The Solution We Are Afraid to Try
A relative of mine who had earlier divorced in his wife, created a scandal in our family with his relationship to another woman. There were two horrifying things about the relationship. First they were a man and a woman living together and not married. Second, she was black and he was white, and this was Louisiana. Marriage was not even a legal possibility.
This relative was a delightful man, very witty and fun to be with. He was also kind and generous and had been especially helpful to my mother. It happened that my daddy was very sick, and Mother was unable to keep her house according to her standards while taking care of a sick man. So the relative sent my mother money every month, in the amount that she paid for the help she needed.
Occasionally he came to visit, always alone. My mother told me this in the context of how thoughtful it was of him, not to bring this black woman with him.
Some of this situation was difficult for me to understand, because I had been away for years, living in the Middle East and in California. One of the people Mother often hired to assist her was a black woman, the biggest woman I have ever known anywhere, so big I expected the house to shake when she walked in, but in fact she walked more softly than a cat. She was efficient, honest and courteous, and my mother loved her. But she was a hired servant. Her right to be present was unquestioned in the neighborhood.
For a relative to appear and walk in with a black woman would reveal their relationship and bring shame upon the house. I finally understood this and accepted that my 88-year-old mother was not going to change.
But one day Mother went too far, and I could not be silent. She called the black partner “his maid.”
I said, “Wait a minute. You know very well that she is not a maid.”
Mother tried to justify her words. She said, “Well, she does keep his house.”
I said, “I keep Wayne’s house, too. Most of the time. I cook and wash his clothes. I don’t think you have ever called me his maid.”
Mother said, “Well, Frances, she’s not his wife.” What I heard was that she didn’t have a right to be anything but his maid.
That was eighteen years ago. I am not telling it to make my mother look bad (she was a product of her time and place), or even the south where I grew up (I have found prejudice everywhere), but just to explain that I know in my experience that America has a problem. I have worried about the problem for a long time. I understand that prejudice is hard to get rid of. There was a time when I thought that a generation would die, and bigotry would go with it, but I was wrong.
Prejudice is complicated. One reason it is complicated is that we are all flawed; we all identify best with our own kind; we all give the others something to resent or fear.
I am not even writing about this in order to propose a solution, because who am I to even suggest an answer to such a basic problem? There is a solution, of course, that would solve much more than racism in our own country, but it is hard, and we are afraid to try it and I am afraid to say it.
I am writing partly to point out that some of America’s problems offer insight into the problems of the Middle East. No, that’s not right. What I want to say is that their problems offer insight into ours. One way to express the complicated problems tearing up the Middle East is to note that they are somehow about diversity. Many different kinds of people exist there together, all of them with a certain amount of suspicion, distrust and disrespect for some other groups.
In Lebanon Too
An American friend of mine who lived in West Beirut once told me this little story. She was east of Beirut in the mountains and when she was ready to go home, she agreed to take with her a young man who happened, when he got into her car, to be eating a candy bar. When he finished it, he wadded up the paper and held it in his hand. She noticed this, because she had no trash container to offer him. He held that wrapper for a long time, while they crept through a traffic jam and stopped at a couple of checkpoints, but when they crossed the “Green Line” into West Beirut, he rolled down the window and threw it out. Appalled, my friend asked for an explanation, and the young man said, “Oh, this is a Muslim area; they don’t care.”
This happened during a lull in a war that had already cost Beirut 100,000 deaths. Disrespect was the mildest symptom of the country’s inability to mesh together Sunnis, Shiites, Druze, Christians, Jews, Phoenicians, Palestinians, Armenians, Kurds, etc., etc. The most diverse country in the Middle East, was proud of it but unable to handle it.
In Lebanon the government is based on some kind of balance of power, giving every sect a share according to its percentage of population. And everybody would like to have more, because everybody feels the need to be stronger than somebody else. They fought for 15 years and learned, I hope, that no one is strong enough to dominate the others, so they have to live together.
America too, the most diverse country in the world, is having trouble living with our diversity. And like Lebanon, we are seeing that discrimination against one group can be costly to everyone, because violence just erupts, unplanned.
Our government is not based on a balance of power between sects or races, but one of the struggles of democracy is to prevent a dictatorship of the majority. Our best dream of America is a melting pot. Black and white and yellow and brown and red and green and blue are supposed to melt into one new and beautiful color. Christians of all varieties, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, atheists, we are supposed to stand shoulder to shoulder and pledge allegiance to the country, which is like pledging allegiance to one another. This is a lofty ideal, too beautiful to give up.
A Subtle Thing
But here in America, as in the Middle East, we all hold on to some measure of disrespect for somebody. It is a subtle thing, hard to expel. History that has left our heads still courses through our veins. We let it fester into fear and the desire for power. Everybody is a little bit afraid of somebody for some reason. We deny it but collect data to justify it. Like in Lebanon, where fear drove the killing for 15 years. Like in Syria, that country that has destroyed itself with a little help from its friends. Like Iraq that doesn’t know how to rebuild itself, and that we who destroyed it do not know how to help.
So….what can we do about a problem so widespread, a problem so fundamental that it seems to begin in the human heart?
Standing up for ourselves is the American way. I have rights. I’m not going to be kicked around. My self-esteem is at stake. I’m privileged because I worked for it. If I don’t blow my own horn, who is going to blow it? My country is best. We have to be the strongest.
What I am going to say now is something scandalous. The American way is not the Christian way. The teachings of Jesus turn the American way all upside down.
A Spiritual Problem
Just after the disasters of last week my daughter Jan posted on her facebook page a few of the words of an ancient Jewish prophet. “What does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, to love mercy and walk humbly with your God.” It struck me as a timely bit of wisdom, a reminder that our problem is not really political or social but spiritual.
The words of Jesus support the words of the prophet and make humility the foundation of the Christian way and the key to peaceful living. Claiming to be a follower of Jesus pretty much requires me to think that the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount are supposed to be a description of those who are equipped to live as he did, peaceably. And there is absolutely no arrogance in the beatitudes. The description begins with poverty of spirit and goes on through sorrow and meekness and a hunger for goodness and then mercy and purity of heart, and finally to being peacemakers.
I have confidence in Jesus. I think he knew what he was talking about. When all of us, the diverse lot of us, lose our arrogance we are likely to discover how beautiful and valuable the others are. We will feel safer. Fewer people will get shot over nothing. The word “demonstration” will likely find a new meaning. Such a fundamental change in its citizens would enable our country to lose her arrogance, open Washington’s eyes to the truth that the people of the earth all have similar problems and could help one another, help us find solutions. It might even enable America to figure out how to invest our ingenuity and wealth in serving (living mercifully) instead of forever pouring it into perpetual wars. Since happy, satisfied people tend not to be terrorists, we might magically make friends before they become enemies.
It all begins with walking humbly. You and me, humble.
But it surely is difficult, isn’t it? I am already afraid of saying something arrogant before this day is over.
The biblical scriptures referred to in this article are found in Micah 6:8 and Matthew 5.
Have you read In Borrowed Houses, a true story of love and faith amidst war in Lebanon?