On Racism

I distributed an Email caricature of President Obama that one of my email acquaintances, an African American described as "racist crap" and told me to keep to myself.  I was abashed, ashamed really.  When I saw the 'toon all I saw was something that made fun of my President, that said he was 'full of crap' which I believe.  When my email acquaintance (I would have said friend but I think he would now object) saw it, he saw:  "Black men are full of crap, that's why they're black".  I can see that now, but it didn't occur to me then.

You see, I labor under a disadvantage, not having grown up in the United States.  Going to English, Overseas American and International schools I was always part of a despised minority:  Americans.  Indeed as an Oklahoman I was lumped in with Texans and was part of the despised minority of the despised minority.  The point is that regardless of color, creed or ethnicity all American kids were under siege from the rest of the kids in the community - we stuck together, watched each other's backs.  We were Americans.

When I was six we moved to Abu Dhabi and I was enrolled in the only school in the Emirate:  The Abu Dhabi English school.  At the end of the first day I walked out of class, was knocked down, when I struggled to my feet I has hit square in the face and pummeled by three boys one to two years older than I.  The English teachers didn't seem to be too concerned.  The violence was so bad that my father's company was forced to found a school for Americans (and Canadians, to show you how much times have changed) to protect me in particular.  It was founded in my Dad's bosses' study.  Today it is the American Community School of Abu Dhabi.

This trend continued throughout my childhood.  I can show you yearbooks with viciously anti-American screeds in them, not written in the margins but typeset and published as the 'hopes for the future' sections.  I just had no experience of the racial divide that existed in the US.  When I came back home I was stunned at what was done and said on both sides.  This was America, we were Americans, what was the problem?

So that extends to today.  I don't think in racial terms.  When I saw the (admittedly tasteless) joke on President Obama I just saw Americans making fun of their leader, what could be more American.  Despite being beaten again and again for my Okie accent and cowboy boots when I was a child I never took offense to the ugly caricatures of President Bush as a dumbass southern hick.  Par for the course, I said.  Even when he was presented as a Nazi - well that's what you get for being on top.

And that's what troubles me.  My Church has built a deep and abiding partnership with a North St. Louis, mostly African American one.  A great Church.  I've been there many times and vice versa, we do ministry and missions together.  My committee held a joint meeting after President Obama was elected talking about the "implications of the election"  ex-Senator Jim Talent spoke for the right and the Senior Pastor of Friendly Temple spoke for the Democrats.  It was great.  But I realized based upon that meeting that my friends at the Friendly Temple would interpret any bumptious criticism of President Obama as racist.  Saying what was said about President Bush with regard to President Obama just wasn't going to be acceptable.  So what did I do?  I censored my email lists, took the FT people off of my serious dialogs, left them on the 'pablum and prayer' ones.  I cut them off because I didn't want to to have to worry about my opinions offending them.  This is selfish, but what could I do?  I have strong, non-racist opinions, I want to make them strongly.  If I am continually censoring my opinions for one group (I don't do it for any others, and certainly no one does it for me) then I am disfavoring all the others.  Why shouldn't my Indian or Central American or lesbian relatives get the same consideration?

I had a roaring debate going on with some friends of my Seattle friend recently over the foreign implications of our increased devotion of resources to health care.  An otherwise charming matronly woman told me "I think all Tea Baggers are racists".  I'm a Tea Party supporter and she knew that.  She called me a perverted name and a racist to boot (right on, my email acquaintance would say).  I was a little taken aback but I kept after the debate.  She thought she had shut me down - she laid the ad hominem and expected me to run away humiliated.  When I didn't she didn't know what to say - the whole point of calling me racist was to escape the debate.  It didn't work.

Look, I was insensitive and I know it and I'm sorry.  But shouting racist cuts off debate and progressively isolates the offended from the rest of the community.  It is grossly overused and is wielded as a weapon to stifle debate, intimidate heterodox people and otherwise retain the status quo.  It must be getting very lonely inside the anti-racist echo chamber..