Racism

The Trickle Down Theory of Bigotry

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kids with instruments-01Enough.

I  know it’s been an interesting ride. We’ve never seen a political candidate like Donald Trump before. He gives vent to the inner two year old, the child who knows he’s better than anyone else and doesn’t let logic, truth, or empathy get in his way. He wants what he wants, and he will say and do whatever it takes to get it – classic two year old behavior. Watching him is like spending a day at the circus.

The problem is that he is a bully, a liar, and a bigot – traits which spit in the face of American ideals like equality, opportunity, and freedom of speech – and our children are watching. When our children see us supporting him for the highest office in the land, they might reasonably believe that we think bullying, lying and bigotry are acceptable.

They are not.

In a speech on caucus day in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Trump told his audience that he would pay the legal fees of followers who beat up protesters at his rallies.

After two brothers in Boston who beat up a homeless Latino man said that they were inspired by Trump’s anti-immigrant message, Trump suggested that the men were well-intentioned and had simply gotten carried away. A two on one well intentioned beating?

Last November, Trump supporters attacked an African-American protester who was chanting “Black lives matter.” They hit him, knocked him down, and continued to kick him after he was on the ground. Afterwards, Trump suggested that their behavior was justified. “Maybe he should have been roughed up,” he was quoted, “It was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.”

Hmm.

It reminds me of the sixth grade bully, gathering his friends behind him to beat up the unpopular kid, then trying to shift blame to the victim.

The Washington Post wrote that “Trump in this campaign has gone after African Americans, immigrants, Latinos, Asians, women, Muslims and now the disabled.” He physically mimicked Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Serge Kovaleski, who suffers from arthrogryposis, a congenital joint condition that affects the movement in his arms.

Can you imagine sitting in the Principal’s office, hearing that your child had done such a thing?

How are we to explain to our daughters that brains, talent and hard work are more important than breast size when the man we are considering for president says that “it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful, piece of ass.”

Last, most of us agree that teaching our children not to lie is an important part of parenting. Mr. Trump’s truth rating on the Pulitzer prize winning site Politifact is 2%.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, teens in Merrillville, Ind., at the predominantly white Andrean High School recently chanted “Build a wall” at their counterparts from predominantly Latino Bishop Noll Institute during a basketball game. Similarly, fans of Elkhorn High School in Wisconsin chanted “Donald Trump, build that wall!” at a girls’ soccer game against Beloit Memorial High School, whose team is largely Latina or black.

A survey of 2000 K through 12 teachers done by Teaching Tolerance reported an increased anxiety level and an upswing in bullying, harassment and intimidation among kids inspired by the appalling misbehavior throughout this campaign.

A kindergarten teacher in Tennessee wrote, “a Latino child—told by classmates that he will be deported and trapped behind a wall—asks every day, “Is the wall here yet?””

The “trickle down” theory of bigotry and bullying. If my parents admire this man, and this man says that Mexicans are rapists and women are disgusting animals, then it must be all right for me to think that also.

Most of us do not dream of our children growing up to be bullies and bigots.

Dr Martin Luther King said it better than I ever will:

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

So, enough. Remember the basics: respect for our fellows, equality, honesty, justice…

Your children are watching.

Domesticated Momster

The Egg Came First, Of Course!

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Family remodeling house. Home remodel and renovation. Kids painting walls with colorful brush and roller. Children paint wall. Choice of bright color on sample palette for child nursery or kid room.

So, I’ll admit it. I truly do not understand that whole man/woman inequality thing. I don’t get why it exists. It’s like the chicken and the egg to me, which came first? It’s obvious: the egg. Something that was almost a chicken laid an egg that had a new mutation, and voila–a chicken! So simple, just a matter of definition, of where we draw that line.

Why is it not just as obvious to everyone that men and women are equal? Each has 46 chromosomes and the same arrangement of muscles and bones. Both have a brain, a heart, two arms, two legs.

How could a lesser being get together with a greater being and create a child? Part of two equals have to make that whole.

And yet we endlessly insist that they are not equal. We focus on what differences we can find and weigh them on an scale created from self interest, history and desire. Men are bigger, stronger, and have more muscle, so they are better! Women can bear life, so they are better!

We write off young women because they are girls, and sexy, and we judge them on that; we ignore old women because they are old, not sexy, and are thus useless. We walk on, satisfied with our actions because we have put them in their slot; it is settled. Women are less, because sex defines them.  We must allow them to be defined by their sex or they pose a threat to the status quo. She can’t be president, she might push the button when she has PMS!

Whole human beings are reduced to their sexuality because it orders the world and makes it easier to find and understand our place.

In the same way young men are written off when they are not big, athletic; old men are written off when they do not have money, a fancy car. If they do not conform, they must be derided, snickered at, because of society’s obsession with macho manliness and wealth.

These prejudices do none of us any good. If we win and convince ourselves that we are better than one person, the flip side is that we will be judged as less than someone else. Do we really want that?

At some point, if this is ever to improve and we are not to endlessly churn out damaged adults with sad relationships who in turn damage their children, we have to evolve to the point where we know, to the depths of our souls, that all humans are equally valuable. All talents are to be prized. All life is sacred.

We all want the same things in life: to love and be loved, to have a safe haven to go home to, to have work that inspires us. We have so much about us that is the same, yet we constantly focus on our differences.

Where does this need to compare and compete, to constantly evaluate and judge, come from? Is it hard wired into our animal DNA, or is it something our human brains can overcome?

Why do we need to write anyone off or judge ourselves against others? Why do we subject ourselves, let alone total strangers, to valuation by our obsessions and insecurities? One part of a person is not the whole; the one hue we individually consider important cannot stamp a whole human being with a value, like a price tag, ignoring the rest of the color spectrum.

It is time that we embrace the whole of the human spectrum, and take joy in our evolution. Each person–man/woman, tall/short, intelligent/talented/mechanical/weird–has equal value, is deserving of equal respect, and can be loved and appreciated as they are.

Why live a life that has already been lived, outlined by the generations who lived before? Grasp change; reach deep into your own unique soul and create something new. Then allow your neighbor, workmate, and child to do the same.

Charleston: Let’s Not Let Roof Win

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Change- just aheadDylann Roof did not murder nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston only because they were Black; he murdered them because he was a criminally insane psychopath.

Blaming their deaths on their race reeks to me of blaming the victim. We did not blame the kids at Sandy Hook; we do not blame rape victims. We did not tell the grieving relatives in Colorado that their loved ones died because they went to a movie. We told them that James Holmes was a criminal psychopath.

Yes, this particular psychopath had craziness is his head that focused on Black Americans. His brain was irreparably diseased. It is horrible that no-one noticed. It is worse that he was allowed to buy a gun. It is a nightmare that will never end for the families and friends of the people he killed.

But if we feed into his insanity we are giving him jurisdiction over our thoughts. Buying into his “I had no choice, I did it because they were Black,” adds weight to racial division that is already at an explosive level. He wanted to start a racial war: feeding into that is allowing him to win, and giving credit to his insanity.

The traditional description of psycopathology involves lack of empathy, lack of normal fear, and no impulse control. These people don’t care about anyone other than themselves: no one else is real to them. They are unable to comprehend danger to themselves. Their impulse control never develops: imagine a 2 year old who has a toy taken away, who immediately lunges to take it back, hitting the other child. Normal adults mature and learn to control their impulses, learn that other people matter. These people never do.

Psychopaths choose their targets based on the craziness circling in their brains. The victims themselves are completely innocent. If we say that they were killed purely because of White on Black racism we are treating Roof as if his thoughts are worth our consideration. They are not.

Horror, grief and anger may push us toward blowing this up, expanding it so that it includes other white men, or all white people, or even all people of any race other than Black.

That is what he wanted.

All young men are not child killers because one chose to murder at Sandy Hook; all men are not rapists because some rape; all parents are not child abusers because some beat their children. These murders could justifiably feed righteous anger and increase racial tensions, but in the end more anger can only bring more injury and death.

Healing will not happen through hatred. Hatred breeds more hatred – it knows no other path. Tolerance and consideration breed understanding; respect breeds respect; time heals.

We cannot feed evil, or it will thrive. His craziness is your endpoint if you allow yourself to hate.

If we want justice for the lives that are lost, and to find some grace in their deaths, we must use it to put an end to racial bigotry. Do the opposite of what he wanted. Say Enough.

a Cure for Racism…

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Change- just aheadPrejudice is “a feeling of like or dislike for someone or something, especially when it is not reasonable or logical.” (Thank you Merriam-Webster) We use our prior experience to place a judgement upon a new person or thing, fitting it into the system already set up in our brains. Prejudice works. It works so well that it is hard wired into the human brain as one of our immediate go-to’s. We function because we do not have to make decisions about each and every thing we do each day: we pre-judge. We know that if we run up a flight of stairs, we need to lift our foot at least 8 inches each step so that we do not go splat. The crazy morning routines to get the kids to school? Autopilot. Prejudice at work.

It can work so well that we don’t notice when it becomes irrational and destructive; so well that when our prejudices are threatened, we feel threatened and become defensive. So how do we break through the concrete wall of prejudice in people’s minds?

The only way to disrupt prejudice is to make it not work. Move to a town where all those stairs are 5 inches high and we will learn change, after a few of those splats.

Why do I have a say?

But first, why does a middle aged white doctor even rate an opinion on prejudice?

I was raised in the 60’s and 70’s as a homely smart girl in a family that did not… appreciate… brains in a female. In high school I earned a 96% in Algebra, for which I received a B. My teacher told me he had never given an A to a girl in math and I “sure as hell was not going to be the first.” I went to college, where my advisor told me not to bother applying to med school because I had no chance: for a female to get in was hard, and one who was not pretty? Impossible. When I went for an interview at the University of Virginia, the Dean walked into the room, told me that he had been told he had to accept 17 females and he had his 17, so he was not going to “waste his time” talking to me. My kingdom for a tape recorder!

Through med school and residency the women had to work harder and longer than any of the men to get half the respect, and frequently the boys got credit for what we did anyway. One of my mentors told me that I wouldn’t have been there at all if not for the quotas. What quotas? Women are not a minority! The other residents (all male) laughed, to make sure he knew they were all on his side, in the boy club.

At one point I passed out and had a seizure from exhaustion; my female senior resident had done the same thing the year before. The attending’s response was, “You’ll be here tomorrow, right?”

When I started my pediatric practice, the local hospital sent a letter to every doctor on staff telling them not to refer to me. The local OB/Gyn told me they were “not ready for a female doctor”, and I should go somewhere else.

Prejudice? I am an expert.

If you think that it is not the same as being threatened by police and possibly killed, I could add that my brother and sister-in-law were murdered by a Miami police officer, who was punished afterwards with a 3 day suspension.

Defeating prejudice

There are two options when faced with bigotry: either become bitter and angry, blaming someone else for your problems, or prove the bastards wrong.

Bitterness and anger solves nothing.

The only way to defeat prejudice is to prove it wrong, and prove that the people espousing it are idiots. Over the last 50 years, I have put a Kasey shaped hole in sexism. Add that to all the other women working toward equality and we have made a dent.

As another example, the tide of public opinion on homosexuality has changed more quickly than any other opinion ever polled. This happened after homosexuals came out in droves. In one generation people went from “I don’t know any homosexuals” to “My friend is gay, and I don’t want him hurt.”

The opposite option is the way the man haters in the original women’s movement behaved. Spouting hatred as your reason for change only poisons the movement and turns people off.

If we want to shatter racism, we have to change the African-American that people see. We need to push into view Black brilliance, talent and ability. We not only need to have people like Obama and Maya Angelou out front and center, we need Hollywood to change the stereotypes they display, and we need successful Black Americans in every walk of life. We need more Black doctors, lawyers, plumbers, and electricians to stand strong in the wind and disrupt the flow of racism.

Which means we need more Black professionals. We need teachers, police officers, nurses… To do this we need to effect change within the African American culture. It does no good to talk and yell that people have to believe differently. It will only change if people behave differently.

Change needs to come from within the culture. No one from outside can fix this. I can tell a little girl she can be anything she wants to be until I am blue. If she goes home and hears that she is “nothin” from her family; that she is a “ho” from her boyfriend, that she can’t escape, because the whole world is against her – in the end chances are good that she will give up and settle, and all of her amazing potential will be lost.

This rant is a plea to the leaders in the Black community: please lead. Stop placing blame and fighting racism with more racism. Take responsibility and offer change. Be decent role models. Value respect, education, determination, and work. Value commitment to family, and presence in the home.  Prove those racist idiots wrong by being better and stronger than they could ever be.