Let's quit putting band-aids on social cancers

Can we finally try something different from a ‘medical-legal’ model of social intervention in our approach to race relations? Symptom attack, through such proposals as background checks, elimination of assault rifles, defunding or re-prioritizing the funding of police forces, hiring more law enforcement officers that are representative of the community in which they work, better training in how to de-escalate tense conflict situations….these are all worthy steps; yet even taken together they will not do more than slightly change the direction of the spike in racially motivated assaults, deaths, murders and protests.

We are living in a world in which the economic system, nationally and globally, serves those with money, power and political influence. It does not serve ordinary people, and actually operates in a counter-intuitive manner to supporting the very most endangered populations on every continent. Several decades ago, Canadian biologist, environmentalist and public educator and thought leader, David Suzuki, told anyone who was listening that the economic system should be the servant of the people, not the other way round. That cornerstone piece of both logic and social and ethical political policy seems not to have filtered its way into the brains, the consciences and the heart-minds of those in power, whether they are in government or the corporate or the academic/think-tank sectors. To be sure, to tip that pyramid of granite “tradition” and accepted convention on its ear is a task no government seems prepared to consider. After all, those in power are put there and sustained there by others who, themselves, consider their ‘right’ to be rewarded for their support a “given” not to be tampered with. And those in office, in too many places, are so silently and covertly in some cases, dependent on those “flush” donors that they know their hold on power relies on their defiance of any attempt to shave even a sliver of influence from their benefactors.

It is not, however, only the economic system, designed and operated for the benefit of the top 1%, that plays a role in generating strata in any society. Within the power elite, there are other markers, symbols, of power and influence, to which that top 1% believes it is entitled, that segregate them from the ‘others’ many of whom they tolerate publicly in order to continue to operate the levers of power and influence, while at the same time, secretly (possibly even to themselves) they harbour negative sentiments to people who ‘still have to learn to pick themselves up by their bootstraps’ or who belong to a ‘perverse’ religious group, or whose ethnic and cultural history does not conform with that of those in power, or who speak a language that is different from that of the power elite, or who are newcomers into the ‘fiefdom’ of the power structure….and thereby merit excruciating and scrupulous scepticism, cynicism, doubt, and even fear. Of course, the public attitudes, behaviours and transactional engagements of most provide a persistent, reliable and impenetrable camouflage of “respectability” and “decency” and “tolerance” for those for whom contempt or at least insouciant detachment in the operative modus operandi. Our conventional vernacular rarely speaks of a ‘modus operandi’ in reference to the way individuals comport themselves; the phrase is reserved primarily for the ‘establishment’ and the social scientists, and the political operatives both theorists and elected officials. Cars, clubs, social and athletic activities, travel, dining establishments, fashion ‘names’ on wardrobes of male and/or female attire, theatre, even church memberships, as a complementing counterpoint to “power” and the status, privilege and ‘right’ (sometimes inherited, sometimes purchased, sometimes rewarded through awards and acts of public notice and value, sometimes built through the deeply ingrained and programmed steps and patterns to “success”).

And what is horrific, despicable, dishonourable and even contemptible is that, in order for such a ‘demographic’ of elitism, regardless of the arena in which it functions, there is another layer of varying sycophants who aspire to the top, or who believe, quite reasonably and correctly, that their best way to operate whether it is in middle management, or whether it is on the factory floor, or even in the public or private school classroom, is to ‘shut your mouth’ and ‘do your job’ without uttering so much as a disagreement about decisions, including policy decisions or worse, personnel decisions, that are taken by those ‘in charge’. The system finds clones of those who have gone before, those whom those in power consider worthy of ‘annointing’ with some form of stamp of approval, whom they will then ‘invite’ into their psychic and political and perhaps even religious ‘inner sanctum’ as if such an invitation were the very approval many were actually seeking, desiring or perhaps needing.

The assumptions made by those in power, no matter what the organization, or the political jurisdiction, from the local fall fair, to the local music festival, to the local diocese, to the local school, to the local school board, to the local council, to the provincial/state legislature, or even the national government….these ‘rules’ apply. Some would, and do, argue that learning the ‘rules’ is the best way to advancement; after all, their argument goes, the only way this ‘organization’ has come into being, and continued to succeed, was by having people loyal to the way we do things, so that success was the mother and father of future success. 

And one of the pillars of the consciousness, (and likely even the consciences) of the ‘people in power’ is that change is an enemy, or at least a risky element to the smooth, predictable and thereby reliable and responsible functioning of this “thing” whatever the thing is. Naturally then, someone who has a different idea, or a different linguistic accent, or a different skin colour, or a different faith, or a different biography, lineage, heritage, (especially one who is considered to have ‘no lineage or heritage’ and thus does not come from an “established family” is considered an outsider, from the very first instance of the entry of such a person into that ‘thing’.

These layers of perceptions, attitudes, and even beliefs are seeded very early in each and every community, likely as a predictable global pattern. And while commonalty of diet, of language, of activities, of beliefs and of dominant archetypes, serves a legitimate purpose in unifying groups, the feasibility of becoming fossilized, armoured, and even worse weaponizing these ‘commonalities’ can and often does serve as a barrier between groups and between individuals. Fear of the other with whom we are not familiar is a constant tree that grows in each and every forest of people around the globe.

Of course, there are initiatives to begin to bridge some of the chasms of belief and attitude, many of which struggle for meaningful and sustainable evidence of success. One example is the World Council of Churches, head officed in Switzerland, with some 350 member churches representing more than half a billion Christians around the world. Obviously, Jews and Muslims and Atheists, even agnostics are not engaged in formal membership. Ideals of peace and justice, from a Christian perspective, are undoubtedly worthy aspirations. However, for example, the Roman Catholic Church is not a member, although it sends delegates as observers. So, even among the Christian community, the church that considers itself the primary expression of the Christian faith is not a member. There is no intent to denigrate either the Roman Catholic church or the WCC here; however, we are merely attempting to parse some of the many variables that contribute to the assignment, both formal and informal, both open and secret, of “insider” (and welcome) and “outsider” (unwelcome) to both people and organizations even those with the highest of aspirations.

In fact, there is a legitimate and tragic case to be made that the church, irrespective of denomination or even faith dogma, aspiring essentially to be a voice for harmony and peace among and between human beings, paradoxically, too often serves as a toxic, malignant and offensive device within communities, between communities, and certainly between various factions of belief in a deity. Rarely, if ever, does this fundamental paradoxical reality and truth get mentioned in public discussion of issues that divide communities. Whether the church itself, in all of its many faces and iterations, denominations and sects, dogmas and traditions, is an agent of division and conflict, per se, can be argued vehemently on both sides. Suffice it to say that its influence cannot be ignored, denied, or dismissed, if and when a society and a culture is attempting to confront blatant acts of hate, whether or not they are motivated by race, religion, ethnicity or economic status. . Secret societies like the Masonic Order, too, while attempting their own version of the Christian faith, while they may serve some immediate social need, nevertheless serve as a divisive, yet almost invisible, force in how a culture conducts itself. For example, stories abound in Ontario history of how only “Lodge” members or family members of members were even considered for summer employment on public ventures like railroads, given that ‘insiders’ were (and are?) determined to preserve their ‘inside’ status.

Human development, however, while not exclusively a religious matter, is another aspect of the conflict in our contemporary culture. We are inculcated into the pursuit of various symbols of achievement, most of them based on competition of some sort from a very early age. Whether in sports, music, art, theatre, science, math or debate, we have instituted a culture in which competition is considered essential, and winning is the culmination of each competition. For many young people, not winning is in a word, unacceptable. Many of the attitudes, approaches, theories and practices of the highest performing practitioners in any field, are easily and often too readily emulated among children far too young to be expected to adapt to such rigour. Parents, too, share in the seemingly obsessive-compulsive need for their children to succeed. Just read the accounts of parents in the United States who have turned their whole family lives over to the pursuit of their child’s athletic success, including high-cost trainers, moving across the country to work with such trainers, and the highly publicized pursuit of each type A parent’s child’s acceptance into a ‘platinum’ university. (How many of those type A parents have worked toward the ‘trophy’ of a type A child?

Social stratification, based on whatever cluster of variables, depending on the culture, the community, the predominant faith, has existed from the beginning of recorded history, as has the pursuit of ‘success’ in any of its multiple forms and faces. Inarguably, that theme of human history has provided both positive and negative results, depending on the role of the winners and the losers in the recording of events. However, the down side of history, the side that has been the experience of by far the majority of the populations, has suffered from under-exposure in the archives, in the academe, in the account books, and in the study and appreciation of the impact on voiceless human beings of whatever power ‘trip’ whatever ‘establishment figure or group imposed.

Giving voice to the voiceless, therefore, goes way beyond listening to the minority in a moment in time, or even in the cliché of a several century pattern. Calling racism against blacks, for example, a legacy of some 400 hundred years of American history, while true, tends to gloss over the many ways in which that history has been ignored, perverted, or even justified by those, including many so-called Christians, for centuries.

When I listen to a retired law enforcement officer, this morning on MSNBC, exhort all listeners to examine critically our attitudes to race, and to power, as a way to begin to transform a country besieged by hate, by contempt, by fear and ignorance, honourable, yes, but somewhat inconsequential.

Having worked in schools, and in churches, and in journalism, I have not only witnessed contempt among professing Christians for others of their faith, I have experienced such contempt personally. And, to be sure, given my own capacity for seeing through the motives of others, I have expressed considerable disagreement, even defiance, of those who, for example, considered it their ‘right’ (likely in their mind, God-given) to decide for others how things were to operate, or who, for another example, deliberately morphed the church into a pale imitation of the for-profit corporate model.

So long as we continue to accept, to tolerate and to acquiesce in the face of the ubiquitous competitive, for-profit, transactional, zero-sum way to conduct public, religious educational and social affairs/business, we will continue to ensnare our culture in a self-sabotaging structure whose roots cannot and will not be burned out, unless and until we acknowledge our deep enmeshment in the very structures and processes that enable racism sexism, ageism, and the over-powering of the voiceless.

Maybe it is too much to hope that the churches themselves, might take stock of their own complicity in engendering hate, injustice, bigotry and violence. Even the old axiom, ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ had its roots in the Christian church, as did solitary confinement in prison originate from the Quaker religious movement.

Sad…and tragic!