Irreconcileable differences do not a community forge, nor a planet rescue, nor hate eliminate

 It does not seem to matter the issue, given the times and the troubles we are living in, there will be two strong, mutually exclusive opinions contending for public acceptance, converts, recruits, and the ultimate impossible as well as implausible…total victory and the eradication of the opposite view and its advocates.

In the United States, Critical Race Theory, comes to mind. Critical Race Theory (CRT)         (from britannica.com) “is an intellectual movement and a framework of legal analysis according to which (1) race is a culturally invented category used to oppress people of colour and (2) the law and legal institutions ion the United States are inherently racist insofar as they function to create and maintain social, political, and economic inequalities between white and nonwhite people..(It) developed in the 1970’s as an effort by activists and legal scholars to understand why the U.S. civil rights movement had lost momentum and was in danger of being reversed. Their approach emphasized general and systematic features of the legal system that served to perpetuate race-based oppression and white privilege.”

Kevin Cokley, a black professor at the University of Texas at Austin, writing in USA Today, on this date, writes (CRT) posits that racism is not simply acts of individual bias or prejudice, but rather is embedded in institutions, policies and legal systems. Not surprisingly, CRT has become a target of America’s ongoing culture wars. Recently Texas became the fifth state to pass a critical race theory bill, House Bill 3979, which states that ‘a teacher may not be compelled to discuss a particular current event of widely debated and currently controversial issue of public policy or in  social affairs.’ If teachers choose to teach this type of material, they must ‘to the best of the teacher’s ability, strive to explore the topic from diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective.’….It appears that the ultimate goal of anti-CRT efforts si to prevent any discussion about racism that presents America as less than perfect….There is nothing insidious or anti-American about acknowledging this fact. One can love America and simultaneously be critical of the ways that structural racism has perpetuated racial inequalities such as in health care, a fact recognized in a recent article in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine….

Kokley continues,

Law professor Kimberle Crenshaw, who coined the term “critical race theory”, has suggested that a lot of what is being called critical race theory in the media are ideas that no proponent would agree with. For example, a critical race theory bill introduced in West Virginia forbids teachers from teaching ‘divisive concepts’ such as teaching that ‘one race or sex’ is inherently superior to another race or sex’ and that ‘an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race or sex.’ However, there is nothing is critical race theory that advocates these beliefs.

In Indiana, for example, some parents criticized the hiring of a diversity, equity and inclusion officer, because the school district was ‘pushing left-wing ideology, an ‘ideology that will place the seeds of self hatred in our children,’ an ‘ideology that white people are born as racist oppressors and Black people are born as our victims.’ (Dwight Adams, Indianapolis Star, May 11, 2021)

The original notion coming out of legal scholarship, has obviously mutated into a bright red, even perhaps radioactive target for conservatives who believe that teaching some form of CRT is  fostering a form of Marxism, that is opposed capitalism, and that the risk of condemning white children to feelings of inferiority, as compared with Black children, their systemic victims. One side, a conservative and vocal side, protests, while another side sincerely believes that structural racism is a demonstrated reality in America needing to be confronted and the law is one of the instruments of exposing this deeply rooted reality, as well as one of the pathways to amelioration.

It is another of what seem to be a pandemic of what Margaret Atwood dubbed the “dialogue of the deaf” when she was referring to the sovereignist movement in Quebec a few decades ago. And in all cases of vehement differences of opinion, especially when one truly believes that s/he is not being heard or understood, one begins to shout more loudly, in the vain hope that the ‘other side’ with wake up to MY point of view.

In a much more local situation, an Ontario community has authored a creative concept to deal with bored, listless young people, by having the police provide “positive tickets”. In A Global News story, July 5, 2021, Constable Mike Gomulkiewicz, the officer credited with inaugurating the program in his community, is reported, “other police forces have been using similar programs…It’s about community safety, road safety for youths..bicycles, skateboards, scooters, roller blades all means of convenience for kids…when officers are on foot patrol, they will be looking for children following safety rules….(who) will be given a positive ticket…a coupon for an ice cream cone or happy meal at McDonalds.

Naturally, public support for such a “positive program” is both expected and forthcoming. However, on the same news day,  reports of a street party in an urban setting indicate the police are investigating whom to charge, given the large number of participants and the size of the event. Predictably, social media comments range into the extreme of “charge them all, what is there to investigate?”

It is the divide between the two attitudes, the one in favour of the ‘positive ticket’ program, and the other condemning to criminal or misdemeanour charges the whole gang from the street party, that astounds. And it is emblematic, not merely local, but rather universal of a number of social and cultural features that we still have to come to terms with:

1)      Everyone is an arbiter of every situation

2)      Everyone can and will comment on social media, with or without the evidence to support an opinion

3)      There is and will not be any direct consequences for anyone who posts the most virulent, and the most condemnatory opinion of what it is they wish to ‘shoot at’

4)      The constraints on news media, facts, supported and confirmed, supported and confirmed by as many sources as one can find, no longer hold for the growth of the public and noxious “weed” of hate, prejudice, superiority/inferiority, and the bandying about of whatever ‘chestnut’ of opinion seems to relieve one of all responsibility, and certainly of any association with the tone and the deportment of the community.

In the adult world, we throw bricks, grenades, and IED’s (verbal variety) if and whenever we fell compelled to throw them, with or without regard to the impact on their target, and without any real responsibility for our attitudes, or our behaviours.

Political actors, too, both lead and follow the cultural trend of the zero-sum game, barricading themselves behind barricades of venom, unique to and supported by the framework of their alleged leaders. And from behind those walls, they lob verbal grenades at their opponents, as if we were again fighting some long-ago cannon-ball warfare campaign.

In Canada, while the rhetoric has not reached as high in volume or in toxicity as it has in the United States, we too are facing a kind of verbal and social and cultural tension between those who favour positive steps toward community building and those who favour retracing old battles, old favouritisms, old prejudices, and old epithets of thought and attitude that conveniently reduce to a war of black and white concepts, if not actual races.

The rise and supremacy of what has become known as a capitalist entrepreneurial society has potentially provided opportunity for many to eliminate the need for public services to be considered, for example, as “needed infrastructure’ in the U.S. and as social programs to alleviate the most recent pandemic. And now as the economies begin to re-start, the argument against continuing support for businesses and social service agencies, in the form of public monies, risks taking hold, under the umbrella of “protecting us against an unbearable deficit and debt”.

Whether or not the phrase Critical Race Theory applies, it is abundantly clear to anyone with eyes to see, ears to hear, and a brain to reflect, that in both Canada and the United States (likely in many other countries as well) the long-standing tradition of white power, white supremacy, and especially white male power is under critical exposure, investigation, cynicism, scepticism and outright hostility. We can no longer watch, passively, while Roman Catholic churches are burned to the ground, many of them on land commonly referred to as First Nations land. We also can no longer turn a deaf ear and a blind eye of detachment from the flaming evidence of buried childrens’ bodies, in graves from which the markers have been deliberately removed. We can no longer remain quiet and complacent in the face of the 94 recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, only 10 of which have been implemented,

We also can no longer sit by idly while others tear down the flags and attack the participants in GAY PRIDE PARADES, no matter where those parades are planned.

From Heather Mallick’s Toronto Star column today, entitled “With the personalization of politics and hate, what kind of person will be attracted to public office in the future?”…we read an account of an incident in Alberta, in which the Alberta Health Minister is accosted by hate:

‘Forcing people to take an experimental vaccine?”

‘Sorry buddy, but your father is a war criminal.’ (within earshot of the Minister’s son!)

With respect to the vaccine controversy, we know that much of the resistance, or outright defiance comes from those who have succumbed to the trap of totally false and frightening information….some of it allegedly endangering a woman’s fertility, others about the dangers of the “unapproved” vaccines and most of the dis-information comes with impunity again, from social media, much of it from Facebook, and more from the dark web.

Hate has so many fathers and faces, so many mothers and vocabularies, so many skin colours and faith embodiments, racism, ageism, sexism, and put all of that into a test tube of personalization, whereby even David Suzuki has to defend his endorsement of CBD gummies, in the face of an openly hostile charge that he resign from CBC, lobbed by right-wing billionaire, Kevin O’Leary.

It was Dr. Kavita Patel, appearing on MSNBC with Craig Melvin who noted that, when she is confronted by patients who refuse to take the COVID vaccine, she does not parent them with alternative pieces of information. Rather she begins with empathy and understanding, sharing their fears and their doubts, prior to offering some ‘new’ information, so that they might actually hear her professional, caring, and medical views.

Unfortunately, empathy, understanding, listening to the other, especially the other who disagrees with us, is neither a habit we have instilled in our school curricula, nor a value we have incarnated in our families, nor a policy or practice we have planted, watered, nurtured and are ready to harvest in our political, legal, academic, religious, cultural or psychological lives.

Positive tickets, infectious disease doctor’s empathy and listening, even clergy agape (fatherly love of God for humans, and human reciprocal love for God extended to one’s fellow human beings….and the occasional “good news” story about how an individual came to the aid of a desperate and threatened human….while these all warm the heart, including the heart of both the donor and the recipient, they do not command the kind of respect and honour that we collectively, and unfortunately also individually, offer up to winners, to criminal charges that result in convictions, to statistical evidence of how men and women are willing and able to transform their/our lives through the help of the Dr. Patels, the local police officers, the favourite teachers, the empathic employer, even the reasonable and reasoned politician.

We have sunk into the slough of judgement, fearful that our lives are unsettled, unstable, out of the reach of planning and predictability, clinging to the last vestiges of some hint that there must be something we “know” even if that something is not substantiated by verifiable truth.

There is a line in an essay in The Atlantic, July/August 2021, by George Packer that shed light on our situation. His piece is entitled, “Competing Visions of the Country’s purpose and meaning are tearing it Apart. Is reconciliation possible?” The opening reads like this:

“Nations like individuals, tell stories in order to understand what they are, where they come from, and what they want to be. National narratives, like personal ones, are prone to sentimentality, grievance, pride shame. self-blindness. There is never just one—they compete and constantly change. The most durable narratives are not the ones that stand up best to fact-checking. They’re the ones that address our deepest needs and desires. Americans know by now that democracy depends on a baseline of shared reality-when facts become fungible, we’re lost. But just as no one can live a happy and productive life in nonstop self-criticism, nations require more than facts—they need stories that convey a moral identity\ The long gaze in the mirror has to end in self-respect or it will swallow us up.”

How can one see self-respect in a mirror if one is deliberately flaunting norms, evidence, stories and episodes that convey hope, care, sacrifice, sharing, openness and vulnerability? Whether they are dictators, fascists, autocrats, or opportunistic Facebook CEO’s,  or evangelical cultists seduced by the narcissism of a trump’s big lie, or the deceit and arrogance of Putin’s lie about Navalny or cybercrime or the lethal commitments of a nihilistic terror cell, these mostly men (and a smaller number of women) are a kind of scourge that darkens the horizon of each of us.

And just as in our shared need to stem the tide of toxic emissions into the atmosphere, we all need to staunch the tsunami of hate, fear, lies and nihilism that, directly and indirectly, through direct infection of the pandemic, or indirect poisoning of  the air and water needed for life.

And it is not a ‘step too far’ to link the issues in a common cauldron of a globe for which we all have a responsibility.