Antidotes to bombardment

 

Playing with hands. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Author: Ibex73.

by Kathie MM

The corporate media assaults us with one awful story after another.

Hate crimes, racist incidents, violence against women, attacks on immigrants, loss of health care, chaotic governments, threats of fascism and terrorism.

Sometimes it’s hard not to feel frightened, stressed out, depressed.

But there are other messages in the media, perhaps more worthy of your attention.

Here’s one from Steven Singer.

He tells us that as a critic of charter and voucher schools, he is often asked, ‘Why should I care about other people’s children?’”

In his thoughtful essay, he explains:

“Children…. haven’t done anything to earn the hate or enmity of the world.… Many of them haven’t even learned the prejudices and ignorance of their parents. And even where they have, it is so new it can be changed.

“[Helping someone else’s child] wouldn’t hurt my child. In fact, it would show her how a decent person acts towards others. It would teach her empathy, kindness, caring. It would demonstrate the values I try to instill in her – that we’re all in this together and we owe certain things to the other beings with which we share this world.”

“I proudly send my daughter to public school…I want her to experience a wide variety of humanity. I want her to know people unlike her, and to realize that they aren’t as different as they might first appear. I want her to know the full range of what it means to be human. I want her to be exposed to different cultures, religions, nationalities, world views, thoughts and ideas….

I want us both to live in a society that treats people fairly, and where people of all types can come together and talk and reason and enjoy each other’s company.”

For me, this essay reverberates far beyond the issue of charter schools. It represents a set of goals for humanity sought by millions of people around the world for hundreds of years.  Let their voices, our voices, be heard.

Watch for our enemies (We are they.)

Protest at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), Terminal 4, in New York City, against Donald Trump’s executive order signed in January 2017 banning citizens of seven countries from traveling to the United States (the executive order is also known as “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States”). January 28, 2017. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Author: Rhododendrites.

Note from Kathie: Wherever possible, we attempt on this blog to provide psychological perspectives on violence and nonviolence.  Today, we share this slightly condensed Open Letter from Canadian Psychologists regarding Donald Trump’s travel ban.

“We as Canadian professors of psychology and practitioners condemn the executive order signed on January 27, 2017, to ban people from specific countries from entering the U.S. We also condemn the right wing rhetoric, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and xenophobic actions that are dominating political discourse in the U.S. and some European countries.

[We] believe that the following principles have been well-established:

1. When people feel secure and accepted in their society, they will tend to be open, tolerant and inclusive with respect to others. Conversely, when people are discriminated against, they are likely to respond with negative attitudes and hostility towards those who undermine their right. Rejection breeds rejection; acceptance breeds acceptance.

2.  When individuals of different cultural backgrounds have opportunities to interact with each other on a level playing field, such equal status contacts usually lead to greater mutual understanding and acceptance. Creating barriers between groups and individuals reinforces ignorance, and leads to mistrust and hostility.

3.  When individuals have opportunities to endorse many social identities, and to be accepted in many social groups, they usually have greater levels of personal and social wellbeing. Individuals who are denied acceptance within many social groups usually suffer poorer personal and collective well-being.

In addition to supporting these three principles, we note the following:

A. Global humanitarian crises do not happen overnight. Such chaos begins in small steps, which may appear benign, somewhat acceptable and even justifiable under given conditions. The world witnessed too many humanitarian crises during the last century.

Not speaking out against such events right at the outset contributed to the escalation of evil and its dire consequences. The current immigration ban applied to seven predominantly Muslim countries (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen) may not be felt by majority of Canadians. However, it can contribute to the escalation of the unfair treatment of a wide range of groups.

B. Studies show that blatant “us vs. them” categorizations contribute to prejudice, discrimination, group polarization and intergroup antipathy. We argue that it is in no one’s interest to narrow the membership of “us” (e.g., Canadian, American, or European) and to widen the membership of “them” (e.g., Muslim, Mexican, members of the LGBT, feminist, and refugee communities). Such polarization leads to fear, rejection, and discrimination, with the negative consequences noted in the three principles described above.”

Signed: John Berry, Ph.D., Queen’s University; Gira Bhatt, Ph.D., Kwantlen Polytechnic University; Yvonne Bohr, Ph.D., C.Psych. York University; Richard Bourhis, Ph.D. Université du Québec à Montréal; Keith S. Dobson, Ph.D., R. Psych., University of Calgary; Janel Gauthier, Ph.D., Université Laval; Jeanne M. LeBlanc, Ph.D., ABPP, R. Psych.; Kimberly Noels, PhD. University of Alberta; Saba Safdar, Ph.D., University of Guelph; Marta Young, Ph.D., University of Ottawa; Jeanne M. LeBlanc, Ph.D., ABPP, R. Psych.

If he were alive….

Inscription on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, commemorating the location from which Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington on 1963-08-28. Available under the GNU Free Documentation License.

If he were alive.  If he had not been struck down by an assassin’s bullet.  If he had not embraced the mantle of peace and social justice in a country where murderers abound, and where their targets are frequently people of color, crusaders for social justice, gun control advocates, and proponents of nonviolence.

If he were still alive, he would probably weep at the slow hamstringing of progress towards the goals for which he fought. Yet, if he were still alive, I know we would see him continuing his struggle to make the US a better place–a struggle in which we should all participate.

Monday is his day, and in his honor I am posting another excerpt from the essay Building a Racially Just Society by Roy Eidelson, Mikhail Lyubansky, and yours truly. Let’s keep his beacon burning.

“Psychology plays an important role in the social forces perpetuating individual and institutional racism. Because of the link between race and class, the psychological mechanisms that perpetuate class injustices also tend to perpetuate racial injustices. The widespread preference to see the world as just, for instance, leads people to… blame those who struggle with socioeconomic disadvantages – disproportionately people of color in the U.S. – for their own plight. This perception then dampens the popular will to support a role for elected governments in setting reasonable minimum standards of economic rights, fostering a political culture that greatly harms working families of all races.

Other psychological mechanisms relatively independent of class also reinforce racist attitudes and actions. Negative cultural stereotypes of African Americans are pervasive and entrenched, in part because of a psychological inclination to unconsciously legitimize status quo disparities….

These biases not only serve as the foundation for intentional expressions of prejudice and racial violence but also for unintended yet harmful micro-aggressions, which often cast African Americans as deserving of fear, distrust, and disrespect. Too often, inaccurate and biased news reports and media portrayals further serve to reinforce perceived differences of the racial “other.” At the same time, stresses associated with disproportionate suffering from class injustices, with being treated as “second-class” citizens, and with being targets of discrimination increase the likelihood of negative physical and psychological health outcomes for African American children and adults.”

If you have not read the entire essay yet, indulge yourself soon.

 

 

Housing justice–then and now (Quaker reflections, Part 4)

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison:  Today we welcome guest author Jean Gerard for the final post in her series on Quaker reflections.]

I read recently of the Occupiers’ attempts to redirect their efforts toward multiple current problems. In particular, I feel an affinity toward “Occupy Homes,” which helps people move back into houses from which banks have ejected them. It takes me back decades to our small but determined efforts in Southern California.

We worked and lived for years in a typical provincial conservative suburb in the San Gabriel Valley northeast of downtown L.A.  The first “housing heist” occurred when all Japanese Americans (most of them citizens) were summarily removed from their properties around the West Coast at the beginning of World War II to isolated “camps” inland.

Later, racial prejudice reared its ugly head again in the form of “restrictive covenants” – illegal promises made among white citizens, promising not to sell or rent properties to “non-whites.”

On the eastern outskirts of Los Angeles County, a tract of inexpensive houses had been built and put up for sale. When black and Asian families tried to buy these homes, banks were willing to lend them money (at no doubt exorbitant rates of interest) but militant and reactionary organizations “hazed” them after they moved in. They were shunned by the white majorities, threatened with mysterious warnings, snubbed, or had garbage thrown on their front yards at night.

When a Japanese-American couple returned from “the camps” and needed a place to live, my husband and I succeeded in supporting their purchase of a house next door.

Encouraged by that success, we joined a small group of neighbors to form an “inter-racial club” in order to support a black couple by helping to calm a neighborhood of white owners. Spending time with them, having picnics together on front lawns, inviting their neighbors, talking over feelings, we succeeded in defusing resistance and fear. Together we reached what might be called “provisional acceptance,” which turned out to be a permanent solution in that community.

Naturally,”Occupy Homes” went straight to my heart when I watched a video of a house in Brooklyn being reclaimed by OWS action.  The moment I heard a child’s laughter coming from his “reoccupied” bedroom, I remembered a similar voice from years ago when I first learned that peace with justice is not only possible; it is imperative. But people have to engage in the process to achieve and maintain it.

I am with you, you are with me, we are with them and they are with us.  I had almost given up!  “Occupy the Future!”