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Once upon a time, when I was too young to get married, I got married anyway, and sent my life spiraling through a morass of hurt and pain... but that's another story.
This story is about the man who served as "best man" at that ill-fated wedding, a Moroccan related to the Saudi royal family, and a devout Muslim, that we called Abe because his real name was a bit of a tongue tangler. Abe was charming, and casually wealthy (so casually, it almost never showed), and fun to be with, and tried very hard to be open minded about American customs, many of which he was openly appalled by.
His opinion of American women was particularly low. "All American women, they are whores", he would say (and yes, in that stereotypically Middle Eastern sentence construction). Then he would remember I was in the room, and say, "But not you, my friend". He sincerely believed that. Despite the fact that I was "living in sin" with my future husband, he considered me a good woman, "as good as" married.
As I am an observer of human nature, I began to watch Abe interact with other American women. "All American women, they are whores", he would say, when referring, again, to some horrible indelicacy he witnessed, or watched on a TV show, or heard about third hand. Invariably, though, there would be American women in the room whom he had gotten to know, and invariably, they were excused from his blanket condemnation of American women. Invariably, he meant it.
You see, Abe was a misogynist, nationalist, religious bigot pig. He deeply believed that Americans, women, and non Muslims were inherently inferior to him, but life had this rotten habit of introducing him to people who fit one or more of those categories who was interesting, fun, intelligent, thoughtful, compassionate, loving, spiritual, all those things he valued in people. (BTW, this is not said to disparage Abe. I liked Abe a great deal, and suspect that given time and sufficient exposure, he would have eventually grown out of most of his prejudices. Alas, last I knew he was back in the Middle East somewhere doing computer programming for an oil company)
Rather than change his beliefs he, like many people with deeply held prejudices, welcomed those in groups he disapproved of into his own in-group, so that he could justify liking them while continuing to hate the group they came from. So I became an honorary Arab, an honorary man, an honorary Muslim, in his eyes, so he could justify the respect and liking he felt for me.
I have been guilty of this sort of "honorary in-group" thinking at various periods of my life, but none so significantly as the first six months or so that I started working with homeless people. Every single homeless person I met, even the criminals, even the drug addicts, even the people that in many ways I just didn't like had good, excellent human qualities, and among those qualities, invariably, was a gift for survival under the most vicious of life circumstances, not beginning or ending with their current circumstances.
I began work with a "the ones who come to me must be the 'good' ones" idea somewhat subconsciously stuck in my head. Then my inner statistician came to the fore and I realized that it was just statistically impossible that I had met only the "good" homeless people and that the "lazy, worthless" homeless people were "out there" somewhere. You know, Those People. It probably took me several more months to realize that "Those People" simply don't exist, at least not in numbers enough to count. I have met people who are both predators and prey on the streets in my city, but every single last one of them is doing the best that they can with the energy and resources they have at this time.
And "Those People"? They exist only in the imaginations of people whose philosophy is not "there but for the grace of God (or fortune's sake) go I", but "if only everyone else was just like (as privileged "good as") I am, the world would be a better place. "Those People" exist to justify oppression, to claim that those who are less fortunate, or less brave, or less intelligent, or simply had more roadblocks put in their way, are innately inferior and don't deserve what we "in-folk" deserve.
"Those People" exist in order for us to say "we deserve this thing we have that they don't, and therefore we're justified in denying them the opportunity to have the same, even if it costs little or nothing to ourselves other than a shift in philosophy. "Those People" exist in order to make us feel a little bigger about ourselves in comparison to their relative (imagined) smallness.
How does this relate to the health care debate? Do you really want to stand in line with Those People? If Those People had access to health care, they'd simply misuse it, just like Those People live the (fictional) lives of Welfare Queens (Welfare Queens are a special category of Those People). If Those People want health care, they can always use the emergency rooms. Those People shouldn't be having children anyway. Those People don't know their place. If Those People wanted health care, they should've gotten better educations, not got sick in the first place, moved out of the inner city (or deep rural area), been more like me.
And it really doesn't matter how we define in-folk and out-folk. If the in-folk have power and the out-folk (Those People) do not, institutional privilege (for in-folk) and oppression (for out-folk) occur. And when we're sitting around the living room and the polite conversation gets deep enough for the privileged mask to slip, you are sure to hear some variation of "But not you, my sweet out-group friend. You are different. (From the rest of Those People)"
This story is about the man who served as "best man" at that ill-fated wedding, a Moroccan related to the Saudi royal family, and a devout Muslim, that we called Abe because his real name was a bit of a tongue tangler. Abe was charming, and casually wealthy (so casually, it almost never showed), and fun to be with, and tried very hard to be open minded about American customs, many of which he was openly appalled by.
His opinion of American women was particularly low. "All American women, they are whores", he would say (and yes, in that stereotypically Middle Eastern sentence construction). Then he would remember I was in the room, and say, "But not you, my friend". He sincerely believed that. Despite the fact that I was "living in sin" with my future husband, he considered me a good woman, "as good as" married.
As I am an observer of human nature, I began to watch Abe interact with other American women. "All American women, they are whores", he would say, when referring, again, to some horrible indelicacy he witnessed, or watched on a TV show, or heard about third hand. Invariably, though, there would be American women in the room whom he had gotten to know, and invariably, they were excused from his blanket condemnation of American women. Invariably, he meant it.
You see, Abe was a misogynist, nationalist, religious bigot pig. He deeply believed that Americans, women, and non Muslims were inherently inferior to him, but life had this rotten habit of introducing him to people who fit one or more of those categories who was interesting, fun, intelligent, thoughtful, compassionate, loving, spiritual, all those things he valued in people. (BTW, this is not said to disparage Abe. I liked Abe a great deal, and suspect that given time and sufficient exposure, he would have eventually grown out of most of his prejudices. Alas, last I knew he was back in the Middle East somewhere doing computer programming for an oil company)
Rather than change his beliefs he, like many people with deeply held prejudices, welcomed those in groups he disapproved of into his own in-group, so that he could justify liking them while continuing to hate the group they came from. So I became an honorary Arab, an honorary man, an honorary Muslim, in his eyes, so he could justify the respect and liking he felt for me.
I have been guilty of this sort of "honorary in-group" thinking at various periods of my life, but none so significantly as the first six months or so that I started working with homeless people. Every single homeless person I met, even the criminals, even the drug addicts, even the people that in many ways I just didn't like had good, excellent human qualities, and among those qualities, invariably, was a gift for survival under the most vicious of life circumstances, not beginning or ending with their current circumstances.
I began work with a "the ones who come to me must be the 'good' ones" idea somewhat subconsciously stuck in my head. Then my inner statistician came to the fore and I realized that it was just statistically impossible that I had met only the "good" homeless people and that the "lazy, worthless" homeless people were "out there" somewhere. You know, Those People. It probably took me several more months to realize that "Those People" simply don't exist, at least not in numbers enough to count. I have met people who are both predators and prey on the streets in my city, but every single last one of them is doing the best that they can with the energy and resources they have at this time.
And "Those People"? They exist only in the imaginations of people whose philosophy is not "there but for the grace of God (or fortune's sake) go I", but "if only everyone else was just like (
"Those People" exist in order for us to say "we deserve this thing we have that they don't, and therefore we're justified in denying them the opportunity to have the same, even if it costs little or nothing to ourselves other than a shift in philosophy. "Those People" exist in order to make us feel a little bigger about ourselves in comparison to their relative (imagined) smallness.
How does this relate to the health care debate? Do you really want to stand in line with Those People? If Those People had access to health care, they'd simply misuse it, just like Those People live the (fictional) lives of Welfare Queens (Welfare Queens are a special category of Those People). If Those People want health care, they can always use the emergency rooms. Those People shouldn't be having children anyway. Those People don't know their place. If Those People wanted health care, they should've gotten better educations, not got sick in the first place, moved out of the inner city (or deep rural area), been more like me.
And it really doesn't matter how we define in-folk and out-folk. If the in-folk have power and the out-folk (Those People) do not, institutional privilege (for in-folk) and oppression (for out-folk) occur. And when we're sitting around the living room and the polite conversation gets deep enough for the privileged mask to slip, you are sure to hear some variation of "But not you, my sweet out-group friend. You are different. (From the rest of Those People)"
