little by little

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.