In his column in today’s The New York Times, “No, It’s Not About Race”, David Brooks tells the story of his encounter with anti-government “tea party” protesters who were mingling with members of a nearby Black Family Reunion Celebration during their respective gatherings in Washington DC last Saturday. Brooks’s examination of the encounter is worth a read, and so is his lesson on “other, equally important strains in American history that are far more germane to the current conflicts.”
Whether “it” is about race or not will be debated for some time (in the flurry of e-mail exchanges I saw today there are important points being made by all sides). It might be that the disconnect is more fundamental than this; that racism is but one manifestation of a way of thinking that flows from seeing the world in terms of ”self” and “other”; a way of thinking that is defined by separation and control.
Brooks ends his column with a quote about the failure of each side to see the other as “legitimate.” That is a powerful idea, and I think the choice of the word “legitimate” is important.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, a courageous voice for women and children’s rights in Iran, reminds us that a society is not free until it sees every citizen as a “legitimate other.” When this condition is not present, the work to be done is to create it, to make it possible, so that we can arrive at a place where real dialogue can occur.
And what is this place? According to Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana: “Love is the domain of those behaviors through which an other arises as a legitimate other in coexistence with oneself. Love entails mutual trust, acceptance – with no manipulation, which attempts to control the behavior of the other by illegitimate means. In this sense, love is not a virtue or something special; it is a biological phenomenon that constitutes trust and mutual acceptance.”
Love.. mutual acceptance… High hopes indeed, and a good way to head into a weekend that marks the beginning and end of two high holy days.