Those Three Little Words

Imagine a married couple. Not a happily married couple, although they’re trying to work things out. It was a marriage that was troubled from the beginning. It was not a marriage that resulted from mutual love, nor even a marriage arranged by the families of the two. No, this marriage was one where the husband kidnapped the woman, put her in chains, and brought her back to live with him. Not an ideal beginning, but after so many years together and what with the children involved, they’re trying to make the best of it.

As you can imagine, in the beginning, it was not a good scene. The husband beat his wife, subjected her to every sort of cruelty. He treated her like a possession. He truly believed he owned her, that he was superior to her and that her personal needs—beyond being fed and housed—mattered not a bit. Besides giving to her the bare necessities of life, he gave her nothing and yet demanded all.

It sounds horrible, I know. Especially since so many on the outside, so many even in his own family, only seemed to see the goodness of the husband. Such was the man’s reputation that they built many impressive statues in his honor. To be fair, the husband did have many fine qualities about him, but no amount of virtues could ever defend the way he treated his spouse: there are some sins so grievous they cannot be pardoned.

The husband himself was aware that this was no way to treat another human being, though he had been raised to think it acceptable. Eventually the time came where his behavior became so obviously morally wrong that he knew he had to change things.

It wasn’t easy. His switch to a more equitable relationship came at a great cost to himself, nearly tearing him in two. He was forced to part with the illusions he had about his ancestors, who treated their wives in the same way, was forced to look at the cultural attitudes of the society he lived in that tolerated such behavior. And so he freed his wife from the chains he used to keep her in and promised that they would henceforth live as equals.

They weren’t of course, since he still owned the farm, the animals, the house. Perhaps she was now free to leave, but she was by then far from the land of her birth and had nowhere else to go. Besides, she had unfortunately become accustomed to the life she had been living however cruel and unjust it was. That is human nature, after all, to become used to the most unhealthy of environments when there is no better choice. Her only realistic option was to stick with her husband and hope that he would keep the promises he made, that all that struggle to become a better person would eventually lead to a better tomorrow.

Besides, she really did see something of value in the man who had forcibly took her from her home. There was a degree of humanity in him. He was still very much a work of progress, but there was potential. If she tried really hard she truly believed she could eventually learn to forget about all those years of violence and domination. From all of the pain and cruelty she could yet envision a brighter future, one where peace and equality would be a reality and not a hollow promise in one hand while the other hand held a whip.

It was a rocky road they walked, the wife always a few steps behind. The transformation of the husband, for all his hard work and sacrifice, was merely the beginning. For every few steps forward he took, it seemed he would invariably slip backwards a couple. Sometimes sheer cluelessness and self-centeredness aggravated the situation, leaving the spouse to ponder if he would ever be able to see her as an equal.

Undoubtedly, the relationship had come a long way. Sure, there were the micro-aggressions, the unwillingness to have necessary conversations about the past, the occasional black eye. But it couldn’t be denied he was trying to be a better man. If only…

If only he could say those three little words. But he couldn’t. And that was the sticking point. That was what made it seem that all the other changes that had been made were little more than cosmetic ones to disguise an ugliness in his heart. If he could not speak those words out loud, then how could she ever know for certain that at his core there didn’t still exist a fundamental lack of concern, a feeling of superiority, a lack of commitment to a healthy relationship? She needed to know she mattered, and yet he would not speak those three little words. She knew a healthy relationship could never truly exist until that day he could speak them freely and without reserve. Black Lives Matter.

Divide And Conquer

Here’s something I wrote in May of ’95 that still seems relevant and if I may say so, prescient. It was written in reaction to ideas dominant in higher education at the time. Looking at it now, I see it is woefully incomplete in accounting for the racism that still exists, perhaps naively so. But it speaks from a point that cuts past the liberal/conservative dialog, which had never been helpful. What do you think? 

Divide And Conquer

According to current ways of looking at things, Oprah Winfrey is an oppressed individual. Apparently, the color of her skin (not to mention her gender) offsets the fact that she takes in a hundred million dollars a year. The unemployed Appalachian white male, however, is “empowered”, someone raking in the benefits of a prejudiced system. The incongruity of this juxtaposition goes to show the limits of the current prominent paradigm. Using nationality as a way of categorizing people is accepting the paradigm of the oppressor. Emphasizing racial themes increases racial tension, resulting in tearing apart a majority that should be working together.

A big part of the reason that prejudice exists is because of cultural and economic differences, especially in regard to the African-American. Statistics show that a larger percentage of African-American males are incarcerated than are represented in society. If we look at this statistic through a racial paradigm, we can choose only two options: one, that black males are more likely to commit crimes, or two, that the white-male dominated system is more likely to incarcerate black males. Either way we increase racial tension without relieving the problem. If we choose a different paradigm, however, we see race as an incidental issue. Poverty is a major determinant in crime. An inordinate amount of Blacks are poor. The causal relationship is obvious. While race still plays a part in this paradigm, we can put it into its historical perspective by stating that slavery and bigotry have caused the poverty which now represses the African-American. In this view, we see a greater commonality between the unemployed white Appalachian and the urban black, even though they themselves may not see it.

While it is easy to say that hard work can help the ghetto dweller or the unemployed Appalachian to succeed, the cold hard facts are that the great number of them do not. The occasional success story does not compensate for the countless lives which never had the opportunity to grow. This is not a racial issue. If we were to go into the slums today and make sure that an equal portion of whites lived with violence, poverty and hopelessness, it would not ease the suffering one iota of the people who would still live there. Poverty, not racism, is the issue. Racism is perpetuated by poverty rather than the other way around. If we truly wish to deal with and overcome racism, we must ensure that all people in this nation are given equal opportunity.

Categorizing people by their race or background is a legacy we have acquired from the likes of slave owners who wished to rationalize their inhuman treatment of fellow human beings. We cannot “fight discrimination with discrimination” as Stanley Fish says. Any power grab by a minority group is bound to trigger off a backlash of the majority. Those who erroneously believe in Fish’s assertion are giving fuel to the Rush Limbaughs and hate mongers. In fighting prejudice, it is crucial to avoid accepting the prejudiced categories that divide us.