United States and THEY being people from the Southern part of the United States. Within their explanation of bigotry and intolerance was another built in “Other.” Frankly, the whole thing sounded like Crazy Clown Logic to me. It still does.
Even leaving God and Sin completely out of the equation, it was built into the civil laws of our country that the majority could make the minority sit in the back of a bus, or use a different drinking fountain. We all know that in one of the greatest Democratic Documents in history, “We the People” actually meant, “We the White, Males, of a Certain Class who can Read, Write and Own Property.” During WWII my father arrived on a base in the desert South West U.S. and found that in this extremely hot climate, there were six swimming pools for the use of soldiers and their families. White soldiers and their white families. The regiments were segregated in those days. This wasn’t a matter of segregated pools, there was nothing provided for the black regiments at all. It took him nearly a month of fighting bureaucracy, bigotry and utter battlement before he finally got one of those swimming pools set aside for the “Negro” soldiers and their families. Dr. Martin Luther King “Dream” of everyone swimming and playing together was a long, long way away and the idea of a desegregated swimming pool completely unheard of. As my father fought, the thing he head the most often was, “What is the MATTER with you?” Why would he do this? Everybody knew that “they” don’t get hot the way ‘we’ do and what if they do? Why did he care? Someone called his last duty station to see if he had a history of mental problems. They couldn’t even understand it.
And, of course, you can’t take God and sin out of the equation. Linking the “other” to “sin” is the quickest way to be sure the bigotry is total and internalized. God is on “our” side. God is against “them.” “They” are sinful. My Grandmother was a suffragette. (Yes, folks, it’s only been that long!) She was told again and again, with great indignation that any woman who voted was in an active state of sin. The act of voting was, in and of itself, against God. She was told this by men and by other women. The next thing you know, woman would start to believe that they were not meant to be ruled by men and Christ said so, right there in Paul’s Letters to the Ephesians. (Are you worried about the math here? As in, how Did Christ say anything so long after he died? Don’t worry about it, no one else does.) It is unbelievable to us that in my lifetime there were laws that made it so someone could not drink from the same drinking fountain because of the color of their skin. It’s almost an inconceivable as not allowing two consenting adults to marry each other because of their sexual orientation. Goodness, if we let “them” have the same rights as “we” have “they” might get it into their heads that “they” are as good as “we” are.
Because that is the bottom line. The only reason for making another person into “the other” is so that we can feel superior. All of the “sin” we put on them, the belief that “we” are smarter than “they” are, better than “they” are … it is all to make “me” - whoever I am - feel superior.
When I was a little girl the town library was on the corner, just a half block from my house. I was a quiet child and they no one ever asked me to leave the library, so I just stayed. I read, I wrote in my notebook. I made up fantastic games in the stacks. Next to the staircase was a quote by Abraham Lincoln, just a few words in a very big frame. I can remember wondering about it from the time that I could first read it. it said: “It is no pleasure to me to triumph over any man.” I can remember being very, very young and still thinking, “if that is the truth, you are the only person on the face of the earth, Mr. Lincoln.” At six, I knew perfectly well that people did get pleasure out of triumphing over other people. I knew I did and I knew that it was wrong. Not one of those “wrongs” that someone made up to make people stay in line, a real wrong, a deep wrong. I knew it was wrong, but I knew it was human nature. I wasn’t very much older before I knew that not only was it wrong, it was one of those things that we have to fight against in ourselves and that, all too often, the people who are defining “sin” are not fighting against this deep, wrong, they are aiding it.
Two other interesting things emerged over the years about this quote. I found out that the entire quote came directly after Lincoln’s reelection. Someone in the “white house circle” had said that he hoped now the critics of the administration felt properly rebuked by this strong expression of the popular will. Lincoln, it is said, was surprised and replied, “You have more of that feeling of personal resentment than I. Perhaps I have too little of it, but I never thought it paid. A man has not time to spend half his life in quarrels. If any man ceases to attack me, I never remember the past against him.” The quote comes from his acceptance speech, where he echoed this:
“I am thankful to God for this approval of the people; but while deeply grateful for this mark of their confidence in me, if I know my heart, my gratitude is free from any taint of personal triumph… . It is no pleasure to me to triumph over anyone, but I give thanks to the Almighty for this evidence of the people's resolution to stand by free government and the rights of humanity.”
And, as a woman in the early 1970's, I was fascinated to find that whoever made that line from Lincoln’s speech into a large, framed plaque and hung it in the Library where I grew up had misquoted Mr. Lincoln. I found six different renditions of the speech before I felt quite safe in saying, yes, it was a misquote. A fascinating misquote. For Lincoln said: “It is no pleasure to me to triumph over ANYONE. Who ever put those few words in a big frame had rendered it as “It is no pleasure to me to triumph over ANY MAN.”
What on earth difference does that make? It doesn’t, I suppose if you are any MAN. Is that getting just a little too nit-picky? What about the assumption that allowed someone in the early 1900's to change that line without a second thought? We’ve come a long way and done it fairly quickly. Do we have racial equality today? Equality between the sexes? Equality of sexual preference? How much of it have we really internalized? My mother commented the other day that she remembered a time when a black couple was never used in an advertizement. You do see that now. But only black with black, white with white. What if that couple lovingly buying a diamond ring together were both women? What if it were Jill and I, would some one shake their heads and say with repulsion “That is disgusting! One of them has green eyes and the other one doesn’t …”
|
