Jim
Nets of Wonder
In the Baha’i Faith there’s a lot of emphasis on the elimination of prejudices, especially race prejudices, and on continual conscious efforts to improve our own character and conduct. Early in my life I saw that people are mostly blind to their own prejudices, so I presumed that it was the same for me, that it might be impossible for me to ever see my own prejudices. The question for me then was how to eliminate my prejudices if I couldn’t see them. I also saw that part of what perpetuated the oppression of black people was unconscious attitudes and behavior in most white people, so I presumed that it was the same for me. More generally, I saw that a big part of every social problem is people thinking that they aren’t part of the problem. Whenever I catch myself thinking that, I put a stop to it right away. I just presume that whether I see them or not, I have some of the same unconscious attitudes and behaviors as other people who grew up in the same cultural environment, and which are causing the problems. I also presume that no matter how much I improve, there will always be room for more improvement. Another principle I follow is that whatever I do to try to help improve other people’s attitudes and behavior has to include trying to improve my own at the same time. Again, the question for me was, how can I change attitudes and behavior in myself that I can’t see?You make it sound as if you were once very prejudiced and yet you come across to me as one of the least prejudiced people on this forum.
Part of my answer to that was to practice fellowship across the widest divides.
Now I’m remembering two incidents that changed my life. One of them is a memory engraved on my mind of a black woman, a member of the Baha’i Faith, standing in a doorway at a Baha’i meeting, telling the rest of us that black people did not feel welcome in our community. I was dumbfounded. I didn’t see how I was treating black people any differently from the way I was treating anyone else. Then I realized, that was the whole problem! The people who didn’t feel welcome grew up in an environment where people have very different ways of showing friendly feelings and intentions than the ways that I learned growing up. Again, the question for me was, how can I change attitudes and behavior in myself that I can’t see? That question is amplified by the problem that it’s already hard enough for me to change attitudes and behavior in myself that I can see.
Part of my answer to all those questions has been to spend time with people across the widest divides that I can see between me and others, in their home environments, side by side with them, trying to see things their way, to see the good in what they’re doing, to learn from them, and to encourage and support them in their best interests.
When my wife and I and our two children were on a flight from Martinique to the US, returning to live there after 14 years in Martinique, out of nowhere our daughter said “We’re going to live in a black neighborhood.” After a few seconds pondering that, we all said “yes,” and that’s what we did, for eleven years. I had no idea at the beginning of what good that could possibly do, but my thought was “Somebody gotta do something about the problems besides talk about them.”
I learned a lot during those years about the dynamics of oppression.
I’ll respond in a separate post to your question about my relationships with other Baha’is.