We know that the right thing to do - the moral thing - is to
embrace diversity. And it is also the logical thing, since there
is so much of it in the world - billions of people - zillions of
people throughout time - all different, on the inside and
outside.
Embracing diversity... It may be the right thing - the logical
thing - but it’s not the human thing - not the natural tendency.
Which is not to say that human beings don’t have a lot going for
them. My goodness! One can see God in music, art, literature,
architecture. Technology.
One can know God through the love of a friend, or the kind words
of stranger: I remember one time when I was feeling heartbroken
because I knew I was losing my second husband. I was sitting on
the bus crying - trying not to, but I couldn’t help myself. The
bus driver, who I’d never seen before, and never saw again,
reached out to me. He gave me some Kleenex and talked to me
until I reached my stop. He made me feel better and I was able
to get through the day. I’ve never forgotten him.
Little things mean a lot to human beings. Little things like
sincerity, kindness, undivided attention.
Little things, like a broken love affair, or a shattered career -
so hard to pull out of, so hard to get over. Some people never
get over them.
So imagine what it’s like trying to get over the holocaust of
Nazi Germany, or the holocaust of the African slave trade. The
genocide of the Native Americans, the "former Yugoslavia,"
Somalia, Rwanda.
The war in Vietnam.
Child abuse and neglect.
The things we do to each other.
Someone said to me recently: "If all of the tribes in Africa had
united in a fight against slavery, it would never have happened."
True, except that would be like expecting all of the countries
of Europe, or Asia, to unite in a single cause.
It would never happen.
Just look at World War I, World War II, the Cold War, the wars in
Africa over the last 40 years. The wars in the Middle East,
Ireland, Bosnia.
People hate and kill each other over everything you can imagine -
skin color, cultural beliefs, personal beliefs. We are capable
of such greatness - a cliche, I know, but it is so true - and it
is also true that we are just as capable of cataclysmic evil,
based in ignorance and fear.
What are we afraid of?
Why can’t we break loose from these chains of history and
ignorance?
As white working class parents of the World War II generation
went, my parents weren’t horrible on racial issues. One of the
few times I ever got hit really hard by my mother - actually
slapped hard in the face several times - I was about four years
old. We lived in Oakland in a racially mixed neighborhood - one
Mexican family and the rest about half black and half white.
In a conversation with my mother, I said the word "nigger,"
referring to one of my playmates - a little African-American boy.
I had no idea what the word meant, of course. I had just heard
my African-American friends say it and I repeated it.
Nevertheless, my mother became hysterical and screamed at me:
"NEVER SAY THAT WORD AGAIN! IT’S WRONG! IT’S THE WORST THING
YOU CAN SAY TO A COLORED PERSON - THE WORST INSULT...."
And I never did say it again.
When I was growing up, we had people of all races, nationalities
and religions in our lives - people from all over the world:
Romania, Hungary, Poland, Russia, the Middle East, China,
Thailand, Mexico.
There were not a lot of African-Americans in our lives, but there
were some: people my father worked with, my elementary school
principal, some of my teachers, a few kids from school and their
parents. My parents were never uncomfortable around
African-American people, and they were strong supporters of the
Civil Rights Movement. For them, it was never a question; it was
a matter of right and wrong: Of course it was right for all
citizens have full civil rights, and it was wrong to feel
otherwise.
Not to give the impression that they were totally open-minded
because they were not: They did not particularly want to live in
a neighborhood with African-Americans. If an African-American
family moved into the neighborhood, they wouldn’t get hysterical
and move, but it definitely wasn’t their preference.
And there was one thing that was absolutely forbidden: That was
me going out with African-American boys. It was forbidden - not
possible, not open to discussion. Not open to discussion at all.
End of story.
I think they would have put me in juvenile hall rather than let
me date an African-American boy. Seriously. Jewish boys were
fine, and Asian and Mexican boys - in that order - but
African-Americans were strictly off limits.
When I found out that my parents felt that way, it really took me
by surprise. When I was fourteen, I had an African-American male
friend, named C., who was about my age. We weren’t attracted to
each other physically; we were just friends. But like all kids
that age, we loved talking on the telephone, and so we talked on
the phone together practically every night. Because we talked so
often, my parents became suspicious that we were becoming
boyfriend and girlfriend. When I told them that wasn’t the case,
they didn’t believe me, and there was no way I could convince
them otherwise.
My father, who was a really nice guy and who almost always tried
to be understanding, ranted and raved about my relationship with
C. for an entire weekend. He and my mother practically drove me
crazy. While she would glare at me from her living room chair,
he would pace the floor, his face red, his voice shaking, and he
would say, "Now this has to end. I don’t want you calling C.
anymore, and I certainly don’t want him calling you. Never.
Never again. Do you understand me?" and I wouldn’t give in. I
would say, "But he’s NOT my boyfriend... But even if he was my
boyfriend, what would be the big deal? Why would it matter?"
which would practically give both my mother and father a stroke
and we’d start all over again. And get nowhere.
I was so disappointed in them.
I could not comprehend what they were so afraid of.
When I would ask my father - when I would really push for an
answer as to why going out with black men was such a terrible
thing - he would say something like, "The problem is not just
going out and having fun.... It’s that you might fall in love
with each other and want to get married, and then have children,
and it’s not good for children to be half white and half colored.
NOBODY wants them, NOBODY accepts them. The white people don’t
want them, and neither do the black people."
I know that a lot of white men - I would venture to say most -
cannot stand the thought of a white woman having sex with a black
man.
And I understand that, likewise, a lot of black men cannot stand
the thought of a black woman having sex with a white man.
Educated white men of all ages have told me, "Your father did the
right thing. Men don’t like that. White men don’t want to be
with a woman who’s been with a black man."
The same is true of women who see men having sexual relations
outside their race. They shake their heads and say, with looks
or words or both: "What’s wrong with you?" "Stick to your own
kind. Why don’t you stick to your own kind?"
But what if my "own kind," or yours, or someone else’s, has more
to do with heart and mind and intellect than skin color and
physical appearance?
And what if my sexual orientation is different? What if I don’t
care whether the person who turns me on is a man or a woman, or
both?
Last week when I was hiking in Marin County in California,
anticipating writing this piece, I said to myself, "What is it
with people? Why is it they’re so full of hatred for the
unknown?" And as I said it - as I was looking down at my feet
walking on the bone-dry golden soil - something came back to me:
There was a boy I went to school with, starting in the second
grade through junior high school. I lost track of him in the
ninth grade. Probably we drove him away from school.
His name was L., and he was no better or worse than any other
kid, in the sense that sometimes he was a sweet kid, and
sometimes he was mean and stupid. But there were a couple of
things about him that distinguished him: He was a truly gifted
pianist, and he was always - from the earliest time I knew him -
very feminine: A temperamental little girl’s personality in a
little boy’s body. Needless to say, the kids didn’t like that.
No one made a huge deal about it in elementary school, though it
did come up in fights and arguments. Whenever L. was part of an
altercation - and there were many because he was so contentious -
his adversaries would always tack onto whatever the issue was:
"GOD, WHAT A FAG!" "OH, L., YOU’RE SUCH A FUCKING QUEER!" The
insults, though, didn’t seem to bother him much in elementary
school. Probably because no one - not the kids who would call
him a "fag" and not himself - knew exactly what that meant.
But then we went into junior high school, and we all wanted to be
hip, cool, sexually experienced. We smoked cigarettes, drank,
took drugs. We went to rock concerts and teenage fairs. We
changed our clothes, our demeanor. The girls put on make-up and
the boys let their hair grow long.
We wanted L. to change too. We expected him to become like us.
After all, he was an artist - a brilliant musician. We wanted
him to be like Mick Jagger or Neil Young or Eric Clapton - not
Liberace.
We who were so attracted to the "non-conformity" of the late
1960's wanted L. to conform to us, and when he didn’t, people
became more unkind - calling him "fag" and "queer" more often -
even sometimes making him cry, which was humiliating. More and
more, his friends and acquaintances dropped away, and I’m sure
that’s what really did him in.
I know that I abandoned him. We never spent a lot of time
together, but we did spend some, and one day when we were
together at lunchtime and he said something to really annoy me, I
told myself that would be it for the friendship of sorts that
we’d had since the second grade. His annoying me offered a way
out of dealing with the "fag" issue and I took it.
I wanted to belong, and being friends with L. made it harder to
belong. I was as bad as any racist or homophobic - and of the
worst type - the type that is driven by going along with the
crowd.
Once I realized, years later, what I’d done, I never forgave
myself. It still hurts me to think about it, but that doesn’t
matter; I did the damage and there’s no way to take it back.
Living in Los Angeles and finding my way in the world, I was
eventually exposed to many homosexuals and got to know several
well. I even experimented with it myself, and then came to San
Francisco where the gay and lesbian communities are a formidable
presence. And so those sexual differences became less apparent
to me - even intriguing - and by the time I was in my
mid-twenties I no longer felt threatened when a man was like a
woman or a woman was like a man. Or when a man was like a man
and wanted to be with other men, or when a woman was like a woman
... Etc.
A lot of people don’t ever deal with theirs fears and ignorance
about homosexuality, because they really have no way to deal with
them, especially if they live in Middle America where so many
people are still in the closet and so they have very little
exposure to homosexuality. Meanwhile, the churches continuously
tell them it’s wrong. They go to church with devotion, and on
the one hand the Bible is telling them to love their neighbor, to
forgive, to try to be understanding, and on the other hand the
preachers are condemning homosexuality. And it gets compounded
by people getting so trapped in their own little worlds - where
just getting by is such a huge effort for some - they have no
desire or inclination to try to expand their consciousness.
The problem is further compounded when one is conflicted about
one’s own sexuality. We so often hate in others what we hate in
ourselves.
And we so often want to believe - we so often want to perceive -
that we are superior - that others are somehow "less than" we are
- so that we can feel better about ourselves in our stupid,
meaningless little worlds - where we cannot even stop for a
moment and think about what the hell it is that we are doing with
our lives. Where we wake up and go to work, and come home in the
afternoon and watch Oprah.
Where we create children with no more thought than we give to
eating dinner.
Men: Before you have five different children with five different
women, you need to stop and think about what you are creating.
These are not validations of your virility. They are human
beings. And women: Don’t have children with men like that.
You’re never going to change them, and your children won’t ever
have a chance. What chance could they have growing up without
love and proper care and attention? Those throw-away children
will just become adults perpetuating the cycle of ignorance and
fear in this hate-filled reality of ours.
The whites hate the blacks, the blacks hate the Mexicans, and
everybody hates the Jews. Everybody hates the gays. And on and
on and on and on ... through every conceivable permutation.
As a species, I believe we will never embrace diversity. Just
look at the history of practically any nation and you will see
that the odds of it happening are not good. We cannot even love
ourselves, or another single person. We do not even have harmony
within our own races, religions and nationalities. How then can
we all be expected to love a world of people who are so different
from ourselves?
We cannot expect it for our species, but we can expect it of
ourselves as thinking individuals. We are responsible for what
we know, and if we know we are ignorant, we have a responsibility
to try to overcome our ignorance. We have no control over others
but we do have control over ourselves. We can try to learn and
understand, and love and respect ourselves and the people we
meet.
Those individual acts might take us a long way. Because each
individual act of love and respect - once carried out - has
validity - existence - the same as each act of hatred and
cruelty. Each good memory is as real as each bad memory, and
enough goodness could cancel out at least some of the bad, and it
could have a snowball effect because people are such sheep. They
want to belong - it is in their nature. So if they experience
confident people in their lives consistently doing good, and
therefore come to believe that doing good is a way to belong - a
way to be accepted - they will do it. And doing good - if only
in deed - is certainly a start and will not hurt them or anyone
else.
