Engaging Across Difference

[mellowtigger]

I've enjoyed a few short primal screams since I got home. After I realized I had been mindlessly pacing back and forth upstairs for a few minutes. Not in a bad way. It's just been a really intense few days. Even typing this post, I found myself doing similar pacing and growling occasionally.

I finished my 3rd and final day of training at work this week. It's a course called "Engaging Across Difference". It is really quite good. I am personally familiar with several minority issues myself, but this course is not information distribution on those topics. It's also not that intimidating role play stuff either. It's a self-examination adventure with communication benefits.

In spite of several decades of experience, I learned a new descriptive language. Each person has multiple group associations with a "power UP" and a "power DOWN" group within their society. Depending on the local norms, for example, old age might confer an increase in prestige and authority. In other norms, old age might confer a decrease because it is assumed as frail, outdated, and incompetent. Being in a power UP category will grant benefits and the authority to share those benefits (or not) with people in the power DOWN group.

Here is one example of activities we performed while using this nomenclature. The leaders put sheets of paper on the wall then gave each sheet a title for a group identity. There are many possibilities, but our session considered:

• MALE,
• HETEROSEXUAL,
• ABLED (body and mind),
• CISGENDER (as opposed to transgender),
• CHRISTIAN, and
• MIDDLE-CLASS (I think that was the name?)

We considered those titles and chose which one of them we wanted to represent as a member of the privileged power up group. I chose the MALE group. Each group wrote down positive statements about things it was safe for them to assume they could do because of their group. Afterwards, we all roamed the room and wrote down additional statements on all of those sheets, BUT... this time if we were part of the power down counterpart to that group, then we used a different color to write our statements about what those privileged members could enjoy. It was fascinating to see the differences in perspective represented by those colors. For example, on the HETEROSEXUAL sheet, I wrote (in the power down color, because I am not heterosexual) that I could enjoy visiting my partner in the hospital. Nobody from the power up group was familiar enough to recognize that privilege as a benefit. It's just assumed without awareness.

And that's the point of the exercise. The whole 3-day training. We explored our own identities, we added our understanding of other identities, we compared the differences. For each of our own privileged categories, we recognize that others have to ask and work for the same benefits. Benefits that everyone deserves.

I also had a profound realization for my power up categories that there is a strong appeal towards the "simpler" state of easy prejudicial answers. They are short-sighted, they are short-term solutions, and they benefit only the existing power up group... but they are simple. That is the entirety of their allure.  Authoritarianism over a power down group is a whole lot easier to adopt than I thought. Living here in the #WarzoneInMinneapolis has taught me my vulnerability to this seductive thinking.

• I want the shooting to stop,
• I want the killing to stop,
• I want the shouting to stop,
• I want the speeding cars to stop, and
• I want the loud car music that makes my house windows rattle to stop.

Meaningful solutions are too slow to arrive, so I start considering those seductive and simple solutions instead: Bring on the surveillance state, bring on the state guard troops, and bring on the traffic checkpoints at every intersection. Just get those people to stop misbehaving.  Simple.  Wrong-headed. But very, very simple.  In the past, I didn't have to actively counter such thoughts within my own mind. Another warzone resident recently said to me:

"Living here really challenges your progressive ideals, doesn't it?"

Yes.  It does.

I'm sorry. I'll try to be better.  In my calmer moments, I do know better.  A former landlord recently pointed me to this YouTube video subtitled "How to radicalize a normie".  It specifically mentions those simple answers that are so readily available for complex situations.  It is exactly those false solutions that are offered.  That's how it works.  And it does work.  Also this week, a former white power skinhead talked to Minnesota locals about how to enable youth to leave neo-Nazi groups and maybe even prevent them from joining in the first place.

I'm sad to report that I have firsthand experience with the frustration that can be exploited for harmful purposes.  I'm a member of several power down groups.  I know the power down struggle.  It is frustrating to see so plainly my own vulnerability, even in what is my power up identity.  Simple solutions for frustrating problems.  That's all it takes.

As one person frequently tweets,

"be brave enough to be kind"

I'm not sure if it's buddhist, but the buddhists usually sound correct on this kind of stuff.