I recently went to the border town of El Paso, Texas that is just on the other side of the river from Cuidad Juarez.
I am not familiar with many of the issues that affect those who live on the U.S. side nor the Mexican side. I know what people told me. I do know that there is a great deal of traffic between both cities, in work places and domiciles. I do know that since about April of 2008 there has been a major increase in cartel and gang-related violence; American citizens have also been targets. Murders have taken place in broad daylight, and sometimes bodies are found decapitated.
The “narco wars” have taken more than 11,000 lives since it started to heat up in intensity and frequency. Juarez has now become known as “Mexico’s deadliest city” with 800 drug-related deaths so far this year. This isn’t only happening at this crossroads, but is occurring at many areas along the U.S./Mexico border.
I went to El Paso to be a participant in a training conference. One mental health professional from Juarez told the participants that the residents have few options to deal with this trauma along the border. She said what is needed is activism and hope. She related to the audience that ‘this is all we have—hope.’
What does any community do when their main resource is hope, and when deadly stressors and community-disruption now are the way of life? Any organism will respond by seeking more creatively how to survive. But if the societal breakdown is maintained over a long period of time, research indicates that the kind of behavior we call “normal” doesn’t return. It’s replaced by a new, more violent sort of behavior.
According to the stories—from those who are aware of this regression—this significant trauma is affecting the social, physical, emotional, mental, and religious domains of life in many ways. For one thing, the violence is just one more reason for people to want to migrate to the U.S. for something better for their families. Last week, however, the Barrera family was returning to their home deeper into Mexico, after living for a while in Juarez, and was attacked with gunfire. Three of the family members were murdered, while the two youngest children watched in psychic shock. The violence is more and more affecting innocents who have no connection with drugs, crime, or anything illegal.
Which brings me to an important point: many of you have heard that we’re attempting to build a wall all along our border with Mexico. Now, apparently, we’re trying to keep out illegal aliens (there are no illegal people by the way) and drug-runners who are competing for the market in the U.S. In my mind, this is an archaic way of dealing with these two problems. The U.S. and Mexico will never even come close to solving this problem, by the use of power, force, the military, or money. Fear is an incredible motivating factor; no one wants to live in the middle of this kind of chaos, so believe me, they’ll keep coming.
And why shouldn’t they? The United States of Europe has already been using a model of porous borders, and people cross from one country within the EU as freely as we go from one state to the next. Europe has not experienced the same kinds of consequences that we have by using an “old brain” approach to a “new brain” dilemma.
Of course migration is built into our human natures. People have been migrating from one place to another ever since humans have been on the planet. People can migrate to get away from something such as political unrest, or migrate to get somewhere such as employment.
A famous eco-researcher, Jack Calhoun, predicted years ago, that the nations of the world would be facing these kinds of staggering problems; he said that immigration is the problem, but it isn’t the problem. His research demonstrated that there were predictable human behaviors that occur when stress reaches a certain maintained level. Any social order will do what it can to retain its own culture and way of life within the parameters of social networks and social connections. This is survival for the need of community, closeness, and support. One of the worst spin-offs of the immigration quagmire is the separation of family members, and this adds more tension to an already tenuous situation.
The experience of history indicates that we need a new adaptive focus to problems like what we find on the border between El Paso and Juarez. These problems call us to look at all the factors involved in a systemic fashion. Sometimes the smallest of changes within any system can have huge consequences; these changes may be for better or ill.
Fear causes people to seek out single causes expecting single effects; behavior becomes reactive and many tend to lean towards biases against the groups involved in the conflicted paradigm. In other words, they use a means of stereotypical thinking, and by this I mean they view the groups who they feel are parts of the problem by using stereotypes as a form of fact. “If we don’t put that wall up, they’ll keep coming over and take all of our jobs! That’s a fact.” Usually, immigrants do the kind of work others don’t want to do, they pay taxes, and add monetary influx into the economy.
We’ve been trying these methods for some time, and we must acknowledge that they simply don’t work; “the war on drugs” has been a dismal failure. Many law enforcement officials now come down “anti-drug war” because we spend far too much money, and the models being used leave out much that is needed to correct the problem.
El Paso seemed like a quiet little town; for me it was peaceful, and a restful escape from the heat and humidity in East Texas. Cooler winds are the natural, airy fans to maintain comfortabililty. It’s nestled in the mountains and seems like a laid back place. Unless you seek it out, you may not hear much about what’s really going on in Juarez—it’s such a different environment. That’s why you need to make it your business to obtain news from good, perhaps alternative media sources, so that you can view the border situation in a systemic and facts-based way.
© Christopher Bear Beam, M.A. August 2009
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
THE WOMEN'S HOLOCAUST
THE WOMEN’S HOLOCAUST
By Christopher Bear Beam, M.A.
There are many holocausts that many in the West – and all over the planet – have not much heard about. The article “War Rape” in Wikipedia cites that 500,000 women were raped in the Rwanda Genocide of 1994. War Rape was first recognized as a crime against humanity when the International Criminal Tribunal tried the Former Yugoslavia. It was evidenced that Muslim women in Foca (southeast Bosnia and Herzegovina) were subjected to the systematic and widespread gang rape, torture and sexual enslavement by Bosnian Serb soldiers, policemen, and members in paramilitary groups. Crimes against women are also recognized as integral to the strategy of war in some cultures.
We must never forget that rape is a crime of violence. As far at its effects, a recent study (cited by Wikipedia) lists STDs or VDs, (including HIV) and pregnancy. Another two physical effects are incontinence and vaginal fistulas. The short-term or long-term psychological wounds may include depression, anxiety disorders (including PTSD), multiple somatic symptoms, flashbacks, difficulty re-establishing intimate relationships, shame and persistent fears.
We have forgotten about the African holocaust that took place in colonial, slave-trading days. The millions of Africans, who were stolen from their homes, put on floating coffins in absolutely deplorable conditions, where men, women, and children, in the millions, died in the Middle Passage. All people need to learn this history, and remember it.
I say this in the spirit of “identificational sorrow,” a concept that means that we do have a link to our European ancestors who were culpable in this African Holocaust. It doesn’t matter if our defense is “Well, my family were never slave-owners,” because we were the ones who benefited from this genocide, and we still, even today, are reaping the benefits. The largest slave-traders in America lived up north of the Mason-Dixon line: the duplicity of the DeWolf family, who amassed a fortune from the bestial treatment of African slaves, made us all culpable, so that we can no longer turn away our eyes to escape our shame. This was another one of our own white-driven holocausts.
Then there are the indigenous peoples of the land in North and South America who have been the targets of genocide and holocaust. Native Americans had their land taken by theft, were dispossessed to places other than their homeland, slaughtered, tortured—men, women, and children. Eventually, their children were taken from their families by ‘good Christian folk,’ housed in boarding schools, stripped of their language, their names, their native clothing, sometimes of their womanhood by forced sterilization, their spirituality (you can only really strip a person or group of their religion, but their spirituality may become more impervious through resistance), and made into the image of the white man. The saying, as a rationalization for their abuse, was, ‘Kill the Indian, save the man.’ This was both a physical and a psycho-spiritual holocaust, since the psychological trauma, poverty, lack of access to resources, internalized oppression, and intimidation of beatings, lynching, and rapes were seen as its consequences by future generations.
When the early immigrants came to America, they created a political moment (a moment for European American history) by inviting the leaders of the American Indian Nations to come and meet with them to see if any kind of strategy might be engineered for peaceful co-existence in order that they might take more of the land and resources of America. The white men noticed that Native Americans brought women with them to these assemblies; in Native culture, women were viewed as equals to men, so they were in leadership responsibilities. The white leaders were horrified because of their sexist views of women, so they counseled the male Native American leaders to leave them at home. After all, Europeans reasoned, they weren’t intelligent enough for the business of ruling, controlling, and stealing what wasn’t theirs to steal, and this was, in the end, what leadership was all about, right? I doubt if the Native Americans took their advice.
We never have to look too far away for historical examples, once we wipe the historical denial from our eyes, and can use our special vision called ‘remembering the past and our part in it.’ The examples are there. I suppose one could even dispute the term genocide or holocaust (there are various interpretations and definitions); in my mind, we don’t need to limit it to the extermination of targeted people. The forced and coercive transfers of any group of people from the land of their ancestor’s kills their spirit… Dislocation leads to the decimation of people’s identities.
If we research very far in the distant past, we can locate the almost invisible, yet primeval, string of yarn that stitched the ideology of Domionism--the design of the chain of the hierarchy of life. Dominionism (growing out of European philosophy and theology) espoused the ideology that men should control nature to make it habitable and productive. For this, they cleverly twisted the theological word stewardship. At the top of this ladder reign men, and at the bottom they placed the ecosphere. Next on the hierarchy, one step down from men came women, but they were viewed as pretty far down the ladder, closer to the earth, which is base, wild, and savage. Women were made invisible, seen as seducing men and leading them into moral depravity, the essence of physicality and sexuality; impudent, easily persuaded by evil spirits (the Devil), unintelligent, in need of control and guidance, etc., etc., etc. You can see the close connection the way Europeans viewed animals.
During the “Dark Ages” the majority of criminals brought to tribunals and village kangaroo courts were women. Is there any reason to wonder about the Women’s Holocaust and how it could happen? Author Rossell Hope Robbins writes about this era being a “shocking nightmare, the foulest crime and deepest shame of Western civilization, the blackest of everything that Homo sapiens, the reasoning man, has ever upheld” (cited by Jim Mason in An Unnatural Order: Uncovering the Roots of Our Domination of Nature and Each Other, p. 226). This emerged as a power struggle between women and institutional male power. Eighty-five percent of the victims during this time were women.
Mason reports that victims of this holocaust range between 200,000 to a high of two million women burned at the stake during this 300-year period. The sordid paradox of the Women’s Holocaust is that it happened during the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment. This is just another example of how male-dominated power and extermination is truly crazy making.
Women were already cast in the role as being complicit with the Devil, so it was no stretch to level accusations against them for behaviors the church claimed as heretical. But really the causal factor behind this holocaust was that of sustaining the power of men and the church. If the church had been holding high the truth of the dignity and sacredness of all people, things, and every created being, why would it be torturing and killing so many women who they ruled were guilty of spurious charges?
Women were accused of witchcraft; some were covered with burning oil, or burned at the stake. No doubt, there were many terroristic rapes as well. Women were butchered or drowned, with their children forced to watch these insane and demonic acts; imagine, children forced to see their mothers killed… What else could this have resulted in except PTSD thousands of years before it was labeled this by contemporary psychologies? Women were also killed at the hands of church and state for being herbalists or healers. They were seen as evil because of their love of the earth and its restorative powers.
The mistreatment of women as inferior to men was part of the Holocaust of Women, and its practices migrated into the New World. It resulted in the Salem Witch trials in the New England states. It has continued to migrate by way of many more covert and subtle ways of oppression: at one time the suppression of civil rights such as voting, abusiveness, murder, rape, domestic violence, sexual harassment, discriminatory treatment, and a culture that still lives in many places steeped with sexism as a normal part of its life. I use the words “its life” advisedly because now sexism and misogyny are a part of our overall system. Systemic sources are bigger and more powerful than individuals. But it’s still a holocaust, no matter how you look at it or try to defend it.
I was so moved by a homiletic of a woman in our community Betty Duff that I became physically ill when I listened to her remarks: like a dredged out well with nothing left inside. All of us men had a mother; we may have sisters, aunts, girl cousins, and grandmothers we knew, yet each of us as men has assisted the White Male System to continue to live and breathe. I think of my own social conditioning growing up as a boy, then a young adult, and now an older adult. I am now recovery from this sickness of the male-dominated, sexist, and superior system; I listen more closely to my inner conversations around female stereotypes, as I have become more conscious and aware. My brain registers thoughts and ideas that I picked up in the land of domination and power. Now I’m moving through the plane of acute awareness, deconstruction, and reconstruction, and the old thought processes and behaviors are often hardened like fossils in ancient burial places. Healing is a dirty and messy business, but the end results are cleansing and lifting.
© Christopher Bear Beam, M.A. August 2009
Many, many thanks to Betty Duff who researched this time period and shared it with our community, Marilyn Douglas-Jones who offered help in editing, and Deborah Levine who gave me helpful feedback prior to the publishing of this blog on the American Diversity Report.
By Christopher Bear Beam, M.A.
There are many holocausts that many in the West – and all over the planet – have not much heard about. The article “War Rape” in Wikipedia cites that 500,000 women were raped in the Rwanda Genocide of 1994. War Rape was first recognized as a crime against humanity when the International Criminal Tribunal tried the Former Yugoslavia. It was evidenced that Muslim women in Foca (southeast Bosnia and Herzegovina) were subjected to the systematic and widespread gang rape, torture and sexual enslavement by Bosnian Serb soldiers, policemen, and members in paramilitary groups. Crimes against women are also recognized as integral to the strategy of war in some cultures.
We must never forget that rape is a crime of violence. As far at its effects, a recent study (cited by Wikipedia) lists STDs or VDs, (including HIV) and pregnancy. Another two physical effects are incontinence and vaginal fistulas. The short-term or long-term psychological wounds may include depression, anxiety disorders (including PTSD), multiple somatic symptoms, flashbacks, difficulty re-establishing intimate relationships, shame and persistent fears.
We have forgotten about the African holocaust that took place in colonial, slave-trading days. The millions of Africans, who were stolen from their homes, put on floating coffins in absolutely deplorable conditions, where men, women, and children, in the millions, died in the Middle Passage. All people need to learn this history, and remember it.
I say this in the spirit of “identificational sorrow,” a concept that means that we do have a link to our European ancestors who were culpable in this African Holocaust. It doesn’t matter if our defense is “Well, my family were never slave-owners,” because we were the ones who benefited from this genocide, and we still, even today, are reaping the benefits. The largest slave-traders in America lived up north of the Mason-Dixon line: the duplicity of the DeWolf family, who amassed a fortune from the bestial treatment of African slaves, made us all culpable, so that we can no longer turn away our eyes to escape our shame. This was another one of our own white-driven holocausts.
Then there are the indigenous peoples of the land in North and South America who have been the targets of genocide and holocaust. Native Americans had their land taken by theft, were dispossessed to places other than their homeland, slaughtered, tortured—men, women, and children. Eventually, their children were taken from their families by ‘good Christian folk,’ housed in boarding schools, stripped of their language, their names, their native clothing, sometimes of their womanhood by forced sterilization, their spirituality (you can only really strip a person or group of their religion, but their spirituality may become more impervious through resistance), and made into the image of the white man. The saying, as a rationalization for their abuse, was, ‘Kill the Indian, save the man.’ This was both a physical and a psycho-spiritual holocaust, since the psychological trauma, poverty, lack of access to resources, internalized oppression, and intimidation of beatings, lynching, and rapes were seen as its consequences by future generations.
When the early immigrants came to America, they created a political moment (a moment for European American history) by inviting the leaders of the American Indian Nations to come and meet with them to see if any kind of strategy might be engineered for peaceful co-existence in order that they might take more of the land and resources of America. The white men noticed that Native Americans brought women with them to these assemblies; in Native culture, women were viewed as equals to men, so they were in leadership responsibilities. The white leaders were horrified because of their sexist views of women, so they counseled the male Native American leaders to leave them at home. After all, Europeans reasoned, they weren’t intelligent enough for the business of ruling, controlling, and stealing what wasn’t theirs to steal, and this was, in the end, what leadership was all about, right? I doubt if the Native Americans took their advice.
We never have to look too far away for historical examples, once we wipe the historical denial from our eyes, and can use our special vision called ‘remembering the past and our part in it.’ The examples are there. I suppose one could even dispute the term genocide or holocaust (there are various interpretations and definitions); in my mind, we don’t need to limit it to the extermination of targeted people. The forced and coercive transfers of any group of people from the land of their ancestor’s kills their spirit… Dislocation leads to the decimation of people’s identities.
If we research very far in the distant past, we can locate the almost invisible, yet primeval, string of yarn that stitched the ideology of Domionism--the design of the chain of the hierarchy of life. Dominionism (growing out of European philosophy and theology) espoused the ideology that men should control nature to make it habitable and productive. For this, they cleverly twisted the theological word stewardship. At the top of this ladder reign men, and at the bottom they placed the ecosphere. Next on the hierarchy, one step down from men came women, but they were viewed as pretty far down the ladder, closer to the earth, which is base, wild, and savage. Women were made invisible, seen as seducing men and leading them into moral depravity, the essence of physicality and sexuality; impudent, easily persuaded by evil spirits (the Devil), unintelligent, in need of control and guidance, etc., etc., etc. You can see the close connection the way Europeans viewed animals.
During the “Dark Ages” the majority of criminals brought to tribunals and village kangaroo courts were women. Is there any reason to wonder about the Women’s Holocaust and how it could happen? Author Rossell Hope Robbins writes about this era being a “shocking nightmare, the foulest crime and deepest shame of Western civilization, the blackest of everything that Homo sapiens, the reasoning man, has ever upheld” (cited by Jim Mason in An Unnatural Order: Uncovering the Roots of Our Domination of Nature and Each Other, p. 226). This emerged as a power struggle between women and institutional male power. Eighty-five percent of the victims during this time were women.
Mason reports that victims of this holocaust range between 200,000 to a high of two million women burned at the stake during this 300-year period. The sordid paradox of the Women’s Holocaust is that it happened during the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment. This is just another example of how male-dominated power and extermination is truly crazy making.
Women were already cast in the role as being complicit with the Devil, so it was no stretch to level accusations against them for behaviors the church claimed as heretical. But really the causal factor behind this holocaust was that of sustaining the power of men and the church. If the church had been holding high the truth of the dignity and sacredness of all people, things, and every created being, why would it be torturing and killing so many women who they ruled were guilty of spurious charges?
Women were accused of witchcraft; some were covered with burning oil, or burned at the stake. No doubt, there were many terroristic rapes as well. Women were butchered or drowned, with their children forced to watch these insane and demonic acts; imagine, children forced to see their mothers killed… What else could this have resulted in except PTSD thousands of years before it was labeled this by contemporary psychologies? Women were also killed at the hands of church and state for being herbalists or healers. They were seen as evil because of their love of the earth and its restorative powers.
The mistreatment of women as inferior to men was part of the Holocaust of Women, and its practices migrated into the New World. It resulted in the Salem Witch trials in the New England states. It has continued to migrate by way of many more covert and subtle ways of oppression: at one time the suppression of civil rights such as voting, abusiveness, murder, rape, domestic violence, sexual harassment, discriminatory treatment, and a culture that still lives in many places steeped with sexism as a normal part of its life. I use the words “its life” advisedly because now sexism and misogyny are a part of our overall system. Systemic sources are bigger and more powerful than individuals. But it’s still a holocaust, no matter how you look at it or try to defend it.
I was so moved by a homiletic of a woman in our community Betty Duff that I became physically ill when I listened to her remarks: like a dredged out well with nothing left inside. All of us men had a mother; we may have sisters, aunts, girl cousins, and grandmothers we knew, yet each of us as men has assisted the White Male System to continue to live and breathe. I think of my own social conditioning growing up as a boy, then a young adult, and now an older adult. I am now recovery from this sickness of the male-dominated, sexist, and superior system; I listen more closely to my inner conversations around female stereotypes, as I have become more conscious and aware. My brain registers thoughts and ideas that I picked up in the land of domination and power. Now I’m moving through the plane of acute awareness, deconstruction, and reconstruction, and the old thought processes and behaviors are often hardened like fossils in ancient burial places. Healing is a dirty and messy business, but the end results are cleansing and lifting.
© Christopher Bear Beam, M.A. August 2009
Many, many thanks to Betty Duff who researched this time period and shared it with our community, Marilyn Douglas-Jones who offered help in editing, and Deborah Levine who gave me helpful feedback prior to the publishing of this blog on the American Diversity Report.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
INTERNAL DISARMAMENT (POEM)
INTERNAL DISARMAMENT
DL says/not talkin’ Hughley,
Talkin’ Dalai Lama/now that’s some real chewy\we all got this thing
From a negative cell……that’s called our brain/name it Internal Disarmament
For me, the news heaven-sent
Scraped off on my cranium cement/
Told me you can do something good
That’s coming from a bad ‘hood
And do it out of anger or another
Dark feeling that can smother
Every sight in your binoculars
High decibel mono-culture and
Mono lens/you drive away friends
Draw the haters to you/means and ends/ all scrambled it’s
Stubbing your toe on weeds brambled\
Message comes over the fire drill
Sound system/get yo act together
Says, “Enemy at hand!,” like PTSD/
Got to align yo inner and outer
Self and get ready to “T”
Off the ball at the first “T”
Just forget ‘bout me/you see/
Because in my denial I’m trying to not see the memory that brought
On this inner attack, just keep comin’ back/doing the same ole thing
I always done, so I ain’t aware
Of the big noise scare for the need
For Internal Disarmament
So go plant the seed
© Christopher Bear Beam, M.A. August, 2009
DL says/not talkin’ Hughley,
Talkin’ Dalai Lama/now that’s some real chewy\we all got this thing
From a negative cell……that’s called our brain/name it Internal Disarmament
For me, the news heaven-sent
Scraped off on my cranium cement/
Told me you can do something good
That’s coming from a bad ‘hood
And do it out of anger or another
Dark feeling that can smother
Every sight in your binoculars
High decibel mono-culture and
Mono lens/you drive away friends
Draw the haters to you/means and ends/ all scrambled it’s
Stubbing your toe on weeds brambled\
Message comes over the fire drill
Sound system/get yo act together
Says, “Enemy at hand!,” like PTSD/
Got to align yo inner and outer
Self and get ready to “T”
Off the ball at the first “T”
Just forget ‘bout me/you see/
Because in my denial I’m trying to not see the memory that brought
On this inner attack, just keep comin’ back/doing the same ole thing
I always done, so I ain’t aware
Of the big noise scare for the need
For Internal Disarmament
So go plant the seed
© Christopher Bear Beam, M.A. August, 2009
Saturday, August 8, 2009
INTERNAL DISARMAMENT
Some Buddhist activists were sitting around discussing a project they had worked on in Tibet (cited in Dharma, Color and Culture edited by Hilda Gutierrez Baldooquin, 2004, pp.205-208); some of the participants just didn’t feel right about how the project went that had been initiated and successfully completed years earlier. As they dialoged about this, a major self-reflection came to the fore. Some of the group suggested that while they were working on the project they felt they were coming out of an inner space of anger; because of the nature of anger dissipating what otherwise would be positive energy, they had fallen into the trap of overemphasizing their activism, and losing the emphasis of their spiritual practice.
The writer of this short article described the need for internal disarmament, a phrase borrowed from the Dalai Lama. The world does need external disarmament in terms of our addiction to possess nuclear weaponry to kill off our enemies. But maybe we need internal disarmament in an even more cogent way.
When I read this, it resonated with me right away. I thought back to my hippy days, and how I would relate to the establishment. I remember the strong and raw feelings of anger, disappointment, shattered expectations that I experienced towards the systemic problems of our culture. My solution at the time was to get in the face of anyone who seemed to be a symbol of this misguided culture we call the US of A. My protesting ways were laced with the fuel of anger, and this also colored many of my assumptions and biases that I felt toward society in general, but particularly those who claimed to be authority figures within the White Male System.
I have had similar reactions (leading to semantic reactions) towards conservatives, Christian fundamentalists, and anyone I considered anti-progressive. I have had a lot of anger towards people within these movements, and I know that this has lessened my ability to listen and to dialog with people who hold to some of these views. Perhaps I’ve missed some opportunities to get to some action steps. The old saying rings into my mind: ‘There are a lot of people against something, instead of being for something.’
Don’t get me wrong, there’s much to protest, and to raise awareness about right now; in fact, we may live at a threshold time when there are more social injustices grabbing the jugular veins of people who have the least resources, and even those others who may not be labeled as “disadvantaged” who are ordinary human beings simply trying to survive, while the wealthy and powerful, continue on in their bliss of denial and lack of accountability to society.
What I learned I had to do was to take a step backwards in detachment, and then look at my own motives and rationale for doing what I do. Do I resist the inequalities of society out of vengeance and retaliation, or do I think and act out of a well thought-out and honest critique of what’s wrong about the way our institutions function?
As I’m experiencing life presently, what is the most difficult thing to comprehend is how the employees of big corporations just ‘go along to get along’ for the security of their jobs. I know that unemployment is a stressful factor, but to deny our own integrity and collude with the monsters that put food into our mouths is for me totally inappropriate.
My daily interactions with representatives of the power elites, aka politicians, corporate systems, insurance systems, are often conversations of neglect and indifference. When I write letters I almost never get a human reply—usually it’s just some form letter. Rarely do I find someone that actually thinks for herself, and isn’t just trying to get over on my needs and me. So I guess what I’m angry at is the omission of humane treatment. I want to see corporations, companies, organizations and other groups simply meet me on a human level, display some humble accountability to me because I pay their salary, listen to me on that level, and then try to be an advocate for me when possible.
Part of the solution for me is doing the hard work of transforming my own heedless and self-oriented conditioning to one of humanistic dignity. If I don’t continue to do this kind of healing for myself, I will continue to react in anger and anxiety. Societal retrogression is in exponential movement, and is largely based on societal anxiety run wild. So I commit to be centered in my own humanity so that I can empathetically confront and comfort those in need. So I see my need for internal disarmament—do you?
© Christopher Bear Beam, M.A. August, 2009
The writer of this short article described the need for internal disarmament, a phrase borrowed from the Dalai Lama. The world does need external disarmament in terms of our addiction to possess nuclear weaponry to kill off our enemies. But maybe we need internal disarmament in an even more cogent way.
When I read this, it resonated with me right away. I thought back to my hippy days, and how I would relate to the establishment. I remember the strong and raw feelings of anger, disappointment, shattered expectations that I experienced towards the systemic problems of our culture. My solution at the time was to get in the face of anyone who seemed to be a symbol of this misguided culture we call the US of A. My protesting ways were laced with the fuel of anger, and this also colored many of my assumptions and biases that I felt toward society in general, but particularly those who claimed to be authority figures within the White Male System.
I have had similar reactions (leading to semantic reactions) towards conservatives, Christian fundamentalists, and anyone I considered anti-progressive. I have had a lot of anger towards people within these movements, and I know that this has lessened my ability to listen and to dialog with people who hold to some of these views. Perhaps I’ve missed some opportunities to get to some action steps. The old saying rings into my mind: ‘There are a lot of people against something, instead of being for something.’
Don’t get me wrong, there’s much to protest, and to raise awareness about right now; in fact, we may live at a threshold time when there are more social injustices grabbing the jugular veins of people who have the least resources, and even those others who may not be labeled as “disadvantaged” who are ordinary human beings simply trying to survive, while the wealthy and powerful, continue on in their bliss of denial and lack of accountability to society.
What I learned I had to do was to take a step backwards in detachment, and then look at my own motives and rationale for doing what I do. Do I resist the inequalities of society out of vengeance and retaliation, or do I think and act out of a well thought-out and honest critique of what’s wrong about the way our institutions function?
As I’m experiencing life presently, what is the most difficult thing to comprehend is how the employees of big corporations just ‘go along to get along’ for the security of their jobs. I know that unemployment is a stressful factor, but to deny our own integrity and collude with the monsters that put food into our mouths is for me totally inappropriate.
My daily interactions with representatives of the power elites, aka politicians, corporate systems, insurance systems, are often conversations of neglect and indifference. When I write letters I almost never get a human reply—usually it’s just some form letter. Rarely do I find someone that actually thinks for herself, and isn’t just trying to get over on my needs and me. So I guess what I’m angry at is the omission of humane treatment. I want to see corporations, companies, organizations and other groups simply meet me on a human level, display some humble accountability to me because I pay their salary, listen to me on that level, and then try to be an advocate for me when possible.
Part of the solution for me is doing the hard work of transforming my own heedless and self-oriented conditioning to one of humanistic dignity. If I don’t continue to do this kind of healing for myself, I will continue to react in anger and anxiety. Societal retrogression is in exponential movement, and is largely based on societal anxiety run wild. So I commit to be centered in my own humanity so that I can empathetically confront and comfort those in need. So I see my need for internal disarmament—do you?
© Christopher Bear Beam, M.A. August, 2009
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Houston Chronicle columnist Randy Cohen, in his August 1, 2009 On Ethics column, wrote an article commenting on a query by a general contractor whose workplace has been infected by one of his contractor’s employees: this worker makes racist statements, and when confronted by another employee gets very volatile (“almost violent”) and defends his or her own actions by saying that he/she has the right of free speech.
Since this is probably a common experience by many in the workplace, it’s fitting to ask how far does free speech go in what people say on the job in a public setting? The employer and boss has the right, in fact, is under the legal precedent of insuring that all workers can work in a safe environment free of racialized harassment. How does one resist this negative kind of hate speech, and interrupt this behavior from occurring?
Perhaps the simplest way to put it is that just because we have freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution, this doesn’t give someone the right to walk into a crowded theatre and yell in a blood-curdling wail, “Get out quickly, the theatre is on fire! Run for the exits!” This, where no fire actually exists. Would this kind of speech promote safety and health or would it intensify the possibility of the patrons getting hurt in the rush to get out of the theatre? Certainly, there is an ethical responsibility to not create fake scenarios so that more people might be injured in the confusion that would follow.
On-the-job discrimination rears its ugly head at various times, but as cultural competency has increased overall in our society, it’s harder and harder for people with racist, and an emotional commitment to ignorance perceptual lens to go unchallenged, and the possibility for discriminatory practice is more easily observed. The perpetrators may be fired for propagating racist auras around their person and into the air space of co-workers.
A personal example illustrates this well. Several years ago in my workplace, a co-worker who seemed to have many personal issues finally showed them in a very aggressive way, and I was the main target. One day as I was setting up some tables, he said angrily, “Hey, what are doing man? Those are my tables.” My retort back to him was, “I don’t see your name on them.” The man went off on me, yelling, and walking towards me in an intimidating way. I was sure he was going to assault me. He began yelling words at me that didn’t make much sense, and told me that when he saw me outside of the work place, on the street, he would get even with my by some kind of bodily injury.
By this time, security had been called, and they escorted him off the premises. I was asked to tell about the incident to others in management, and the police came to the premises to file a report against this hostile employee. My point here is that most companies won’t tolerate this kind of hostile action by one employee against another. In some places, the charge is called a “terroristic assault.” So most people have zero tolerance for these kinds of actions towards others in the workplace.
There are strategies we can take preventatively as well as following anti-discriminatory polices that the company already has in place. If you aren’t aware of these within your own workplace, take the personal responsibility to find out. Another way to say this is take your responsibility seriously to interrupt racism, sexism, able-ism, cultural or religious racism, heterosexism, discrimination, etc. wherever you see it going down. Hate speech flourishes where there is silence and denial. Hate speech always flows to the lowest place because there’s not any hint of truthful compassion to stop it. Make it a priority for your place of work to be a place where these kinds of discriminatory behaviors simply can’t live or gain momentum.
If someone is using hate speech, racial slurs or racial jokes, one simple way to interrupt them is to tell the person, “Please don’t communicate this way in my presence.” Another one is “No in my presence, please.” Not here, and not now. If you happen to be European American and a white co-worker is using negative innuendos or racialized jokes on you, you might think about responding by saying, “Why are you telling me these things, and automatically expecting that I am just like you? Why are expecting me to agree with you? Is it just because I’m a white person?” These sorts of questions will initially be a switch from the place of an emotional commitment to ignorance. They may shock the person into stopping to think about the questions. The other side of this is that the individual will resist the answers he or she might find in their heart and head that someone else has told them about. We have to expect this reaction, too. The truth will be denied at times.
Any answer you give to the perpetrator might sound easy, but actually doing so takes bravery. It’s going counter-to-the-culture. Bystanders do see the truth in what you may do to confront the offender, but they are afraid to be open about it. They may fear repercussions from superiors or co-workers. When we follow through we provide a social example of peer-modeling a format for interrupting racism.
Since whites are still in power and possess privilege in our social environment, it’s our particular role to initiate interruptions of racism with people who look like us. When we do this, it helps open up a dialogue with persons of color in the workspace. We gain more of their respect, because it’s hard for persons of color to tell a white person that they are engaging in racist language or answers, because they come from a “one down” position; sadly, many whites won’t even listen to persons of color. They get angry and defensive, and find they are very stuck in their own definition of reality. The complexion changes, however, if a European American stands up for truth, and challenges any kind of racist behavior. It’s at this point that whites can do ally building with persons of color or of different faith traditions.
By interrupting racism, we take an active role in the design of a safe and secure workplace where everyone may work towards common goals.
© Christopher Bear Beam, M.A.
Since this is probably a common experience by many in the workplace, it’s fitting to ask how far does free speech go in what people say on the job in a public setting? The employer and boss has the right, in fact, is under the legal precedent of insuring that all workers can work in a safe environment free of racialized harassment. How does one resist this negative kind of hate speech, and interrupt this behavior from occurring?
Perhaps the simplest way to put it is that just because we have freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution, this doesn’t give someone the right to walk into a crowded theatre and yell in a blood-curdling wail, “Get out quickly, the theatre is on fire! Run for the exits!” This, where no fire actually exists. Would this kind of speech promote safety and health or would it intensify the possibility of the patrons getting hurt in the rush to get out of the theatre? Certainly, there is an ethical responsibility to not create fake scenarios so that more people might be injured in the confusion that would follow.
On-the-job discrimination rears its ugly head at various times, but as cultural competency has increased overall in our society, it’s harder and harder for people with racist, and an emotional commitment to ignorance perceptual lens to go unchallenged, and the possibility for discriminatory practice is more easily observed. The perpetrators may be fired for propagating racist auras around their person and into the air space of co-workers.
A personal example illustrates this well. Several years ago in my workplace, a co-worker who seemed to have many personal issues finally showed them in a very aggressive way, and I was the main target. One day as I was setting up some tables, he said angrily, “Hey, what are doing man? Those are my tables.” My retort back to him was, “I don’t see your name on them.” The man went off on me, yelling, and walking towards me in an intimidating way. I was sure he was going to assault me. He began yelling words at me that didn’t make much sense, and told me that when he saw me outside of the work place, on the street, he would get even with my by some kind of bodily injury.
By this time, security had been called, and they escorted him off the premises. I was asked to tell about the incident to others in management, and the police came to the premises to file a report against this hostile employee. My point here is that most companies won’t tolerate this kind of hostile action by one employee against another. In some places, the charge is called a “terroristic assault.” So most people have zero tolerance for these kinds of actions towards others in the workplace.
There are strategies we can take preventatively as well as following anti-discriminatory polices that the company already has in place. If you aren’t aware of these within your own workplace, take the personal responsibility to find out. Another way to say this is take your responsibility seriously to interrupt racism, sexism, able-ism, cultural or religious racism, heterosexism, discrimination, etc. wherever you see it going down. Hate speech flourishes where there is silence and denial. Hate speech always flows to the lowest place because there’s not any hint of truthful compassion to stop it. Make it a priority for your place of work to be a place where these kinds of discriminatory behaviors simply can’t live or gain momentum.
If someone is using hate speech, racial slurs or racial jokes, one simple way to interrupt them is to tell the person, “Please don’t communicate this way in my presence.” Another one is “No in my presence, please.” Not here, and not now. If you happen to be European American and a white co-worker is using negative innuendos or racialized jokes on you, you might think about responding by saying, “Why are you telling me these things, and automatically expecting that I am just like you? Why are expecting me to agree with you? Is it just because I’m a white person?” These sorts of questions will initially be a switch from the place of an emotional commitment to ignorance. They may shock the person into stopping to think about the questions. The other side of this is that the individual will resist the answers he or she might find in their heart and head that someone else has told them about. We have to expect this reaction, too. The truth will be denied at times.
Any answer you give to the perpetrator might sound easy, but actually doing so takes bravery. It’s going counter-to-the-culture. Bystanders do see the truth in what you may do to confront the offender, but they are afraid to be open about it. They may fear repercussions from superiors or co-workers. When we follow through we provide a social example of peer-modeling a format for interrupting racism.
Since whites are still in power and possess privilege in our social environment, it’s our particular role to initiate interruptions of racism with people who look like us. When we do this, it helps open up a dialogue with persons of color in the workspace. We gain more of their respect, because it’s hard for persons of color to tell a white person that they are engaging in racist language or answers, because they come from a “one down” position; sadly, many whites won’t even listen to persons of color. They get angry and defensive, and find they are very stuck in their own definition of reality. The complexion changes, however, if a European American stands up for truth, and challenges any kind of racist behavior. It’s at this point that whites can do ally building with persons of color or of different faith traditions.
By interrupting racism, we take an active role in the design of a safe and secure workplace where everyone may work towards common goals.
© Christopher Bear Beam, M.A.
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