WE HAVE A PROBLEM. . .

It seems to me that as a culture, we have a problem.  It is a problem with the ‘Other.’  It appears to me that the ‘core’ of this problem is that the ‘Other’ (think: African American, Hispanic, Muslim, Refugee, Asian, LGBT, etc.) is victimized by the psychological and social conflicts deeply rooted in a historically dominant ‘white’ culture which, today, is more fear-full than the Southern States were prior to our Civil War.  This culture being fear-full makes sense to me (I am a 72 year old, white male who spent the first 18 years of his life in an all-white city; literally, the first non-white I met was when I sat down in my first college classroom and sitting next to me was a person of another color).  The dominant ‘white’ culture is quickly becoming the minority culture (when all of the non-white cultures are taken as a whole); this means that there is a cultural ‘identity’ shift, change and perhaps even a transformation occurring (transformation = a fundamental change in character or structure).

Sadly, for me at least, our ‘white’ culture seems to have little, if any, deep, mature insight into the reality of what is taking place.  Because of this, our ‘white’ culture is not able to be responsive; we are trapped into being reactive, if not reactionary.  Our ‘white’ culture appears to be incapable of accepting the ‘Other’ and assimilating him/her.  Our ‘white’ culture cannot even, it also seems to me, cope with this shift, change and transformation.  Because we cannot assimilate, much less cope, we interpret the ‘Other’ as a threat not an opportunity and hence we ‘defend’ (sometimes even ‘attack’).  Our emotions are running amok and we in the ‘white’ culture are becoming more and more emotionally unstable in response to the rapid changes washing over us (think of all of the laws that local and state governments are passing to protect the ‘white’ culture).

In order to defend-cope the ‘white’ culture attempts to minimize the threat (or control it) we (remember I am a member of this ‘white’ culture) seek to accomplish this by projecting our fears onto the ‘Other’ and then declare that the other is ‘the threat.’  The greater our insecurity (think: perceived threat) the more powerful our projection and more ‘paranoid’ we become (think: We have to build a wall to keep folks out.  We have to deny refuge to the children of the ‘Other’).  We have to deny the ‘Other’ rights they already possess because of our Constitution.  Although there is a grain or two of ‘truth’ present (think: as a nation we are not as ‘safe’ as we once were) our over the top response is still more pathological than rational.

[To be continued. . .]