You might find today's Raspberry column interesting.
Woe Is All of Us
By William Raspberry
Monday, February 26, 2001; Page A19
The dean of the Washington National Cathedral was talking about Christian community, but the words of his recent sermon seemed to have relevance for civil and political community as well.
We can't achieve the community we keep saying we want, said the Very Rev. Nathan D. Baxter, because we've forgotten how to think beyond our individual and subgroup interests.
"We are all," he said, "victims of something: racism, sexism, homophobia, classism -- even privilegism that says nobody likes us because we are successful. There is a pride, a manipulative sense of power, in being a victim today, and our . . . fights are often about who is more oppressed, or whose turn it is to be exalted as the 'victim of the day.'
"In fact, it often seems that a sense of being a victim is the most acceptable and effective basis of our collaboration. I believe that is why we never achieve community -- just political alliances, which only nurture our suspicions and only temporarily abate our basic sense of competition and mistrust."
Do we really feel sorrier for ourselves than in times past? And if not, what is the source of the victimism Baxter decries?
Curiously enough, he says, it may come out of one of America's proudest moments: the civil rights movement. "The attention to the black experience produced by the protest movement may have taught other groups that feel underrepresented that the way to achieve what you want is to afflict the consciences of the majority," he said in an interview after his recent sermon. "We've refined the tactic and assigned morality to it."
And what's wrong with that? Two things, Baxter believes.
First: "Most of the movements today -- for women, for the aged, for gays and lesbians -- have spawned their own aggrieved subgroups. Black gays and lesbians have formed their own groups, with their own complaints about the white-led gay and lesbian movement. The [white] feminist movement has spawned the womanist movement that focuses on the concerns of black women."
Second, and in Baxter's hierarchy perhaps more important: "It forces us to identify ourselves separately from or over against another group and thus makes it impossible for us to ask what is in the interest of the society as a whole."
What is interesting is that the movement that produced the tactic was in large measure a movement for inclusion, not separation. Martin Luther King Jr., says Dean Baxter, "was talking about the interests of America, not just of black people; he was calling for justice and political morality, not just raging against Orval Faubus and Bull Connor, but also condemning the Vietnam War."
As the dean sees it, we've embraced the tactic and lost sight of the overarching philosophy.
And that may be in part because the tactic has lost some of its moral force. When the goals of the protests were essentially unarguable -- voting rights, fair housing, public access and equal treatment under the law -- consciences of the majority really were "afflicted." Today the issues are far less clear cut. Ordaining women, sanctioning same-sex marriage or hand-counting Florida's presidential ballots may be right things to do, but decent people can oppose any of them without necessarily violating their consciences.
Another problem with the victimist approach to political gain is that it proceeds from a presumption of weakness and thereby encourages the aggrieved to magnify their weakness. They accuse; the majority responds (or fails to). The protesters of today bring little to the table aside from their grievances -- no notion of negotiations between moral equals, no sense of compromise in the interest of all, no thought of building community.
Perhaps they imagine that when all the grievances are responded to, we'll have community. But of course, there is no end of grievance -- and no movement toward community.
Baxter, who recently published a collection of his sermons and personal reflections called "Visions for the Millennium," believes the use of rage and anger as tools to motivate the majority -- no matter how justified the rage and anger may be -- "makes it impossible for us to fulfill our larger humanity, makes us lose sight of the commonality that lies behind community."
A friend, Jayne Ikard, said much the same thing a few years ago. We should refrain from any demand, any public policy proposal, unless we can, in good conscience, begin it with the words: "We would all be better off if . . . "
© 2001 The Washington Post Company |
