Go There

When you travel in Europe, particularly Eastern Europe, you encounter gypsies, now called Roma. (unless you live there, in which case you use some variant of Tsigane.) They are an oppressed people.  They are treated badly.  They have been treated badly historically as well, and if you come in with your American ideas you will attribute all their difficult actions to that background.  When you are there, however, you will see that not all Roma act alike.  We went to jolly, welcoming villages and we went to thieving, threatening ones, and were not allowed to go to the violent ones.  So their behavior makes some difference in their lives.  They are not prisoners of their history.  It is more complicated than that.

The various Eskimos have certainly had a hard time in life since contact with the Europeans.  However, they had a hard time before Europeans, and according to Lawrence Keeley were violent toward nearby tribes. Incest rates are high. It would be easy to blame them or not blame them, depending on which end of the telescope you are looking through.  I have no objection to seeing them as an oppressed people who are unfortunately easily addicted to the alcohol that Europeans introduced into their midst uninvited, and brought with them a world of desirable goods that they are having a hard time fitting into.  You might hesitate to adopt that view, however, because there are lots of Yupik and Inupiat who disagree with it.  The village elders often forbid alcohol, but some tribe members smuggle it in. It's complicated.

The European treatment of Native Americans contains horrible chapters that their descendants cannot defend. They died of our diseases in what is certainly the farthest reaching tragedy in the known history of humankind - killing 90% of the population of two continents - even before we get to actual sins committed against them. Yet at nearly every time and place, if you asked them who their enemies were they would more likely have identified another tribe rather than any of the European tribes.  Only very late in the day did they begin to see themselves as a group which was collectively being forced out by white men collectively.  In fact, that is still not a universal sentiment among Native Americans, who still have resentments against various violent tribes.  The Comanches commanded an empire of the surrounding tribes, raiding and exacting tribute through much of the 19th C. A growing Native American Women's movement is identifying their own men as a greater problem than white society. It's complicated, not simple.

I have friends with mental illnesses, and still maintain that no group has it harder, even though they are seldom the first group that comes to mind when we think of the oppressed.  It is the illness that is their primary oppressor, but other human beings contribute to that. I look at some and think it is a wonder they are able to get up and function every morning. Yet there are also decisions before them, as there are before any of us.  They are not all homeless.  They are not all violent or criminal. They don't all abuse substances. (And even among those who do those things, it is not a permanent state. They do better, they do worse.) Some with great effort and discipline set up good lives. I will readmit patients I have not seeing for five or fifteen, or twenty-five years who are having an episode, but have carved out a place in this world against great odds.  It's not simple.  It's complicated.

You have to Go There to even get a feel for it, or you end up going down the road of blaming someone for everything or absolving them of everything.  Real life doesn't work like that.  I mean "Go There" first in the physical sense, as knowing actual people is the closest understanding.  Being acquainted with actual people is next.  Reading about them is more distant, but is still valuable.  We cannot visit every one of the world's many categories of people after all. I am not sure that movies or other works are quite the same.  In some ways they can be better, as a skilled artist can distill complicated contradictions into well-designed expression.  Yet just as often, fiction or music can be used to oversimplify situations, causing us to root for one sort of person and against another, not often fairly.

We all have groups that we identify with and resist hearing them blamed for things they have done. I haven't read White Fragility but I get the concept, and it isn't entirely untrue. We seldom fall for complete untruths unless we are psychotic.  Much more likely, we become convinced of minor truths swollen out of all proportion. If you wished, you could make the argument that nearly everything important for your comfort and well-being was brought to you by some white male, probably now dead.  Because of their powerful reach in the world, you could alternatively make a list of all the evil that has been done to you and trace that back to some white male as well.  For personal events, females might be as likely as males both for good or for evil:  a spouse, a parent.  For cultural events, only recently have females become as influential.

I didn't invent the telephone, and as far as I can tell, neither did any of my family invent or create anything of general value.  I think that more of them contributed in a small way than destroyed or undermined society, simply because I live in a good time and place.  Someone who came before built that, or it wouldn't be very nice.  Building things is hard. I don't think much in terms of credit until I am suddenly being blamed. I have never gone through my days thinking "How wonderful we white guys are!  Everyone should love us and be more grateful!" It's only when someone accuses and says that "we," which all of a sudden is including me, "have ruined everything and everyone" that I go. But wait.  You're driving a car. You get to vote for your government. Oh, hang it all, I'm not going to engage in even borrowed glory here because it's not true and it's bad for me.  But you're just being a crazy person.  It's not simple.  It's complicated.  You have to Go There.