Years ago, Salt-n-Peppa put out a catchy little song called “let’s talk about sex.†I recall it going something like:
Let’s talk about sex, baby.
Let’s talk about you and me.
Let’s talk about all the good things and the bad things that may be.
Let’s talk about sex.
Back “in the day†I thought it was “on the edge.†Catchy. Fun. A little bit inappropriate, but it made a good point. People were realizing that “free sex†wasn’t “the best thing since sliced bread;†schools were arguing about whether or not to teach sex ed. Hip hop was young; rap was just coming into its own. Movies got “R†ratings then that today would probably get “G†or “PG.†Sex was a hot topic and it needed to be discussed.
In the past two decades it has unquestionably been discussed… and discussed… and discussed. Sex is now so common on TV that its impossible to watch prime time without seriously having to question whether or not our children should be in the room (or perhaps even ourselves!) It could be argued that VERY little helpful came from many of those discussions.
That really isn’t my point though. My point is that, I found myself humming the tune of that catchy-little song yesterday and realized that the words I had given it were this:
Let’s talk about race, baby.
Let’s talk about you and me.
Let’s talk about all the good things and the bad things that may be.
Let’s talk about race.
Interesting, huh? I don’t know why it was going through my head that way, it just was, and when I thought about it, it frustrated me. Not that I’m opposed to discussions on race and ethnicity. It’s just that VERY few of those discussions (and I’ve heard and participated in MANY of them) are worth anything at all. I may be the only person in this category (I doubt it!) but such discussions/dialogs/trainings/etc. seldom seem to get past historical problems/mistakes/issues/etc.
They simply don’t help.
Some of you know that my wife is a social worker. She’s been learning more, over the past several months, about a type of therapy called DBT (Dialectic Behavioral Therapy). DBT is primarily intended for treatment of borderline disorders, but I think its usefulness is probably much broader. I haven’t discussed this much with her (so she may correct me) but my (simplistic) understanding is that DBT essentially asks the following questions:
Like I said, I have no training in DBT and I haven’t discussed this with my wife. I could be WAY off and I’m sure this is overly-simplified. In any case, it strikes me that discussions about race/ethnicity/culture/etc. might be more effective if they took those questions as a framework.
It’s worth noting that some things cannot be changed and must be tolerated and/or survived – this is particularly true about the past. It sounds awful, but it’s true. I, for example, know that people will falsely assume, from my color, that I have never been directly discriminated against even though I have been refused service in a restaurant because of my race. Although none of my African/Asian/Hispanic/etc.-American friends have had the similar experience, people assume I have never been directly discriminated against because I’m white. I cannot change that. It reveals ignorance on the part of the “assume-ers†but it will probably never change. I will probably always have to deal with that kind of ignorance. There are some things I need to do to cope with that and some emotions that I need to regulate because of that.
People will also assume that, since I am a white man in the midwest, I have never been a minority. It won’t occur to them that I haven’t always lived in the midwest, or that I have been the foreigner, or that I have been the person who didn’t speak the language well, or that I have lived in a situation where my race made me suspect, or that I’ve had to NOT do things because it would be unsafe since I was a foreigner, or that I have had friends (who looked and spoke like me) beat up and hospitalized because they were like me. People make those assumptions… revealing their own ignorance… even though I have been in each of those situations. In the US (and the RCA) which handles racial issues simplistically, that may never change.
What DBT requires is that we learn how to COPE with what cannot be changed and how to CHANGE what we can. Both are essential. Coping means learning how to ensure the things that cannot be changed don’t continue to destroy us – learning how to move on, even when we cannot (and should not) forget. Changing means taking those things that can be made better and doing what we can to improve them.
The problem is that these kinds of discussions usually focus on the unfairness of the things that CANNOT be changed rather than how to cope with them (no matter how unfair and awful they really are). Nothing good comes of that. There has been a lot of injustice and unfairness in this world over the centuries and much of it has been racially focused. It unquestionably still effects us, but it cannot be changed. The only option is to learn how to cope (and how to ensure we don’t make things worse).
The other problem is that we seldom get to what CAN be changed or what can be done to make things better. Let me suggest that the reason we’ve been so awful at focusing on what CAN be changed and what CAN be made better is that we haven’t learned how to cope with what cannot be changed well enough to truly move forward. In other words, discussions on race and ethnicity often focus so much on what cannot be changed that they simply are incapable of moving onto what can. We continue to sabotage the present and the future because we’re obsessed with a past we cannot change.
The RCA has decided to start (re)focusing on our “multiracial future.†While I think multi-racial is too small of a category (it doesn’t necessarily include class/culture/etc.), I DO agree that it is a focus we need. Here’s the question: Will we continue to follow the old, unhelpful methods that so often focus on the unfairness and injustices of the past that cannot be changed, or will we take the wisdom of those, in a variety of other fields, who can guide us into a better future?
Grace and Peace,
`tim
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