| We’ve been polarized recently, haven’t we? I have my own feelings and opinions, but both my undergraduate and graduate degrees include Sociology minors so I tend to look at patterns. First, I have to say that though I am light-skinned I have been with brown people when the police arrive. I have even stood between officers and one of these groups, talking slowly and reasonably, hands carefully still. I have accompanied dark friends to the bank to cash a check, friends who had more money and resources than me, but not the assumptions that are companion to my color. More importantly, I saw how my father was treated. These patterns are invisible if one doesn’t live in their matrix. There is no ill will on the part of others including police, no hatred, only a collision of realities. I think of this as similar to some descriptions of quantum theory – loops of reality interacting but separate; each perception correct but not the whole. |  |
But let’s come at this another way. In a legislative meeting one time long ago I heard someone refer to the “sin taxes” – alcohol, tobacco – that sort of thing. Later, I applied this thought to the money businesses of tribes. Tribes, who lived for hundreds of years at the margins of other systems, barely surviving, and sometimes failing even at this. There are few ways tribes can compete in the larger economy so their focus drifted toward providing a route to “sin,” or cheaper sin, for the mainstream, dominant culture - alcohol and tobacco minus state tax, and now gambling.
The nature of these enterprises have in some instances further alienated tribal communities. Of course tribal wealth brings resentment in itself, resentment from those who are more comfortable with a barely surviving relic of the past. Defeated. Powerless. Quaint. But as an employer? As a group from which to solicit charitable donations? Not so much. Still, what happens in a community that services “the sins” of another? In a sociological way this further separates, affirms old stereotypes, or maybe not so old.
From a tribal view however the revenue has meant clean water, new sewer systems, education, and, yes, expanded law enforcement. Even cultural resurgence.
Let me push this thought beyond what I should. I hate hip-hop, though in truth I am not quite sure what it actually is. However, because my reaction is so strong one day I forced myself to listen. One song was a translation of something out of Mexico, so maybe that is some whole other category of music. Nevertheless from my experience with tribes I think I understood something – suppressed people, one’s excluded from realistic economic opportunity, alienated from social and cultural place - these create an alternative. They develop their own laws and values, their own art and ideas of beauty, their own music. And their own economy, based in the same fundamental ideas as the dominate culture’s idea of the “sin tax.”
You see where I am going. Break-away cultures. Evolving survival strategies. Alternative structures. Defiant. Secretive. Outside the system.
So let’s keep going. As an addiction specialist, and in my work with abused children, I have worked with police officers, entered houses where it wasn’t safe, encountered some of the most dangerous people you’ll ever meet. What impressed me most was not so much the danger, but the routine horror. These stories lodge in the mind, and sometimes seem even to scar the spirit. Most people don’t encounter this reality of extreme sadism and cruelty. Officers do this for us. They know things we don’t. A policeman once told me about those few minutes of adjustment he allowed himself after work and before he entered the home where his children live. He knew stuff that he could only share with other officers. An alternate reality. Secretive. Loyal.
Yes institutional racism is as alive and well as it ever was. Look at the stats, at the pictures of dark-skinned people working for Depression Era wages in private prisons. Examine the contracts of these prisons, the guarantees by the State for a percentage of filled beds. Think about the mental health diagnoses that are not allowed inside some prisons – no PTSD as that would seem to justify the crime, and therefore no appropriate medication. Etc.
And the stories – not only from inmates – about what happens in prison. Horrifying. Not limited to dark sites in foreign countries. Some prisons have such nasty reputations that many professional providers will not work in them. Dark. Evil. You don’t want to know. Your tax dollars at work.
So, because of my experience I can move easily to rage, but I need to acknowledge the complexity. I need to make room for another experience, another reality. Our hope is not in what we say, but in listening. Really listening.
And maybe we should wonder just a bit about who benefits by our division.
The nature of these enterprises have in some instances further alienated tribal communities. Of course tribal wealth brings resentment in itself, resentment from those who are more comfortable with a barely surviving relic of the past. Defeated. Powerless. Quaint. But as an employer? As a group from which to solicit charitable donations? Not so much. Still, what happens in a community that services “the sins” of another? In a sociological way this further separates, affirms old stereotypes, or maybe not so old.
From a tribal view however the revenue has meant clean water, new sewer systems, education, and, yes, expanded law enforcement. Even cultural resurgence.
Let me push this thought beyond what I should. I hate hip-hop, though in truth I am not quite sure what it actually is. However, because my reaction is so strong one day I forced myself to listen. One song was a translation of something out of Mexico, so maybe that is some whole other category of music. Nevertheless from my experience with tribes I think I understood something – suppressed people, one’s excluded from realistic economic opportunity, alienated from social and cultural place - these create an alternative. They develop their own laws and values, their own art and ideas of beauty, their own music. And their own economy, based in the same fundamental ideas as the dominate culture’s idea of the “sin tax.”
You see where I am going. Break-away cultures. Evolving survival strategies. Alternative structures. Defiant. Secretive. Outside the system.
So let’s keep going. As an addiction specialist, and in my work with abused children, I have worked with police officers, entered houses where it wasn’t safe, encountered some of the most dangerous people you’ll ever meet. What impressed me most was not so much the danger, but the routine horror. These stories lodge in the mind, and sometimes seem even to scar the spirit. Most people don’t encounter this reality of extreme sadism and cruelty. Officers do this for us. They know things we don’t. A policeman once told me about those few minutes of adjustment he allowed himself after work and before he entered the home where his children live. He knew stuff that he could only share with other officers. An alternate reality. Secretive. Loyal.
Yes institutional racism is as alive and well as it ever was. Look at the stats, at the pictures of dark-skinned people working for Depression Era wages in private prisons. Examine the contracts of these prisons, the guarantees by the State for a percentage of filled beds. Think about the mental health diagnoses that are not allowed inside some prisons – no PTSD as that would seem to justify the crime, and therefore no appropriate medication. Etc.
And the stories – not only from inmates – about what happens in prison. Horrifying. Not limited to dark sites in foreign countries. Some prisons have such nasty reputations that many professional providers will not work in them. Dark. Evil. You don’t want to know. Your tax dollars at work.
So, because of my experience I can move easily to rage, but I need to acknowledge the complexity. I need to make room for another experience, another reality. Our hope is not in what we say, but in listening. Really listening.
And maybe we should wonder just a bit about who benefits by our division.
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