Pluralism: In Gratitude for My Friends

I had fun.  We laughed.  We told stories.  We talked about the problems of the world.  It was a good visit with my friend.  We met in a coffee shop and ended up spending over two hours together.  It was the break I needed from being my overly serious self.

Sean’s a good friend.  We haven’t known each other very long, but we get along well.  He’s 31 and grew up in Atlanta.  He graduated from Morehouse.  For a time he studied theology at ITC (The Interdenominational Theological Center) on the Westside of Atlanta.  His father is a minister and he was encouraged to follow after his dad.  But then Sean discovered Buddhism and found that it was a better spiritual path for him.  If you didn’t figure it out, Sean is African-American.  He sports visible tattoos and dreadlocks.  Looking at us, most people wouldn’t think we would be friends.

As a white man in my sixties, I sometimes have to take a deep breath and pause when I think about my life.  My partner is Chinese.  I have several good friends who are from different racial and national backgrounds from me.  Then I consider what’s happening in the United States and I’m embarrassed by the rise of White Supremacy, racism, and nationalism.  There are times when I feel as though I owe friends like Sean an apology for all the crap they experience from people who look like me.

As if the radical right and their racism, nationalism, sexism, homophobia and everything else weren’t enough, the Progressive Left fails to understand how it participates in racism.  Many on the left have misappropriated the term “woke” and apply it to themselves.  They seem to think that because they have had some insight into the dynamics of oppression that they are now “the good white people” as opposed to the White Supremacists.   I understand that.  There was a time when I wasn’t much better.

In the late 1970’s, one of my first professional jobs was as chaplain at an inner-city hospital.  I was keenly aware that some of my colleagues and many staff members at the hospital were patronizing and condescending when dealing with African-American people.  Yes, I thought I was better than these colleagues but in truth, I was mostly clueless about African-American culture and experience.  I thought if I just treated people the way I wanted to be treated, then I was not being racist.  While treating others decently is a first step toward breaking the cycles of racism, it’s not enough.

The social sciences are clear that race as an identifier is an artificial concept.  It’s one we use, but the color of one’s skin says very little about a person, their family, or their culture.  Instead, identity has much more to do with family and culture than skin color.  White people understand this very clearly when thinking about people who are British, French, Italian, or Russian.  When white people think of people with darker skin tones, then all Blacks, all Hispanics, and all Asians are the same and defined by stereotypes.

Learning to be close friends with people of different cultures than me (no matter the color of their skin or the country in which they were born) is based on my coming to a clearer understanding of what it means for me whose culture is rooted in Eastern-European immigrant experience in the United States.  As I’ve grown to understand my own culture and the way it has shaped me, I have become more relaxed with the cultural identity of others.  As with any kind of personal growth, moving beyond the biases and prejudices of race and culture takes time.  I know that I still make mistakes.  When I do, I admit it, apologize if appropriate, and do what I can to correct things about myself.  It helps to have a good sense of humor about myself.

The reality is that in the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand and a few other places in the world, the time of having one dominant culture is passing.  Those who want to hold onto a singular dominant culture in a country are losing their grip on cultural norms with which they are comfortable and they are fighting to hold onto those cultural norms.  In the end, with the cycles of deaths and births, pluralism will become normative in the United States and much of the world.

I understand the shift from monolithic cultures to pluralism as a form of spiritual growth.  The old is passing away while something new is emerging.  The death of what has been can bring life for what will be.  To struggle against the emergence of new ways of being with and relating to others can only result in harm to people, including those hanging on to the past. The emergence of new and different ways in which people live together in pluralistic societies will result in new dimensions of creativity and various kinds of innovation.  I hope that I live long enough for a respectful and authentic pluralism to be a reality.  In the meantime, I cherish friends like Sean because relationships with people like him not only give me energy for my daily living but also fill me with hope for the future.

photo source: pixels.com