Random Thoughts: My People- The Sequel

I am posting an extension and clarification of my remarks with respect to “my people” of July 28. A very good friend of mine sent me an email with some interesting comments, so I would like to clarify my meaning with respect to “my people”.

Opinions are an inappropriate delineator for deciding who are and who are not “my people”. Opinions may separate religious and political groups, but not ethnic groups. For instance, at the 40th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday, we went to see Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) speak at a morning church service. She had me nodding and tapping my feet until she went to my wallet. Congresswoman Waters suggested that Social Security could be saved without privatization if the ceiling for capping Social Security contributions was raised to $140K of income from $90K. Oh, you should have heard the celebratory uproar from people just eager to go digging in my pockets for prescription drugs. I just sat with my hands in my lap. My aversion to high taxes does not exclude me from my people – it’s just a difference of opinion.

My friend wrote in part: “I think [humans are] designed to be extremely tribal, with every clear delineations between ‘us’ and ‘them’….This desire to put people either inside or outside a circle quickly and easily is natural, but not good.”

When I draw my tenuous lines in the sand, I am drawing them around culture, culture as the broadly defined amalgamation of beliefs, traditions, and shared history that makes us different from one another. Culture is what makes Americans different from the French different from the Japanese. Different cultures are what make diversity and multi-culturalism so appealing. I often feel that in our effort to love everyone and emphasize that everyone is the same we forget that we are all not the same and that that is okay.

A culture that has an Uncle Tom in its background is different from that has a la Malinche which is different from one that has a John Henry. Those differences are what draw circles around us. Surely I believe those circles should be porous, but they are circles just the same. Personally, I belong within many circles – geographic, collegiate, professional and cultural – each one is an important building block of who I am.

Now when I say that Condi and Clarence and some other black neocons behave in a manner that is culturally foreign, I am not trying to impose orthodoxy of thought and I am certainly not condoning those who would kick them out of the racial circle. G-d put them in the circle and only He can take them out. I do, however, reserve my right to say that from what I know of black people, I find their manner of not relating to black people to be culturally foreign. I reiterate that I firmly believe that if we do not hang together, we will hang separately. From a cushy perch up in the White House or academia it may not seem so, but none of my heroes ever left the rank-and-file behind when they became famous or wealthy and I look with derision upon anyone who does so; they are foreign to me. I don’t speak for all black people, just for myself.