Brits By the Boatload

When that boatload of Brits showed up in Massachusetts, they quite literally considered themselves god’s gift to the continent. Subsequently, they decided which religions were acceptable; which ethnicities and countries of origin were acceptable; who could vote; who would be enslaved; who lived and who died.

This norm has functioned continuously since, letting some in and refusing entrance to others. This normative power is what Professor Ignatiev meant by “white” in her book How the Irish Became White.

A look at the election results this past Tuesday demonstrates that white skin and male gender are still the tickets to power in the United States, the power of whiteness.

That boatload of British Anglo Saxon Protestants declared themselves the baseline. The arbiters of all things worthy. And they vote.

US history shows that some groups were able to get into the club relatively easily. Descendants of German immigrants, for example, now outnumber descendants of British immigrants. George Washington was half German, though it took until 1890 for a full-blooded German to be elected to national office . . .

Germans became white in 1890.

Professor Ignatiev argues that the Irish became white by becoming more racist than the British and Germans. One piece of evidence: is it a coincidence that the great haters on Fox News are generally of Irish extraction?

Whiteness. It’s a club.

Tuesday’s election demonstrated that whiteness hasn’t given up. I suspect it will become more overt in the next several years.

Here’s a hero many haven’t heard of: A. Philip Randolph. Randolph was African American, born in 1889. He organized a union called the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. One of the first African American unions. He was also president of the Negro American Labor Council and vice-president of the AFL-CIO.

Whether it’s right or wrong, the Marxist analysis of race that Randolph believed is very simple: the ruling class (read: that boat load of Brits) uses racial prejudice to divide and conquer the poor. In other words, Marxists say that “whiteness”—and allowing some into the club of whiteness—is a manipulative tool for controlling the poor, the majority.

True or untrue, this analysis of race is why humanists, Unitarians, Universalists, and other progressives were once at the forefront of anti-racism work and nowadays are not. True or untrue, the Marxist story marked a path that could be usefully followed.

A. Philip Randolph was a Socialist. An atheist. And a humanist. He signed the second Humanist Manifesto in 1973. (As did Betty Friedan.) The second manifesto was a child of the more explicitly socialist first Humanist Manifesto, written when the New Deal was a heady dream.

Humanism has socialism in its DNA. After all, if you believe in the inherent worth and dignity of each person, it’s hard to argue that “white” America and its engine, Capitalism, offer a level playing field. Facts on the ground point the other direction. Far from being a statement of individualism, the inherent worth and dignity of every person implies communal action toward communal good.

After all, after you’ve asked how a nation can create a level playing field, you have gone down the road of redistributive justice. The most extreme of un-individualistic ideals.

There are two ways to redistribute wealth: revolution and taxes. Sane people tend to suggest that taxes are the way to go . . .

But back to A. Philip Randolph, who helped plan (along with nonviolence theorist, gay rights activist, and socialist Bayard Rustin) the 1963 March on Washington, where MLK gave his greatest speech. That march was the culmination of a way of thinking outside the norm.

And that was then. Isn’t it almost unthinkable in today’s US? Where would the Civil Rights Movement have been without labor halls to speak in and union money?

We are the stories we tell ourselves. “True” or not, some narratives bear richer fruit than others. The idea that race is a construct used by the oppressors to oppress was the fuel of the Civil Rights Movement. Nothing since has borne so much fruit.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

A Phillip Randolph put it this way:

Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship.

A child falls down and begins screaming. It’s common. You did it as a child. I did it.

What happens next?

For me, my parents said, “Get up off the floor! Boys don’t cry!”

When this happens at an upscale pre-school nearby, I’m more likely to hear, “You feel sad!” Or, “That’s frustrating, isn’t it?” Or, “You’re so angry!”

What’s the difference between the two parental responses?

Fact is, any time I cried as a child, I got the same response: “Boys don’t cry.”

Consequently, I learned to suppress my emotions rather than expressing them.

That child outside the pre-school, on the other hand, is being taught the difference between anger and sadness and frustration and fear and embarrassment. That child is developing a palate of emotions with nuance. That child is developing “emotional intelligence.”

Kids treated as I was learn that emotions need to be suppressed. We learn “men don’t do that.” We learn “women are hysterical.”

And so the cliches go, ‘round and around.

And so does the drinking and drugs and physical violence and abuse that come as a consequence of the suppression of emotion.

Now, allow me to add that my parents were preparing me for the world that they lived in: working class people learn to be very careful about emotion. You can’t let the boss see your emotion.

My father was in the Boiler Makers Union. You don’t cry among your fellow Boiler Makers. And you don’t get angry when the boss yells at you.

We were also farmers, and farmers in traditional communities aren’t allowed to get angry either. You can’t show anger when the bank won’t give you a loan . . . and on and on. It’s a life of oppression and suppression in which a show of emotion can be interpreted as dangerous.

That’s the world I was prepared for. Everyone has a story.

We call the result “stable.” But at what cost to both the individual and society?

Professor George Rowan did a study called “A Multicultural Investigation of Masculinity Ideology and Alexithymia.” It wasn’t a best seller, but the study tells us what we already have intuited: In many social groups, men are afraid to express emotion, especially in the presence of other men.

“Alexitymia” describes the result of this suppression: an inability to describe emotions; an inability to sustain social connections; and an inability to sustain interpersonal relationships.

The result is a socially-created sociopath. The result is a dangerous person created by the desire to live up to the social definition of masculinity.

That pretty well describes the men in my extended family.

Think for a moment about how many—and different—lives you lead. Partner. Friend. Manager. Co-worker. Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy . . .

We learn to use different vocabularies in these different niches. We learn to express our emotions differently. In addition, as the dad of two children in the GLBTQ alphabet soup, I know that the gender binary is an inconvenient fiction. Men aren’t from Mars and women from Venus. We come from many planets.

Yes, there are differences in the emotional lives—and the ability to articulate—that can be called gender difference. Still, we have an obligation to try to use our words, no matter what planet we’re from.

The Twentieth Century writer Anais Nin started writing when she was eleven. She continued, obsessively writing of her inner life, for more than sixty years. She said this:

I am a series of moods and sensations. I play a thousand roles. I weep when I find others play them for me. My real self is unknown . . . I create a myth and a legend, a lie, a fairy tale, a magical world, and one that collapses every day . . .

It isn’t that Nin had some super-complex emotional life. Or that she was mentally ill. Rather, she had the tenacity to pursue her many selves to the essence of the self. Much like the Buddha. And, like the Buddha, she discovered there isn’t one.

There is no constant self. The evidence is right before our eyes. And right behind them too. What we have instead is an ocean of sensation and reaction. We have emotions, some fleeting, some stable enough to be called moods. These add up to what we call a self. Yet it’s a fiction.

The dangerous and damaging idea behind this insistence on a stable self is what has been called “soul” in the Western tradition. That tradition tells us that the soul is incarnated. Lives in the flesh for a time. Then goes somewhere forever, still constituted as the self that lived on earth. In some traditions the soul is rewarded with heaven or hell. In others the soul blissfully resides . . . well, somewhere.

Such an idea is a dangerous illusion. The only constant is change. And the self and the soul it creates are stories we tell ourselves.

When we figure that out, the Buddha said we are enlightened. Anais Nin put it this way: “I see myself and my life each day differently. What can I say? The facts lie.”

It isn’t news that there’s an inverse relation between religious piety and innovative thought. Religion is a handbrake—whether it stops humanity from going uphill or downhill is the real question.

When a new study comes out telling us what we already know about secularity, my secular acquaintances do the I-told-you-so as the religious squint and look for flaws in the statistics.

The latest study, “Forbidden Fruits: The Political Economy of Science, Religion, and Growth,” is the most thorough study yet (see link below). Furthermore, it hits in the pocketbook: religion costs the economy.

Not to ruin the study’s punchline, but both internationally and in the US the secular spots are the innovative spots. And vise versa. In the US, religiosity drags down innovation in all but two of the old Confederate States of America.

What’s up with religion?

Full disclosure: I am a humanist. Most humanists don’t put much credence in the revelations of the various scriptures and traditions of religions. Many of us are agnostic or atheist. We tend to put our trust in reason and the scientific method, ways of thinking predicated on not knowing. We like mystery, because it gives us something to do on long afternoons. We like not knowing what we don’t know.

According to this latest study, the humanist brain is a good place to be if you happen to be an innovative idea. Why? Dr. Arie Kruglanski, a social psychologist, has created the theory of “cognitive closure.” His theory examines the fact that some people are more comfortable with ambiguity than others. Humanists eat ambiguity for breakfast. We love it. But some folks search for a definitive answer, even if that answer is . . . well, clearly wrong—an answer with flaws even the believer can see (but chooses to ignore or compartmentalize).

That’s why Dr. Kruglanski gets the call when we try to understand the minds of terrorists. Some of us don’t need closure all that much. But many of us do—whatever the cost to our own reasoning abilities.

Yet, yet. But . . . the question that generated the US portion of the study was this: “are you a religious person, not a religious person, a convinced atheist, or don’t know?”

Those who identify themselves with their (mainline) religions as a primary descriptor will clearly pick “religious person.” But what about those who identify as pagan? Buddhist? The spiritual but not religious? Unitarian Universalists . . .

I happened to grow up in a religious tradition that absolutely required cognitive closure—the sort of folks who build creationist museums. Yet, as an agnostic humanist, I also would tick the box for “religious person.” I think a lot about my values and actions and I work hard to live out my values. To me that’s a religious person.

Yes, there is value in the mounting heap of studies that indicate that religion can be bad for society. But, dear researchers, please avoid cognitive closure! Some of us are spiritual but not religious. And some of us are religious but humanist, drinking ambiguity like an ever-flowing stream.

http://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers/Religion%20December%201i_snd1.pdf

“Forbidden Fruits: The Political Economy of Science, Religion, and Growth” by
Roland Benabou, Davide Ticchi, Andrea Vindigni

https://openclipart.org/detail/87589/combination-lock-by-jhnri4

Authenticity or Bust

From the First Great Awakening of the 1740s that energized the North American colonists and eventually led to the American Revolution to the Transcendentalists to the Beats, Hippies, and What-Have-Yous, a frequent cry of Americans has been “authenticity.” Americans want it to be real; genuine; visceral; heartfelt; roughhewn . . . something like that.

Authenticity, I take it, has something to do with being yourself. Or finding yourself. Or getting out of your head and into your heart. Something like that.

In the US, finding one’s authentic self has often involved hitting the open road and going West. Or heading to the big city. Sometimes it’s the distance from the pew to the alter in a holy roller church. Or to the free air of an ashram after escape from the stale breath of a parish church.

It often involves both geographic space and psychic distance–the distance from of a Midwestern farm to Gay Paree or Hometown, USA to Greenwich Village or North Beach.

Whatever else it might be, it appears that the authentic self is open to new experience and fresh possibility. Open to taking advantage of options. And changing fundamental beliefs.

(It is also a marketing opportunity. The authentic individual often needs a particular look and particular accoutrements.)

Self Like a Sieve

I grew up in a farming community near the Ohio River. My parents rode farm wagons pulled by horses into the nearest town when they were kids. For those children of the farm and the Depression, the speed and power of a 185 horse power V8 Chevrolet engine on a paved road spoke to them of possibility and adventure.

My parents transformed themselves from farmers to factory workers. The sort of folks the Beats, also of their generation, found square. Authenticity, it appears, comes in many packages.

My farmer parents were what philosopher Charles Taylor termed “porous selves.” They lived fully aware of the difficulty and dangers of survival. This reinforced their faith in the Christianity of the lower Ohio River Valley.

My father was born prematurely in a two-room sharecropper’s shack. He survived because August without air conditioning is a great incubator. His family nearly starved during the Depression. Next, he survived house-to-house and hand-to-hand combat in Europe during the Second World War. Then he worked as a boilermaker, sometimes suspended high over the water, working on ships; sometimes he worked several stories up, on smoke stacks.

My parents qualified as “porous selves,” as philosopher Charles Taylor put it–the sort of people for whom life itself is as authentic and real as anybody could want. They weren’t out looking for authenticity . . . Nor did they seek new religious thinking.

As Charles Taylor puts it, “The porous self is vulnerable: to spirits, demons, cosmic forces. And along with this go certain fears that can grip it in certain circumstances. The buffered self has been taken out of the world of this kind of fear.”
http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2008/09/02/buffered-and-porous-selves/

This “buffered self,” according to Taylor, often becomes secular, or at least “believes” in received religions only insofar as they choose not to seek authenticity in that direction. “Buffered” people are free enough, in other words, from the fear of looming, immanent privation and death to–if they choose–begin examining cultural assumptions, including one’s religious ideas.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow had a similar idea, which he called a “hierarchy of needs.”

Boomers and the Big Bang of Authenticity

A very large shift in US consciousness occurred post-World War II. What became known as the Beat Generation served as catalyst. But it was more than one particular group of young people. I like Taylor’s distinction between porous and buffered because it helps grasp what happened.

Many Americans–like me–were able to move from a porous understanding to buffered understanding. Beat writers such as Jack Kerouac or Allan Ginsberg or Gregory Corso became models for our religious, spiritual, and artistic quests.

Remember what Charles Taylor said: “The buffered self has been taken out of the world . . . of fear.” Unlike my parents, I never faced starvation. Or war. Or educational deprivation. Or the feeling of being less-than because of my social location in US society.

For many like me, the Beats became models for this “buffered” sort of individualized “finding yourself.” They became the models for making choices.

Whose Yer Daddy?

Charles Taylor is trying with his distinction to explain why safety leads to secularity. Why it is that people who are not in constant want and fear choose to drop out of their childhood religions and question the norms they have been taught.

Immediately after the September 11th attacks, the churches and synagogues and mosques of the America were full. My supposition at the time was that the fear of the day would lead to a resurgence of piety of the sort that swept the nation during the Red Scare of the 1950s.

This did not happen.

As a matter of fact, the reverse has been true–attendance has dropped steadily ever since. It appears Americans felt “porous” for a short time but returned to “buffered” robustly. Why?

Perhaps it’s fairly easy to feel safe in the US of the 21st Century, despite constant low-level wars and rising debt and poverty. Perhaps a majority of Americans still feel that the likelihood of growing old is in our favor. Perhaps it’s always 9/11 now. But we have adjusted to that new normal.

After all, that “invisible hand” of Capitalism continues to pump out the calories and the iPhones.

So, we go on, wandering from one religion to another, one answer to another. We go on seeking authenticity. Whatever that means . . .

The Thursday following the fundamentalist disruption of worship service at First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans, a Pro-Woman, Pro-LBGTQ, Pro-Religious Freedom rally was planned for City Hall. It may not surprise you that the Unitarian Universalists showed up. Dozens of Standing on the Side of Love t-shirts, signs, and stoles were vividly on display. A small but exceedingly vocal counter-rally was staged on the hill above the rally by some who had apparently raced back to New Orleans from Baton Rouge for this very purpose. Even with the bullhorn, it was difficult to hear what was being said at the rally over the yelling of the anti-choice protesters.

And so a group of people, mostly UUs, turned toward the hill, forming a sound barrier between the those speaking their truth in the center of the safe circle and those screaming their truth from the hill, and began to sing (to the tune of Siyahamba, a South African freedom song,) We are standing on the side love, we are standing on the side of love. The singing continued until everyone had had a chance to speak their truth in the Pro-woman, Pro-LBGTQ, Pro-Religious Freedom space.

As the rally drew to a close, everyone not on the hill joined hands, forming a gigantic circle, and sang together: We are standing on the side love, we are standing on the side of love. Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger blessed us all, sending us off with the wisdom to “Go Now in Peace.”

The police were on alert and surrounded the park – subtly…We were allowed to protest injustice in peace.  Our right to do so was affirmed by the community and by the powers that be.

Friends, that’s a privilege we have not extended to #Ferguson or the many communities of color protesting the extrajudicial killings of children and young adults.  Please, before you say “they just need to calm down,” consider the humane and human need to protest injustice.  May you tender the communities’ outrage with mercy, with compassion, perhaps even, with love and holy curiosity.

May you withhold your judgment.  In times of grief, there is no room for our shoulda, woulda, coulda…. only room for compassion.

If you cannot find your compassion in this time, please still yourself until you can.  And if you wonder where it went, spend some time thinking about how systems of oppression steal the humanity of the oppressor as well as the oppressed.  If you cannot find compassion for the human grief of others, you may have lost touch with your own humanity.  Beloveds, it is worth the work of undoing oppression to reclaim it.