movable type

We need to make our differences discussable, in order to make them usable

Published in the Asheville Citizen-Times - 7 May 2005

Political correctness—dancing around what we really want to say and ask, not talking about difficult issues for fear of offending someone—is killing us.

Rather than helping navigate treacherous waters of difference, this self-censorship is driving people further apart. Unable to determine correct terminology for individuals or groups of people different from us (since the rules seem to change constantly), many people have simply stopped interacting with those different from them altogether.

Rather than err and describe an African-American person as black when they prefer another term, we engineer ourselves out of situations where we’d need to make that decision. Rather than risk offending a person who is Muslim by raising the question of their religious beliefs and dress, we avoid them. Rather than be rebuked for mentioning someone’s race—even though studies show that skin color is the first thing we notice when meeting someone—we pretend we don’t notice the difference.

The result? More division, misunderstanding, distrust.

This urge toward political correctness attempts to sanitize what is messy: life is messy, particularly with increasing numbers of people who don’t look like me. Each individual has their own set of preferences – how can I possibly know them in order not to offend? I can’t.

I can’t always know the right words to say when talking with someone who has a different ethnic background, a different set of cultural norms, a different way of eating, greeting, or meeting – but I can learn to ask respectful questions to get information I need to interact effectively and in a way that enriches both of us. “Help me understand” is a nonjudgmental way to start that conversation: “help me understand the rituals associated with your religion,” “help me understand your feelings about gay marriage,” “help me understand your dietary needs.” It’s also a two way-street: it is as destructive to intentionally take offense as it is to intentionally give offense.

Perhaps we have difficulty acknowledging difference because we have confused recognizing difference with making a judgment.

One of the first employees I supervised was an African-American woman named Annette. Once she overheard me describing to a Board member who had never met her how he could recognize her in a meeting they were both attending later in the week, a meeting at which Annette would be the only African-American participant. Bemused, she listened to me use every other possible descriptor: “Annette? Well, she’ll be the well-dressed young woman with dark hair who is 5-feet, 6 inches tall. I’ll ask her to wear her name tag.”

“Wouldn’t it have been easier,” she said afterwards, “to tell him I’ll be the only African-American there?” Why did I hesitate? I didn’t want to define her by her skin color, I wasn’t sure if she preferred to be described as African-American or black, and I had confused discussing difference with making a judgment.

We learn from a young age not to acknowledge difference. When my older daughter was quite young, she saw a man in a wheelchair at the grocery store one day. “Mama!,” she shouted, “that man has no legs!” My immediate reaction? “Shhhhh!,” I whispered. “It’s not polite to point.”

It wasn’t new information to the man in the wheelchair that he had no legs, anymore than it is news to my African-American friends that their skin is darker than mine. By minimizing the difference, we lose the ability to talk about it, to acknowledge the often unconscious judgments that lie behind that discomfort, and to learn from and make the difference usable in some way.

A friend has quadriplegia as a result of an accident. Many who meet him try to avoid acknowledging the obvious: Howard is unable to move from the chest down. It is a difference that is glaringly obvious, yet people go to great lengths to pretend they don’t notice. It is a dance we have all done around difference. The result? People veer away from Howard, they avoid him altogether rather than risk offending him.

Gordon Alport, author of The Nature of Prejudice, built a model from his research at Harvard called “The Stages of Prejudice.” Acts we know are wrong are included, such as discrimination and violence, but the first stage of prejudice might surprise you: avoidance.

Many people talk about wanting a “colorblind” society in which we don’t notice difference, but that is the wrong goal. Let’s work instead for a society in which our differences are our greatest asset, and in which we acknowledge, celebrate, and learn from those differences.

To attempt to ignore our differences by avoiding them is to render all of our lives, identities, contributions, and backgrounds trivial. We must learn how to talk about our differences, not around them. We must move from political correctness to respectful questioning, from avoidance to engagement.

Be outraged by your own racism

“No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.” --Elie Wiesel

When my oldest daughter was in the first grade, she stopped me cold with just 16 words. “Mom,” she said as we stopped at a traffic light near Dupont Circle in Washington, DC, where we lived. "Why do you always lock the doors when a black man comes toward our car?"   

It’s not a story that I’m proud of – in fact, I’m utterly ashamed of it – but it’s an important story for me to acknowledge, own, and learn from. Her question was an honest one; as a six-year-old, she had no hidden agenda. She really wanted to know. My first reaction was to be defensive. “I don’t!,” I quickly announced, self-righteously. “Not every time, no it can’t be, I don’t, do I?,” I asked internally, my mind reeling with the implications. “No, you’re wrong, honey,” I wanted to say. “I don’t do that. That wouldn’t be right to do. I train people about racism. I have black friends. I used to watch the Cosby Show. I would never do that.”

But, while I could argue like the best defense attorney in the world, parsing the definition of “always,” in my heart of hearts, I knew she was right. I didn’t do it all the time, but I did it enough that she noticed. Actually, once was enough. And, truthfully, I knew that the black men outside my auto fortress knew it too; they heard the click. Always.

So, I didn’t lie to her and I didn’t try to minimize the small revolution that had taken place in that car that afternoon. Instead, we talked, as honestly as I would talk to an adult about these issues. I began that day, near Q Street, what has been a lifelong conversation for Emma about what racism is and how even people who mean well and know better can be racist and do things that perpetuate stereotypes. And how important it is to always be watchful, as she had been.

What I couldn’t bear was the thought that with that click, a whole universe of information had transferred to her, some silent and powerful and fast download that would change the way she sees the world, how she interacts with black men, what she passes along to others.

In a workshop that a colleague conducted once, a man was completing a written questionnaire about the kinds of messages that he heard growing up – from his parents, his school, his peers, the media. As he worked, he groaned every few minutes, as if in pain. When my colleague asked if she could help, he simply said, “it’s just that as I’m filling this out, I’m hearing my father’s voice tell me really awful and negative messages about groups of people.”

”Oh, my,” she responded. “That must be really painful to remember.”

“No,” he said, quietly and slowly. “That’s not the painful part. The painful part is that I can hear my own voice saying those same things to my kids.”

And so, like folktales and family recipes, we pass along this information – whether it is that black people are criminals, yuppies are shallow, Southerners are slow and stupid, Northerners are rude, lawyers are shifty, Gen X’ers are slackers, blondes are ditzy – whatever our particular brand of negative stereotyping (and whether we are using our voices or the mere click of a door lock), people around us are absorbing it like so many rambunctious and powerful memes, incorporating it silently (and probably unknowingly) into their bloodstream, having it impact not only their thinking, but also their actions, now and for years to come.

~*~ 37 Days: Do it Now Challenge ~*~

In a startling expose (well, startling to white viewers), ABC News reporter Diane Sawyer explored skin color prejudice in the U.S. with the help of two friends virtually identical in all respects but one—John is white, Glen is black. As they each separately try to buy a car, rent an apartment, respond to job listings, and shop, hidden cameras reveal that John is consistently welcomed and helped, while Glen is faced with higher prices, long waits, unfriendly salespeople, and closed doors. When interviewed for the film, Dr. Julianne Malveaux said that what is really needed is for white people to be as outraged by racism as black people are. And, if my door clicking shut is any indication, we need to be outraged by our own racism first.

~*~ A quote to remember ~*~

Last week’s 37days focused on the story of Kelli Davis, the high school senior whose picture was banned from her senior yearbook because she chose the tux rather than the drape for her photo. Here’s a quote from CNN from the man who upheld the principal’s decision to ban the photo: DAVID OWENS, CLAY COUNTY SUPERINTENDENT - “Her sexual preference is her sexual preference and that's OK, but the school shouldn't be the platform for her to make this statement.” There’s that word “preference” again. And I guess gay and lesbian people shouldn’t put photographs of their partners on their desks at work, either. I’ve sent Mr. Owens reading material on heterosexual privilege.

Why can't we have White History Month?

There is a petition being circulated on the Web that is addressed to “All Whites.” It has been signed by thousands of people, and reads in part: “We believe that if African Americans and now Hispanics can have their history month for their heritage, why can’t the White Americans have White history month? Wake up Americans before we become extinct! Please, sign my petition so that we can also have our White history month.”

This is an issue that surfaces every February, like clockwork, when Black History Month rolls around. I have the answer to the question: it is, quite simply, because every month is White History Month. 

When scholar Carter G. Woodson created what was then called Negro History Week in 1926, he hoped for the day when it no longer would be needed, when the contributions of people from various races, ethnicities and even genders would be taught fairly and properly. Woodson believed that Negro History Week would accomplish two things: build self-esteem among blacks and help eliminate prejudice among whites.

It was needed. As professor Yaw Boateng of Eastern Washington University reminds us, “between 1619 and 1926, African Americans and other peoples of African descent were classified as a race that had not made any contribution to human civilization; they were continually dehumanized and relegated to the position of non-citizens and often defined as fractions of humans. It is estimated that between 1890 and 1925, an African American was lynched every two and a half days. Peoples of African descent were visibly absent in any scholarship or intellectual discourse that dealt with human civilization.” This was the world in which Woodson lived.

But Woodson’s dream that Negro History Week would no longer be needed still isn’t a reality, nearly 80 years later. He dreamed of a day when every student's education would include such African-American figures as Crispus Attucks, who died in the Boston Massacre; Dr. Daniel Williams, who performed the world’s first open-heart surgery; Matthew A. Henson, who co-discovered the North Pole with Robert Peary, and Benjamin Banneker, the pioneer scientist who helped conduct the first survey of Washington. If you’re like me, those names weren’t mentioned in your history classes, and still aren’t today.

After the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Black History Week was expanded into Black History month. I’ve heard people joke that February was chosen because it’s the shortest month. Cute. But no, that’s not the reason. It was chosen in part because the birthdays of slave abolitionists Frederick Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, as well as poet Langston Hughes and musician Eubie Blake, are in February. It’s also the month the NAACP was founded (in 1909) and the month that its co-founder, W.E.B. Dubois, was born (in 1868). On February 3, 1870, the 15th Amendment granting blacks the right to vote was passed. February 25, 1870, the first black U.S. senator, Hiram Revels, took his oath of office. It was on February 1, 1960, that a group of black Greensboro, N.C., college students began a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter. February is an important month in Black history, though few of us in the White community know it. The intention of Black History Month was not to confine our study of Black history to those 28 days of February. Rather, Black History Month must be the climax of a study of the Black experience throughout the year.

So back to the question of the petitioners: why is there no White History Month? In the words of a Tulane University Black History Month website, a “White History Month is not needed because the contributions of whites are already acknowledged by society.” In other words, American history is white history, plain and simple. And as Thomas Sowell has written, “You cannot understand even your own history if that is the only history you know.”

Being white in the United States means that when my daughters attend school, the curricular materials they receive reflect the color of their skin; the same is not true for my African-American friends and colleagues. When my children hear about their national heritage or about “civilization,” they are shown that people of their color made it what it is; again, not so for the children of my African-American friends. Scholar Peggy McIntosh, associate director of the Wellesley Colllege Center for Research on Women, listed these and other realities of what it means to be white in this country - simply conditions of daily experience which, as a white person, she once took for granted. Not only do “flesh” colored bandages match her skin color, she noted, but when she turns on the television or looks at the front page of the paper, she can see people of her race widely represented—and not just as criminals or sports figures. The same is not true for African-Americans.

Last year, the Long Beach Grunion announced that January 2004 would be the first annual “White History Month.” They reported that White History Month festivities would include mass viewings of the latest Pixar and Disney brand films, the NBC’s Frasier farewell season, wine-tastings, and free Jet Blue travel. “White Americans,” they reported, “are in a celebratory mood, eagerly anticipating their first month where they can finally pay respect to their culturally rich traditions and the lifetimes of all the white people who have made the world a better place to be white in.” It was written as satire, but truer words may never have been spoken than those last seven: a better place to be white in.

Let me change my answer to the opening question: we don’t need a White History Month - not because every month is White History Month, but because every year is White History Year. In fact, a colleague of mine put it even more aptly: “it’s even more than White History Year…it’s White History Life – just look at the names of bridges, mountain ranges, parks, universities, colleges, streets, cities, management styles and philosophies, pictures on money, constellations, the color of Santa Claus...”

Quick! Who were Otis Boykin, Garrett Morgan, Lewis Latimer, and Patricia Bath? If you don’t know, don’t tell me we don’t need Black History Month.

 

 

Otis Boykin (1920–1982) invented the electronic control devices for guided missiles, IBM computers, and the pacemaker. Garrett Morgan (1877–1963) invented the gas mask and the first traffic signal. Lewis Latimer (1848–1928) invented an important part of the light bulb — the carbon filament. Dr. Patricia E. Bath (1949–) invented a method of eye surgery that has helped many blind people to see.