The nurse pronounced baby as “BEE-bee” in our prenatal class and it got me thinking of how language develops. Words will shift to reflect their usage. The meaning eventually match with the reality when we attempt to disguise unpleasantness in flowery speech or try moral inversion. Cultural values will shine through and snap understanding back where it was prior to the manipulation.
How did “bAy-bee” become “BEE-bee”?
The latter evolution in pronunciation is cuter and therefore a better representation of the subject matter. The word never will change the thing it describes. Yes, words influence our perception, they also change to reflect a new understanding of the things that we are describing. For example, the word “baby” only changed in pronunciation for me when considering the little human now within my wife’s belly. It was no longer an abstraction or vague category, but a tiny vulnerable ball of loveable life.
When we experience something firsthand it is harder to deny what it is. We can use the terms detached and technical to distance ourselves from the emotional content. Say that a baby is just a clump of cells or some kind of parasite—up until the moment when we finally hold it in our hands. To keep up the charade after this would be delusional or psychopathic. It is not human to see an infant as anything other than precious. The political lexicon becomes irrelevant.
A Tangled Ball Of Words
Words trigger emotions. I was thinking of this as a tear formed while the instructor in a prenatal class described the ideal of “skin to skin” and a soothing environment. Some of this reaction may be feeling the weight of my wife’s pregnancy. But it also has a lot to do with my own identity as the “premie” and “fighter” who struggled for life. Discussion of baby care today compared to what it was for me. The thing is, while my experience certainly impacted my development, I don’t have memories of the trauma. It probably only looms large as a part of my personal identity because my mom told me what I went through and reinforced it. The I gave further shape and form to it by attributing many of my struggles to the events of my birth—everything from my delayed growth to difficulties with focus in school.
However, it is impossible to know, outside of creating a genetic clone, if I would have been much better off with a normal birth or with more human touch rather than being in a plastic box with ‘stimulating’ music. This had some impact, no doubt, and yet there is the bigger psychological complex I’ve built on top of this named thing. Like an irritant in an oyster, it provided a nucleus to attach all of my insecurities to and blame for my failures and shortcomings. With a normal birth would I have been more like my more accomplished siblings and less a mess?
However, it is very easy to reverse cause and effect to give ourselves an excuse for our being lazy and taking of exceptions. We become the label that we apply to ourselves as much as it truly describes us. We act the part. Things of identity, like race, sexuality, religion, are as much a construct or fantasy as they are facts. We live up to our name to an extent. My mom would often tell me that my name meant “strong-willed” and it might be one of those self- fulfilling prophecies. If we tilt confirmation bias in a direction it isn’t a big surprise if our character develops that direction. It is like strapping a young tree to influence where it grows.
In a sense, nobody is truly “born this way,” it is a statement discredits conditioning and culture too much. But the environment itself doesn’t make us where we are as much as those descriptive words that reverberate in our heads. A child that is called “stupid” by a parent or teacher may spend many years trying to sort through their doubts. My dad letting me look over his blue prints and then giving some affirmation when spotted an error made by the engineers is likely what led to my being confident in my abilities and a career in design. Our reality is influenced by use of language.
These are just personal observations, but it is also backed up by other sources that put it more succinctly:
Language is not just a medium of communication; it’s a lens through which we view the world and a mold that shapes our identity. From shaping cultural perceptions to influencing personal identities, language’s role is pivotal in constructing our social and personal realities.
Language is more than a mere tool for communication.
It’s a portal through which we perceive and interpret the world.
Imagine how our understanding of colors evolves when we learn names for shades we previously couldn’t distinguish.
With each new word we acquire, a facet of reality emerges from obscurity, offering us a richer tapestry of experiences.
The Dynamic Relationship Between Language and Reality
Neither of those sources are academic or truly authoritative, but do say what I’m saying in a different way and thus useful so far as my goal here which is to provoke thought. New use of language reframes the world. It can amplify our efforts and transform society as more people begin to see the world through the lens we provided. Memes do this, as do pounding of propaganda headlines, it is why “fact-checkers” exist—all to reinforce a particular narrative.
With so much power in our words there is plenty of reason for cunning and conniving people to exercise this for their own selfish ends.
They take advantage of insecurities and level accusations to shame or confuse the innocent.
Wordsmiths, they could turn a baby into a villain and murderer into a saint—beware.
His talk is smooth as butter, yet war is in his heart; his words are more soothing than oil, yet they are drawn swords.
(Psalms 55:21 NIV)
There are some use the guise of compassion to gain control. Their promises are about attaining power. They seek only to bind us and yet many people are blinded to these motives because their identity has been hijacked by these nefarious actors.
Categories Are Social Constructs
The structures and constructs of language are entirely fabricated. There is no person who is “black” or “white” by birth, no, rather these are categories we create, clans that we join, and always artificial divisions. We are often grouped by others using various label words and internalize the divisions as being inseparable from our own experience, in that we identify with other “rednecks” or “blue-collar” types as those ‘like us’ and yet also *become* like that. Nothing requires a rural person to use country slang or go buy a massive diesel pick-up truck, some of the markers of this lifestyle (chewing tobacco or dress) can impact opportunities. This is about politics, not genetics. It is about the strength of an identity group that helps us gain power for ourselves. Being a victim of an “ism” is a lever, a social tool or means to build a coalition against others.
The individual without these groups, that is denied the right to put their fist in the air in solidarity with others ‘like them’ is weakest and most disadvantaged in this game. That is the irony of the “systems of oppression” language. Those who describe this kind of problem are actually creating it more than they are simply observing. In the same way that observation in quantum mechanics is an influence of reality (collapses the wave function), the ‘study’ of human interaction is an interaction and is a product of our bias as much as it has basis in reality. Those who are concerned with the existing ideas (of racism, sexism, or heterosexism) steal attention (and thus disenfranchise) victims of systemic heightism and those who lack privileges in ways not discussed, defined or even recognized. The individual is the most vulnerable, a minority of one, and frequently abused by recognized groups. Bullies travel in big groups—victims are often alone.
1) “Language both mirrors reality and helps to structure it” (2). Explain and give an example.
2)Racism, sexism, heterosexism, and class privilege are all interlocking systems of oppression that ensure advantages for some and diminish opportunities for others, with their own history and logic and self-perpetuating relations of domination and subordination (3). Explain what this means. Do you agree/disagree? Why?
3)What are the economic impacts of constructing race, class, and gender?
Sandwiched between the lines of this effort to build awareness (indoctrinate) are a pile of assumptions that, in the end, only serve to darken these artificial dividing lines.
It is rewarmed class warfare rhetoric, Marxism, and is basically designed to feed envy or feelings of being an other and disenfranchised. No, this is not to say that prejudice or abuse is entirely a social construct. What it is to say, rather, is that their worldview, segregated by these simple binaries, is too compartmentalized and minimizing of other factors.
There isn’t one group of oppressor and one group of oppressed.
There is no hierarchy of victimhood.
Everything depends on the context or situation. A Jewish student that is harassed on a college campus because of the IDF dropping bombs on Gaza is not privileged in this moment even if they are ‘white’ and rich. Nor is it anti-Semitic to characterize the decades long campaign against the Palestinian people as an ethnic cleansing. Labeling terms like “terrorist” or “occupier,” while useful to an extent, rarely explain accurately and are dehumanizing ends of conversation.
The whole point of claiming the existence of “interlocking systems of oppression” is to make anyone who dares to question their narrow perspective a part of a monolithic enemy rather than an individual with life experience to be respected. It is truly the educated left’s own version of a conspiracy theory where anything they don’t like is part of some invisible system that can teased out of the statistical categories they created to emphasize identities based on color and physical features. If some in one of these groups lag behind then some other group must be at fault.
Building humanity requires the de-emphasis of meaningless boundaries and formation of bonds based on behavior. Skin color is not synonymous with culture or the choices one makes that shape their outcomes. Yes, we must identify mistreatment of people on the basis of appearance, but this isn’t black and white, nor is it oppression to apply the same standard to all. Indeed, some people are treated unfairly, but many end up being marginalized for antisocial behavior and yet claim to be victims of oppression when the chickens come home to roost.
Call A Turd a Baby…
Bringing this full circle, the word “baby” is cute (and the pronunciation of the word is becoming cuter) because babies are cute. The language of description is merging more and more with the reality adorableness that we perceive in a human child by our instincts. Using the word “baby” to describe an adult does not make them cute. Albeit pet names, used to convey fondness, do imdue the quality a bit or at least will hijack some of the sentiment that associated with babies. However, this is something that can only be stretched so far before the absurdity is too obvious.
In this regard language that is used in an attempt to counter popular perspective, or overrule accurate description, will eventually take on the meaning that it was supposed to erase. The language police can only temporarily remove a stigma (albeit never long enough to make the effort worthwhile) and it is because the unpleasant reality will always bubble to the surface again. In fact, “special needs” today probably carries more negative baggage than the use of the words slow or retarded in the past.
Likewise when a person is accepted at the university or get your job simply as a result of the particular identity group they belong to rather than only on the basis of equal qualifications this leads to an asterisk with the accomplishment—even when equally earned. New terms like “diversity hire” will spontaneously and organically come into existence as a result of need to delineate between identity and merit based. These, sadly, are far more damaging stereotypes applied to minorities who are outstanding by their own right.
Just as one cannot relabel a turd as a baby and expect people to cradle it once the truth is revealed, one can’t just apply credentials or distinguished titles to someone thinking this will change a lack of qualifications. It will only degrade the meaning of words and in the long-term will do nothing to solve the socio-economic divide.
Calling someone a fisherman and giving them a pile of fish is not the same thing as teaching them how to fish. You can’t simply declare reality as the left believes they can. Turds are only cute when the term is used ironically to describe something truly cute.
I ran across two stories the other day, one of them about a mixed race man who looks like a female and another about a child with ‘werewolf syndrome’ who looks like the missing link—in both cases I thought about the negative attention this brings. In the later case, given the current awareness push, a young man who looks very feminine faces presumptuous comments about his ‘transitioning’ and I wondered at what age this happy kid would realize that he was a genetic freak? School children don’t need to be taught cruelty.
While I’m certainly not on board with the current “I identify as” phase, I also am not for alienating or adding to pain others have from being odd. What I’m talking about is the exceptions who are the exceptions by no fault of their own. Starting with those who are visibly different, dwarfs, albinos, Down Syndrome, conjoined twins, chimeras, Klinefelter syndrome (boys and men with extra X chromosomes), intersex people (born with ambiguous genitalia) or Turner syndrome. There are many chromosomal abnormalities and many issues that do put some in a “none of the above” category that is apart from what is most common.
We accept that physical abnormalities exist, it is pretty much impossible to deny, but the controversy begins when someone who has all of the physical characteristics of a man demands that other people use a female pronoun to describe them or competes as a woman. Genitals don’t tell me what goes on in someone’s head. My wife says that I’m “like a woman” in how I am expressive and emotional. My little sister was a “tomboy” growing up. I suppose today that would be proof that we deserve special protection or rights? How far can we tolerate people who do not meet expectations for their gender?
You don’t need a biologist to tell you that men tend to have a very distinct advantage over women in strength and size. It is not fair or safe for women to be in competition with those born with an XY chromosome no matter how they identify. I mean, isn’t that why women’s sports were created in the first place?
And, contrary to what the “Muh rights! You can’t make me wear a stupid mask in your private establishment.” people think, it is perfectly okay for groups to exclude those who have willfully refused to conform to the established standards. Try to walk into any church naked. They probably won’t even let you get to your explanation about material making you itchy or how Biblical prophets ran around butt naked. We set rules. We define categories. We decide if those with Swyer Syndrome are men or women. Click the link and give me your own answer in the comments.
Include or exclude?
It is our cultural bent to be more inclusive of the exceptions. We are taught that we must show empathy and understanding for those who are “born eunuchs” as part of Christian love. Then again, the Gospels are a sort of square peg being fit in the round hole of Scripture and it is easy to comprehend why the ‘chosen people’ rejected Jesus given how he mingled with the impure.
Biblical Exclusion
One reason why to be sympathetic towards those Jews who rejected the message of a teacher who ate with sinners is the Biblical tradition itself and the system it established to exclude those deemed defective:
The Lord said to Moses, “Say to Aaron: ‘For the generations to come none of your descendants who has a defect may come near to offer the food of his God. No man who has any defect may come near: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; no man with a crippled foot or hand, or who is a hunchback or a dwarf, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles. No descendant of Aaron the priest who has any defect is to come near to present the food offerings to the Lord. He has a defect; he must not come near to offer the food of his God. He may eat the most holy food of his God, as well as the holy food; yet because of his defect, he must not go near the curtain or approach the altar, and so desecrate my sanctuary. I am the Lord, who makes them holy.’ ”
(Leviticus 21:16-23 NIV)
And repeated:
No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the Lord. No one born of a forbidden marriage nor any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, not even in the tenth generation. No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, not even in the tenth generation.
(Deuteronomy 23:1-3 NIV)
Discrimination against the abnormal wasn’t only suggested or caught in a round about way be misinterpretation, but a command from God. Talk about a kick in the nuts (or lack thereof) for those already suffering an undesirable condition. Be born the ‘wrong’ ethnicity or suffer an unfortunate accident and you’re out. Not much of this is actually explained, giving opportunity for apologists to explain around it, but Christian religion (along with modern science) has certainly taken things in a very different direction.
If a woman is ‘barren’ nowadays we try to treat the condition rather than assume it is a curse from God. I mean, yes, the woman in the Philippines who had the hair covered son with ‘werewolf syndrome’ may believe that it had something to do with eating a cat during pregnancy, the popular notion of “you are what you eat” manifesting, but we’re not as likely to see it as punishment from God—we do not tend to attribute things blindness or misfortune to sin. It is harder to exclude those who are imperfect when you realize it could’ve been you.
Any more than I need to know why Islam is different from Christianity, where someone was clearly copying some else’s notes, I’m not going to attempt to theologically explain the transition from Old to New Covenant. It is clear enough that those who had lawfully been excluded, the leprose, lame and blind, Jesus healed. The result of his ministry two millennia ago was a wave of tolerance that started with his Jewish converts. Peter had his pigs in a blanket vision (while hungry out on the road) and now we eat bacon despite Biblical command:
About noon the following day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds. Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.” “Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.” The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven.
(Acts 10:9-16 NIV)
This, along with the Jerusalem Council, is a huge departure from Jewish Biblical religion and, again, it is no big surprise this new cult was rejected by the faithful. Even today some observant Jews continue the tradition, like that Orthodox chaplain who declared loudly as he took a seat (next to me) on a crowded airliner with mixed races, “I’m a racist and don’t care what you think!” My own cringe at this statement is born of an indoctrinated sensitivity, years of Christian influence, and not values arising naturally from thin air. Or, rather at least not without a sheet to carry it down from heaven.
Bacon To Bisexuals
The other day I saw a post, from a Muslim friend, and it listed the problems with eating pork meat, their unique parasites, what pigs eat, etc. Of course the winning comment was “but fried bacon is so delicious” and it basically for this reason why no Baptist will ever depart from pork consumption. If it is pleasurable to us, we do it. However, don’t dare use that reasoning with these same Biblical fundamentalists when it comes to things they’ve not be acculturated to. And not at all to say that bisexuality is now in that big blanket of tolerance coming down.
No, it is just interesting to me how Biblical law is largely ignored except where it makes sense to us. Don’t like tattoos? Well then it is okay to misapply those laws that pertain to specific ancient pagan practices. But if you like shellfish, then “freedom in Christ” exempts you from having to obey these outdated and irrelevant laws. The energy in the room is completely different when it comes to the violations of Scripture we’re unaccustomed to or don’t apply to our own circumstances. Sexual deviation is a whole can of worms that I’ll avoid until or at least until a good explanation of Swyer Syndrome is given to me.
One eyebrow raising moment, during a Bible study, while being brought into Orthodoxy, was when the topic of veiling (1 Corinthians 11) came up for discussion and how the old ethnic Russian priest dismissed it as being custom or cultural. I never had the chance to ask him about the explicit quotes of Saint John Chrysostom on the topic. But, like all things, what is important is a matter of our perspective. The cradle Orthodox follow after the mainstream of Protestantism as much as anyone else, whereas the converts from Protestantism are more strict about preserving Orthodox tradition. It’s amazing how culture influences our applications of Scripture.
All this to say that I don’t know where the precise dividing line is between pure and impure, acceptable or unacceptable. But believe there is much more value in being merciful as our Father is merciful. That is to apply the Golden Rule to those who struggle in ways that we can’t fathom or begin to understand. Where it was once okay to stigmatize and treat left-handed people as second-class or evil we now accept them and think it is strange it was a problem for past generations. There are many things that aren’t an identity we choose or a matter of “feel this way” (like a man who claims to be transracial) that require that us to show some grace.
“Ew, Brother Ew”
You’ve probably seen the meme. A Muslim preacher lamenting those who abandon the Islamic practices of eating on the floor and growing a beard. His comical expression of their disgust gets to the heart of what most of these religious do and don’t rules come from. There is a continuum when it comes to gender and normalcy, taboos change, as do ideas of what real men do. It’s funny to see how these standards have evolved over time. From the time pulpits had spittoons to the current time of rainbow flags, we are not the same as our ancestors.
There are natural aversions. We’re naturally disgusted by bodily fluids and it is for good reason. Disease travels in blood, saliva and waste. We are also attracted to beauty, the healthy form or good hygiene, this is about instinct and survival. Sexual promiscuity is also risk as well. So being grossed out can be beneficial if it protects us from negative outcomes. However, this can malfunction, sort of like an autoimmune disorder, where we can overreact and exclude on the basis of things that aren’t a danger to us. Bigotry and prejudice, like middle school fears of cooties, are often as sign of immaturity or lack of self-awareness. Attributing every unfortunate condition to a moral failure is not sound judgment.
Just because something is strange or ugly to us is not a reason to recoil. If a person is not trying to draw attention to themselves it is important to acknowledge their humanity rather than their odd appearance. We didn’t choose to be ‘normal’ anymore than it was a decision they made to be different. We do not need to pretend everyone is beautiful or affirm every exception as glorious. There is healthy, there is deformity and disorder, we can love the person who overcomes or does not give up for their character. It is possible for inner beauty to shine when we truly get to know the person rather than only see the outward appearance.
It is 2064 and refugees from Spanish-speaking countries nearly match the native-born American population in border states. The United States, after fighting war after war and finally collapsing economically, is a shadow of the globe-spanning power it once was. A militant ethno-nationalist contingent within this group of new arrivals, armed with their own understanding of history, believes that the American West rightfully belongs to them. And using a campaign of terror and intimidation, after a few skirmishes, have driven even many native Texans out of their most notable cities.
La Raza (or ‘the race’) is not satisfied to only have parts of the historically Spanish parts of the continental US. However, the new UN based in Dubai, while agreeing that the Spanish had a better claim, determined that a two-state solution was best and drew the map for a partition plan. Of course, neither side is truly satisfied with this and both are merely buying time. A coalition of sympathetic American states formed to help the Texas Rangers, which is now a paramilitary organization of mostly fundamentalist Christians, but the partisans of the Partido Nacional de La Raza Unida strike first. Many Texans flee as cartels and Chinese-backed militants start a campaign to push them out.
Decades pass and the Spanish state increases its zone of control. The Texans continue to fight asymmetrically but have lost control of their resources and are also politically destabilized by their better-funded rivals. MTGA, or Make Texas Great Again, an extremist group that states a goal of removing all non-Americans from Texas, is secretly aided by La Raza who seeks to undermine the more representative and moderate Texas Rangers. Why? Well, with their end goal of taking all of what was Spanish territory, they really did not want a successful state of Texas, they wanted exploitable chaos and opportunities to seize more land using self-defense as an excuse.
After a small success, where the MTGA ‘terrorists’ managed to break through the formidable La Raza borders (ironic, given that generations of Americans were told that borders are racist), the enraged Spanish demand that Texan civilians evacuate and begin to bomb the Texas panhandle camps where the remaining resistance fighters base their operations. Across the Spanish world their own language media, sympathetic to the Spanish cause, ask many questions. Why do the Texans not overthrow the terrorists? Why don’t they simply move to other US states and give the land back to the rightful owners from the South? Why do the border states oppose the relocation of Texans so much when they’re all Americans?
Of course, the scenario above, for the time being, remains fictional, but it is also an analogy to introduce this post which deals with similar questions as to why Gazans do not overthrow Hamas or leave for other Arab lands. I realize some, even if they don’t admit it, see the people of Gaza as being subhuman, a race marked for destruction or “Amelek” (as Israeli right-wingers call them), and won’t even attempt to understand their perspective. The propagandists have done their job well, once again, and convinced the masses that the side they are told to oppose is a bunch of savages who can’t be reasoned with and whose blood—including their own children—is on their own hands.
WhY DoN’t ThEy JuSt OvEr-ThRoW hAmAs?!?
Many do not draw a distinction between Hamas and Palestinians. This is what those who want a blank check to do whatever they want to Gaza want. If you can make all in this small territory collectively guilty, then you don’t need to deal with the moral dilemma of whether it is okay to kill innocents as a response to innocents being killed. If all Palestinians are terrorists then you can just treat them like a termite infestation. It isn’t genocide, it is just pest control! No, they won’t come out and say that. However, be honest here, when you drop bombs on a populated city that is exactly what is happening, it is collective punishment and a war crime.
Anyhow, what they don’t tell you is that only a fraction of Palestinians voted for Hamas. In fact, in no single district of Gaza did Hamas win the majority of votes. For all of you who want a third-party ballot choice, there’s your warning. And once you give power to a group like Hamas don’t expect to ever get it back without a fight.
Propaganda Parrot: “Bu-but, what about all those Gazans out cheering when Hamas attacked Israel?!?”
Me: “What about it???”
Thousands of Americans took to the streets to chant “Not my President!” when Trump won. And thousands of Americans participated in the Jan 6th ‘insurrection’ as well. In neither case did the protestors in the crowd, even if millions of them, represent the plurality of Americans. Furthermore, being in the crowd doesn’t make you a supporter of whatever others have attributed to your cause. If you are pro-MAGA, contrary to what the Democrat-controlled media says, you aren’t sympathetic to a coup for being upset about the election and subsequent prosecutions. No, you’re rejecting their framing of the event and beholden to an entirely different narrative.
The same is true of Gazans. Maybe they don’t support the means of Hamas. But they certainly understand the grievance and see Israel as an oppressor of their people. Many Americans would be happy to see Moscow or Tehran leveled. Does that make them one and the same as those giving the order or carrying it out?
But more significant than that, half of the population of Gaza is children. They didn’t get a vote nor do they have the ability to go toe to toe with a group currently giving the IDF a run for their money. Why don’t the Gazans overthrow Hamas? Maybe for the same reason that those of us who disagree with the waste of our tax dollars and endless wars don’t overthrow the US government: We want to live our lives. We don’t want to be killed or end up locked up. People do not rise up even against a regime that abuses them simply because they don’t want to die. I mean, come on, do you really expect civilian Palestinian mothers and fathers to take down Israel’s enemy for them? Do you expect children to overthrow armed men?
Are you really that dull?
Okay then…
WhY dOn’T tHeY jUsT LeAve GaZa?!?
Wow, you’re smart! Why don’t a million people just follow the IDF command to leave everything behind so that their homes and communities can be leveled without concern for civilian casualties? I mean, we would all do that at the snap of a finger, right?
This is the biggest bullshit line of all of them.
State War Crime Apologist: “We gave them an opportunity to leave…”
As if this makes them not responsible for the bloodbath that follows. I mean, by that reasoning, if they had an opportunity to leave, then the atrocities that followed during the Pogroms are on those who didn’t immediately flee, right?
This is just not a realistic expectation and most especially given the very recent history of the Palestinian people. First, many who live in the Gaza Strip are already refugees living in camps. Why? Well, they were forcibly expelled by Zionists in events like the Nakba of 1948 and many others, these massacres to push them out may have been forgotten by us, but what if that was your grandparents who still remember the olive groves they tended and the good life that they had prior? Now you have a place, even if it isn’t the greatest, you have friends and neighbors around you, are you going to just march into the desert again so that more of your ancestral land can be annexed?
This is stupider than expecting Texans to up and leave for Canada if they don’t like the current border situation.
If Palestinians leave who will ensure that they are allowed to return?
The UN?!?
Of all people, white Americans who decry foreigners entering their country, and threatening their culture, should understand this. If we can’t even tolerate sharing our land and so fear losing our national identity, imagine if we had been backed in a corner for decades and are now being told we must evacuate to a new place so that our rivals can do their mop up of the American resistance.
No, Palestinians don’t leave for the same reason we wouldn’t leave and the same reason why Israelis don’t simply move to friendlier Western nations. I mean, it would be much easier for Israelis, many of whom are wealthier and have dual citizenship, to make the move to safer places. Why not just move completely out of range of Hamas rockets and incursions?
You don’t have to be sympathetic to the Palestinian cause to see this as an injustice, you just need to be human.
As ignorant is this idea that Arab nations should simply absorb the people displaced by Israel as if that would solve the problem. I mean, it isn’t like hard-core Zionists don’t also think that Lebanon belongs to them. Unlike many Americans, Arab leaders aren’t dumb. They know that in politics when you give an inch they’ll take a mile. Their own rule is fragile enough. They understand that a stream of refugees will potentially undermine their stability and, again, we should understand this by looking at what is happening in Europe or the US where refugees are welcomed. And, sure, the US certainly could’ve moved all from the British Isles across the Atlantic to avoid confrontation with Hitler, but why would we?
Why should Gazans leave? Why should Arab leaders facilitate the whims of Israel?
Blame-shifting Is Evil
Abusers always make the victim guilty. The little girl he assaulted should’ve been wearing that dress. This is how they wash their own hands, so they aren’t the bad guys in the narrative they create for themselves. In their mind, they’re not a bad person, they were just presented with an irresistible temptation, and it was a failure somewhere else that caused them to fall. Sexual predators do say things like “why did her parents leave her with me” or “he didn’t put up enough resistance” as a justification. It is evil when they do it and it is evil when others do it in murkier circumstances.
The blood of Gazans, who are killed by the IDF, is completely on the hands of the Israeli leadership who are ordering the invasion. It is no different from Hamas being to blame for those who were shot by their militants. Gazans are not collectively guilty of what Hamas does and, likewise, innocent Israelis have no blame to bear for what their government does. If an enemy uses “human shields” that doesn’t give a military permission to gun down or bomb the civilians between them and their enemies. If a military invasion is not possible under those conditions, then find another solution.
Israel doesn’t need to invade Gaza to neutralize Hamas. Even Israelis see the incursion as a failure of their government. And doing more to defuse the legitimate grievance of the Palestinians, who are having their land systemically taken by religious extremists who cite texts thousands of years old, would go a long way to helping them move on. Turning enemies into unthinking inhuman monsters is exactly what has enabled genocidal purges in the past and is what is most concerning about the rhetoric coming out of the mouths of Zionists. It is not Christian. It is not excusable.
The propagandist’s job isn’t to placate critical thinkers. No, it is to feed the confirmation bias of those who have already picked a side or keep those on the sidelines indifferent. One way this is done is by answering legitimate concerns with plausible, yet spurious, excuses for why normal human compassion need not apply to this situation. It is basic blame-shifting, where you make the victims of abuse guilty for what others are doing to them. And, as gullible and eager as they are, it really doesn’t take much to keep a ‘Christian’ Zionist spouting talking points.
We need to think long and hard about the precedents set by Gaza given our own diminishing influence. Islamic no-go zones in Europe have expanded to include large swaths of urban centers. Refugees from destabilized regions of Africa and the Middle East have flowed in, unabated, while native populations have dwindled. Will we go quietly when it is our turn to be displaced? Will we like it when our own ethics are turned against us? Hopefully whoever will rule after us has more compassion and mercy than we do. Pray that they do not dismiss our cries for justice or brand us as terrorists to be destroyed for opposing their unjust edicts.
It is disheartening that so many in the West have an understanding of the problem less sophisticated than a French aristocrat musing, in response to the starving people saying they don’t have enough bread, “Let them eat cake!” It’s out of touch. It is cruel and indifferent. It will come back to bite us when the world starts to hold us responsible for the abuses of those who claim to act on our behalf and have slaughtered millions. Who will stand to defend us?
I feel the need to preface this once again with a trigger warning for those who won’t read through and will miss my point. No, I’m not saying what Hamas did was justified. Nor am I saying that Israel should not respond. But I am trying to confront a bias, motivated by a misuse of Scripture, that is leading our side to look the other way at what amounts to dumping white phosphorous on innocent children and then pretending this is a just response to the death of Israelis. I am addressing what clouds the moral judgment here and not saying that one side or the other should just take the abuse.
I’m addressing the false dichotomy exposed in this letter from Albert Einstein (Jewish) in his opposition to the terrorism that was taking place. He wrote this right after a massacre carried out by Zionist extremists and warning of what would eventually become the horrendous reality of the Nakba and why Palestinians today are reluctant to leave their homes today. They know the history even if you’re ignorant. Read what Einstein wrote and then study what happened next…
To be clear, Einstein was not against a Jewish homeland. He was simply against the violent means being employed that have led to the current hatred. Had more followed his advice then we wouldn’t be facing yet another bloody war today. When will we learn?
Framing Issues
Had the British managed to put down the bloodthirsty terrorists who fought to “water the tree of liberty” by violently taking over their American colonies, does that mean they never existed? No, they (along with their weird pagan offshoot religion that required regular human sacrifice to keep their tree nourished) did exist and they existed as a distinct entity the moment that they declared themselves to be independent. And to say otherwise would be dumb.
One of the stupidest arguments ever made is “tHeRe Is nO PaLeStINe” as if the millions of people pushed into Gaza and West Bank simply do not exist. By that sort of semantic and legal argument, there was never a state of Israel prior to May 14, 1948. Sure, there were a people called the children of Israel and a kingdom of David, but never a STATE by that name, and certainly not one that was a Western-style democracy, prior to a bunch of Europeans moving to British-controlled Mandatory Palestine (which is what it was called) and most certainly a nation with the world’s strongest standing army is not the same one as found in the Scriptures. No, that doesn’t mean they should be run into the sea or not recognized as a legitimate nation (although many do not) and yet we must deal with the reality that the land was occupied before European settlers arrived to claim it. Historical claims may make a nice romantic script, for those with no skin in the game, but telling people that their grievance of being displaced doesn’t exist because you don’t like the name is asinine. It is reasoning that may get you likes in your echo chamber but suggests you are silly and should not be taken seriously by those with a modicum of intelligence. It’s not like the Palestinians are going to stop their fight against those who took their deeded land because you claim they don’t exist.
Furthermore, legal recognition does not change what something is. By now we all should know this. The governments of the world can call black white or white black and it doesn’t change the nature of color. Calling a man a woman or your affinity for your pet a marriage doesn’t make it true. We have the absolute right to question legal precedent or to hold to whatever existed in our minds prior to their changes. Maybe your modern definitions are simply ignorant of the original meaning and the other side is right. You might eventually be blotted off from the face of the Earth and forgotten. But it doesn’t mean you or the perspectives you held don’t exist. A person’s perspective still exists even if opposed by the powerful who have better propaganda and denying it exists is plain dumb.
Palestinians exist even if they are erased from the land or never officially recognized by many in the United States. That’s not a statement that will suit many from my fundamentalist religious background. But they’re simply not dealing with reality, it is denial, and ridiculous. Einstein called it Palestine. It was Palestine. The modern-day Israeli state came after.
Who were the Samaritans?
They were people deemed illegitimate by the pure-blooded religious elites. They made a counterclaim to what the other descendants of Abraham Jesus mingled with saw as their own exclusive property. The Samaritans had their own priests (apparently descendants of Aaron directly) and, contrary to the belief of their Jewish rivals, also continuously occupied the land like their Semitic cousins.
This is what makes how Jesus recognized these people so significant. We learn, in his conversation with a Samaritan woman, that true worship wasn’t about location, including Jerusalem, but about Spirit and truth. If this wasn’t clear enough, the parable of the good Samaritan was a slap in the face of those whom Jesus addressed. A Samaritan more righteous than their own best? Jesus was intentionally antagonizing. He intended to offend and insult them.
The point, however, remains that salvation is not a birthright. It is not about your claim to be or ethnic inheritance. The Christian truth is about what we do, and how we love, and never a matter of our worship ritual or genetics. The measure of Christian pedigree is faith, pure and simple, like that of Abraham—which is what makes a person a son or daughter of Abraham.
Jesus didn’t mince words when addressing those who believed they would be saved by their ethnicity or Abrahamic bloodline:
Abraham is our father,” they answered. “If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do what Abraham did. As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. You are doing the works of your own father.” “We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God himself.” Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
(John 8:39-44 NIV)
There are not multiple paths, according to Jesus, but only one way, truth, and life for all to come to the Father. Galatians makes it clear that Abraham’s seed is fulfilled fully in Christ and all who believe in Him:
The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ. […] So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
(Galatians 3:16, 26-28 NIV)
Romans affirms what St Paul said above in Galatians:
So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. […] What then? What the people of Israel sought so earnestly they did not obtain. The elect among them did, but the others were hardened…
(Romans 11:5, 7 NIV)
The “remnant” is those who believed in Jesus. While the “hardened” are those who rejected Him and, in their unbelief and ignorance, crucified the one who was called their King. And, for those who contort and turn the Gospels inside out trying to revert to a Covenant that passed away, Hebrews 8:13, I despise your bastardization of truth. Those who would replace His Kingdom “not of this world” with a modern secular state are not legitimate scholars or Christians.
I reject your ignorant religion.
I reject your indifferent religion.
I reject your false religion.
The true Christ isn’t an ethno-nationalist or waiting on yet another stone temple to be built. And I don’t really care what your Scofield reference or some random guy on YouTube says. Christian Zionism is a contradiction of terms. I’m perfectly fine with European Jews finding a homeland and defending it. But it should never be confused with the fulfillment of anything more than that. We should instead be looking for the new Jerusalem. So stone me like Stephen for repeating what he said: “The Most High does not live in houses made by human hands.”
Count me with the Samaritans.
A blessing or a curse?
Since the 1950s, no other nation has shown more perfect loyalty or full allegiance to the state of Israel than the United States. The Biden administration is no exception and doubling down on what Trump started. For this have accumulated a mountain of debt, a decay of our institutions, and sharp moral decline as more and more Americans fall away from faith. Sure, we are materially wealthy, for now, but churches are empty and those that remain are temples to consumerism rather than self-sacrificial love. If support for this country is a blessing then I guess we’ll need to redefine that word like we have been with everything else lately. Or maybe consider we’ve gotten things wrong?
The direction of the US doesn’t look good right now and maybe that is because we’re like the Jeruselum condemned by Ezekiel:
“‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen. Samaria did not commit half the sins you did. You have done more detestable things than they, and have made your sisters seem righteous by all these things you have done. Bear your disgrace, for you have furnished some justification for your sisters. Because your sins were more vile than theirs, they appear more righteous than you. So then, be ashamed and bear your disgrace, for you have made your sisters appear righteous.
(Ezekiel 16:49-52 NIV)
Maybe it is time to stop focusing on the sins of Samaria and consider our own. Sure, maybe IsRaEl hAs ThE rIgHt To DeFeND iTsElF, but then so do the other Semitic people in that region. Consider that we are Haman, from the book of Esther, unwittingly building our own gallows as we justify our unjust vengeance against undeserving people. We’re not a righteous judge. The children of Gaza did not attack Israel. It is not anti-Semitic to stand with Einstein or recognize the unjust suffering of the Semitic people in Gaza. It is not our allegiance to the state of Israel that will bring us blessings, only allegiance to the king of the true Israel can do that and we must all repent of our delusions otherwise.
Years ago I had a nemesis. My counterpart positioned himself as a white knight type of character and was basically there to harass anyone too fond of the religious tribe I was born into. He knew the group, he had been a convert and was now an ex-member, who classified us as “an ethnic church” dismissing what we said about our conversion experience.
Now that I’ve left the group there is no reason to continue to guard the ideas left behind and that includes the notion that my own participation had been completely a choice. There are doctrinal reasons for this denial of the obvious. I mean, if you believe that conversion is a personal choice, a rational and unbiased conclusion, then it really gets under your skin when someone says that you’re more or less a product of a religious culture.
We were, in our own eyes, a sort of remnant church. And then also had to deal with the awkward reality that many, like us, were so inbred that they had distinct genetic disorders. And, unlike our radical forbearers, we had no cultural relevance besides being the quaint old fashioned people who dressed like it was the 1800s and called this non-conformity to the world. So, obviously, the fact that everyone who shared our views happened to be genetically related was the source of cognitive dissonance.
It is for this reason that converts, the more exotic the better, were clung to and even given special treatment. We would say it was out of Christian love and yet some of this had to do with our own insecurities. They were our validation. They were the proof that we were more than just an ethnic cloister, more than a bunch of cousins of a particular European heritage claiming that our own brand of religion represented something universal and relevant to the times.
Those who come into this group, visibly from the outside, are often treated both with mistrust and also with a special adoration as well. They can never be fully accepted, they’re always both more and less than equal, coddled or spared normal rebuke from some to keep them from leaving, and yet also can sense that they’re just the tokens being used to prove a point rather than being treated as people. Sure, they may form real friendships with some, but they themselves are often misfits from whence they came and still remain stuck in no man’s land.
Now that I’m in a church that both spans continents and is mostly converts locally, I don’t have as strong an urge to collect tokens or evidence that I’m not just a product of my ethnocultural roots. I mean, sure, I still want to be right. But the pressure to bring the Gospel to all people is off my shoulders. The Church didn’t take long to spread into Asia or Africa, early Christians didn’t dress like Europeans from a generation ago either, there may be some times to chase down Ethiopian eunuchs in their chariots, and yet there’s also a time to acknowledge that the fullness of the faith has never left Africa.
Evangelicals, of all stripes, have this desperation for relevance. They think that they will win more converts by being more cosmopolitan, and by painting a picture of superficial diversity and inclusion, but Jesus said that his message would make the world hate us and even divide families. If we have the truth, if we know the truth, we are no longer bound to ethnic quotas and, instead, simply love people, especially of the household of faith, as we are commanded. Jesus preached to his own tribe first, his converts were mostly other Jews, like him, and that was perfectly fine.
Composite materials are stronger than their component parts. When two or more materials of unique strengths are blended together the result can be a composite that has the ideal characteristics of all the parts. This is what makes concrete and rebar a formidable pair. The combination gives both the compressive strength of concrete and also the tensile strength of the steel. It is inarguable that diversity is not strength or at least when it comes to material science.
However, as all topics go, it does not end there. Boeing, like all builders of commercial airliners, has two primary goals (besides safety) in their designs: Lightweight and reducing costs. One of their innovations is the use of carbon fiber in their aircraft. The problem with carbon fiber is that it reacts with or is corrosive of aluminum. For this reason, they must use a separating layer of expensive titanium as the solution to this bad material pairing. It works in this case, but diversity is also a source of conflict and potential systemic failure.
Diversity: Good and Bad
First, the good. We’re all unique. I go to work with a group of people with slightly different abilities and backgrounds from my own. It is what allows us to specialize and thus be stronger as a team than if we tried to do it all by ourselves. I would rather Patty do the bookwork, the members of our sales team talk to our customers and stick to my role of designing trusses. This is where diversity is a great strength.
Furthermore, men and women are different, both physically and otherwise, which can make them an ideal pair. Only a male and female can produce offspring together. We can argue over the particulars or against sexist generalities, but there is something special about any diversity of characteristics that can lead to the creation of new life. It is ideal in other ways as well. One of this special partnership can provide and protect from outside threats, the other can nurture their children and organize their shared space. It can be the best of human arrangements.
Unfortunately, with the good comes the bad, and what can be the best of things can also be the worst. The gender wars, that endless battle for control between abusive men and their feminist counterparts, is how the most wonderful kind of diversity can go very badly and be anything but strength. Diversity is, therefore, also a source of deep division and strife. What can make a strong composite can also lead to corrosive interactions and unwanted drama. Sparks flying.
Homogeneity is our strength?
While the West, the ‘woke’ Anglosphere in particular, is obsessed with “diversity and inclusion” as the highest order of priority, not all in the world do.
Japan, for example, is very happy to remain Japanese and feels no need to host foreign refugees on their own ancestral lands. This homogeneity of their culture and ethnicity does seem to help to reduce the friction in their society. Crime is extremely low. During the disaster at Fukushima older engineers were willing to sacrifice themselves for sake of their younger kinfolk. And there’s just a sort of harmony that exists with everyone pulling in basically the same direction.
This has never really been the case in the United States There were wars between the natives and new arrivals. With every new immigrant wave arriving there was mistrust and contempt between these groups. It is what led to sentiments like this:
Only a damn fool can expect the people of one tradition to feel at ease when their country is flooded with hordes of foreigners who — whether equal, superior, or inferior biologically — are so antipodal in physical, emotional, and intellectual makeup that harmonious coalescence is virtually impossible. Such an immigration is death to all endurable existence and pollution and decay to all art and culture. To permit or encourage it is suicide.
H.P. Lovecraft
It is notable that Lovecraft, the famed atheist writer of existential horror, had his strong opinions about various races, including Italians and Jews. His racism, xenophobia, disgust over the intermixing of people or fear of contamination, has the markings of an obsessive-compulsive disorder. And yet he was not entirely wrong about the “melting pot” being chaotic and creating a place that’s lacking social cohesion.
It is no big surprise that after a decades long assault on policing and national symbols that, with the ‘woke’ takeover, military and law enforcement recruitment is falling off a cliff. Nobody, in their right mind, would ever sacrifice themselves for a country or cause that doesn’t represent them and their own values. Participation requires buying into the common vision and is not possible when there’s competition for that spot. Nobody wants to die for those who lack appreciation or are completely divorced from what matters to them.
Unequally Yoked: Understanding Biblical Warnings
There is a sort of distain, even amongst professing Christians, towards the Old Testament law. The various cleansing rituals, dietary prohibitions and other restrictions can seem to be quiet arbitrary our modern ears. Why does it matter if we mix several materials in our clothing, plant diverse seeds or crossbreed different animals?
First, I believe this was more about teaching a concept of Holiness or being set apart for good.
Second, it is a completely practical point about our greater potential when being of the same mind or spirit:
Can two walk together, except they be agreed?
(Amos 3:3 KJV)
Third, this principal didn’t end in the Old Testament:
Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
(2 Corinthians 6:14-16 KJV)
The whole point of Old Testament law was to reinforce the things that St Paul explains above, we cannot expect good results when we are paired with those who are pulling in a completely different direction. It’s simply reality, we need to have a boundary between ourselves and those who have nothing in common and want to destroy us.
Is Diversity Our Strength?
It depends.
I don’t think complete segregation of sexes or making all people androgynous is a good solution to gender difference. Nor should we erase subcultures in the name of unity either. We want diversity, we want people of different strengths. But there needs to be some kind of common identity or bonding agent, otherwise we end up with a bunch of competing identities and a fight for the supreme position. It takes a powerful adhesive to make composites work and this can mean a national identity that overrides all others.
Christ: The Ultimate Bonding Agent
All composite materials rely on some kind of bonding agent to work. And early Christians, likewise, were also trying to bridge some vast cultural differences. In fact, much of the struggle, in the early church, came down to the difference between the Jewish born and Gentile coverts. Should those newly converted, from non-Jewish background, be required to follow same requirements of faith or be exempted?
Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)— remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
(Ephesians 2:11-18 NIV)
It is Christ who eliminates old social barriers:
So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
(Galatians 3:26-29 NIV)
So, diversity, if bonded in Christian love, can be an amazing strength. But, when lacking any kind of joint identity it is a horror show, it is corrosive. It leads to a bloody and violent competition for supremacy between rival groups. Without Christ it becomes man versus woman, black versus white, class versus class, and there is no strength in this kind of arrangement. The ‘strength’ of diversity is only possible when all, despite differences, are seeking after the exact same overall goal.
It is okay to have our own separate identities, even to celebrate our own cultural or ethnic heritage. But, when are being black or white, male or female, rich or poor, puts us at enmity with each other, when it is corrosive and causes is to react with hostility to those of a different perspective, then it must be brought under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and repented of rather than to be a source of pride. This is the higher order priority: “Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.” (Romans 14:19 NIV) And, “over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” (Colossians 3:14 NIV)
The following is intended both as serious and satire. The serious part is that the statistics are real, shortness is practically a crime. The satire is how little those who typically decry such things care about forms of discrimination not as popularized and yet as established in fact as any other.
Systemic heightism is everywhere. This discrimination against people on the basis of shorter than average stature is something that is deeply embedded into culture and our institutions. For men, in particular, it means a lifetime of being denied opportunities for some and height privilege for others.
Shortness and Statistics
In terms of available statistics, and actually proven discrimination, short men are most disadvantaged of any group of people both in history and modern times.
There is a distinct wage gap driven by height:
“…researchers estimate that each additional centimeter of height is associated with a 1.30% increase in annual income. In other words, a person who is 5 feet 6 inches making $50,000 per year would expect to make about $2,000 more if they were 5 feet 7 inches, and $4,000 more if they were 5 feet 8 inches.”
It isn’t only a matter of income either, but status: 90% of CEOs are of above average height. Try playing college sports, let alone get an athletic scholarship, if you’re below average height. Even in the Bible a man named Saul was made king simply for being taller than average. Meanwhile, David, a short man, was ridiculed, and had to literally kill a giant to prove his worth.
Many short men are never given the chance to prove themselves and this is especially true in the realm of romance. Women on dating sites openly, and rudely, dismiss short men writing in their profiles things like “must be 5′-10″ or over to ride.” Of course, most women are more covert in their height discrimination and simply ignore potential suitors who who don’t meet their requirements.
Some women say what others conceal, but the preference is proven in the numbers.
A 2006 study, by the University of Chicago, found that a man who is 5’6” needs an additional $175,000 to be as desirable as a man who is approximately 6′ tall and only makes $62,500 a year. Talk about an uphill battle. Not only do short men get paid less, on average, but they also need more money in order to get an equal opportunity to be considered desirable to women.
Deniers of systemic heightism try to explain away the discrimination by victim blaming. They will often claim that lack of confidence that is the real issue. However, this is adding insult to injury. A short man can’t even be confident without risking an attempt to diminish him on the basis of his height. An assertive tall man is considered to be confident, to have leadership potential, while a short man with similar qualities will often be accused of “small man syndrome” or having a Napoleon complex.
Napoleon was often pictured with his tall elite soldiers and not actually unusually short.
Even in language, terms like “great stature” indicate something good, while phrases like “short tempered” are indicative of a flaw in character. And not to forget those many common expressions, like “getting the short end of the stick” or “coming up short” that associate shortness with inadequacy or misfortune. There is even implicit heightism expressed in the statues of famous people being enormous in size. It is inescapable, ‘bigger’ is typically paired with ‘better’ and nobody cares about the harm done.
Over the course of a lifetime a short man will have endured being last picked in gym class despite his tenacity, friend-zoned by women who admire his character and yet are not at all romantically interested. He’ll literally be overlooked by his employers and routinely denied promotions. It will cost him years of his life. But there will never be reparations, never even be a bit of sympathy, because nobody sees shortness the same way that they do gender or skin color.
The Long and Short
We’ll never have social media campaigns to affirm shortness because it would just seem too silly, plus even short men (already self-conscious) would reject the effort. I mean who really wants to be praised, falsely, for a characteristic that makes less attractive than others? It is better to just deal with it, use the disadvantage as motivation, prove that a guy can be short of stature and still a bigger man than most. That is the best and truly the only way to overcome adversity, to show the world who you are.
Johnny Depp with bodyguards
Maybe this is why the most powerful and influential men are actually on the shorter end of the scale? Many actors and a significant number of billionaires are of average or below average height. Maybe it is because they knew that they would be overlooked without going 110% in everything they do? The long and short is that we can forever wallow in our disadvantage or we can turn it into a strength. No, it does not make it fair, nothing ever is fair, still nobody will ever come to the rescue of short men.
The worst thing we can do to anyone is pity them and make them dependent on our help to be actualized. It is the true racist, and the real sexist, who assumes that some need their help or uses their ‘sensitivity’ to such things for their own socal advancement, a person dealing honestly will value character above all else and not allow themselves to be biased one way or another, favorably or unfavorably, on the basis of outward appearance.
Elliott Rogers is a poster child of grievance culture and where he was the real problem.
In the end, hurting people come in all shapes and sizes. It is impossible to quantify and rank such things and completely a fool’s errand to try to compensate people for every disadvantage they face in life. Furthermore, in trying, we make the problem worse in that we actually reinforce the feelings and the perception of inferiority in those we’re trying to help. It also leaves those not receiving this special treatment, and as disadvantaged or more, feeling even more neglected.
Sure, absolutely, a little awareness of the unique difficulties some encounter can go a long way to helping. And yet grievance is often a tool used by toxic and controlling people so they can have their way without putting forth the required effort for success themselves. There’s a vast difference between pity dating a short guy and giving him a chance despite his lack of statute. We should help people because they are people, not because they tall or short, black or white, male or female.
Short men, by dwelling on their grievance, will only exasperate their disadvantage. It may be cathartic to whiny and complain, but it doesn’t bring a person closer to feeling accepted. Having ‘pride’ events, marches declaring we matter, even months where members are extolled, can never actually produce the legitimacy that those snared in their grievances crave. It is only in finding our identity in something else that we’re free.
All lies have an element of truth. In fact, a misleading narrative, in order to have any convincing power, must contain many true statements.
It is not the off-the-wall and totally unsubstantiated claim that is the most dangerous. No, it is the half-truths, the facts out of context, the misunderstood statistics, that are most deceptive. Effective lies employ facts, they work our emotions and attempt to frame even our own experiences into a deceptive narrative.
The biggest lie of our time is the so-called “anti-racism” of the far-left. Call it woke, call it social justice, Critical Race Theory, Equity committees, or anything else, it is all fundamentally the same thing and that common thing is to promote division over identities.
The sad part is that many will stop reading here and leave without understanding. They might see the statement above as attacking their good intentions, as being ignorant, and a lack of comprehension of what those things listed truly are.
First, discrimination is real.
People are discriminated against on the basis of height, body shape, ability, intelligence, credentials, wealth, political views, affiliation, having a disease, personal history, gender, and, of course, skin color. Any category of identity or appearance can be used as a reason to deny and mistreat people. Ultimately, we’re all a minority of one and most have faced some form of discrimination.
In this country, the United States, religious, racial, and ethnic minorities have faced a significant level of discrimination. Chinese weren’t allowed to hold certain jobs, Germans were forced to scrub away much of their cultural heritage and unique identity because of war propaganda, Japanese sent to internment camps, Mormons were lynched, as were Republicans, and of course the horrendous exploitation of African Americans as slaves and then the discriminatory Jim Crow laws that followed.
This legacy of discrimination, especially in the most severe cases, has undoubtedly left its mark on various communities.
Second, power dynamics change with context.
Be the wrong person to walk into a biker bar and the welcome will be anything but warm. Go to Philadelphia, get off the beaten path like my family did, and the McDonald’s may be a rather hostile environment where the staff servers others ahead of you and then make your tired little sister cry because they dumped a massive pile of salt on Happy Meal burger.
As a Northerner, in the rural South, I was a bit nervous about standing out too much for my accent, did the sons and daughters of the Confederacy hold a grudge?
I was definitely a fish out of the water getting off the bus stop in Compton!
I think we all feel a little uncomfortable out of our own context, away from our own cultural tribe. I know from traveling abroad, being surrounded by people who eat unfamiliar foods, speak a strange language, look, act and dress differently, this can feel a little threatening and unsafe. No, it is not because the people are unfriendly or show any signs of contempt for you, as a foreigner, it is just that you don’t know the risks, customs, or what to expect.
Stepping out of the airport terminal, into the steamy Manila heat, filled me with a mix of excitement and anxiety as I clung tightly to my bags and scanned for the face of that one person of millions that I hoped would not beat, rob, and leave me for dead.
It would be really easy, had I had the wrong encounter, to generalize and conclude that Americans were unwelcome. If on my own turf, if treated badly, I would assume it was a bad individual and not a reflection of all in the community or culture. But amongst those who are different in appearance, it is very easy to make broad generalizations based on a couple of bad experiences. Being in a room full of strangers, especially those who seem to know each other or have something in common, we feel vulnerable or powerless. And sometimes there is actual bullying and discrimination against the odd ones out in a given context.
As a Mennonite in a public school, I was always keenly aware of being different. I was asked questions, often containing assumptions and annoying, had nicknames based around my religious (and ethnic) identity, it is a behavior called “micro-aggression” according to the current paradigm. Being called “Jebediah” or hearing derogatory comments about Mennonites didn’t exactly leave me emotionally unaffected. There was always (and still is) a feeling of safety and security that comes from being with people of my own sub-culture.
Third, I’m completely opposed to racism.
I have long taken a stand against racism and discrimination based on appearance.
Even the concept of race itself does not actually make much sense.
Why is Barack Obama black when his mom was a privileged New England blue blood, white, and that lineage half of his genetics? What percentage of African blood does one need to be black? Why does skin color or a few unique physical features determine another race, but not hair color or height? Why aren’t redheads a separate race?
The definition of race, according to Merriam-Webster, is “any one of the groups that humans are often divided into based on physical traits regarded as common among people of shared ancestry” and could actually mean that Mennonites and Amish, with their unique genetic disorders, are a race. But the reality is that it is mostly an artificial barrier, something arbitrary, a category based on mostly superficial things, and not science-based.
This first step in eliminating racism is to reconsider the existence of race. Race is not real or at least no more than Mickey Mouse. It is simply lines that we have drawn, like the political and geographic boundaries between nations, and the bigger difference between people is actually culture, but don’t take my word for it:
Culture has enormous effects on social outcomes. The influence of culture on social outcomes is not just a hypothetical—there is a great deal of evidence that culture has a large effect on many of the unequal social outcomes that some would like to ascribe to biological differences between races or sexes. Those who urge us not to deny that biology contributes to human nature have a point, but they often short-change the significance of what really makes the human species exceptional—our culture.
There is a multitude of reasons why some like to emphasize racial differences and try to make culture synonymous with race. The first amongst them is political power. By convincing people that some others are inferior or a threat, based on some category of difference, you can harness their anxieties as a means to get votes. Blaming behavior on genetic predisposition is a license for color discrimination and also a ready excuse for bad behavior.
If we ever want to overcome racism we need to understand race is purely a social construct.
What is false about anti-racism?
Being raised in liberal America, post-Civil Rights era, meant being indoctrinated into the teaching of Martin Luther King. It was not colorblindness, as often framed, rather seeing the person first rather than judge on the basis of outward appearance. But this liberal order is currently under assault. Even reciting the passage out of the “I Have Dream” speech, about not being judged by the color of skin but by the content of their character,” will be met with the ire of the “anti-racist” left.
Why?
Well, strange as it is, the far-left push for ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ is not about race at all. No, in their worldview and framing of experience, it is always about this supposed power struggle between the majority (within their culture) and those deemed to be marginalized and oppressed. In other words, if skin color were removed from the equation entirely it would not matter, this ideology seeks to find any difference in outcomes and call it an injustice.
The term “white privilege,” for example, is indicative of race. That is how it is defined, as the perceived advantage of those with lighter skin tone over those of darker complexion, and yet that’s not truly what it is about. That’s simply the bait. The term is a divisive tool and cover for an assault on religion, property rights, traditional marriage, and other existing beneficial structures of civilization that stand in the way of the far-left’s self-declared ‘revolutionary’ ideological goals.
For sake of analogy, think of the gag when you tap a person on the opposite shoulder to make it appear that someone else in the room did it. I mean, nothing but a harmless prank in that case. However, it could also be employed as a diversionary tactic, where you get two other people arguing so you can take advantage of the ensuing chaos to pursue the actual objective. It is misdirection.
Many, in taking on racially divisive terms like “white privilege” fall for the ruse, they respond by pointing out all of the advantages black Americans have. This, in turn, can easily be presented (out of context) as proof of racial prejudice and only fuels the fire of resentment across color lines. Many black Americans, for their part, are very aware and sensitive about their racial identity and not without cause either. Unfortunately, this also makes them vulnerable to political opportunists who seek to exploit this history and experience of prejudice. It very quickly escalates into an unsolvable tit-for-tat mess, nobody on either side realizing they’ve been played for fools.
The prime example is how the Kyle Rittenhouse shooting is framed as being white privilege, the riots in Kenosha supposedly an expression of anti-racism. The narrative pushed by the corporate media is that Rittenhouse was some kind of far-right nut job looking for trouble, a counterprotester, and gunned down protestors at random. In reality, Rittenhouse had family connections in the city, he was there protecting a minority-owned car dealership, he has actually expressed support for BLM, and his attackers were all white men. He wasn’t there to oppose justice for Jacob Blake. He was there because of the destruction the night before and to defend the innocent from harm.
The three white men who attacked Rittenhouse are protected from scrutiny, under the “white privilege” rubric, for being classified as oppressed. It is not in spite of, rather it is because of the violent criminal history of these three white men that they are considered victims by the left. The left assumes that people behave the way they do because of circumstances, they blame-shift responsibility for violence perpetrated by their own and use narrative as cover for ideological agenda rather than a means of transmitting truth. The left is not truly against discrimination or anti-racism, they are about gaining power over others by any means and this racial wedge is simply an effective tool.
The lie that color is culture
Underlying the Critical Race Theory (CRT) and any of the rebranding attempts used to “start the conversation” or sell this anti-liberal divisive ideology is an assumption that race and culture are inexorably linked. It is, not too ironically, the one thing that both the ‘woke’ and actual white supremacists agree on. They both teach and believe that skin color determines behavior.
This is why those pushing CRT reject the call of Martin Luther King to see past color and judge by the content of character instead. To them people behave the way that they do because of their race, that skin color basically determines culture and character, and therefore it is oppression for the majority to impose any kind of order or at least not when it goes against their own leftist political agenda. Any cultural standard, like the idea people should work for their own food, is classified as oppression and racism.
Both white supremacists and far-left theorists present differences in behavior and statistical outcomes, between racial categories, as being primarily driven by genetics. They, unlike liberals, who see a larger role of culture and assume that economic circumstances play a part in shaping outcomes, see race as being what determines culture. The only difference between the two is that white supremacists see this as a reason to subdue and subjugate some races, while the far-left sees it as a reason to subjectively excuse or accuse people along color lines. Both are equally abhorrent. Both reverse cause and effect and provoke hate.
The first problem is that even if genetics did determine outcomes, why stop with categories of race? We all know that Europeans all have their own unique cultural groups, as do Middle-Easterners, Africans, and Asians. It is the basis for stereotypes. We know Italians to be big talkers, Germans as industrious, Russians for drinking lots of Vodka, and the same thing could be done across any racial division. It is sort of like Native American tribes, they were not all the same, some were warlike and conquered their neighbors. Some were nomadic, others building massive cities. To lump them all together is plain ignorant, it is the heart of racial prejudice and poor analysis.
At this point, some, at least on the right, would be eager to get into statistics showing the correlation between race and criminality or IQ. To them, this is smoking-gun evidence of the superiority or inferiority of collective racial groups. They would use the athletic advantage of African Americans, given the domination of black people in professional sports, as undeniable proof of this overall thesis. And, certainly, we could get into a discussion of the structure of the Achilles tendon, Testosterone levels, and whatnot that would go on forever. However, all this obsession on physical racial differences ignores both the large overlap between groups on the standard Bell Curve and also the role that culture plays in shaping these outcomes.
The lie is that race predisposes culture. That some are genetically predisposed to violence or laziness and therefore should be exempted (or excluded) and granted special permissions. It completely ignores the reality that categories of white and black are far too narrow given the diversity of outcomes within those labels, that there are two many other influences on behavior to settle on only an inborn genetic nature. Yes, perhaps some of our personality is predetermined and travels along with skin color. But we cannot rule out that these behavioral predilections are not mostly a product of nurture or culture.
The left needs to have race determine culture in other to push forward a victim narrative and this idea of systemic racism. If culture (behavior) is genetic and not a choice, then some can’t be held accountable for their own poverty of criminal activities. This is a new variant of Marxism. The German philosopher, Karl Marx, saw us as products of class rather than independent moral agents, which was the basis for class warfare rhetoric and license for violence against those more successful. The left wants African Americans to believe that they can’t thrive in the broader American culture. That’s a lie.
Religion produces culture and shapes outcomes
One of the most wonderful things about being rejected by my own ethnic kind is the opportunity it gave me to learn how much people are truly the same. I’ve never dated an ethnic Mennonite, nor a white American-born woman, and not as something deliberate either. In other words, I was open to any race and simply had more luck with those different from me.
But each time, whether an immigrant, black, white, or the infinite shades in between, Hispanic, Algerian, Egyptian, Cantonese, Filipino, or Congolese, slightly better educated or more athletic, these women had much more in common with me than was actually different. In some regards, they remain more my kinfolk than the conservative Mennonites who could not love me the way that I wanted to be loved. And, here’s the truth, while racial and cultural differences are always an interesting conversation, it is similarities in religion that formed the bridge of our common bond.
My bhest, Charlotte, is an Asian woman. A Filipino to be more precise. And yet her ethnic heritage is actually Igorot. The Igorot tribes live in the Cordillera mountain region of Luzon. They are known as ferocious warriors and only a couple of generations removed from head hunting:
A tribal war usually starts after a tribesman takes the head of a member from another tribe. Head taking was a rite of passage into manhood. The offended tribe can demand retribution. If the one taking the head desires continued peace, influential tribal leaders are sent to the other tribe to negotiate. Compensation is paid and the accord is sealed with an exchange of articles. If no agreement is reach then a war challenge is issued by the offended party.
This cultural arrangement would make for a rather uncomfortable existence, at least when traveling alone on the edge of tribal boundaries, and resulted in plenty of bloodshed, no doubt. However, while still carrying on some of the tradition, the practice of headhunting is a curiosity of the past rather than a reason to be fearful of getting a haircut while visiting Baguio City, which is now a big tourist destination for other Filipino people and the hub of the Igorot world.
What changed?
Well, not the genetics.
Let me tell you the story of Charlotte’s family, the terrible tragedies they have (at the hands of wicked men) endured, what made the difference for them and how it is a path forward for us. The violent lifestyle of Igorot tribes changed with the conversion of many of their ethnic kind to Christianity and this has produced significant changes in outcomes.
An Igorot family that forgave
As a writer, as part of my trying to make sense of the world, I do not want the suffering of others to be for naught. But I know that this subject matter is personal and painful for Charlotte and her family, so understand that I share this with conflicted feelings. On one hand, I want to protect those whom I loved. On the other, I want to create a better world for our children by this very practical testimony of faith and sacrifice.
Charlotte’s grandpa converted to Christianity and even started a church in the village. He was a respected man, an elder in the village, and was called to settle a land dispute between two parties. However, the party he went against was evidently enraged. He hired an assassin. And Charlotte’s grandpa was murdered in the night, shot in his own bed, leaving the family without their beloved Patriarch and with a trauma that is visited upon generations.
Now, the traditional Igorot way of handling this would be to take matters into their own hands. However, rather than seek blood for blood, this first-generation Christian family chose to forgive. No, they would not have opposed justice for the killer. But civil authority is weak and overstressed in this region, this meant nobody would face legal penalties for this murder. A tough pill to swallow for sure.
And yet, that’s not even the most extraordinary part, they knew who the hired killer was. They knew who he was and would actually allow him to eat with them! Talk about heaping coals of fire! The only thing is, they did not forget nor did they let him off scot-free. There called him Judas. Referring to the Apostle who betrayed Jesus for money and his obsession with political power. Which is an apt description. So even with this forgiveness, there was still a bit of poetic justice and a not too subtle call for repentance.
One morning, several years ago, I was getting ready for work and received a call from Charlotte. I have never collapsed to the floor before in my life. But, I was immediately overcome with emotion, when I heard those words “they killed uncle Roland!”
My heart sank.
How could this be?
The man who so selflessly served his family, a wonderful father who would smother his children with love despite being exhausted from a long day of work, a provider, a leader in the community, and someone who would help anyone. The friend who welcomed me into his home, along with his lovely wife, aunt Geraldine, was murdered in a most brutal fashion, by thugs hired by a jealous business rival.
But, again, despite the identity of the killers (and who hired them) being known, despite the police lacking resources to investigate and prosecute, the family did not seek vengeance. I mean, for some time, I would fantasize about taking my own anger over what was done out on these wicked men. Still, in the end, what would that accomplish other than continue the cycle of violence common in tribal honor cultures the world over?
The wicked flee though no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.
(Proverbs 28:1 NIV)
Now it is said that the man responsible for the murder, upon realizing what Igorot tribe uncle Roland came from and knowing their reputation for violent retribution, went into hiding and only goes out in disguise. Not sure if that is still true, nevertheless Jesus saved him even while he remains lost in his sin, and he should pray for God’s mercy on his soul.
Let’s talk about Haitian work ethic
A prejudice many sanctimonious Americans have against Haitians is that their poverty is the result of a lack of ambition or work ethic. A point of agreement between many on the ‘common sense’ right and ‘woke’ far-left. And yet, as one who has been there, who still has a deep respect for a particular Haitian family despite our estrangement (on social media) over political differences, I can say unequivocally that this generalization is a lie.
Looking at the county of Haiti, the poorest in our hemisphere, it would be easy to assume that this is entirely a reflection of the people. And, indeed, corruption does abound, there is something reflected of the character of a people in a nation and the fatalistic Voodoo religion likely does play a role. But what a lot of people do not realize is that there are a lot of good people stuck in a feedback loop and, once broken free of the cycles of poverty and violence, could be extremely successful.
First, I think of that Haitian man, in Port Au Prince, heaving a truck body on his back. That is many things, but it is not lazy or lack of work ethic. The amount of determination and strength this took, for such little compensation when he finally got it to the metal scrap yard at the port, required extraordinary motivation. I had to think about my own complaints, making tens of thousands out on the road, and how this man would be both able to do my job and probably be much more grateful as well.
Second, that young man who showed up outside the church us Mennonite ‘missionaries’ were painting as part of our well-meaning desire to serve others. This young Haitian man, thin and possibly malnourished, confirmed one of my fears prior to going on this youth group trip. He, with pleading eyes, begged, “I can paint!” We could have employed him and a crew of Haitians, with American supervisors if need be, for a year with the money that went towards our airline tickets. He was willing to work, but lacked opportunity due to circumstances completely out of his control.
Third, let’s talk about my Haitian immigrant friends. All of them have gone further with their education, have worked their tails off, and have proven themselves to be real go-getters. Beyond that, they have always been hospitable to me and I have many fond memories from the time with them in Brooklyn or elsewhere. Their agreement with divisive racial politics aside, I see them as people of great moral character and more than my equal in many regards.
You stick the child of a hard-working American in “little Africa” in Haiti and there’s a very high probability that they will not live a comfortable life in suburbia. In Haiti, there is a sort of systemic oppression. The elites in that country squandered opportunities for their people. The political gridlock and misguided charitable efforts produce poverty, and the culture as well. Yeah, duh, people in such a chaotic environment are likely to score lower on a standardized intelligence test or even give in to despair. Just like children from fatherless homes (white or black) are often disadvantaged. The differences in outcomes are a matter of culture or circumstances and not of race.
Furthermore, if you look at Appalachia or Coal Region, or any blue-collar town where the industry has left, the results are often no different. These “deplorables” are not privileged people and have more in common with inner-city minorities than the social elites who sneer at them. (I mean, take this UC Berkeley professor putting his anti-rural bigotry on full display.) The customs and costumes vary and yet the actual substance does not. Black or white matters less than frequently believed. No, work ethic has nothing to do with skin color, nor does faithfulness in romantic relationships nor propensity for violence.
There is little doubt that our genetics do have an impact on our outcomes. Being bigger and stronger, smarter or more attractive, is at least somewhat predetermined. It is not all nurture.
Still, race is a construct. People certainly are not predisposed to culture on the basis of the race category they are placed in. Behavior is a choice. No, we do not choose our cultural conditioning, the neighborhood we were both into, and a vast number of factors that help to shape outcomes. We are judged by our appearance. But this does not mean we should.
Lies can shape outcomes. If we are told, over and over again, that this one distinguishing characteristic is of primary importance, we start to believe it. My being 5′-8″ tall, for example. This is a definite disadvantage, there is prejudice against men of shorter stature, statistics show this clearly, but dwelling on this only compounds the problem. Things like short-man syndrome or insecurity only increase the disadvantage. Isn’t it better to tell people to be confident?
That is what is so troublesome about the racial narrative of the far-left. It encourages people to believe that race determines culture. This is part of their broader push to blame bad behavior on circumstances and undesirable outcomes on oppression. But the real crime is that they’re robbing individuals of their agency and saying that we cannot transcend or change our stripes. It is essentially anti-Christian and racist at the core. If a person is what they are because it skin color then prejudice and discrimination is justified. This is not the way forward.
Racism is the idea that we are fundamentally different because of skin color, that culture and behavior are determined by race. It is a framework, a lens, that discards any evidence to the contrary or, worse, attempts to delegitimize the people that go against the narrative. This happened in the segregationist South. It was almost worse for white people who stood against the racism there. But it is happening now, where racial minorities who stand up to the political far-left are the biggest targets of ridicule and hate.
If a ‘black’ person has a job and is a productive citizen, the racist left attacks this success as internalized racism. If a ‘white’ person enjoys other cultures, they are vilified for appropriation and accused of theft.
The ‘woke’ left must guard these color lines or their divisive political ‘theory’ falls apart.
The reality is that behavior is not inexorably tied to skin color. Culture is behavior and evolves. Loud and obnoxious or reserved and shy, it could be a result of social contagion and cultural conditioning more than something genetically preprogrammed. What is called ‘black’ culture today will change. The mainstream American culture has also dramatically been remade over and over again. We don’t have duels to settle ‘gentlemanly’ disputes, petticoats have long gone out of style, my German identity has largely been assimilated into the melting pot and my children will have values slightly different from my own. The same is true in Africa, Asia, South America, and elsewhere.
The reason why the left seeks to break cultural cohesion, with CRT indoctrination (or wherever it will be renamed now that it is being scrutinized) and conflating race with culture is that a coalition of minorities is more powerful than those who would represent the cultural norm. Think about it. Most of us think we are unique, most of us could frame our “lived experience” as being disadvantaged. Much of this, in actuality, is an illusion of our own knowing our own struggles and not knowing what others have faced. Oppression narrative frames this as being a matter of only some identities, not a shared human experience as it truly is. We’re all a minority of one that must negotiate within the broader social space. Culture can unite. It can bridge differences in racial or other identities.
The left wants morality to be subjective. There is no good or evil in their perspective. There’s only what is politically expedient to them, a means to obtain power and control for themselves or those like them. Every system designed to create equity will eventually only end up unfairly advantaging a different group of people. Allow pedophiles to follow their passions, like everyone else, and children will be exploited. They will destroy liberal institutions, in the name of helping those marginalized, and only ever make us all subject to their own dictatorial whims without solving any injustice in the end.
I have little doubt that many seeking “social justice” or “equity” are good and sincerely caring people. But they are participating in a divisive framing of things that will only lead to more injustice. The term “white privilege” promotes prejudice and anti-racism is truly hyper-racism. Their critique aimed at structures of civilization, like marriage, religion, property rights, will only result in more insecurity and hurt.
The Christian alternative to race obsession
The church, not an equity committee, is supposed to be the center of community and healing. We can’t solve a spiritual problem with a political solution. We can’t fix the world without addressing our own hearts first.
CRT is a cheap counterfeit for the Gospel. It encourages us to externalize blame rather than repent of our own sin and let God judge others. Rather than project our own guilt on others, or accuse, decide who has too much, is racist or whatever, this is the Christian ethic:
Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?
(James 4:11-12 NIV)
Politics is a competitive affair. It is a constant battle for position. And one of the cheats to gain power is to rile people up and use them as pawns to take out those who stand in the way of their agenda. This is done through vicious accusations and evil surmises. It is the very opposite of what James instructs, which is to focus on our own behavior rather than judge others.
The Gospel is about creating a joint identity that overcomes our differences:
So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
(Galatians 3:26-29 NIV)
Christian culture is for all identities. The salvation Christ brings is free to all and thus can’t be appropriated.
There is no such thing as the “social justice” Gospel. Our ‘equity’ does not come from political action. It comes from Christ and loving those whom He loves. Unlike the political alternative, this is a positive focus, us using our love to build humbly rather than destroy with accusations:
You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.
(Galatians 5:13-15 NIV)
Proverbs 6 calls “a person who stirs up conflict in the community” detestable to God. It is because these contests are limiting our collective potential and destructive.
Orthodox Christianity is about looking inward rather than outward. It is about finding a common union in Christ rather than dwelling on differences. It promotes leadership through self-sacrificial love rather than by political power and change that comes through personal repentance rather than reforming systems, this is the way:
It is worth noticing that, after acquiring spiritual understanding, the defects and faults of one’s neighbor begin to seem very slight and insignificant, as redeemed by the Savior and easily cured by repentance—those very faults and defects which seemed to the carnal understanding so big and serious. Evidently the carnal mind, being itself a plank, gives them this huge significance. The carnal mind sees in others sins that are not there at all.
(St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, The Arena)
The other day, I had a ‘woke’ online acquaintance (presumably, someone who still goes to church) respond to something I wrote with a proclamation about racism existing. The weird part was that my post had nothing to do with race whatsoever and was simply me venting my frustrations with a multitude of things including the slow progress of Charlotte’s immigration. For whatever reason, he saw race and pounced on the opportunity to promote his racially divisive worldview. As in the quote, people obsessed with a particular narrative “see in others sins that are not there at all” and are truly only projecting their own sins.
We must first correct the beam in our own eyes before we can see clearly to help others with the splinters we perceive in their eyes. If we want spiritual transformation and social change we need to shed our own judgemental black and white thinking first. The path out of this sinful delusion of racism and divisive race obsession is repentance.
Remember that viral video, from a few years ago, that has a bunch of young people lined up in a field?
As the music plays, we hear an announcer tell participants this is a race for a $100 bill and then proceeds to list off statements that will allow some to advance. If both parents married, if they had a father figure, if they had access to private education, if they never had their cell phone shut off or had to help their parents with bills, and the list goes on.
For those of us who have studied socioeconomic issues, and have long pointed to things like fatherless homes as being predictive of outcomes, this is no surprise. In fact, fatherless homes have a stronger correlation with negative outcomes than race. Many mass shooters come from broken homes. We should be talking about such things.
However it seems many of my former religious peers, raised in conservative Mennonite cloisters, prior to watching this video, had been completely unaware of this ‘privilege’ of family structure. Suddenly their ignorance had been revealed. But, some, rather than simply ponder and reflect, used this new knowledge to bludgeon others and suggest that anything less than feeling deep shame equal to their own is somehow sinful.
One problem with being raised in a religious culture where indoctrination and conformity is preferred to open discussion is that many coming from this background are nearly incapable of critical thought. A media presentation like this dazzles them and there’s no reason they can imagine to question the conclusions. They see what they’re supposed to see, what was carefully edited and prepared for them to see, and what the lecturer tells them to believe.
The video, unfortunately, frames things in terms of race. The one announcing even explicitly saying “if this was a fair race…some of these black dudes would smoke all of you.”
It’s ironic that this man plays on racial stereotype, the perceived athletic advantage that some have, while simultaneously making the case that privilege is about getting the money at the end of a race. He undermines his own thesis. If some young people, as a result of their athleticism, can get into a prestigious university, how is that not also privilege?
More importantly, where does that leave those of us who neither had the athletic prowess nor the academic chops nor wealthy parents to provide for our education?
My father was absent, out on the road weeks at a time, I went to public school because my parents couldn’t afford the Mennonite school tuition, I never had a cell phone growing up and also eventually had to pay rent to my parents for the privilege of living under their roof, is that unfair?
Who is to say that a person raised in single parent home is truly at a disadvantage to someone with a learning disability?
And is it actually true that those with non-athletic scholarships didn’t earn any of that reward through their own hard work?
A big problem with the presentation is how it frames privilege in a very narrow and misleading way. The list of factors is extremely selective. He never mentioned the many other disadvantages (or advantages) that can shape outcomes, things like physical stature or gender, affirmative action and health. There is also no attempt to explain why these factors should be weighted as they are. Ask different questions and the completion of the results may completely change.
Breaking Down Privilege
The problem with the privilege narrative is not that it highlights the advantages that some have over others. We all know that an athletic tall guy is more likely to dunk a basketball, and have a girlfriend, than the 5′-5″ tall perpetually last-picked dude. All of the things listed in the video may very well have an impact on outcomes and yet there are so many other things people overcome that never got mentioned.
The message is right, in that we should be aware of the disadvantages others face, but does a disservice in framing privilege almost entirely in terms of race. And, with that, feeds insecurities, builds upon division, encourages animosity or guilt—all without providing any actual solutions.
To get to solutions we need to break down the framing:
1) Not About Race
The irony of the “white privilege” claim is that, when we get to specifics, the advantages some have are often not actually about race.
Fatherless homes, for example, have nothing to do with race and everything to do with the choices of a prior generation. My dad took responsibility, he provided for his children, my mom remained loyal to him despite his shortcomings, and us children benefited.
Do you know who else had that privilege?
The daughters of Michelle and Barack Obama.
Not only that, Sasha and Malia, had access to private school, prestigious universities, and other opportunities that a working-class child (such as myself) could only ever dream about. Sure, they may have similar skin color to Trayvon Martin, but that’s where the similarities end and to say otherwise is to be absurd. The average blue collar white person has more in common with racial minorities than anyone in the ruling class.
My school friend, Adam Bartlett, the one who eventually killed himself and another man, was a victim of sexual abuse as a child. Not only that, but he wasn’t all that athletic, wasn’t a great student, had nothing given to him by his parents, yet we’re supposed to believe that he had this thing called “white privilege” and was actually better off than the daughters of the President?
This idea that privilege is about color, that fatherless homes and poverty is a matter of race, is the very definition of prejudice. It is a message bad for the racial minorities whom it both disempowers and discourages. It is also wrong, an injustice, to the many people deemed privileged who face the exact same challenges and never get as much sympathy or help.
The truth is that statistics never tell us about individuals. There are many born into poverty and poor conditions who do overcome their circumstances. It has as much to do with attitude, the things we believe and are told to believe about ourselves, as anything else. The very things that can be a disadvantage in one case can be motivation in the next.
2) Let’s Address Culture, Not Color!
If we’re truly interested in changing results then we need to talk about the elephant in the room. Why do some children grow up in single parent homes, in poverty, while others do not? More importantly, what can we do to prevent this from repeating?
Woke nationalism, a far-left Marxist political movement adjacent to this sort of privilege propaganda, would have people believe that more money (in form of reparations or government programs) is the solution to disparities in outcomes. Rather than address the root cause of disparities, they blame-shift and promote acceptance of toxic behavior.
Black Lives Matter, for example, doesn’t support the reestablishment of traditional families. And, worse, many promoters of the “white privilege” narrative would have us believe that things like work ethic are somehow related to skin color. They are explicitly encouraging the very things that the video would have us believe hold people back from success.
Just today, while writing this, a BLM leader in London, was shot in the head. Her story not all that uncommon in the inner-city, where gang warfare and honor culture, a criminal underground, leads to many violent ends.
Are we truly supposed to believe this is black culture?
Should I celebrate that the majority of shootings in my little corner of the world are perpetrated by a rather small minority?
My answer is a hard N-O to both questions.
No, we should not accept fatherless homes as normal nor be an apologist for the honor culture that so often leads to violent outcomes.
No, skin color does not, should not, should NEVER determine our behavior.
It is culture, not color, that is shaping outcomes. And to conflate color with culture is the very epitome of racial prejudice. Seriously, saying that black people must act differently, must be more expressive, must prefer particular kinds of music, must talk a certain way, is the same kind of ridiculous thinking behind minstrel shows. We should be beyond this, we should be judging by content of character rather than color of skin, stop promoting foolishness!
3) Life Is Not Competition
The most egregious presumption in the video is that life is a competition and ending up with more money is the goal. Talk about spiritual rot posing as enlightenment!
Sure, your bank account may be somewhat a product of the home, community and culture that you were raised in. Hunter Biden certainly has an advantage over me in terms of earning potential given his father’s high political profile. And, trust me, it has very little to do with anything he’s done. For sure, if he were the average Joe, if the 1994 Crime Bill applied to him, he might be in jail for a long list of crimes. But that ‘privilege’ doesn’t mean he’s a success compared to me, does it?
Some extremely wealthy and visibly successful people are extremely unhappy with their lives. No amount of access to private education, cell phones, health care, or whatever, is going to solve a feeling of inferiority or self-loathing. And, if anything, more wealth in the hands of a disgruntled person will only enable them to do more evil. I mean, was Hitler, a struggling artist and disenfranchised military veteran, improved by the power eventually given to him?
No, not at all.
This idea, in the video, that life is a competition, that more material wealth equates to success, is completely wrong and deserving of the severest rebuke. What is truly shameful is that those religious folks sharing this message never once stopped to consider the metrics of success presented. So much for the first being last and last being first, as Jesus taught, apparently to them life is all about the accumulation of stuff and political power.
Sad.
Maybe if we would, instead of pitying and patronizing people, start preaching the truth, start telling dead beat parents, or anyone making excuses for themselves, to repent—then we would see positive change?
But that would require us to see others as being our equals, capable of choosing good behavior. It would require being unpopular and to stand at odds with the virtue signaling of the social elites. Those who are honest about matters of culture, who confront woke nationalism and racist lies, they are the only people systemically oppressed.
Jesus Defies Privilege Narrative
No, matters of bad character and toxic culture are not fixed by more money, consider this parable:
“Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. To one he gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another one bag, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. The man who had received five bags of gold went at once and put his money to work and gained five bags more. So also, the one with two bags of gold gained two more. But the man who had received one bag went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. “After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received five bags of gold brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five bags of gold. See, I have gained five more.’ “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’ “The man with two bags of gold also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two bags of gold; see, I have gained two more.’ “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’ “Then the man who had received one bag of gold came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’ “His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest. “ ‘So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags. For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
(Matthew 25:14-30 NIV)
Of the parables that Jesus told, this one has to be one of the most harsh and counterintuitive. I mean, who can blame this servant, given so little, for burying his talent?
Was it fair that, before the investment phase even began, the “wicked” and “lazy” servant was already at a severe disadvantage?
While this parable affirms the idea that what we’re born with has little to do with what we’ve done. However, it departs radically from the central notion of the video that success at the end of life is “nothing to do with what you’ve done.”
This flies completely in the face of the social justice gospel and, frankly, everything that comes naturally to me. As one who always felt like the servant given little and thus was fearful of God, this parable confounded me. Didn’t the initial disadvantage, the unequal distribution of wealth, shape the outcome?
Are we now going to say that Jesus lacked understanding, compassion or sensitivity?
Should we cancel Jesus?
We could replace the wealth or talents of the parable with “privilege points” and not change the message. Jesus who said, “to those much is given much will be required,” also said those who are given less by God should be appreciative and invest well rather than make excuses.
In other words, if you have no father, you can wallow in the disadvantage or choose to invest in the next generation so they do not suffer as you did. If you were excluded, as I was, on the basis of lacking stature and athletic abilities or other things not within your control, you can harbor the grievance, let it take over your life, or you can use it as motivation to do unto others what wasn’t done for you.
The reality is that Jesus was being far more compassionate in addressing the spiritual matter at the heart of many negative outcomes and ignoring questions of fairness. Furthermore, life is not a competition for material gain, it is not about the rank we attain in society either, and to frame it in such a way only shows a complete lack of discernment. The privilege narrative is not only racist to the core, it is also at odds with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Instead of chastising innocent people for their alleged color privilege, trying to burden them down with guilt. Instead of telling some people that they lack the ability to be successful simply on the basis of their outward appearance or place they were born, which is a total lie. We should love our neighbors, rebuke this notion that life is a competition for money, and call all to repentance.
There was a time, many years ago, when I had a particularly severe struggle with insecurities, it was likely related to a recent romantic rejection and this mess of anxieties being part of the aftermath. I had walked into a youth volleyball event and, observed, a couple of girls across the room laughing.
I had known how cruel young women could be about guys who didn’t meet their standards, overheard their giggles and comments related to that slightly awkward and unfashionable older guy who was the constant butt of their jokes. So my fears of this sort of ridicule were not entirely unfounded.
But, after a quick self-assessment, making sure I wasn’t wearing my underwear on the outside or anything too obviously wrong, I did my best to ignore that nagging voice and find another explanation. They could have been laughing about anything, there was absolutely no reason to conclude it related to me and yet the unpleasant knot remained in my stomach.
Had I run with this conclusion, based upon my hallucination of their reason for laughing and not reality, this incident added to my existing grievance with the female gender. I was already aware that many girls have a 5′-10″ cutoff for guys they will date, the guy that did end up dating the one I had asked was a six-footer, it could be that they were laughing at my expense?
However, had I gone with that, even if I didn’t match across the room and command them, “Do better!” Something that most definitely would have branded me as a weirdo even if they were guilty and did apologize. Even if I had simply allowed my own explanation of their actions to metastasize, it would be the root of a very toxic attitude that would further marginalize me.
My initial interpretation, born of my anxieties, not their laughter across the room, was the real problem. Even if we banned all laughter or every snickering teenager girl were reprimanded for their feeding of male insecurities, had a plan been devised to force all girls to date short men as reparations for discrimination and height privilege be excoriated by leaders, the actual issue would never be solved.
No, I’m not saying that genuine acceptance doesn’t go a long way towards healing old wounds. Becoming part of the Orthodox world, where I didn’t have a reputation to proceed (and limit) me, where it was possible to talk to the opposite gender comfortably, did certainly help. And there’s no denying that my being in a relationship has lowered the stakes and helped me to relax around other women.
Still, all that only happened once I stopped caring what other people thought and subsequently became comfortable in my own skin. Today, unless it was a really bad day, I would be more likely to laugh with those laughing and then ask them what they were laughing about. Slinking around, and making accusations, might gain you a following on social media and earn the meaningless sympathies of those only hearing one side. But it will do nothing to improve self-image.
Painful as it was, I’m glad that things didn’t work out for me because someone swooped in for the rescue. Had this happened I may never have found my internal spiritual footing and, after briefly appreciating the charitable effort, remained as lacking in confidence. Pity the woman who marries a man looking for her to bolster his self-image and mend his brokenness, that relationship is probably going to be hell in a few years.
My physical stature hasn’t changed since my days of paralyzing approach anxieties and there remains plenty of reason that one may laugh in my direction. But my life improved vastly when those voices of self-pity and doubt were muted. At this point it would not matter if those girls had been truly laughing at me, I wouldn’t take them so seriously anymore. I’m a different man.
Irregular Ideation 