So, a few weeks ago I finished The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb: A Spirituality for Leadership in a Multicultural Community by Eric Law. Probably the best book I've read on the subject so far, because he dives underneath the political and social realities of race in our society, and goes into how people of different cultures communicate differently, and how those different cultural styles inherently contribute to power dynamics. It has helped me a lot to understand what it means that I bring a certain amount of power into any relationship or friendship with a person of color.
One aspect of cross-cultural communication that I found particularly confusing and difficult, is the issue of communicating verbally vs. 'communicating out of context.' In fact, whenever I heard the phrase 'communicate contextually' I wasn't entirely sure what exactly was meant (a perfect example of how I do not communicate well contextually, ha ha ha). For a long time it has been extremely important to me to communicate as clearly as I can, particularly in matters that are deep and emotional, because I have seen firsthand the devastating effects that can happen when people do not express clearly what they are feeling in a difficult situation, hold on to resentment, and then eventually leave the relationship without having really dealt with the problem.
Hell, let's get specific--that's the paradigm I experienced when my father left my mom when I was 13. That was when I first experienced this terribly frightening sense that there have been unresolved hurts and issues lying around buried under the carpet, and the bad feelings and interpretations of other people's motives, but none of that stuff is able to be brought into the open, talked about, perhaps healed--and then it was too late. In many ways my own desire to work out and talk about feelings and problems--at length--has been an extended response to seeing that happen in my family, and wanting to prevent it happening again.
But it has happened again--in my own life, a couple times at least--and when I feel like a friend of mine is unwilling to go a full ten rounds, examining every aspect of our feelings, understanding where our assumptions are different, etc. etc.--I have been very quick to attach the label 'passive agressive' to that person.
What, then, am I to do when relating with people of different cultures, people of color in particular, who interact with different cultural assumptions? Here's how Eric Law puts one of the issues:
"Verbal communication alone is a biased means of communication, favoring people who have a strong sense of power and verbal ability--the majority of whom are whites. Verbal ability is often confused with good leadership. [In fact] it constitutes only a small part of how human beings communicate. Furthermore, the degree of comfort in using verbal communication varies from culture to culture. Some cultures, especially ones that emphasize the collective over the individual, tend to use fewer words to communicate. People from these cultures assume a lot because of the long tradtition of living as collectives rather than as individuals. Therefore, much communication is done nonverbally. Silence is used a lot to communicate a variety of feelings and information. . . . For many people of color, silence communicates a wide range of emotion and information that only a person from the same cultural background can read.
On the other hand, cultures that favor the individual over the collective tend to use an abundance of words to communicate with each other. Since people in these cultures have been living as individuals and the living units are much smaller, they make fewer assumptions about each other. Therefore, they feel the need to explain everything to make sure the other understands."
Law then goes on to talk about how putting verbal communicators in a meeting with non-verbal communicators is a recipe for misunderstanding and disaster, since the verbal communicators (whites, basically) already come with the social power, and a greater inbred sense of personal power, on top of a conversational style that is more domineering. So, I can have all the goodwill and desire to hear people of color that I could hope to have (theoretically), and even in that case my act of communicating in the style I am used to will put others at a disadvantage.
This explains a ton of the frustrations I've had--to me, from my own cultural perspective and perspective of privilege, it seems 'self-evident' that we need to do a lot of explaining because how else am I going to know what you're thinking? Why go through all the difficult hoops of reading non-verbal cues, and interpreting silence, and making assumptions, when we can make the whole process easier by just coming out and saying it?
Ah, but there's that rub again--easier to me. I cannot personally imagine what it would be like to feel more natural reading the nonverbal cues in a social gathering than it is to 'just explain myself'--but for many people, it is. And for me to insist on communicating in the way that is easier for me is an exercise of power--because my culture is the one that gets to call the shots.
So at this point I'm already screaming internally, 'but isn't there a balance here? Do I really have to be expected to read minds? Not have things explained?' A couple of thoughts to that.
1)Maybe there is balance, but as someone comfortably ensconced in the dominant culture, I need to err more on the side of learning and entering into communication styles that are more uncomfortable to me. It's what my society asks people of color to do every day.
2)In my own experience, I have encountered more examples of this 'balance'--times when friends of color have sat down, talked, explained more about a certain conversation, or an underlying prejudice they sensed, or something else. But I need to be patient. It doesn't all come quickly, laid out nicely in the way or at the time that I want. It comes more slowly, over time, perhaps held back in one conversation but then alluded to a little more in a conversation a few weeks later. It's more like patiently sifting for gold nuggets in a brook, then hacking out a big chunk of gold just the size I want with a power tool.
Even as I write that last paragraph, I am not sure how much that desire reflects privilege in and of itself. What right do I have to understand the experience of people of color? I guess I don't have the right. But I do have the desire. And I want to make sure to be a good steward of things I have learned, working to actually convince, persuade, change hearts of people like me who live in comfort, and keep the systems of society in place because they work just fine for us. But it's like wading into the lake--as soon as you think you're starting to get used to the water, you find out just how much deeper it goes.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Sunday, May 20, 2007
power play
So, it's been over a year since I've been told that I ought to start blogging more. I did a couple about six months ago (or gosh, nine months ago now. This year has gone by so fast), but I haven't dug into the stuff that I'm afraid to write about--what I'm learning by living in the Rainier Valley, about race, about privilege, about how to communicate with people who have experienced different levels of social power than I have.
In fact, talking about power at all is inherently distasteful to me. I am learning to do it, and recognize it, but it still just makes me ill. Why is that? I guess I want to think that we really do start from the same basic place, my friends, the people I talk to, the people who I love and want to engage with--I come in to most conversations (I think) with the basic assumption that the person sitting across from me has just as much confidence (or more) than I do, and feels that they're just as good as I am (or better).
And yet, one of the main things I've struggled to learn this last year, as I begin to talk to people about racism, and Christian faith, and how to work for justice for all people, that I don't walk into conversations as "just me". I don't enter a conversation just as Dan, who thinks the Bible is really interesting, and can't stand putting academics up on pedestals, and who thinks that the most important things I've learned spiritually have come from friends and from prayer and from journaling, and who really wants to be on the right side of the racism issue, and who doesn't have any desire to see people of color put down, and who wants to be liked by people of color and who wants my friends of color to see me as someone on their side, who they can trust and want to be with.
Nope, I don't enter into a group, a conversation, or a church, just as that person--how I see myself. I enter as a tall white guy, who has a graduate degree with four letters (M.Div, the stupidest degree name on the planet, by the way--I guess they used the word 'divinity' a little differently back then, but now it just sounds like I'm mastering God. Which is funny.) I enter conversations as someone who never had to learn a second language, unless I felt like it, for fun, who never had to experience being 'the minority' at school, and have teachers of a different skin color talk about how they should all be really nice to me now because just a couple decades ago my parents couldn't get a drink of water at the same fountain as people of the same color as all the people around me. To put all this short, I enter into a conversation as someone with power.
That ugly, ugly word again. What does it mean? When I walk into a room I can tell people of color what to do, and for some reason they have to do it? I don't feel that kind of power. Does it mean that I have all this confidence, this great sense of self that comes from having all of society's privileges open to me? I sure don't feel that. My own experience of childhood was one of intense insecurity, and often when entering into new social situations I still feel that insecurity.
What does it mean to have power that I do not feel? That I do not know how to use? That people tell me I am using when I had no conscious intention of using it--this power that I don't know I have?
Most of what I know at this point is only intellectual--I don't really feel any of it, still don't really KNOW (in the biblical sense, heh heh) what it is. And I still have no idea how to write about it.
I'm getting that it is completely intertwined with culture. And that because people of my culture and skin color have kicked out, kicked down, made laws against, moved away from, people of other cultures and skin colors for generations, that means that my culture has become 'a norm'. So ways of speaking, (for example, speaking very explicitly about a desire, something I want from someone else), ways of learning (going through a process step by step, definining each task along the way), ways of operating in groups (wanting to see a community come to a quick, specific decision, perhaps), these things that I take all for granted as 'just the way people work'--is actually just the way that certain people work. So I can be in a conversation where the other person and I are using the same words in different ways, and there is serious misunderstanding.
Here's the rub. When that misunderstading occurs, I am much more likely than a person of color to just assume that my thinking is right. Because I never had another, dominant culture living around me and over me teaching me that my way of thinking isn't right. Because I grew up in an environment where my culture was taken for granted, so my approach, when encountering thinking radically different from my own, is to retreat easily to "well, he or she just doesn't understand".
But when people do that to you, you feel invalidated. Here's a different rub, because being part of a multicultural community, I have felt that kind of invalidation a few times. This sense that I only think the way I do because I just don't get it, and if I spend some more time here, and pay attention, then I will just get how my thinking is off. So in those situations, I feel like the one without power, because I want these people of color to like me, I want to feel respected, I want to feel like my beliefs and ways of thinking are valid and valuable.
So pretzel it back (is 'pretzel' a verb? It is now)--where is all this power I supposedly have? I have it because I can go anywhere else in the broader society and receive confirmation for my views and my emotions from people who are more like me. What I am experiencing in the Rainier Valley is what people of color must experience, constantly, in the overall culture. But for them, going through that cultural stress, and going through those feelings of they're just forcing me to 'get it' like them, is necessary to get a job, buy a home, get any kind of education--it's like society-wide required culture stress, and coupled with the conscious or sub-conscious discomfort that people of the dominant culture have towards them.
Even as I write this, it seems extremely paltry. This is fairly basic stuff in the books and the classes and the everything else on cultural competency, and yet I'm needing to keep writing it out and analyzing it because it's not sinking in on some level. How does the 'system' operate? What is 'the system'? After a few years of reading and discussing, I still don't feel like I have a solid answer to that question. The main reason that learning about racism and privilege and power is so scary for me is that it makes me feel so dense. Truly, truly dumb.
And I don't like that.
But I have to keep going.
In fact, talking about power at all is inherently distasteful to me. I am learning to do it, and recognize it, but it still just makes me ill. Why is that? I guess I want to think that we really do start from the same basic place, my friends, the people I talk to, the people who I love and want to engage with--I come in to most conversations (I think) with the basic assumption that the person sitting across from me has just as much confidence (or more) than I do, and feels that they're just as good as I am (or better).
And yet, one of the main things I've struggled to learn this last year, as I begin to talk to people about racism, and Christian faith, and how to work for justice for all people, that I don't walk into conversations as "just me". I don't enter a conversation just as Dan, who thinks the Bible is really interesting, and can't stand putting academics up on pedestals, and who thinks that the most important things I've learned spiritually have come from friends and from prayer and from journaling, and who really wants to be on the right side of the racism issue, and who doesn't have any desire to see people of color put down, and who wants to be liked by people of color and who wants my friends of color to see me as someone on their side, who they can trust and want to be with.
Nope, I don't enter into a group, a conversation, or a church, just as that person--how I see myself. I enter as a tall white guy, who has a graduate degree with four letters (M.Div, the stupidest degree name on the planet, by the way--I guess they used the word 'divinity' a little differently back then, but now it just sounds like I'm mastering God. Which is funny.) I enter conversations as someone who never had to learn a second language, unless I felt like it, for fun, who never had to experience being 'the minority' at school, and have teachers of a different skin color talk about how they should all be really nice to me now because just a couple decades ago my parents couldn't get a drink of water at the same fountain as people of the same color as all the people around me. To put all this short, I enter into a conversation as someone with power.
That ugly, ugly word again. What does it mean? When I walk into a room I can tell people of color what to do, and for some reason they have to do it? I don't feel that kind of power. Does it mean that I have all this confidence, this great sense of self that comes from having all of society's privileges open to me? I sure don't feel that. My own experience of childhood was one of intense insecurity, and often when entering into new social situations I still feel that insecurity.
What does it mean to have power that I do not feel? That I do not know how to use? That people tell me I am using when I had no conscious intention of using it--this power that I don't know I have?
Most of what I know at this point is only intellectual--I don't really feel any of it, still don't really KNOW (in the biblical sense, heh heh) what it is. And I still have no idea how to write about it.
I'm getting that it is completely intertwined with culture. And that because people of my culture and skin color have kicked out, kicked down, made laws against, moved away from, people of other cultures and skin colors for generations, that means that my culture has become 'a norm'. So ways of speaking, (for example, speaking very explicitly about a desire, something I want from someone else), ways of learning (going through a process step by step, definining each task along the way), ways of operating in groups (wanting to see a community come to a quick, specific decision, perhaps), these things that I take all for granted as 'just the way people work'--is actually just the way that certain people work. So I can be in a conversation where the other person and I are using the same words in different ways, and there is serious misunderstanding.
Here's the rub. When that misunderstading occurs, I am much more likely than a person of color to just assume that my thinking is right. Because I never had another, dominant culture living around me and over me teaching me that my way of thinking isn't right. Because I grew up in an environment where my culture was taken for granted, so my approach, when encountering thinking radically different from my own, is to retreat easily to "well, he or she just doesn't understand".
But when people do that to you, you feel invalidated. Here's a different rub, because being part of a multicultural community, I have felt that kind of invalidation a few times. This sense that I only think the way I do because I just don't get it, and if I spend some more time here, and pay attention, then I will just get how my thinking is off. So in those situations, I feel like the one without power, because I want these people of color to like me, I want to feel respected, I want to feel like my beliefs and ways of thinking are valid and valuable.
So pretzel it back (is 'pretzel' a verb? It is now)--where is all this power I supposedly have? I have it because I can go anywhere else in the broader society and receive confirmation for my views and my emotions from people who are more like me. What I am experiencing in the Rainier Valley is what people of color must experience, constantly, in the overall culture. But for them, going through that cultural stress, and going through those feelings of they're just forcing me to 'get it' like them, is necessary to get a job, buy a home, get any kind of education--it's like society-wide required culture stress, and coupled with the conscious or sub-conscious discomfort that people of the dominant culture have towards them.
Even as I write this, it seems extremely paltry. This is fairly basic stuff in the books and the classes and the everything else on cultural competency, and yet I'm needing to keep writing it out and analyzing it because it's not sinking in on some level. How does the 'system' operate? What is 'the system'? After a few years of reading and discussing, I still don't feel like I have a solid answer to that question. The main reason that learning about racism and privilege and power is so scary for me is that it makes me feel so dense. Truly, truly dumb.
And I don't like that.
But I have to keep going.
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