> The following is a rather inept attempt to express a considered OPINION...
> IF (big IF) racism disappeared, some other "inherent difference" would
> be "discovered" amongst us. Racism is not the problem - the us/them
> mentality is. It IS the "materialist illusion" incarnate. Who wrote
> "We have engaged the enemy - and they are us"?
It was Walt Kelly, creator of the "Pogo" comic strip. I think the line was
something more like "We has met the enemy, and they is us!"
I'd like to doff my moderator's cap momentarily to express a view on this
most fascinating of approaches that Dorothy proposes to whatever problem it
is that keeps us from living in harmony with one another - and with ourselves.
Dorothy continues:
> As long as we fool
> ourselves that "they" have nothing to do with "us", that "we" are better/
> holier/smarter/cleaner/ad nauseum than "them", we are going to have to
> deal with one form of oppression or another. And that includes the planet
> on which we live, and the universe in which this planet moves. As long as
> we allow such a mentality to go unchallenged, whether by agreement or by
> silence, we can only expect more of the same.
There's another form of this mentality, in which those of us who feel
alienated from our own particular cultures might attempt to invest our-
selves with the trappings of another, which is at least one issue involved
in the matter of Native spirituality we talked about recently. Feeling
cut off from our own cultural roots, or finding it represents a kind of
oppression of others of which we want to deny in ourselves, it might feel
easier and better to try to lose ourselves in another culture, which we
can imagine to be free of such sins against humanity.
Maybe it's naive, or overly optimistic, but my hope is for a world in
which we can understand our common humanity, and realize that we all
came into this world as babies without culture, without language, without
belief, without prejudice - and we adopted and accepted these things and
took them more and more to be ourselves as we grew and found the need for
tools and symbols to help us make our way in the world. Perhaps this kind
of thing is what Gregory Bateson calls a "category error" - mistaking the
menu for the meal. Culture and tradition and all the other overlays that
give us a sense of identity are not really who and what we are in my mind.
They represent options for us to get a sense of belonging - a kind of
security to help us avoid the feelings of alienation expressed by the
English poet A.E. Housman in the phrase "a stranger and afraid in a world
I never made."
Perhaps these things can give us what amounts to a sense of false security,
though, and can be disfunctional in certain circumstances, when they serve
to convey upon us feelings of essential, rather than accidental distinctions
from one another on racial and cultural bases. Surely items like intelli-
gence and spirituality and skill are part of our common human heritage, and
different people living in different places in different times have devel-
oped distinctive ways of expressing their own discoveries, through customs
and games and song and dance and arts of various kinds, and through language
and law.
It's very difficult in a few words to convey all that I'd like to express,
that Dorothy's article has helped to trigger in my mind - but I think that,
for me, she has come close to getting at the essence of the problem we have
been trying to grapple with in our recent discussions, if I sense her in-
tention correctly - or even if I don't, in fact - since I hold that all
communication is really involves something like Plato's classic idea of
the shadows on the floor of the cave. We can really never know what the
other person intends to express, we have only our own projections, which
may at times be just as meaningful as what the other person intended to
express, but might not recognize in our own interpretation, which is all
related to the idea I'm trying to get at.
Does anyone know what I mean, or is it too abstract in these few words?
Why is it not possible for us to share what we and our forebears have each
learned as survival skills, and ways to make our lives richer and more
meaningful? Why must we guard our inheritance so fiercely, except that
we doubt our own ability to create anew from the materials at hand, some
of which may have arrived from distant shores? Yes, there are, I am sure,
"good and sufficient reaons" why it is difficult to learn to trust and to
honor and celebrate differences, but why must we continue to fight battles
that are not ours? Yes, the ancestors of some of us despoiled the lands
and spilled the blood of those whose societies others of us descend from.
Can we not investigate our differences in a spirit of wonder, trying to
comprehend why we think something fundamental is at stake when we defend
(or criticize) "our own kind" as distinct from "the other?" Yes, perhaps
there are good reasons for Native people to want to keep their traditions
to themselves, given that so much has been taken from them, and there's
not much left to hang on to. But we need also to have those among us who
can serve as "bridges" - as conduits of understanding between our peoples
who can help us understand our common humanity and the problems that face
us all. We will need all our skill and all our imagination to deal with
these challenges, and we'll need to develop the ability to see beyond our
traditions, and to understand that we need to understand their origins
to avoid making them dry and lifeless remnants of once vibrant experience.
We need to learn, perhaps, how to create our own tools including a new
mythology and a new sense of ourselves as a collective - not a "polyglot"
or the product of a "melting pot" - but more like the elements in a salad
(as I heard it expressed by a Senor Madrid, interviewed by Bill Moyers a
couple of years ago), where each element remains distinct, with a unique
flavor of its own - together creating a synergistic whole, much greater
than the sum of its individual parts could ever hope for on their own.
--
Gary S. Trujillo gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us
Somerville, Massachusetts {wjh12,bu.edu,spdcc,ima,cdp}!gnosys!gst