I have been
reading a book lately that indirectly involves discrimination in the
subplot. Two boys are prejudged to be idiotic and simple-minded when they
leave their homes upriver and travel to a tavern in the next closest town. They
are scoffed at for their ragged clothes and funny accents. Their clothes
change, their accents adapt, they continually prove themselves to be wiser than
any other character, and yet, they continue to battle new and differing
preconceived notions no matter where they travel. It’s a harsh
introduction to a totem pole society they’ve never known before; no such
hierarchy existed in their village.
They speak of
the beautiful, isolated naiveté of their home. Before venturing out, they
thought their clothes were nice. They didn’t know anyone who wore
nicer. They were completely unaware their clothes were rags until they
were labeled as such by others. Their tongue is the common vernacular of
their environment. They’d never known other before. And it
certainly never sounded funny or out of place until they traveled out to a
place where their words were laughed at. When taverners called their
reckless behavior foolish they tried to explain there was no need for
protection or secrets back home. It would be an easy task to tell whose
resources had suddenly increased should someone in the village take to
stealing. Rather, supplies were more communal: those who had a little
more remembering times they had had a little less and had been helped by those
who had a little more.
It reminded me
of when I was young enough to be colorblind. Before I’d learned of
slavery and civil rights, holocausts, revolutions, liberations, and
nine-elevens. Though I learned of them in respectable ways, reverenced
with woe and forbearing repetition, I nevertheless can deny they didn’t implant
the discernment of ‘different’ notwithstanding. Yes, I learned to respect
and appreciate differences from these historical lessons, but an inescapable
byproduct of equality lessons is learning that inequality existed in the first
place. I’m pleased with an accepting mind. But, sometimes I still
yearn for the childish purity of not recognizing differences at all.
However, since differences do exist and can no longer be denied, it is best to
glean from them what we can. A profound lesson I learned from watching a
Where Are They Now recap episode of "Wipe Swap" last night.
LOL!
One of my pet
peeves is the way “racist” and “bigot” have replaced “witch” in the
finger-pointing hunt for modern-day scapegoats. I often cringe when I
hear these words pop up in articles and media headlines because I find the
situations so blown out of proportion and the labels so misplaced.
Without getting
into too much psychological mumbo jumbo, human beings organize, assemble, and
classify information according to the availability heuristic, i.e., what’s
available to us. What is available to us? Previous information that
we’ve already encountered and categorized.
We process new
information based on old information. We lump like things together.
When we see a four-legged creature with spots and a long neck, we expect it to
be a giraffe. Why? Because in our brains, these are the qualities
that delineate 'giraffe' from other animals. We anticipate dogs barking
and wagging their tail because all other dogs we’ve met have barked and wagged
their tails. And so on, and so on.
The availability
heuristic is a shortcut: giving first-time attention to every scrap of matter
we encounter would be debilitating. The heuristic allows us to process
information quickly so we can move on. This way we can walk down the
trail without having to scrutinize each rock along the way.
Remember how the
School House Rock pronouns video demonstrated the useful timeliness of not
having to repeat Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla over and over? Or how Yelp
takes information previously input (comments, reviews, ratings), organizes
them, processes them, and then presents them to you in one easy search result
so you don’t have to spend all night driving around to different
restaurants? Your brain kind of works the same way.
Just as you put
keywords into a search bar, your senses (see, hear, smell, taste, touch) send
key information to your brain and your brain replies with the top
results. For example: Ears to the brain—I’m hearing a loud, rushing,
whooshing sound coming from overhead. Brain computes—there must be a
plane flying over you in the sky. Brain to eyes—check if there is a plane
flying overhead in the sky. Eyes to brain—yes, we see a plane flying
overhead in the sky. Brain confirmed, mind at ease. Unless it’s
something really bizarre we’ve never encountered in all our years of sensory collection,
these computations are so habitual they happen instantaneously and
unconsciously.
Key sights
(four-legged), key sounds (barking noise), key touches (hairy or furry)—any key
information your senses provide to your brain are processed instantaneously and
unconsciously (it’s a dog) because they are homespun from common consistencies
(dogs are commonly four-legged, hairy, barking creatures). And, common
consistencies translate to people as easy as anything else.
I’m originally
from Utah. When people learn I’m from Utah the first question they ask
is, “Are you Mormon?” This is a prejudiced question. It’s
prejudging based on what people know of Utah. It doesn’t bother me.
I smile and answer. This doesn’t cause headlines or social media outpour
because the prejudice is based on fact. It’s prejudiced, but
logical. Utah has a higher Mormon population than anywhere else in the
world. Therefore, being from Utah, there is a high probability I myself
am Mormon.
People are aware
not EVERYONE from Utah will automatically be Mormon. They are open to the
possibility I may say no. But, they’re also not senseless enough to
ignore a correlation. And, why should they? Why deny it? A
correlation is a correlation. It’s there. It exists. It
exists for a reason: because there is a common consistency. And, this
common consistency helps us group, categorize, and process information.
Today, the sun
is shining. It’s in the habit of rising. In fact, there is a strong
correlation between morning and the sun rising. It rose yesterday and the
day before too.
When I stop and
think about it, I know it will not last forever. A day will come when the
morning arrives and the sun has not risen. Every night I lay my head down
I know there is potential the sun will not come up again. However, there
has never been a day in my life when the sun has failed to rise.
Therefore, I expect the sun to rise again tomorrow. Because it has risen
every day thus far. I anticipate it despite knowing the potential for a
different outcome. This makes the sun consistent and reliable, it doesn’t
make me a sunist.
In the medical
world they have a saying: When you hear hoof beats, think of horses, not
zebras. There are reliable reasons stereotypes exist.
The fact of the
matter is lower socioeconomic environments are more likely to have higher drug
abuse and crime rates. I have lived paycheck to paycheck. I’ve been
poor. I have lived in government housing. And I know that most of the
lower class is good people just trying to get by; put food on the table; make
it to another day. That still doesn’t change statistics.
“[The poor]
suffer higher disease rates, death rates and imprisonment than their affluent
brethren. They are imprisoned at much higher rates and they are executed for
capital crimes more often than any other group.”--http://www.pubdef.ocgov.com/poverty.htm
Additionally,
certain races and ethnicities are more likely to reside in these
environments.
“SES [socioeconomic
status] and race and ethnicity are intimately intertwined. Research has shown
that race and ethnicity in terms of stratification often determine a person’s
socioeconomic status (House & Williams, 2000)…African American children
are three times more likely to live in poverty than Caucasian children.
American Indian/Alaska Native, Hispanic, Pacific Islander, and Native Hawaiian
families are more likely than Caucasian and Asian families to live in poverty
(Costello, Keeler, & Angold, 2001; National Center for Education
Statistics, 2007).”
When it comes to
the workforce, women too make their own bed, so to speak. Highly educated
or not, women are more likely to favor children over jobs.
Just as my
fellow Utahns and I are more likely to be Mormon, those from poverty stricken
areas are more likely to be involved in crime Minorities are more likely to be
from poverty stricken areas. Women are more likely leave a job. These
are just a few examples of a list that goes on and on, but they are not racial
judgments; they’re statistics. Of course they’re not all
encompassing. Of course they don’t apply to everyone. But, they do
make particular behaviors warranted.
Should a person
bypass a hitchhiker, it doesn’t necessarily make them bigoted; it makes them
educated in self-preservation. A boss wary of handing over a job to a
woman may also be schooled in self-preservation. Business owners have to
do what makes the most sense to ensure the business keeps going.
Sometimes a less qualified man actually becomes more qualified simply because
he is more likely to stay with the company, which in the long-term outlook is
more beneficial. Are these conundrums of life unfair? Yes.
Irritating enough to pull hair out? Yes. But, are they
racist? Not necessarily.
In order to show
true racism a level of unity and equality must first exist. Imagine
putting two identical cups filled with identical clear-looking liquids in front
of lemon-lime soda enthusiasts who on a previous questionnaire all disclosed
their favorite soda is Sprite. One cup is labeled Sprite while the other
is labeled 7-Up, yet BOTH CUPS contain 7-Up. The subjects are
instructed to sample both sodas and choose which they think tastes best.
Even though both
cups contain the SAME liquid, and NEITHER cup contains Sprite,
undoubtedly these enthusiasts will be likely to say the liquid in the cup
labeled Sprite tastes better. This is an example of a truly biased superiority.
Believing Sprite tastes better based purely on name alone. Unfortunately,
creating a similarly empirical environment to assess racism in people is not
only difficult, it’s arguably impossible.
How can
you obtain equalization between two things that are innately
different? No matter how equally they measure up on paper, women will
always have something different than a man. Despite being the same age,
growing up in the same neighborhood, having the same accent or lack thereof, attending
all the same schools, taking all the same classes, earning all the same
grades, being clean-cut, well-groomed gentlemen in business suits, an
African-American male and a Caucasian male will always have one inalterable
difference. The catch-22 is that without the difference racism would have
no boundary, and therefore, cease to exist, and with the
difference there is no way to accurately assess presence of racism without
causation possibly being attributed to extraneous variables.
Suppose a boss
interviews the two men mentioned who share all the same credentials but
differ in skin color and the boss hires the Caucasian male. Ultimately,
the boss chose the candidate he was most comfortable with. It’s
possible he believes one race to be superior to another. Maybe he was
raised in a predominantly Caucasian area and unconsciously sides with
familiarity. This would make sense. Tastes in food, entertainment,
etc., are all heavily influenced by the nostalgia of childhood.
But--especially in this day and age--it really could come down to a host of
other possibilities: an extra smile, an eyebrow raise, maybe the tone of voice,
or the speed at which one talks. There are hundreds of reasons why one
was possibly selected over the other.
Thus, finger
pointing and labeling based on one isolated incident is
an unwarranted jump to conclusions. Repetition is needed to
establish a common stream of behavior and intent. When people in
heated moments become red-faced, desperate, or fed up they often lash out
with one-time words they would not otherwise say. This doesn't
mean they believe it. Were these words consistently repeated over time
and situations, root behavior could be established and labeled. However,
generally people who are upset don't mean what they say and will own up to such
once they calm down. Repetition and intent must be taken into
account.
Knives are the
second most common murder weapon in the United States. Everyday
knives are used for heinous purposes. And yet, knives continue to be
used everyday in every kitchen across the country. What's the
difference? Intent.
Knives may be a common killing tool,
but the majority of this country is actually using knives
to butter bread. Like knives, words have the power to
destroy lives. But, at the end of the day, words are just
words. It is the way in which we use words that matters. Not
every taboo word that slips out is meant to be a swipe at the
neck. As mindless as chopping lettuce, it is possible for such
words to surface without malice.
Because it is
the intent behind words that matters, it's fairly ridiculous we have
outlawed words in the first place. It's a blind hope
that eliminating the word will somehow also eliminate the malicious
intent behind it. But, plucking a leaf off a tree has never
succeeded in killing the branch, let alone squashing the trunk.
Meanwhile, we've become so pavlovian trained to hear sirens anytime
particular buzz words are used that we've stopped caring who is the
real enemy and who is not and have simply started condemning
everyone. This doesn't seem particularly healthy.
I am aware that
racism continues to be a very real and prevalent threat. However, most often this is not what I’m
seeing in the media. What I see in
national coverage is a grain of sand sensationalized into a mountain. This is why I'm less concerned with what
Paula Deen may or may not have said in her kitchen at one point, and more
concerned that neighbors having an Easter-egg hunt in Richmond, Virginia found supremacist-planted
eggs with notes saying “’Diversity’=White Genocide” and links to
“Whitemanmarch.com.” Censoring the words
does not censor the ideology. The
ideology is what I’d like to see expelled.
Not the livelihood of media-selected scapegoats.
