Sitting on the beach the other day, two girls throwing rocks into the bay had lime green shirts on that proclaimed that they were Iowa girls.
In my mind I went back in time to a road trip out west a number of years ago. We had been heading west from Minneapolis. We stopped in a small town in Iowa to eat at a restaurant close to the highway.
Another family with children was eating nearby. One of my children, who will not be identified, looked over at them and said, "So that is what people from Iowa look like!"
Surprised I pointed out that they didn't look different than us at all. He hesitantly agreed.
It is always a fight to keep from looking at the world as "us" versus "them". We continue to define the world as those other than us. And we try to stack the deck to show our rightness and other's "wrongness".
Politicians and religious leaders have used it with great success. We are divided between rich and poor, saved and unsaved, hard working and welfare, catholic and protestant, privilege and common, faithful and infidel, red and blue, righteous and heathen. And we are encouraged to choose a side and look down on the other side.
“So that's what humans look like.”
Yes, and they don't look too different than me.
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2 comments:
I really like this post. Greg and I often talk about how 'them' is really 'us' and it IS this mentality which is setting up barriers and creating this idea of superiority.
Great way of saying it! :)
Yeah, I'm totally guilty of this "us" and "them" thing. Especially when it comes to politics. *hangs head in shame* And it is that mentality that starts wars, separates families and friends, builds barriers and fuels disdain for others who we perceive to think they are better or worse or (sometimes even) equal to us. Perception...I recall learning something about this in a class I took called Interpersonal Relations...hmm...could it be that filters play a part in this?
For example I was working at my last job as a manager and we were having to find people who were "blue collar workers". My co-worker came up to me and said, "I ran a list of names for possible blue collar workers." I asked him, "How?" He said, "I just ran names of males who have no college education." I just sat there staring at him. I finally muttered, "Excuse me?"
"Well, you know that almost all blue collar workers have no college education. They aren't exactly smart."
I have never, in my life, wanted to punch and shake a co-worker...until that moment. I took a deep breath and tried to be calm with him as I explained that I am a child of a blue collar worker. And, despite what he may think my father is incredibly articulate and intelligent. His supervisors, and many of his co-workers have Bachelors if not Master degrees from large universities. I explained, ever so kindly, that I grew up on the Iron Range where nearly all jobs were "blue collar" type jobs, and every single millwright had to go to school to learn his/her job. I then asked him if he considered ER doctors, Nursing Assistants, Construction Company Owners, Builders, Pressman, and the like "uneducated" as he put it. He tried to explain he meant "people like mechanics" not "professionals".
I never did understand his position or why he saw "blue collar" workers that way. It really made me angry and I was never really super nice to him ever again after that. I will always look at him as the person who looks down on people like my father and myself as being uneducated, inarticulate and unintelligent.
Filters. *shakes head* I never knew just how different each person's could be.
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