United we stand, divided we fall

At last Tuesday’s school board meeting, public comment centered largely around how we might best handle controversial politics in our schools, particularly in reference to student clubs at CB West.

Time-travel back to 1777 and Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. He wrote:

We the General Assembly of Virginia do enact [Be it enacted by the General Assembly] that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

Jefferson believed that religious freedom was in essence freedom of thought, and that we all must possess the right to choose our religious beliefs for ourselves, according to our lights. Clearly here we see his intent that nobody ever should suffer for their religious beliefs.

Yet here we are at a time when many people are, in fact, blamed, threatened, and menaced because of their religious beliefs and ethnic identities. 

We thought of all this as we listened to public comment and the statements of our school board on Wednesday. The conflict between freedom of speech for students and the need of marginalized students to go to school in safety and with dignity continue to cause passionate concern. 

A number of students who belong to the Muslim Student Association spoke of their othering, the insults and slights they endure, the scrutiny they have been subjected to, the distrust and hostility they confront, even as they grieve and protest events in Gaza.

A number of community members spoke of relatives who perished in the Holocaust or who barely escaped. They spoke of the anguish and fear caused by rising antisemitism and the October attacks in Israel.

We honor this suffering. We stand in humble, back-row solidarity with all those whose ancestors and themselves have suffered attacks on their being.

This is what matters: that we ALL stand against hatred and the descent to violence no matter who is the target this time.

Whether it’s Rwanda in 1994 or Armenia in 1918, the pogroms in Russia or deliberate spread of disease to native North Americans, or the dehumanization of Africans and their theft into enslavement—we’ve seen this sick progression before. 

It takes the same form the world over:

1. Identifying some “other”: A group that is regarded as less than, strange, foreign, abnormal, not real people—as opposed to the real people of the group that holds the power.

2. Scapegoating or devaluing: The othered group is blamed for all the worst ills in the community or deemed unworthy of their own riches, land, resources, or the fruits of their own labor.

3. Demonizing: The group is separated, ostracized, and depicted as villainous, lost to decency, irremediably low and immoral.

4. Dehumanizing: The group is associated with vermin, animals, or monsters. The defamation that they are subhuman is stated directly.

5. Violence: Once the first four steps have been completed successfully, it appears actually right and good to drive out, exterminate, or enslave the othered group.

This is the problem: Some people believe that some people are not fully people.

It’s a human failing. It began in antiquity and continues to the present day. But just because it’s as old as we are and pervasively widespread across time and place, that does not mean we cannot confront it and call it out for what it is: tribalism descending to hatred.

What we cannot and must not do is to regard this hatred as worse when it happens to someone we know and like and not as bad when it’s someone we don’t know or to whom we have no connection. This sequence of hatred is always dangerous and evil, no matter the target. Those who have been subjected to this sequence of hatred know this better than anyone: it’s the descent down the scale that constitutes the evil, regardless of which group has been targeted this time.

When someone tells you that this group deserves our help combatting hatred, but that group does not, they are leading you down the steps. They’re beginning with step 1: othering.

That’s what some folks are doing with our current controversy. They want to raise up one group as the real victims and put down another group as unworthy of our protection, our welcome, our acceptance. Straight out of the dictators’ plan book, it degrades us all to accept hatred of any of us.

We say to our community: it’s useless and offensive to identify the “true victims” here. Any student or group of students who feel shut out or menaced need our help to know that we value and support them.

Those who want to defeat us need first to divide us. Democracy stands on a foundation of equal rights and equal protection for ALL citizens. If we begin to bicker about which citizens are more equal than others, we are lost.

AKA designs

We do our best work when we educate, when we rise up to inform students about best civic practices. We can teach them and ourselves to recognize the steps downward to violence. We can model our tolerance and even love for one another across our community. 

Back to Jefferson:

We have solved, by fair experiment, the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries.

Perhaps the single thing which may be required to others before toleration to them would be an oath that they would allow toleration to others.