Page Two: Humanity in Its Habitat

In my last two columns, I wrote about realism and idealism, practicality and utopian fantasy. Many leftist positions that are too often and too easily labeled idealistic are in reality practical. Conversely, hardcore right-wing visions whose believers insist they are more realistic because they are so often brutal and not pretty, humanist, or compassionate are just discount-store fantasy. The conceit that cynical, bloodthirsty, suspicious, and hostile positions are the most honest because they are not "politically correct" is about the politics of disparaging and marginalizing people rather than actually considering ideas.

Twisting through all this position-taking is the notion that since, when it comes to expressing our opinions, we are mostly all on safe ground, the same is true when it comes to labeling or quantifying our beliefs. Sorry, but I think that proposition is more than shaky. In the same way that the notion of walking a mile in someone else's shoes all too often has come to mean imagining in what ways, given one's own beliefs and viewpoint, the wearer of those shoes is wrong and either willfully naive or evil. Similarly, in a classic and much embraced, modernist, partisan reading of the Lord's Prayer, out of Matthew, we find folks of all political stripes recasting it as, "We forgive us our trespasses (sins), as we carefully record those who have trespassed (sinned) against us." Not quite the spirit of the original, but the amount of personal absolution and self-forgiveness of one's own sins is so unendingly abundant it is as though we truly are in biblical times.

Along those lines, I'm always amazed when, in the course of a discussion on race, people espousing one point of view or another will baldly state, "I'm not racist." The number of times I've heard or read just such words before, after, and/or in the middle of racist statements can't be counted.

Let's accept the idea that at least some of bigotry is biological, that almost all of us are more comfortable with our "own" and get increasingly uncomfortable with "others" – especially the more different from "us" they are in terms of lifestyle, race, and religion. Given that, it is not at all absurd to suggest that we are almost all racist – although here I do not use the term in a literal way, to mean the more malevolent way of embracing the superiority of our race and the inferiority of other races.

Certainly, I do not mean even vaguely to suggest any nonchalant embracing of the many extremist views, ranging from the Ku Klux Klan, Nazis, black separatists, white supremacists, and anti-Semites to skinheads, xenophobic nationalists, and Islamofascists. Rather it is to argue that we are always cognizant of race in all our interracial interactions. Further, in all but in the rarest circumstances, this knowledge, if you will, does not come with the baggage of race hatred that insists on racial superiority and/or inferiority. It is not that pronounced or in any way extreme, but instead is found in the nearly unavoidable consciousness of differences.

Currently it is guaranteed reaction that, in the wake of any racial slight, misstatement, or hiccup (especially when authored by a minority), the mostly white, mostly right-wing television and radio pundits will weigh in with near gleeful condemnations that they insist are not just race-neutral but are actually offered in the service of the goals of true civil rights equality. The statements are usually so extremely racist that normal boundaries of social sensitivity are obliterated beyond recognition. This is Humpty Dumpty country: Words mean exactly and only what we want them to mean. In the service of these visionary civil rights, they claim, they are not only applying a single standard of conduct to all but that doing otherwise would be racist.

The absolute smugness with which condemnations are thus issued is compounded by their authors' ignoring not just a long history of pronounced and often legal racism but the reality that they are not, nor do they strive to be, race-neutral in making social judgments. They know this is blatant racism repackaged, and they are beamingly proud of themselves for doing it so cleverly. In fact, terms like "race neutral" and insisting "I'm not racist" are simple, currently acceptable code words that allow for the most biased, bigoted, and racist thoughts to be expressed as though they were socially reasonable observations.

It is crucial when considering such actions to remember that oppressed groups are not granted any special nobility by their oppression. Those discriminated against are not morally superior to all, including those who discriminate against them. Endowing the oppressed and segregated with special qualities – including any kind of moral absolution of any of their reactions or retaliations – does not only perpetuate the most vile, inhumane political and social systems but, in almost every way, embraces them. Regarding members of any race as superior – noble savages, God's chosen, more civilized, racially superior – is exactly the same mindset that regards any race as inferior, inhuman, and soulless.

Consider the TV miniseries Into the West. In it, Indians are portrayed as so noble that the sequel should have them all traveling to the Vatican for beatification. Putting them on pedestals that deny them their humanity is a similar act to degrading them by dragging them through the mud. Endowing Native Americans with the spiritual qualities of saints who are motivated only by the most exalted principles is a denial of their integrity and humanity. True humanity insists on the rights of all to be inhumane, stupid, misguided, and possessed of all seven of the deadly sins, as well as to be noble and inspired. Equality argues not for the holy baptism of oppression but the commonly shared and most mundane humanity of us all.

Arguably, those who are oppressors are morally compromised, but who among us is so without sin as to make that judgment? When I hear contemporary activists condemn previous generations as racist, sexist, or morally corrupted, it makes me crazy. A crucial step toward fascism and legitimized oppression is to deny history. Exercising one's purity of vision by condemning others is the cheapest kind of moral pornography.

Wouldn't we all actually be better off if, instead of grading the morality, humanity, and righteousness of all others, we instead worked upon improving ourselves? This would mean actually working on change rather than anointing ourselves, judged against the standards of those of whom we disapprove. The too easily and consistently glib will accuse me of doing exactly what I condemn here, but that is just a kind of lazy desperation to dismiss troubling arguments. I condemn no person or persons, nor do I celebrate or redeem myself in any way. Of course I wish I were a better person. Of course I am just as trapped by my emotions, experiences, and self-centered ways when dealing with the world as anyone. No Zen loss of "self" here. No large-picture arguments against selfishness or in favor of losing identity or addressing the defining oneness of us all.

Those who argue that the most unnatural force in nature is mankind – that humanity, rather than living in harmony with the natural world, corrupts, distorts, destroys, and ruins it – are being unbelievably, piously bizarre. Because we are here, we are natural. In the ways fires destroy, animals kill, and droughts turn the land barren, we live and do what we do. Suggesting that the natural world, without humanity, is more perfect, or that if there were far fewer of us and we were thus far less disruptive it would be more harmonious, takes Disney-style fiction to heights once almost unimaginable.

We are who we are, and that's all that we are and all we should be. Or as put more succinctly and poetically by Popeye, "I yam what I yam, and tha's all that I yam."