In Defense of Difference

My partner spends her work week corralling 3-year-olds and exposing them to school for the first time in their very young lives.  Some of them are not potty-trained, most of them enter the year crying for their parents and all of them have a hearing loss of some degree or another.  The challenging part of all of this, as if there needed to be more complication, is the children (because of their hearing losses) generally come in to the classroom with very little language and quite often none at all.  Her job is to teach them to speak; sometimes with their voices, sometimes with their hands.  I think what she does is nothing short of miraculous, a fact she would never admit.

The other side of the world in which she exists professionally revolves around heated debate over auditory-oral and total communication modes of education. It's a debate that is nuanced on many levels and far too complex to adequately explain in a single blog post and yet, here is a ludicrously brief synopsis of each:

The auditory-oral methodology uses techniques for teaching communication by working with residual hearing (whatever hearing an individual still has) and speech in order to equip the individual with the ability to communicate self-sufficiently. Essentially, they want an individual who is deaf/hard of hearing to be able to speak and hear as accurately as an individual who is hearing.

The total communication philosophy attempts to maximize an individual's ability to communicate by using whatever works best for them.  This may include but is not limited to various types of sign language, body language and natural gestures, visual cues and auditory/speech training.  The aim is to provide each individual with the most suitable avenue to effective communication (which will look different from person to person).

The two "camps" are divergent initially in that one is a methodology and the other a philosophy and become more convoluted when expanding the debate beyond the education system.  Questions emerge over the tension between a majority hearing culture and minority deaf culture, the influence of money from cochlear implant and hearing aid companies behind the push for auditory-oral teaching and even the very definition of disability.  It all illustrates nicely some of the more telling pieces behind our reactions and interactions with difference.

I don't think that deafness and deaf culture would be so problematic for a hearing society if they weren't so adamant about remaining happily and productively deaf. To many who live within deaf culture, deafness isn't a problem to be fixed or a disease to be cured, something that we hearing people either don't want to hear or don't understand how to hear.  For the rest of us (those who communicate by voice and ear) this kind of difference is inconvenient.  It might require us to exist (if only for a moment) in a world where we're not entirely at ease.  It would mean having to grapple with a culture we're not comfortable around and have very little knowledge.  It might, in fact, feel something like a deaf person interacting with a hearing culture on a day-to-day basis.  It's horribly privileged to think we need to fix what someone else doesn't identify as a problem simply because it's an inconvenience for us.

My partner recently shared a story with me about a friend who works in a school system where there is a student whose primary care-taker is a deaf grandfather. No one wants to deal with the grandfather because it's difficult and the school has all but stopped trying to communicate with this individual because he is "stupid" and "illiterate".  He'll sometimes be waiting in the parking lot for hours before dismissal to everyone's concern and school officials have actually been close to calling the police because he "touched" a student.  The problem with all of these characterizations is that they're completely a product of the school's ignorance and unwillingness to learn.  He's neither stupid nor illiterate.  He uses American Sign Language (ASL).  ASL does not use English grammar and sentence structure so when this man uses English to respond to notes written home by teachers you'll generally find that nouns and verbs aren't in the expected place because ASL follows a French grammar and sentence structure.  He waits in the parking lot for hours at a time because no one has been able to effectively communicate to him the days that are early dismissals and the days that aren't. His concern is that he won't be there in time to pick up his grandchild so he errs on the side of caution (which I think makes him a good parent).  And the "touching" of the student business?  The student had dropped something and the grandfather noticed and attempted to get the student's attention.  In deaf culture, one doesn't yell at the other person, because, well, obviously.  What people who are deaf usually do is tap each other on the shoulder, which is exactly what he did to this student.  And for all of this man's troubles he is treated as unintelligent, weird, creepy and a security risk.  God forbid.  The heartbreaking piece for me?  These are daily things most deaf people run into, mostly because the rest of us hearing people are too busy or too lazy to care.

Sometimes I can't help but hear comments made by people screaming about homosexuality ruining marriage or how black people need to get jobs and illegals need to go back home.  They ring in my head long after they're said as if I'd just heard them, like those things tend to do when you're disgusted by hate and frustrated by misunderstanding.  It's hard to reach for compassion and empathy when I hear those things and it's rarely ever the first thing I want to do.  If nothing else, we could all be better teachers and listeners.  PBS has a wonderful documentary, Through Deaf Eyes, that gives a good look at 200 years of deaf history.  I recommend a watch if only for the history lesson.

"Never Forget" Ten Years Hence

I was sitting in a student lobby watching TV's that had been rolled in on carts after a math class the morning of September 11th.  By then both Tower 1 and Tower 2 had been hit by hi-jacked planes and the news anchors were calling whatever had happened a terrorist attack.  I stood watching, trying to wrap my head around what was going on and soon after the South tower collapsed.  The first thing I thought was I need to know that the people I love are okay.  It didn't matter that they weren't in New York, it didn't matter that they weren't in any danger, I was simply grasping for something to steady the world in which I now existed.  And it strikes me now how starkly innocent and naive my reaction was compared to the world that we already existed in.  I lived in America where the true ravages of war or constant threat of terrorism had never entered the psyche of an entire nation. These things didn't happen, at least not here.  They happened to other people. Once I reached my (now) partner on the phone we sat on the line with a great deal of silence, comforted by each other's quiet voices and not knowing what to say.

The popular refrain since that day, "Never Forget," is one that haunts me and infuriates me and disgusts me.  Not forgetting means there's something we should remember and the tricky part about remembering is the onus to learn from those things we remember.  So what have we learned?

A year and a half later, when President Bush had made the decision to attack Iraq, I sat with my suite-mates in our college dorm room watching the video footage of the first bombs dropping in the Iraq War.  The live video feed was in that eerie night-vision green.  The cheers from various people on our floor echoed through the hall and in open doors as the bombs began to fall.  Finally, something was being done, someone was being paid back for what they had done to us.  Except, nothing was being done and no one that had anything to do with the September 11th attacks were being paid back.  Instead we learned a great deal about our own use of violence and war as a tool for personal gain and mask for a new world in which we no longer sat comfortably.

It doesn't surprise me that we attacked Iraq based on lies and misinformation.  It doesn't surprise me that both a Republican and Democrat have executed more wars since that day.  I'm not surprised by the notion that a larger military and greater defense spending will make us safer.  I'm not at all astonished by the amount of bigoted paranoia that surrounds so many public officials' statements about Islam.  It is, in fact, what we have learned since September 11, 2001.

The most poignant images and sounds that I've been unable to shake from the events of that day was the people jumping out of the towers and the faces of the firefighters-the split second registering of a crash followed by a punctuated moment of silence-as they try not to think about the sounds of the bodies while attempting to mount an effective rescue in the towers.  It represents in my head the confluence of the best and the worst of us.  It forces me to remember that, for all the hurt and malice and anger wrapped up in the perpetration of those attacks, there were those who were willing to put aside everything else and do what they could to help.  We could use more of those people and we could do a better job of making sure those people who did respond are taken care of today.  Instead we've become much more comfortable calling people evil and dividing the world between the good and the bad.

The controversy over the "Ground Zero Mosque" (as the media so ineptly termed it) is a heartbreaking reminder that we've forgotten a great deal since September 11, 2001.  We've forgotten about Touri Hamzavi Bolourchi, a 69 year-old retired nurse on United flight 175 who died when it collided with the South tower.  She was Muslim. We've forgotten Mohammed Salman Hamdani, a 23 year-old NYPD cadet whose remains were recovered months later after vicious rumors had circulated that he had fled in connection with the attacks.  His body was recovered near the North tower where he had gone to help.  He was Muslim.  We've forgotten Mon Gjonbalaj, a 65 year-old janitor at the World Trade Center who managed to call his son one last time to tell him, "I'm trapped. I don't think I'm going to see you guys again. Keep the family together. Be strong."  He, too, was Muslim.  I don't really hear people talk much about the Muslim victims of September 11th and the growing number of Muslims who have been (and continue to be) ridiculed, demeaned and accused because of what happened that day.  It is as if many of us don't want them included, as if we want to forget that Muslims lost just as much as anyone else.

Remembering "those people" and accepting that the world is more complicated than "there are good guys and there are bad guys," doesn't make for catchy slogans or powerful impassioned speeches by politicians.  But that's why we remember, right?  So when the next politician needs to paint his opponent he can invoke "9/11" to remind us all why so-and-so will let the terrorists win.  It's so a decorated military general can convince himself and others that war is the only answer.  People stop being people this way; they stop being people and instead become "evil."  In this day and age, can't we all just accept that calling people evil helps no one and does nothing but reinforce our own prejudice.  It's far to simple an explanation for some of the most complex moments in life.  It's the same reason why I've never liked the idea of hell and the devil.  It's to neat and tidy.  If there is anything I can be confident of since that day it is that life is almost always messy and living is never as black and white as many would have us believe.

To be honest, I didn't even register that this was the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks until a week or so before the date.  I'm not quite sure why it hadn't occurred to me until then other than to say I still have moments in life in which that day feels like it just happened.  We're still fighting wars that stem from the events of that day, we're still trying to solve the worlds problems by injecting a good dose of violence and we continue to act as if we exist in a world where we can completely insulate ourselves from everything that's happening beyond our borders.  I'm hoping that over the next ten years those things will begin to change. I'm not very confident that they will.

The Trying and the Wanting and the Waiting

I was fortunate to have been raised by parents who, for all of their flaws and inconsistencies, couldn't have done a better job managing the struggles of life and raising three children.  My dad probably worked something like 100 hours a week and still managed to read my brother and I bedtime stories.  My mother, who was left with the enormous task of taming two rambunctious boys 14 months apart, somehow maintained her sanity while showering us with love and raising our much younger sister.  It was a tall order and us kids tended to not make it easy.  As is the cycle of life, I never really appreciated or understood what my parents did for us growing up until leaving home and beginning the process of becoming an adult.  And it's really only now, after nearly two years of trying to get pregnant and failing, that I'm beginning to understand a tiny bit of what it might mean to be a parent.

A curious thing happened to my memory over the long course of this endeavor to get pregnant.  I can still remember the excitement of those first few weeks and months after making the decision to try for a baby.  I can recall our optimism and the late night talks wondering what our future child might be.  It's all still there somewhere but there came a point when the optimism and expectation was replaced with something else.  At first it was confusion and frustration.  We were reassured by friends, family, and doctors that sometimes it takes time and so, despite the frustration, we soldiered on.  Eventually those emotions were compounded by miscommunications and arguments in which my partner and I struggled to express our own conflicted and painful feelings as those first few months turned into a year.  Soon after that year mark (and probably sometimes before then as well) the optimism was replaced with successful and unsuccessful attempts just to remain present in the month to month ordeal of tracking ovulation cycles, beginning the process of figuring out what could be wrong, and hoping beyond reason that damn blue line would show up.  The anticipation and expectation had been sapped from the process, replaced with a pall of unknown reasons and the specter of looming problems.  At times, it's difficult to even recall what the initial optimism and expectation felt like.  I still have the memories of it, I still recall those moments but it's like watching them through an old dusty window as if the lack of emotional connection leaves them in this strange detached place in my self.

When I was in seventh grade I began to experience a number of emotions that I neither knew how to identify nor manage.  I couldn't shake an overwhelming feeling of wanting to be alone.  I began spending most of my days cooped up in my room dwelling on god know's what and feeling desperately lonely.  It wasn't until my parents noticed some of the more obvious symptoms of my depression that I found myself at therapy with a man I had never met asking me questions I had never answered before.  I never did ask my parents what that experience was like for them, who they might have talked to or what they learned from it all and I think that had to do with the fact that I was acutely aware, perhaps for the first time, of the importance of my parent's presence in my life.

It's odd the places your mind takes you.  In the midst of this never-ending path to create a life, I've been unable to shake this memory of my parent's faces when I left my therapist's office for the last time.  There wasn't anything particularly special about that moment except that, in my mind, I have this wonderfully poignant and vivid image of my parents without any manufactured happiness attempting to mask the situation. They were concerned for sure (perhaps still a bit scared) but what I remember feeling from their faces was the warmth of their presence.  They were there.  They had been there at the beginning, they were there that day leaving the therapist's office for the last time and they've been there every day since then.  And the only thing I can think of now, in this moment, is that I think I can do that.  I think I can be good at that.

The first part of this experience ended with some pretty raw emotions drifting in a place somewhere between apathy and exhaustion which is neither a helpful or healthy state of mind for the having of children.  Waking up mornings and finding that your living with a person that is completely foreign to you is a scary experience for two people that have vowed to live their lives together.  You're forced to confront things never before imagined and ask questions that you may not want to hear answers to.  And you know what, it doesn't always end up okay.  Sometimes there isn't some magnificent plan (not least because if this is all part of a plan, then I have to interject that this is a horrifically shitty plan).  I'm thankful that we never had to traverse the road of ending our partnership together.  We've managed to come out of this in a good place and we at least have some answers and direction as to where we go from here.

Classism and Other Easier Ways for White People to Talk Around Racism

Classism [noun] a biased or discriminatory attitude based on distinctions made between social or economic classes.

It seems in our "post-racial" America we are finding more and better ways to circumvent any real conversations about race in the public sphere.  We have a black president now which, apparently, magically alleviates our society of any need for reconciliation.  And because of that faulty assumption, so prevalent in certain corners of public discourse, talking about race in any way that does not conform to "color blind" rhetoric becomes taboo.  Suffice it to say, if you think a "color blind" society would solve all of our problems, you're probably white and spend time convincing yourself and others that you're not racist because you have a black friend.

Classism is the new racism for white America.  And it's a convenient way for white Americans to frame their understanding of inequality because, for an overwhelming number of us, it alleviates our feelings of guilt and/or paranoia over the reality of inequity in this country.  Most of us aren't rich so we can justify becoming righteously indignant over wealth parity.  We can talk about the increasing concentration of wealth (which equals political speech! Thanks Supreme Court!) without having to face our own staggering inability to understand the part we play in the systems of disadvantage we accept.  The word doesn't hit us like racism does.  It doesn't convict us or make us squirm or react so defensively when it is used in our presence.  No, no.  You see, we are the "middle-class" and we are normal, everyday, human beings.  We stand for middle class sensibilities.  We're the backbone of the American economy.

The problem with shifting the conversation from racism to classism so that we can "move beyond" the narrow focus of racism is that classism is still a system of disadvantage and privilege predicated on race.  It might be easier to talk about, it might be less threatening, it might not be full of so many uncomfortable conversations but that's the thing about Euphemism, easier to talk about with a healthy dose of disingenuousness thrown in for the sake of feelings.  I want to stress that I'm in no way implying that classism doesn't exist or that it doesn't disadvantage certain groups of people but I cannot accept arguments and conversations that treat classism as if wealth was the only thing standing between equality and disparity in this country.  Thus, a chart (from an interesting study):

It's pretty clear we're not just talking about wealth as the problem or, more accurately, that wealth is the all encompassing lynch-pin in the understanding of American disparity.  We're talking about red-lining and the lack of inclusion for minorities during the economic recovery of the Great Depression.  We're still talking about systems of disadvantage that have been orchestrated and maintained by white America.  And to a large part, I feel like we're still talking about the pathology of privilege that continues to feed on the fears of middle-class white America.  This well-known scene from Lee Mun Wah's The Color of Fear helps illustrate this pathology a bit:

So, we exist in a culture where the majority culture (power) has been willing to accept and promulgate (sometimes through ignorance) systems of disadvantage in which they readily benefit.  These systems are largely ignored and overlooked by the group that is implementing them because we have the privilege of not having to deal with their consequences and can continue to live in a state of ignorance.  And now, in this most recent economic downturn, white America has been unwittingly hit by these systems that have been used for so long to privilege their own.  We have experienced a piece of the disadvantage that our brothers and sisters of color have been living with and have known about for most, if not all, of their lives (and we've incorrectly placed the blame of this problem on our black president, a bastardization of the truth that so complete that if I were to actually call it racist in public I would be laughed out of the room).  And although it has come primarily in the form of economic hardship, it should provide us with a moment to reflect upon all the systems of advantage and disadvantage we navigate and negotiate in this country every day of our lives.  It provides us with an opportunity to raise our own consciousness, to challenge the fear and paranoia we accept into our narrative and accept the experiences of life in America that those with black skin and red skin and yellow skin have endured.

Yes classism is a legitimate problem.  Yes its reach can be felt across ethnic lines in society.  But to try and talk about classism without also addressing racism does us all a disservice.  It's a convenient way to gloss over the true lay of the land and a white-washing of the realities of experience in America.  It would be easy for us to latch onto classism as the explanation for the current climate of America's economy but my feeling is it would only serve to rob us of the opportunity to identify the fear we've agreed to live with, the fear that keeps us from accepting the voices of American experience that differ wildly from our own.

Unemployed, Well-Educated, White, Male

As a currently unemployed, well-educated, white, male I love what Tim Wise says in this video.  The myth of entitlement Wise speaks about in the closing minutes of this clip is a powerful witness to the reality of privilege and racism in American society today.  And if I'm honest and I reread the first sentence I just typed, I can point out that a mere three words in to this post I display, without thinking twice, that same pathological entitlement.  Because, you see, I'm just "currently" unemployed.  It would be hard for me (too hard) to believe in a world where unemployment for myself would be an ongoing, persistent, and debilitating issue.  And it's funny because sitting here (in all of my flagrant white privilege) I live in a modest house where I just mowed the grass and have internet access in order to comfortably sit on a seat at a kitchen table so that I can compose this post...white privilege.

It would be a mistake to think Tim's comments are without sympathy for someone in my position.  But Wise isn't addressing the pain of unemployment or the feelings of inadequacy and frustration or the current climate of the world's economic systems.  Wise is giving us a reminder, a proof if you will, that what we think about the unemployed (that they are lazy, that they WANT to be on welfare, that they intend to leach off of the government until our government and society implodes on itself) is a narrative and picture that has been painted by the people in society who look like me.  And as Wise says, "[it] is ironic, and it is sad, and it is tragic," because those are the people that have bought into this myth of meritocracy.  It is that same White Protestant ethic that I can hear in the back of my brain, "god helps those who help themselves," as if all you need to do is work for what you want.

I'm privileged that my days are filled with endless applications and going on the occasional interview.  I'm not excited about it, I'm not happy about it and at times I can feel quite depressed about it, but at least I still have the luxury of searching for employment in a field I would enjoy working.  And never in that process has my status as a natural-born citizen of the United States been questioned (This might have something to do with the fact that I'm not a high profile public figure but I'm also fortunate enough to be white with an acceptable Anglo sounding name).  We need only look at the top rung (THE VERY TOP!) of a hierarchy of public service to see the plague of racism and privilege that continues to permeate this country.  Birthers, was it really the fact that President Obama never released a satisfyingly official document (at least to your unbiased eyes) to assuage your fears of a foreign-born Black Nigerian Muslim with a funny name taking over "our" country or are you just bigots?

There are days I would like to paint myself so that when these people say these things, these people who look like me, I can hide for a few days (at least).  There are days when I wish I could wash off the legacy of slavery and Jim Crowe and reservations and smallpox in blankets and Tuskegee even though I know that would help nothing.  Beyond the laughter President Obama shared at the beginning of his most recent news conference to address the claims of the Birthers, I was honestly and utterly ashamed of myself, of white culture, of privilege, of this country, of all of it and all of us even though I know the shame and the hiding doesn't do anyone much good.  Instead, for now, I'll simply say I am an unemployed, well-educated, white, male and I can admit what our brothers and sisters of color have known and lived with much longer than me, that sometimes it doesn't matter how much you work or how much you know; sometimes the only thing that matters is whether your name sounds white enough or your skin color is light enough.

Tragedy

We are, for the most part, terrible at confronting tragedy. Grieving is a process we rush, not one we savor, stories are retold so long as they have happy endings and we love revisionist history when it acquits us of the sins of our fathers and mothers. I’m not sure I could pinpoint what part of our society reinforces this relatively common experience, but I am certain that we are simply dumbfounded when it comes to confronting, living in, and learning from the tragedies we experience regularly in our lives. In my religious upbringing hope was the refrain heard most often over the discordant melody of tragedy; that somehow god would make something good out of a bad situation, that we should hope for a brighter tomorrow and that things will eventually get better. And I have to confess that these are compelling beliefs for me as well but there is a part of me that can’t quite stomach the notion that there is always some good that comes out of our tragedies. I feel like, sometimes, hope gets in the way of the more human part of reacting to tragedy. We don’t know how to live with sorrow or trade our feelings of loss. We worry about visiting our own demons on others or subjecting them to a version of ourselves we’re not altogether comfortable with.

I did not attend my grandmother's funeral the reason for which (the one I shared with my father and others) was primarily logistical. My partner was in St. Louis in the middle of student teaching and I was missing her terribly and boarding a plane to go see her. The other reasons that I failed to share with anyone at the time were, perhaps, the more important ones. My grandmother had fallen into increasingly deeper spats of dementia as her life ended and there was a large part of me that already felt she was gone. The last time I saw her, it wasn't her anymore. I suppose (or at least convinced myself) that my grieving had already begun. I said goodbye that final visit in more ways than one. I had no intention of attempting to visit my grief on others.

A month or so after the funeral the family gathered to bury Grandma’s ashes. Not all of us were there, just like before. The moment was awkward. Someone suggested we bury one of our beer cans with her and the only thing I could think about was whether or not anyone really wanted to talk about the fact that Grandma was, for all intents and purposes, an alcoholic. I was asked to offer a prayer and over the swelling and passing sound of several cars, I did.Then we buried our grief in the ground.

And so, Good Friday will come and pass this Lent with all due haste.We'll take a moment to leave our sanctuaries in a Tenebrae silence and then quickly shuffle on to the joy of Easter. It’s so much less effort this way, so much less awkward. The dwelling will be on new hope and new life rather than living the lives that are so obviously staring back at us. Because, in the end, we still don’t know what it means to live the tragedies of everyday life even though we are all painfully aware that we need to.

“The glory of god is humanity fully alive.” – Iranaeus of Lyons