Over the last week, I have had an opportunity to confront, up close and personal, prejudice at it's root. It has slapped me in the face, pummeled me in that part of my psyche where I make the most basic decisions that guide my life, and turned my ideas of who am I and what I stand for upside down. It is a shock, it saddens me, and I am left wondering what I really stand for, if, when the chips are truly down, I can't stand for what I know in my heart and mind and soul is right.
This brief, but compelling experience, made me understand, perhaps for the first time, just how deeply we are divided, what an extremely arduous task it is to overcome the basic life experiences that serve to separate us, and just how far we have to go in order to achieve anything like fairness and equality. It took a brief phone call, which forced me to step out of my personal comfort zone for a few minutes, to open my eyes to my own flawed thinking, and my own instinctive personal biases, setting off a crisis of conscience in my soul that I not only didn't expect, but didn't even realize I could have.
Most people who know me well would probably say that I am fairly color-blind. I have never been, or so I thought, especially aware of skin color or racial or ethnic background when meeting people. Like everyone, I make snap judgments when meeting someone new, based on a list of mostly nebulous criteria. But I judge most people, or at least, so I believed, on the same set of criteria, even if I don't have it strictly laid out in my mind. I have been intolerant, in fact, of people who looked at ethnicity and made judgments based on that alone.
At times in my life, I have been friends with people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, and I always found it interesting, rather than an obstacle or a drawback, that we had different backgrounds and life experiences. At one point in time, I was even married to someone from another culture, and whose ethnicity is a part of my children's heritage, even though he is long gone.
I thought I had experienced the worst side of racial bias, not only in the way my marriage was viewed by other people when we were out in public, but also with friends from other backgrounds. I have been close friends with women who wouldn't allow me to get out of the car when I drove them home from work, and who refused to go shopping with me for my own safety. I have seen intolerance, I have felt the sting of it against me, and I thought I understood it from the inside out.
I now realize, belatedly, that I foolishly prided myself on my ability to overlook what is, after all, a basic human characteristic. I now realize the reality - you cannot overlook it, because it is part of each person's life experience, and goes into making up how they act and react to the world. That reality is part of each person's life filter, for better and for worse, and to try to ignore it means you are ignoring something fundamental in a person's understanding of the world.
This earthquake in my own psyche occurred in the most innocuous of ways, as they so often do. Last week, in the course of my business day, I had the opportunity to converse with someone from a totally different background - not only the color of our skin was opposite, but our life experiences were clearly a world apart as well. It was an eye opener for me; one which, although clearly needed, turned out to be pretty uncomfortable.
This person called asking for assistance, and my job was to provide that assistance. It is something I do many times a day, for a large variety of people, and I don't generally think about their ethnic background, unless there is a language barrier that makes it difficult to converse.
The woman I was speaking with had definite ideas about the help she wanted, and how she wanted it delivered. And that is where the disconnect began for me. Because she wanted me to come and call on her in her home, to speak to her in person, and to help her sort through the complex maze of information she had received, so that she could make the best decision for her.
The details of where and how I went wrong with her are really not important, because one reason is as bad as another, when it comes to doing the wrong thing. Ultimately, I agreed to meet with her, but reluctantly, and with a certain amount of trepidation, not because I thought I couldn't do the job, but because I felt afraid to go to the part of the city where she lives.
I can make plenty of excuses for myself which sound convincing, if I don't look too closely at the underlying assumptions. The crime rate is high. She wasn't particularly cooperative on the phone. It's a long way from my office, and will waste my time, because she probably won't go with me in the end, anyway. Valid excuses all, and most people wouldn't fault me for using them to escape from a situation that makes me uncomfortable.
But the actual truth, deep down inside where it doesn't normally get exposed to scrutiny, was that I made assumptions based on her location, economics, and the way she dealt with me on the phone, which were more about stereotype than my experience with or knowledge of her.
Because I didn't have any.
I had one brief phone call, and from those few minutes of fleeting conversation, made all kinds of assumptions to justify what I wanted to do, rather than what I needed to do. Or more to the point, what she needed me to do.
I am ashamed of myself, in a way I do not want to be. I know better than to make assumptions based on where someone lives, or the type of car they drive, or how they dress, or the language they speak. I am a more tolerant, more understanding, more compassionate, more enlightened person than that, at least in my own mind. I find it almost unbearable to realize that, in the moment of trial, instead of following the example of Jesus, reaching out to the disenfranchised, I became a Jonah, attempting to run away from the responsibility that had been placed upon my shoulders.
Like the Biblical Jonah, I considered the options for reneging on the agreement. I asked for someone else to be assigned to the job, giving the reasons, all legitimate and valid, why I was the wrong person for it. I thought about simply not showing up, my own personal storm raging around me all the while. I worried and wondered and fretted all weekend about what I should do, how I should deal with this situation that had so unexpectedly arisen, and which made me so nervous and reluctant.
It is humbling to be smacked in the face with one's own wrong minded thinking. To be forced to own the wrong is difficult, uncomfortable. But after some time to think over my initial response, I realized that this woman needed my help, she had asked for it, and I had no excuse not to give it. So I determined that the correct, and only, course of action for me was to simply keep my word and fulfill the promise I had made to her. My own conscience ultimately led me to realize that I could only do the right thing, which was to show up and do what I could to help her sort out the various options available to her, and to assist her in choosing the one that was best for her.
And that is where this story takes a different track, becoming one of redemption and grace. I received a phone call from her the morning I was to visit, asking if I would still be coming. I could hear the mistrust in her voice, and when I told her I would, indeed, be coming, her whole tone and approach to me changed. Suddenly, she was worried about my ability to find her home, whether or not I could make it on my own, if it was, indeed, convenient for me to visit her that day. I assured her I would be there at the appointed time, and she sounded happy and relived.
When I arrived, she was waiting for me in her driveway, waving and calling out to me, happily anticipating the arrival of someone who not only agreed to help her, but who actually carried through on the promise. It was bittersweet for me to be received with such graciousness and joy, when I had started out so begrudgingly.
At that moment, I realized how the difference in our life experiences was the real chasm that divided us. Because she has lived where she lives, and grown up as she has, she has learned never to trust anyone, and that everyone will let her down. It is not the color of her skin that makes her different, it is her whole experience, of which that is a part, which has affected her approach to the world, and other people in it. She can no more ignore that reality which she has lived than I can ignore the realities that have shaped my own skeptical approach to the world. The chasm that divides us is also one for which we can find a bridge, because, in the end, the very differences that divide us also have commonalities.
I had a delightful visit with her, helped her decide what was most important for her, and ultimately, as I knew it would be, we decided that she needed something other than what I could do for her. But the real story, the payment of my commission, came in the moment when I understood that the life experiences that divided us were also what make each one of us vulnerable to the mistakes and rash decision making to which I almost fell prey.
Sometimes, when you take a chance on someone, it pays benefits you never imagined. I have carried that experience with me all week, and pondered the lesson I learned. I hope I now understand how much more complex my own decision making process is than I realized. When I am talking with someone, I know I need to reach them where they are, not where I am, because that is where understanding begins.
That old commercial told us to "Reach out and touch someone." The lovely woman I met this week reached out to me and touched my heart unexpectedly, and I will carry that with me for the rest of my life. The only regret I have is that I ever hesitated in the first place.
Don't be afraid to find a bridge to someone different. You never know until you reach across just how narrow the chasm might be. And you might find a bridge is already under your feet.
