Tag: racism

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Emerging on a New World, Part Four: Power

What is power?

My first year in high school, I felt unseen. About 2000 students attended that school, and I joined the restless masses that thronged the halls at every bell. I had one friend, a holdover from grade school who felt as insignificant as I. We hatched a plan to get to school early one day and bring screwdrivers, with which to remove as many light-switch covers, and any other removable hardware, as possible. And we did. Because those were the days before surveillance cameras, we got away with it. The only effect was this: for the next few days, every time I passed one of those little acts of vandalism, I thought, I did that.

It was small and silly, but at the time I was small and silly too. Still, I wonder if I was motivated by the same impulse that causes spray-painted slogans and smashed windows.

That’s one form of power: the ability to be heard, be seen, and make changes. Over the last few weeks it has mostly been exercised by people who feel themselves powerless, at least individually. Corporately they march in the streets, hoping to impose change by signs and slogans—or spray paint and Molotov cocktails. Certain kinds of change will almost certainly happen: the law and policy kind. The heart kind of change has already happened, sparked by a 9-minute video. That’s the same way hearts were changed almost 60 years ago. by news footage of police clubbing people on the Edmund Pettis Bridge and setting their dogs against peaceful protesters.

The protests (not the riots) are a result of that heart change, not a cause. Any meaningful change, in policy or attitude, will come from the heart, not from law or policy.

Here’s another definition of power, from Culture Making by Andy Crouch: “the ability to successfully propose a new cultural good.” Notice the verb. Political change must be imposed by law and threat. Cultural change can only be proposed, by persuasion and example. Imposition forces; proposition appeals. One breeds resentment, the other sympathy. To take one example, the legalization of same-sex marriage came about not by vandalizing wedding chapels and boycotting Bed Bath and Beyond, but by persuading enough of the public that marriage was a basic human right, to which many of our fellow humans were unfairly deprived.

Emotional appeals work true and lasting change more than angry demands. Both are forms of power available even to the powerless, but how successfully any group proposes a new “cultural good” (such as meaningful change in race relations) depends on when, where, and especially how the proposal is made. Anger is powerful, but by nature anger doesn’t last in its purest form—it quickly burns off into resentment, vindictiveness, opportunism, radicalism, rationalization, frustration, apathy, and a host of other negatives.

“American race relations” is a huge, complex topic that has already taken up entire library stacks. I can’t address it in a column, except to say this: No one (except perhaps the very old, the very young, or the very sick) is completely powerless. Everyone has a certain degree of power and a platform for using it. Some will have a lot more than others, but all it takes is a voice, a mind, and a will.

The question is, what will you do with it?

The world proposes one way: get in their face and make demands.

Jesus offers another way: He who would be great among you must become your servant—not by groveling, but by hearing, encouraging, and investing.  

Martin Luther King understood this. He could not make America change her biases, but he could persuade her to change her heart by harnessing the influence of the black church, challenging the conscience of the white church, inspiring youth, and reminding his fellow Americans of their founding ideals. He invested his power in service, not violence. As much as some present-day activists would like to deny it, change happened (I was there; I saw it).

They say peaceful power doesn’t work anymore. I say it’s the only thing that works. Destruction squanders power (I did that); investment builds it. Whatever you have in your hand builds your power base, which grows as you share it with someone else: knowledge, skill, connection, even friendship. This kind of power doesn’t spread as rapidly as the other kind, but it’s more durable, and certainly more stable.

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Chislin’ Dixie

Blue vs. Gray, twice a day!

My daughter was one of the first employees of Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede Dinner Theater Attraction (yes, you need all those words) when it opened in Branson—1996, as I recall.  It’s advertised as unique, and for a fact I’d never seen anything like it.  The audience sits in long rows before plank tables with a sawdust arena serving as the stage.  The two sides of the horseshoe-shaped seating area are designated North and South, and the servers dress in blue and gray uniforms.

The show, like every Branson show I’ve seen, was noisy, corny, and various: trick horse-riding, musical numbers, broad comedy, and animal acts (like ostrich races and buffalo “stampedes”).  At the beginning, the entire cast, including servers, marched out to “Dixie” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Then the servers scattered and raced to the kitchen to bring out the first course, which they slammed down on the long tables that made up their section. Audience participation took up the space between show numbers, carrying on a “friendly rivalry between north and south” with events like chicken-chasing and toilet-seat horseshoe tosses.  Servers also performed as cheerleaders, stirring up their side to cheer louder than the other.  (My daughter says it was a real workout–she was always either running or yelling.)

Chowing down up north. The food is actually pretty good.

It was dumb.  It was also really fun.

Last summer Alysha Harris, culture writer for Slate, visited the original Dixie Stampede in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and was appalled.  Two considerations: Ms. Harris is black, and the week she attended the show was right around the time of the fracas in Charlottesville.  That said, her review was harsh.  She actually bought two tickets, to experience both sides, and noted that the Southern side was definitely more boisterous.  Though there were very few African Americans in the audience, everyone she talked to was friendly and cheerful.  Meanwhile a bizarre retelling of history played out before them, based on the “lost cause” myth of the gracious southern way of life that’s Gone with the.Wind.  Her review ended this way:

 Dolly’s Dixie Stampede has been a success not just because people love Dolly Parton, but because the South has always been afforded the chance to rewrite its own history—not just through its own efforts, but through the rest of the country turning a blind eye. Even though the South is built upon the foundation of slavery, a campy show produced by a well-meaning country superstar can make-believe it’s not. We’d prefer to pretend, to let our deepest sins be transmuted into gauzy kitsch—and no one blinks an eye because that’s what they truly want.

And don’t forget, “Birth of a Nation was once the biggest box-office hit of all time, and Gone with the Wind still is.”  Ms. Harris published her review in August and requested comment from Dolly Parton’s corporate office.  The PR department replied that they were considering, and this week they announced the removal of “Dixie” from the name of the attraction.  Ms. Harris sees the chiseling of Dixie as a start, but notes that the friendly rivalry theme is still offensive, even more the “fantasy of the Lost Cause.”

I have no investment in “Dixie Stampede” and whether they keep the name is of no concern to me.  I appreciate that Alysha Harris’s perspective is far more weighted than mine—even though the ol’ plantation part of the show felt squirrely to me, too—and would just put forward a few points.  For the sake of conversation, not rivalry, friendly or otherwise.

  • The south is not built on the foundation of slavery.  I’ll grant that it was (even though the vast majority of southerners in 1861 did not own slaves), but it is not now.  The bloodiest war in our history destroyed it, and the southern economy, at a cost of half a million lives at least.  Unfortunately the war did not end racial oppression, but those old roots have shriveled and though racist attitudes sadly remain, times have changed.
  • Likewise, Birth of a Nation can’t be mentioned without being in the same breath condemned.  Once it won Oscars.  Now 12 Years a Slave wins Oscars.  Times have changed.
  • The slap-happy ending of the Stampede show, that we’re all friends now, is kitschy but true.  We are all friends now, even if the political rhetoric is superheated at the moment.
  • Does the typical ticket-buyer to Dolly Parton’s Stampede still buy the Lost Cause myth?  I doubt it.  If a few die-hards remain in the audience, they won’t remain long.  Old myths are dying out and new ones taking their place, like the environmental spiritualism of native Americans and the innate wisdom of every ethnic group but white Europeans.  Real history is complicated and tangled, and myths don’t help us sort it out on any side.
  • Finally, the audience isn’t there to see their deepest sins transmuted in gauzy kitsch.  They are there to have a good time.

What I truly want is reconciliation, desperately, for the sake of “my people” and “your people.”  That won’t happen unless we give each other a little grace.  Slavery was indeed our deepest sin and the Civil War was a great tragedy.  It also occurred 150 years ago.  There may be a time and place to not take it so seriously–or something like it may happen again.

All friends now?

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Back in the Lifeboat

Try this thought experiment:

You’re the captain on an ocean liner.  While en route to Europe your ship strikes an iceberg and starts sinking fast—so fast that the majority of passengers are drowned, and of the remainder almost all have panicked and piled into lifeboats that capsized or failed to launch or met some other tragic end.  A handful of passengers are left—twelve, to be exact—and one inflatable raft that will hold only seven (including you.)  Who would you choose to be in the boat with you?  There’s the brilliant but arrogant doctor, the young musician who speaks no English, the combat vet who hears voices, the muscular cage fighter, the alcoholic carpenter, the disabled tech genius . . .

Forget it.  As soon as that raft inflates there will be a mad dash for it, and you’ll be reduced to throwing out the weakest six.  Better bulk up, or you may be one of them.

Of course, the “Lifeboat Game, or Problem, or Exercise, was never meant to be a real-life scenario.  We heard about it back in the 1990s, when “values clarification” was an educational buzzword.  Nothing much was clarified, unless it was sneaking reinforcement for a utilitarian worldview, for the only objective criterion for a seat on the boat was the perceived usefulness of the passengers.  Take the drug-dealing doctor over the Baptist co-ed in a heartbeat, even if the girl was traveling to France for one last visit with her dying grandmother.  And what good is a twelve-year-old recovering from leukemia?  Unless you can eat him once he croaks.  Even as a theoretical exercise the Lifeboat Game was repugnant at best and destructive to human values at worst—if it’s still used in classrooms we don’t hear about it.

Women and children first! Oh wait–can they fix a leak? Fight off a shark? Perform an emergency appendectomy?

But a version of it recently surfaced in North Carolina, when a history teacher asked students to decide which four of the following they would allow in their bomb shelter during a nuclear attack:

  • A 35-year-old White male construction worker who is a racist
  • A 40-year-old Black female doctor who is a lesbian
  • A 50-year-old White male who is a Catholic priest
  • A 25-year-old Hispanic male who is a lawyer
  • A 30-year-old Korean American female who is a former college athlete
  • A 20-year-old white female who is pregnant, has a two-year-old son, and is on welfare

It’s the old “values clarification” shell game, this time with a racial/political edge.  Instead of, “Who’s the most useful?” kids also get to determine, “Who’s the least worthy?”  Because, obviously, if you pick the racist White guy (who might be helpful when it’s time to rebuild), what does that say about you?

The teacher only meant to provoke lively dialogue in the classroom, but real-life parents—both black and white—complained, quickly and loudly, and the exercise disappeared with apologies.  Parents rightly pointed out that there were better uses of classroom time, such as learning civics or algebra, but there’s also something creepy about activities that force us to assign value to people rather than ideas.

Because when we’re looking at functions, sexes, and colors, we’re not seeing people.

Because when survival is understood as the ultimate value, love, courage, and sacrifice take a back seat—or they stay aboard the sinking ship, to go down singing “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”

But what’s the harm if it’s all theoretical?  Some theoretical alleyways should be avoided because bad things happen there.  When people are seen as units to be evaluated, not to help but to eliminate, pogroms and ghettos and extermination camps may not be far behind.  Not always, but never without the lens of functionality or race or creed.  We tend toward that kind of evaluation anyway; why encourage it?

Here’s an alternate exercise:

You love to cook, but your latest dinner party fell through when all the guests cancelled at the last minute.  Outside your downtown apartment are an Asian dance instructor, a Black single mom pushing a stroller, a homeless white guy, a gay couple waiting for the bus, a Hispanic nurse getting off her shift, and a white Christian homeschool mom with her ten-year-old son.  How will you persuade them all to come in and share your dinner, and what will you all talk about?