Please, not the dreaded DIALOG

As the riots continue to persist, while hopefully dying out, we begin to see calls for “dialog” about race. Letters in the paper: “we need dialog.”  Social media postings: “to move forward there must be an accounting for the past”: “this group needs to accept responsibility for the pain of that group.”   Joe Biden: “I will lead the conversation” (this after he has told us that if you don’t vote for him then you aren’t really Black).  I believe that former President Obama led a few “conversations on race.”

I have been seeing this call for conversation since the 60s.  I spent my young adulthood in Detroit in the late 60s and early 70s.  This was a turbulent time that included the Detroit riots/rebellion.  When it subsided, there were “conversations.”  Back then they were called “consciousness raising.”  They then became “teach ins” that then became “dialogue” which gave rise to “documentaries” and these things continue to become slicker and more political. 

What these conversations have in common is that they focus on the identity of one or more groups rather than individuals who may have that group trait as one of their many own traits.  They put group identity first, individual identity second.  That is, well-intentioned as they are, they will tell us something about the “Black experience” as if every person who is Black experiences the world in the very same way.  This by necessity denies the individuality of individual Black persons.  It in a way makes them less than human.

In a similar way such “conversations” may focus on “White complicity” in injuries to people of color.  Again, while some Whites may be very complicit, others somewhat so, and others not at all, to group all as having an equal and identical history simply because of their Whiteness puts their membership in that identity group above their individuality, again making them less human.

When one focuses on hurt, whether physical or emotional, that hurt and its accompanying pain grows and eventually becomes all encompassing.  People deal with pain in many ways, one way being to hate the cause of the pain.  When we continually place all people with one color identity in one group and continually tell them how a different color identity group has caused them pain, we are certainly likely to create discord if not hate between the two groups.

Is it any wonder that after 50+ years of simplistically defining one group as suffering because of another group that our racial tensions have grown worse rather than better?

Our identity politics have grown far more divisive in the last 10 years or so.  When one is nothing more than a representative of one group or another simply because of their color, what happens is that the individual becomes dehumanized.  It is far easier to hurt a dehumanized being than it is to hurt a three-dimensional human being who shares humanity with you.

Identity politics grows hate.  I realize that many who now begin advocating that we look back and discuss Black pain historically – what it was, who caused it, its repercussions today – have good intentions of helping us to move forward.  But the reality is that this does not help.  Moreover, the product of these good intentions is often co-opted by those who have political ambitions that are furthered by building hatred between groups.

One traditional tool of socialism is to build hatred between the working class and the bosses.  It may allow the socialists to gain power, but that power and that socialism is always destructive, hurting most those whom it promised to help.  It the same way, there are those in this country who use identity politics to build hatred between racial identity groups.  It is simply a tool to their power, to their desire to reform if not totally change our governmental structure.  Like socialism, though it claims to have the best interests of its chosen group at its core, it is likely that group that will end up suffering the most.

The socialists today tell us that this time they will get it right.  Similarly, those who urge dialogs on race assert that this time they will get it right.  They won’t.

If one keeps focusing on a wound it will never heal and the one who is injured will never be able to move forward.  We have been pushing people to see only the bad, focusing on racial wounds in one way or another since the 60s if not before.  And, the recent days show us where that 50+ year focus has gotten us.  It is time to turn around, see every person as an individual first rather than simply a member of one or another identity group.  It is time to face forward and move on.

Talking one on one with your brother – an individual – with his own history, understanding him as an individual, what are his current feelings, beliefs, his goals for the future, and letting him know and understand you – that leads us much further towards a shared humanity than the “lectures” that try to change us by playing with our emotions by presenting us the history or emotions not of an individual but characterized for an entire identity group. 

We will not move forward unless and until we begin seeing a group as only one part of a person’s full identity.  We must stop seeing persons as members of a group first and then as individual second if at all.  Only when we understand that we each one of us has our own separate and very different identity, not only from those who look different but also from those who look the same as us, only then will we truly be able to move forward.

Standing in the way of that forward movement is a constant litany of hurt caused by one group against another.  That group-think, that identity politics, dehumanizes us all.  It pushes us to hate, to demand revenge and retribution.  It puts us in a time warp that not only keeps returning us to the mid-twentieth century, but, even worse, it destroys our individual humanity.

So please, let’s NOT have another conversation.  Not the dreaded dialog.  Let us not fester in festering wounds.  Let us all say that we are more than those wounds whether victim or perpetrator or neither.  Let’s stop the identity politics along with those who would use it only for their own gain.  Let us instead reach for Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream where we see each other not by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character.  Then, and only then, will we end the cycle that I have seen repeated over and over.  Let us understand one another’s individual pain but rather than stall within that pain let us look up and move on.

Is Diversity a Job Qualification?

The answer to that question should be an obvious “no” but sadly it has become, in a world of “woke” political correctness, a resounding “yes.”  And yet, what does someone’s identity group membership have to do with whether or not one can perform the tasks of a specific job or enter an institution that will educate one for future jobs?

Back when I was first looking for work in the late 60s, as a woman there were very few jobs available to me, not because I could not do the work, but simply because of my gender.  African-Americans faced similar limitations at the time because of the color of their skin. 

This was frustrating and disheartening, but people worked hard, spoke to their government both softly and loudly and things began to change.  And so, as I really settled into a career I had far more choices open to me and for the most part felt that, as an applicant, I would be judged on the quality of my ability to perform the job and not simply because of my sex.  The same began to be true for people of color and others who had been discriminated against because of some immutable characteristic.

And yes, I realize there is still a way to go in some areas, but the point is that we were beginning, at least in the work force and in higher education to begin judging people not by their gender or the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.  We were beginning to move toward that ideal voiced by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  People could work hard and succeed based on that work; their success or lack thereof would not be because of characteristics with which they were born and could do nothing about.

And then something happened.  The progress toward that ideal of Dr. King stopped.  We again began judging people by those immutable characteristics.  We started placing people into identity groups and we wanted to be sure we had enough members from each group in anyplace where we could show off numbers.  It now became different groups who had the advantage and the disadvantage.  Businesses and schools wanted to show their positive numbers of minority groups, to prove their political correctness.  Everyone wanted to show their diversity.

So, now perhaps the White male, fully qualified, will be overlooked for the woman or for someone of color.  The heterosexual female may be less favored than the homosexual or bisexual female or male.  Victimhood becomes a plus.  These become qualifying factors, more important than actual ability.

At least in the past when certain groups were denied jobs or education, it was because, however wrongly so, those in charge believed that something about that person’s immutable characteristic made him or her less capable of performing the required tasks.  Now members of certain identifiable groups are denied simply because they are a member of that disfavored group or not a member of one that is favored by those in charge, those making the rules of political correctness and identity politics.

In Soviet Russia individuals were denied promotions, education, and other benefits simply because they were not a member of the Party.  The need of the Left, the “woke” ones, to make decisions based on membership in this or that identity group in order to further a political agenda is not that different.  Their “wokeness” is a clear form of the discrimination that they claim to detest.  It is detrimental to the individuals who are discriminated against simply because they are in the wrong identity group and also detrimental to the people who will be served by those who may or may not be the most competent for the job but who received their promotion or education or other benefit based on membership and not on valid job criteria.

So, now, rather than “Blacks or Women need not apply” we have “only those who meet politically correct diversity requirements need apply.”  It’s the same thing.  It’s discrimination.  And it has nothing to do with whether or not someone has the skills necessary for that to which he or she is applying.