The whole name calling thing has been an obsession of mine for several weeks now. Recently, in an early morning read of the Jesus story, there was a name that somebody was calling somebody. The name? "The Deceiver." Called of whom? Jesus of Nazareth. Called by whom? The Chief Priests and Pharisees. To whom were they using this term, "The Deceiver?" Pilate. And that was to insure that the tomb would be secure. And, a curious text in the Gospel of Mark says that they were afraid of the Man from Nazareth. Curious. A person they feared. One whose death they plotted. At His death and in His tomb, He is called "The Deceiver."
And then I began to wonder, who gets to call who what and when. These days the President is called a lot of names by different folks. Race baiter, turd, coward, liar, village idiot, blowbama, boy, punk husband, and lying Obama just to name a few. Frankly, there are others I respect such as Representative John Lewis, a legend in the arena of social justice, also receives similar verbal taunts, even in his old age.
What occurs to me is that it is "us," whoever "us" is that gets to call "them" names, whoever "them" happens to be.
Name calling helps to draw distinctions and some of those distinctions are more than just superficial name calling, in my opinion.
I remember with much shame the last time I used a racial epithet that is frequently used to describe a race of people. Despite any number of experiences I'd had, my racialized past haunted me and then and there it came out. Without provocation, I used the word N****r in front of someone I cared about and she planted a fork in the back of my right hand and told me never to use that word again. We were in college, in the cafeteria, doing our college thing.
That experience has stayed with me with all of the questions that one would want to ask. Why did I use that word when I found that word to be nauseatingly offensive. From what crevices of my mind did that word and its various associations reside. Why would I use that word when I was offended when my boss earlier in my high school years used the same word toward one of his customers?
There was some emotional excavating that needed to happen.
Many years later, Richard Schwartz wrote a life-changing book, Internal Family Systems Therapy. Thanks to Dr. Eddie Parish for introducing this work, this way of theorizing and doing therapy, and Dr. Schwartz to us at the MFT/ACU community. Later, in 2001 Dr. Schwartz told a riveting story in an article entitled, "Dealing with Racism: To Exorcise or Embrace Our Internal Bigots." That article is revised and found in IFS: Innovations and Elaborations in Internal Family Systems Therapy. That story was about when he was compelled to deal with his internal bigots. The scene occurred in front a large crowd of people at a conference. Check out the book or article and he can tell you better than I can.
His theory suggests that we all experience "multiplicity of the mind," that we all have in varying ways, a Core Self, a set of manager parts, a set of exile parts, and a set of fire fighter parts. The Core Self is as we are intended to be, kind, generous, thoughtful, respectful, spiritual. The manager parts are protector parts and they just want to keep us out of trouble, to keep hurt, fear, and rage all under control. Our exile parts are filled with hurt, shame, guilt, humiliation. The fire fighter parts are skilled at protecting us as well. Lest the exile parts lay out our hurt or shame, the fire fighter parts react in some emotionally reactive way that is both distracting and protective and laced with impulsivity, either with words or with actions or both.
What Schwartz suggests and I found for myself was that hidden within us are parts with unique ways of thinking, feeling, behaving, and viewing the world that are often not in my public view. Those parts use demeaning words, phrases, justifications, and the like. They often mimic words, phrases, attitudes, justifications, and the like that I heard as a child, as an adolescent, and that I still hear and see as an adult.
We are complex and complicated. Who wants to admit to the Self or the world, "I am a racist." No one that I know of. Who wants to say to the woman who checks us out at Walmart, "Oh, by the way, did you know that I am a racist and that I have bad words to say about people of color." Who wants to admit to the congregation on Sunday morning at the altar call, "I have sinned because I am a closet racist and use ugly words to describe people of color including some here in this church." Who wants to say to the person receiving food and clothing at the church facility, "I am prejudiced against people like you who cannot take care of themselves."
No one that I know of.
I believe that people are good, generally speaking. I also believe that we are made in the image and likeness of God. I do believe that we are fallen people both individually and as a society, and that only in eternity will we be restored to our true selves as God fully intended. Even the worst of us have positive attributes and the worst of us have negative attributes.
So, I am going to explore the inner parts of what makes me me. I am going to continue to embrace those internal bigoted parts and point out that they no longer need to protect me from anything and that they can take on different assignments. I am going to listen to how those parts think, feel, perceive the world, and the words that they use to describe other people. I am going to ease their burdens as they tell their secrets. No need for an exorcism here, just meaningful dialogue, internal dialogue.
This is actually an ongoing process for me as a human being. I do not want to be anything other than what God intended for me to be. I do not want to be overly influenced by society, past or present. I do not want to hear pejorative words coming from my mouth. Seems like the Man from Nazareth even said something about that.
It has helped immensely through the years that people who love and respect me have called me out on symbols that I have used that allowed racist ideas and attitudes to linger beneath their use. That symbolic language thing is a killer. They loved me enough to confront me.
It has also helped immensely that people have schooled me from the inside out and the outside in. The president of BFAA taught me more than I wanted to know about living while Black and farming while Black in America. The vice-president of BFAA taught me more than I wanted to know about the same and more.
I also suspect that these ideas apply to groups within our country. Yes, I think they apply to individuals and that we can embrace rather than exorcising our internal bigots, and that as a society, we would do well within our groups to embrace rather than exorcise our internal bigots.
That way, we might hear less of the name-calling. Race baiter. Boy. Village idiot. Blowbama. Punk husband. You people. Those people. Their kind.
Thugs. Good for nothin's. Entitled. Lazy. Welfare queen. Chimpanzee. Gorilla.
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