Funny Hats

[dreamer_easy]

Prodded by judiang :), I'd like to air some more thoughts about Elizabeth Moon's posting about Park51, continuing in the same spirit of respectful disagreement as before. (This may take a few postings - there's a lot of think about - so bear with me. And thank you hugely for making it possible for me to do this, by commenting assertively but not aggressively!)

When I first began to look more seriously at race and racism, I came across Ricky Sherover-Marcuse's writings, including Towards A Perspective On Eliminating Racism: 12 Working Assumptions. In this posting I'd like to speak to a couple of points from that list:

• "Racist attitudes and beliefs are a mixture of misinformation and ignorance which is imposed upon young people through a painful process of social conditioning."
• "Misinformation is harmful to all human beings. Misinformation about peoples of color is harmful to all people. Having racist attitudes and beliefs is like having a clamp on one's mind. It distorts one's perceptions of reality."

In my view, a number of Ms Moon's statements are incorrect because they're based on wrong or inadequate information. By "information" I mean more than just "facts", such as Park51 being a community centre and not a memorial: I mean ways of thinking - how we get meaning out of facts.

One of these ways of thinking is our brain's ability to pick out new and different details from a familiar background. You can immediately see how useful this would've been for our ancestors, who needed to spot the arrival of a sabre-toothed tiger without delay. But this useful ability can also mislead us: because what's unusual stands out to us, we're more likely to notice it, and we're more likely to remember it. It's the reason "dog bites man" isn't a headline and "man bites dog" is. This thing our brain does is one of the reasons white people often overestimate the proportion of non-white people in their nations or neighbourhoods. For instance, a 1993 survey showed many Australians overestimated the Indigenous proportion of our population by as much as eighteen times or more the true figure.

At this point, I want to quote part of Ms Moon's posting:

"Groups that self-isolate, that determinedly distinguish themselves by location, by language, by dress, will not be accepted as readily as those that plunge into the mainstream. This is not just an American problem--this is human nature, the tribalism that underlies all societies and must be constantly curtailed if larger groups are to co-exist.

The "bad citizens" Ms Moon correctly identifies at the start of the essay are criminals: the corrupt judge, the rapist prison guard, and so on. But wearing a funny hat is not a crime. Nor is it an example of the vices of the failed citizen: "greed, dishonesty, laziness, selfishness, cruelty, anger/resentment, refusal to take responsibility for his/her own acts and their consequences". Which of these sins causes immigrants and their descendants to live near other people with similar backgrounds, or to speak their first languages? How are those behaviours provocative or offensive?

I think what's happening here is more than just an overestimation of how many Muslims are around: I think it's an overestimation of how different they are, and crucially, how much that matters. The problem is not the funny hat, but the meaning assigned to it: "I refuse to fit in, I am like those who are corrupt and fraudulent, irresponsible and selfish. I am not really an American at all. I am a danger." That's a lot to tell from a hat!

Ms Moon goes on to say:

"It is natural to want to be around those who talk like you, eat the familiar foods, wear the familiar clothes, have the familiar cultural references. But in a multicultural society like ours--and it has been multi-cultural from its inception--citizens need to go beyond nature. That includes those who by their history find it least comfortable."

I think that's right. But if Australia's history since Federation is any guide, those who are the least comfy with the unfamiliar are not the new arrivals, but the white people nervously watching them arrive - or passing laws to keep them out.

Dear gods, my eyes are melting. More later. In the meantime, some related links:

Catholics, Muslims, and the Mosque Controversy: "... if the Catholic experience in the United States holds any lesson it is that becoming American also means asserting one’s constitutional rights, fully and forcefully, even if that assertion is occasionally taken to be insulting."

Paper to Readers: Sorry for Portraying Muslims as Human: "Here's where we are in America, 2010: There is now one group of Americans whose peaceful religious observance cannot be noted by decent people, unless it is "balanced" by the mention of a vile crime committed in 2001 by people, with a perverted idea of the same religion, from the other side of the world."

Where Home is Ground Zero: "... they wish to invest 200 million dollars back into the neighborhood, revive a deserted block, and join with the community that they have always been a part of gets little push back from those of us who live here. What better way to thumb our noses at terrorists than to show that Muslims stand united with us against terrorism committed in their name and will even help in our rebuilding?"

They Burn One, We Give Two! Happily, the Massachusetts Bible Society won't have to replace burned Korans - but what an act of hope and grace.

I don't think I'd heard of "The Man Without a Country" before Ms Moon mentioned it - for those who may be interested, it's available online in many places, for example here: The Man Without a Country. For me, it's a bit too much like that cartoon where Uncle Sam has to teach Porky Pig a lesson, but I found the historical detail fascinating. Definitely worth a read (although I have a feeling many Americans will know it well from school).

ETA: Ground Zero mosque is an antidote to extremism: "Some will analyse this as merely the latest incarnation of the old story of every nation needing an enemy. Are Muslims to rejoice that one day they will hand the baton of victimisation and fear to another group? Is that all the founders of America - or any democratic nation - have to offer its citizens?"

Comments

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

Thankyou for taking the time and effort to do this.

Yes, the "familiar/different" disparity in how we evaluate things and how much attention we pay to them is a big factor in all of this - and in all forms of prejudice, IMHO. The "so that's Jazz, is it? I don't like it!"/"Oh my god, not more Jazz!" factor, if you will. =:o\

"those who are the least comfy with the unfamiliar are not the new arrivals, but the white people nervously watching them arrive - or passing laws to keep them out."

Again, spot on, I'd say (says the Brit, living in a still mostly white nation that likes to assume the blacks folks and muslims only live in particular towns and regions, and gets confused when they turn up elsewhere, or talking posh, or brandishing law degrees...). After all, those who have left home (for whatever reason) and travelled to a new land *expect* to find things different when they get there: They've had at least that journey time to steel themselves for the fact that things are going to weird. The folks who haven't budged an inch, and suddenly have something unusual turn up: they're the folks who kick up a fuss. And those who've just arrived are having to spend all day, everyday adjusting to many, many new things. The folks who are already here only have to deal with an occasioanl encounter with strangeness amidst a life that's otherwise ticking along as usual. The "So that's Jazz is it?/Not *more* Jazz!" factor kicks in.

Add to this the privileged assumption that anyone arriving from overseas must have chosen to do so (so often not the case!), and can always choose to go elsewhere, e.g. back where they came from, if they don't like the way we do things around here...

Add to this the whole irony that the USA was built in part from a whole bunch of little colonies, all with their own distinctive cultures and religious views & practices, who arrived there 'cos they didn't fit in back home and had to run away! Yes, they *gradually* became more similar and basically assimilated each other, keeping only the differences that caused the fewest rucktions between them and learning to just ignore or indulge any "those people are weird"-nesses that were left... but that's a process that happens over generations of co-existence, not overnight. And of course, still isn't complete. =:o\

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Thankyou for taking the time and effort to do this.

Oh, erm, thanks. #^__^# It's a bit basic, but it's a start. Once you start thinking about this stuff, the words just sort of chew their way out of your head.

basically assimilated each other

Oh, I love that. :D