Roots of Racism Today

A few days ago I wondered aloud whether or not our capacity for "compassion" as a society was decreasing, or whether or not I'm just being overly sensitive. In the context of reading Weber, I was exploring some of Weber's conceptions for the disenchantment of society, such as bureaucratization and rationalization. I wrote an entire essay for my Social Studies class on why I disagreed with Weber's prognosis that bureaucratization and rationalization are disenchanting for society. Of course, I wrote in the narrower context of the roles of the politician and the scientist. Since then, I've been taken by another idea on this related problem of the disenchantment of society by thinking that people may just be withdrawing from a public life, for whatever reason, and therefore are just becoming more removed and isolated from their peers that way.

Think about it: with people living in the suburbs, or just hanging out with their own comfortable social networks and not really stretching their social boundaries, how much are people really exposed to the ethnic, cultural, economic, geographic, political, artistic and philosophical diversity around them in society? How much compassion can one feel for peers that they don't even entirely know exist, or who are almost entirely alien and foreign to them?

(In response to my musings, I've received more stories of people who have experienced and/or seen something similar. Fascinating stuff. Thank you so much for sharing with me. I really appreciate knowing that there are people out here who I can communicate with so I don't feel like I'm constantly only communicating with myself.)

In any case, one of my friends responded by asking, "How much compassion has there been in society to begin with?" In this, she was critiquing my question's implication that in order for society's ability for compassion to decrease, I had to be referring to a period of time where compassion was the norm. I've been wondering about that too; she's right. How much compassion, really, has there been in a society with a history of war, religious conflict, genocide, cheats, and colonization? The ideals that I hold in my head are either just high minded fantasies and daydreams, or something that I've only experienced on a smaller scale.

I guess I'm really remarking about how, upon leaving San Francisco, I feel that people's understanding of diversity and compassion are really different than I expected. I feel really lucky to have had a really compassionate community in high school. Compassion to me, if I can just throw out a definition, is the ability to empathize even with people that you have little understanding of, or fundamental disagreements with. A compassionate community, then, is one where disagreements and differences are tolerated, accepted, and even appreciated. Imagine what a compassionate society can be.

Truthfully, it scares me that people can cut each other off and be emotionally detached from each other. I've lived this only recently, where I fear my roommates and I (who have split up for about two to three weeks ago over fundamental differences) have little to do with one another now. I don't even think that they miss my presence, although I know that I still care for them. In any case, my example isn't exactly illustrative of the point I'm trying to make, although it is illustrative of it on a smaller scale. What I'm trying to say is that what scares me the most, is that there is a capacity in people and society to dehumanize other individuals or even other groups of people. You don't need to physically harm or disrespect someone in order to dehumanize them. Quite simply, you can shatter their dreams. You can just treat them differently, or simply ignore them. What's worse is when you actively work to suppress them.

This has happened a lot recently to many groups, but in our current American society this is happening particularly to Muslim-Americans. There's an article in the New York Times today that struck me in particular. In this case we have a Muslim-American who attempted to moderate between Muslim-Americans, Jewish-Americans, and Christians. Ultimately, her efforts were untenable, and she paid for it. Her dream was to create a school that would teach the Arabic language, just like we do with many schools for the Spanish, French, Chinese, and other languages. Religion wasn't even a consideration in the curriculum, except in the context of global studies. Yet people out there made religion an issue, and painted her as an extremist. In fact, she didn't need to be an extremist to be punished, all that people needed to do to ruin her was identify her with a group of people who the greater American society holds little compassion for.

One of these critics in particular was a Harvard grad, Daniel Pipes. In any case, here are some of his quotes:

Conceptually, such a school could be “marvelous,” Mr. Pipes wrote, but in practice, it was certain to be problematic. “Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with Pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage,” he wrote, referring to the school as a madrassa, which means school in Arabic but, in the West, carries the implication of Islamic teaching.

Mr. Pipes is perhaps best known for Campus Watch, a national initiative he created to scrutinize Middle Eastern programs at colleges and universities. The drive has accused professors of, among other things, being soft on militant Islam and sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. It has stirred widespread controversy and, in some cases, may have undermined professors’ bids for tenure.

Mr. Pipes was joined in the monitoring effort by other self-declared watchdogs of militant Islam. Their Web sites are often linked to one another and their messages interwoven. One critic, David Horowitz, founded Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, a campaign aimed at college campuses. He noted in an interview that monitors of radical Islam have increasingly trained their sights on nonviolent Muslim-Americans.

It's interesting to me how the Arabic language can automatically be defined by Islamic religious fundamentalism, and the English language not automatically identified by Christian fundamentalist evangelism. This contradiction only serves to point out the absurdity of how harshly people can treat other groups they have little understanding of, and consequently, little compassion for.

In any case, her story is a complex and complicated story. Naturally, if you have time, I encourage you to read about it and think about it.

In an odd twist of fate, she was sent to the Bronx last fall to review a small, innovative school that had opened the same month as Khalil Gibran. It also taught a foreign language: Spanish. The students seemed to be thriving. As Ms. Almontaser walked the hallways, she was shaken, she said.

“It wasn’t that I was envious that her dream materialized,” said Ms. Almontaser, referring to the principal. “It was seeing her sixth graders, her teachers, and seeing that she did it. And I didn’t get a chance.”

What is the root of the problem? Can something as simple as more compassion be the end-all cure-all of racism?