Poking the Elephant

"Simply put, to get to the heart of this country, one must examine its racial soul. Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been, and I believe we continue to be, in too many ways essentially a nation of cowards. Though race related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about things racial."

Eric Holder, Attorney General of the United States, February 18, 2009


Attorney General Eric Holder's recent speech on Black History Month has been vilified by many for his use of the term "cowards" in describing the average American when it comes to the discussion of race and its place in our society. The published reactions to his speech are interesting, since almost every commentator has seemingly taken the comment personally - as if Mr. Holder aimed the comment at everyone but himself. In fact, he included himself within the scope of the complaint when he said "we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about things racial."

Our society has changed greatly from the one in which I grew up; the one where stereotypes of all kinds were commonplace and where epithets and insulting terms were routinely used to describe any group one couldn't comprehend. We have arrived at a point in the maturation of our society where most of us understand that using epithets to describe others who are different is not acceptable behavior. We understand that we are to be civilized to one another. We don't, however, understand that we need to look past apparent differences in order to understand our common humanity. We simply haven't been taught how to engage in the kind of conversation Mr. Holder is urging in his voluntarily assumed role as public provocateur.

While I am pleased that we have made progress to the point where epithets are no longer de rigueur in our society, I have to agree with Attorney General Holder that civil politeness is not nearly enough. We all have much to learn from one another and can only do so if we engage in constructive dialogue. I can remember many years ago in college when I asked a black friend from the South whether things were truly as bad as portrayed in the newspapers of the time. When she got through examining me to see if I was sincere in my question, she told me stories about her family's upbringing in the South that were truly eye-opening. I had begun the conversation with a naive wish to disbelieve that mankind could be so cruel to itself, and was quickly disabused of my wish. Through her stories, she enabled me to look anew upon the world with fresh eyes. She made me realize that I had to engage reality, not hide from it. If we hadn't had our conversation, I would not have come to this conclusion so quickly or, perhaps, at all.

I have seen this sort of behavior in person. My youngest son is hearing impaired - not deaf, but hearing impaired. As such, he inhabits a narrow world of those who are neither fully hearing nor fully deaf - in short, he is neither fish nor fowl. When he was in grade school and high school, the other children were unfailingly careful not to call him names or to classify him in any unkind way. They had learned at home that name calling was unacceptable, and their teachers enforced this rule. However, no one - students or teachers alike - ever voluntarily engaged him with respect to his differences and what those differences might mean to him. They never sought to learn from him what his differences might mean to them. They were either too frightened to inquire or too clueless to care.

More importantly, apart from the occasional unusual teacher or staff member the school never really reached out to include my son in its society - while he was with them, he was not of them. The loneliness this engendered in him was as hard for a parent to tolerate as it was for my son to endure. It still bothers me greatly even though he has now found, years later, societies in which he is accepted without qualification. I can only imagine the added pain he might have suffered if epithets had still been the rule of the day.

To give my son the credit he deserves, he tried to engage others about the issue while in school. In high school, he used to start each new class by standing to explain his hearing difficulty and letting his classmates know what they could do to help him in the classroom. I am proud of him for taking what was, for him, a very courageous step, but am deeply disappointed that no one - teachers and students alike - ever made his speech the beginning of a deeper discussion about human differences and what they might mean in the grander scheme of things. I reserve my greatest disappointment for his teachers, since they missed an outstanding opportunity to learn and to teach. Apparently, it was easier for everyone to listen, to stay silent, to quietly mark him as the kid with the hearing aides, and to move on to other, safer topics.

It is this innate inability to meet differences head on about which Mr. Holder is speaking. We are cowards when it comes to our differences. We don't really want to know what it is like to live in someone else's shoes or skin. Some of us are afraid that the other person will not want to speak about it or that we might offend; others are simply indifferent. Frankly, I find it easier to forgive the indifference as a by-product of a poor education or of a defective mind, than I do to forgive those more intelligent for overlooking the elephant in the room. As Mr. Holder says, for a person with an intelligent, inquiring mind to ignore the elephant, is simply cowardice.

I have always found that listening to others is the best way to learn. However, in order to listen, you must usually prime the pump to let others know that you care about their stories. Listening begins by first earning a basic level of trust and then by asking the few simple questions that let others know that you care enough to risk the asking. Only then will people begin to tell you about matters which are extraordinarily personal.

In other words, you have to first risk getting to know those different from you in some personal way which is typically beyond the limits of your personal comfort zone. Most of us will not take this risk. Some of us will do so sporadically, finding it easier to do so with some groups and not with others. Yet, whenever we do risk these kinds of conversations and acquaintances, we always learn something new about others and about ourselves. We are always enriched.

And, still, we hesitate.

It is our shared proclivity to hesitate that Mr. Holder was admonishing. The hesitation is the manifestation of our innate cowardice to deal with others who are different from us. As I have said elsewhere, I believe we, as a species, are genetically hard-wired to engage in this form of fight-or-flight hesitation when encountering something or someone new. This form of hesitation is peculiarly selfish as it is nothing more than a manifestation of our instinct for self-preservation. It is akin to the reaction of a cat to a sudden movement it does not understand. However, if we, as a species, are to continue to mature, society must recognize this hesitation for what it is and teach our children to blow right past it.

I see some hope that we are doing so, even if the process is not nearly as advanced as one might wish. I have been tutoring a group of college students in recent weeks and have been amazed at the diversity within the group and their seeming indifference to it. They treat one another as equals without the careful pussyfooting of my generation around the subject.

Perhaps it is Mr. Holder's and my misfortune to simply be too old to have been able to enjoy this kind of mutual acceptance. It is equally possible, however, that while the students mix well, they aren't asking the questions that lead to real mutual enlightenment and understanding. Maybe they are just civil and tolerant without being interested in the life stories of others. I don't really know, and it occurs to me as I write this that I should try to find out. I think I have a topic for discussion with my youngest son - he has always been game to face these issues and hopefully he will read this and take up the discussion with me.

I congratulate Mr. Holder for having the courage to become a public provocateur on the subject of racial differences. To those who are accusing him of playing on white guilt or who are reaching other extraordinary conclusions, try actually listening to his remarks as I did. Don't react to a summary prepared by someone else, go to the source - go here, for example, and listen for yourself: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rinku-sen/it-takes-a-nation-of-cowa_b_168276.html-

Trust me - Mr. Holder's remarks aren't that scary, especially when you come to realize that he is accusing himself of the same cowardice, the same hesitation, that each of us often feels. It took courage for Mr. Holder to admit his hesitation in public; it takes an equal, if not greater, amount of courage for each of us to move past our own hesitation in our private relationships and conversations.

Thanks for poking the elephant, Mr. Holder. Now that we have his attention, maybe we can find out what he has to say.

Peanut CEO Takes The Fifth

The above is the title of a breaking cbsnews.com article about the President of The Peanut Corporation of America who is under subpoena to testify before a Congressional Committee today and who is refusing to testify, citing his Fifth Amendment rights.

I can only conclude that CBS is referring in its headline not only to the company in question, but to the qualities of a man who may have knowingly ordered the company to ship product tainted with salmonella.

Greed is not a wonderful thing, as the gurus of big business, to their lasting shame, continue to prove with each passing day.

Traps For the Unwary Philosopher

While I am always amazed at the traps we create for ourselves, even more amazing to me is our inability to see that most traps are of our own creation and that the easy way out is simply to decide not to be trapped. I was prompted to think about this again this week while watching a friend painfully extricate himself from a job he had outgrown some time ago.

I have long pondered over what it is that prompts each of us to continually trap ourselves, and I have come to the conclusion that deep in our past we must have been herd animals prior to rising through the primordial murk as a dominant species. Nothing else explains the incredible array of rationalizations, fears, and downright excuses used by all of us at one time or another to explain why we don't just pack it up and move on when entrapped in some distasteful situation. Most of the traps we endure are creations of our own minds, with the locked trap door consisting of the constant ebb and flow of mental anguish over how we got there, why we cannot leave, what others will think of us if we try to do so, and how good life might be if we could only get out. Most traps are no more than the real time equivalent of the tormenting midnight sweats we all suffer from occasionally - the ones that make you wonder about your sanity when viewed in the limpid light of a new morning and the realization that fears suffered in the dark have little bearing in reality.

Why my conclusion that we are herd animals? If we were truly the thinking and rational individual beings in the style that John Stuart Mill imagined us, we would not have such a strongly felt need to make decisions primarily in light of the expectations that others have of us and we would, instead, make those decisions by proceeding immediately to our personal expectations, goals and needs.

For the record, I am not hereby advocating that we all engage in rampant Ayn Rand-ish selfishness. I am no fan of Objectivism or of Howard Roark and his airborne dollar signs. I am simply making the observation that it is the rare person who can first analyze and understand a present dilemma by the immediate application of personal goals and needs without having to first undergo considerable anguish over what others might think if he or she were to take individual action. In other words, it is almost always true that our loyalty to our particular herd has to be first mentally worked through prior to an individual taking an inevitable personal initiative that seems, when viewed in the rear view mirror of time and roads taken, to have been glaringly obvious all along.

Since we never seem to learn from these experiences so that we act differently in the face of the next, succeeding dilemma, I have to assume that this is how we are biologically hard wired to think. I suspect our innate herd instinct also explains why our initial reaction to Paul McCartney's departure from the Beatles and Paul Simon's departure from Simon & Garfunkel was to think them selfish and suspect in their motives. Only with the fullness of time and the subsequent realization of what the two Pauls achieved in their later, individual careers, can a herd animal come to appreciate the wisdom of an individual leave taking.

The implications of this conclusion are not as obvious to me as they might appear to you. I suppose one might argue, as Ayn Rand did, that there is glory in selfishness and that we all ought to act accordingly and let the chips fall where they may. I have long felt, however, that there is greater glory and satisfaction in working for the communal good than for personal gain. If so, the herd instinct is not only strong within us but necessary for our survival and success as a species. Even so, each of us has individual needs that must be seen to and there are times when we must look past the herd to take care of ourselves.

Friedrich Nietzsche maintained that "morality is herd instinct in the individual." As such, our beginning the resolution of a personal dilemma by worrying about the perceptions and goals of others prior to applying our personal needs and goals may be nothing more than an attempt to define, determine and rationalize the morality of an action we will inevitably take for the sake of our own sanity.

Seen in this light, the herd anguish that puzzles me may not only have merit, but may be a necessary mental process that must be undertaken prior to taking effective, individual initiative. Notwithstanding that conclusion, when one is merely an observer of another's attempt to extricate himself from an obvious personal trap, such anguish seems a high price to pay for achieving necessary personal peace of mind - especially when it is obvious to the observer that the individual involved is extricating himself from the kind of situation where far more was given than received.

I guess all of these ruminations are really nothing more than a public adjuration to my friend to move on, to look forward and not backward, and to enjoy the next phase of his life.

Can Stumbling Be a Good Teacher?

While patience can be a virtue, it certainly hasn't served me well these last two weeks as I have watched, waited and wondered at what our new President might do next. While it seemed for a time that he was off to a running start, he has reminded me more of an athlete in full forward motion who isn't totally in control of his balance. There were more than a few stumbles, even if his motion was generally in the right direction.

Our new President's biggest problem was his suffering from an acute case of the Old Pol Syndrome. He began by leaning heavily on Old Pols for his more senior positions, even while making some seemingly great choices of relative unknowns for lesser positions. When you combine that with either a poor vetting of backgrounds or a temptation to risk sending forth a nomination in light of the poor results of a thorough background check, he brought his overall grade down significantly from where it might have been.

I can certainly understand the temptation to bring in a Tom Daschle to fix something as complicated and controversial as health care. The politics involved are significant and Daschle is, if nothing else, a consummate politician. However, he can't be the only experienced politician who can do the job, and putting him forward after he had to pay a whopping $140,000 in unpaid taxes was unnecessary Presidential risk taking. To have had to pay tax in that amount, Mr. Daschle had to fail to report income in the $400,000 to $500,000 range. That simply cannot amount to an oversight - at least it doesn't in the minds of those of us in the middle class who put so much faith into the Obama campaign.

When you combine the Daschle problem with those of his other appointments who also suffered from tax problems, you have to assume that someone in the administration believes that not paying taxes, while naughty, is not a bar to higher office. What happened to the Mr. Clean image that our new President was trying to create from Day One? Someone goofed and, in the final analysis, that someone had to be the President, since I simply cannot believe that he was unaware of the relevant information prior to making the appointments in question.

My father always told me that life was really quite simple - if you did the right thing morally, you would generally succeed. He also taught me that if your gut hints to you that a decision you are about to take is questionable, either don't take the action or think again and fix matters prior to proceeding. While my father was never President of these United States, nor will I ever be, it simply has to be true that greatness as a President includes the ability to stick to these homespun truths even in the midst of the greatest temptation to abandon them. All major decisions have at their core a basic condition set of right and wrong, and the trick is to see through the complications and the compromises and to recognize these basics for what they are and to act accordingly.

I truly thought that President Obama was a believer in the basics, but I worry that he may have caught Potomac Fever even prior to his inauguration. On the other hand, his choice of Steven Chu for Energy Secretary seems to have been remarkable, even if Mr. Chu is, as yet, unproven with respect to his political skills. It will be interesting to watch how Mr Chu does in light of the Daschle debacle. Can this man without prior political experience effectively operate at the highest levels of government and become a force for change, or will he founder in the Washington DC muck and mire. For me, his appointment is the most interesting of all of President Obama's choices to date. If he can come in and effectively run a large federal bureaucracy without prior political experience, it may well be an indication to future Presidents that the antidote to the Old Pol Syndrome lies in thinking outside of the usual Washington DC box. Only time will tell.

On other fronts, the President moved forward with seeming confidence in ways that were in accord with his promises. The administration seems to have got it right with respect to closing Guantanamo, stopping the military tribunals, changing our foreign policy tone, and learning to listen to foreign leaders instead of preaching to them in belittling tones. The administration seems to be hitting long balls as to foreign policy, while striking out in its appointments.

Accordingly, I can only give the President C+ for his first few weeks in office. It pains me to do so, since I had so hoped for a change from business as usual in Washington, but business as usual has, so far, been the routine. The Republicans have yet to learn the meaning of the term "Loyal Opposition", the Democratic majority in Congress needs to learn the meaning of the infinitive "to listen", and the President needs to show effective leadership by not appointing Old Pols just because they have cachet from rising above the usual Washington rank and file. In making further appointments to high office, the President needs to remember that the politics of Washington for the past two decades were not the politics of our best and brightest, but were, instead, the politics of mudslinging, yellow journalism and rampant, unchecked partisan mediocrity. If he is going to make appointments from among the participants of this untasty stew, he had best choose someone capable of throwing stones when stones are required.

I have not given up hope for this Administration, as these are early days and there are many encouraging signs amid the screw ups. If he can avoid the historical, lethal dependency that the institution of the White House usually has in recycling Old Pols, it may garner his Administration a much higher grade over the long haul of a four year term. To do so, the President needs to learn from his early mistakes and greatly improve the quality of his game. If the President is really who many of us think he is, the poor grade may well serve as a needed wake up call for him to return to the basics and not let Foggy Bottom obscure his view of his own moral standards. If so, maybe an early stumble can be turned into a valuable learning experience on the way to a high grade.

I remember with fondness the poor grades I received at the end of my first quarter in college. I entered college with a fair degree of arrogance, having served as my High School salutatorian and as a graduation speaker, only to find myself firmly enmeshed in solid C's at the end of a lackluster first quarter. I say that I remember this with fondness, because I became truly disgusted with my performance and immediately realized that it was wholly up to me to improve if I wanted to succeed. To my great satisfaction I did significantly improve, but only because I first stumbled so badly.

I hope the President knows he has stumbled, can accept the humility of having failed the standards he set for himself, and will step up his game in future. I will continue to watch, grade and hold my breath along with the rest of those who really have hoped that one man can make a difference.