Are they black? Are they a woman? Are they homosexual? Are they young/old? While any and all of these will tend to influence me to one degree or another, I try to always push these labels aside and see the real person underneath.
Sometimes people ARE defined by these labels. And old person that constantly reminds everyone that they are older than them, that they've experienced and done more than any body else. That they have already heard every argument, and therefore they know all the answers and if you'd only shut up and listen to them, that you too one day might be wise. Or a person of color that sees everything in the light OF their color. They see discrimination everywhere and will constantly remind those around them that they are being prosecuted for nothing other than their ethnicity.
Those are the type of people I try to avoid. If their world is constantly and utterly defined by one fact in their life, then how can I possibly fit in without being a supporting player or a villain? I'm not saying that they are completely wrong... but there is far more to life than any one thing.
For instance. I am a man. I am white. I am straight (I'm going to gloss over the whole 'Caitlyn' part as she isn't really relevant to this discussion). But none of these things define me. If they do, its simply because someone doesn't know me. But then again, it's not as though I am attacked for any of these things. I'm not held back as many women are by my gender. I'm not disliked or hated because of my race like many people of color are. I'm not persecuted and denied basic rights like homosexuals are.
People that do live by their labels and try to label everybody around them are not often (if ever) on my friend list. I just can't stand to be around people like that. I think it may be one of the most idiotic stupid things that can ever be. For example, let's look at homophobia. How exactly is some other person's sexual orientation going to affect my life in any way? If I only know one thing about a person and that thing is that they are homosexual, then I don't really know anything about them. I can't judge them using only that criteria. Are they a 'good' person? Are they a jerk? Are they hateful? Are they optimistic? Are they intelligent? These things could all help me 'judge' them or at least base an opinion of them. But being homosexual? All that tells me is what the gender of their +1 will be.
Race is almost exactly the same. Tell me somebody is african american, and I can't tell you anything other than the color of their skin (and really I couldn't even say that much).
I see so much effort from so many people and so many groups going into hating somebody using facts that can't possibly be used to know whether you'd like or dislike them, let alone love or hate.
But possibly the most insidious thing is when you see these hateful things said or thought by people that I love and respect.
By my family.
You've heard me talk about family, especially my immediate family. My mother and brothers. I would stop bullets for them using only my body as a shield. I would crawl through fire to help them. I've always thought of my love for them as something that could never be changed. It was concrete. Granite. Solid. Never ending and never wavering.
But.... maybe I have to reconsider that. I'm looking at that never ending wall of love closer and closer, and I'm starting to see some cracks in it.
My older brother isn't exactly what you would call a compassionate person. In many ways he can be quite hateful. But for the most part his 'hate' comes form firmly believing in his own ways and 'knowing' that everyone else is simply wrong. He hates capitalism and hates that anything can ever be considered of worth when he can't see the worth. For instance, he hates that athletes get paid millions of dollars. I'll admit that on a scale of worth, atheletes are over paid. Doctors, Fire Fighters, Police, Teachers, Soldier... these should all be paid far more in my opinion than a basketball player. But I know that pay isn't based on worth. Pay is based on what the people WHO pay WILL pay. Seeing as hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of fans will pay high ticket prices to see these athletes in action= (and for merchandise... can't forget the goods!), then the owner of the team can justify paying them millions and millions of dollars.
So even though my brother can be a hateful and honestly quite stubborn person, I still love him. But then there is the underlying racism. I don't think he would consider himself racist. I don't even think I could call him that while being completely honest... but he certainly does use racist language and is far quicker to dislike someone of color than he is someone that is white.
A big recent example is the manager of the store I used to work for (and where my brother continues to work). He's black. He's also intelligent, quick to like, slow to anger, compassionate, and a generally good person. He is also very optimistic... almost to a fault. My younger brother worked for him as well, and was promised that he could get into management. That never worked out and eventually my brother left for another job. I hired on just a few weeks before my younger brother left, and since I never wanted to move up in this job (I took it while going to nursing school) I never got upset by the manager's optimism.
Eventually my older brother came on the staff and for awhile he had nothing bad to say about the manager. But my older brother's value system and his opinion on what exactly a store manager can and can't do got in the way. Part of my brother's value system says that if you work hard, if you work efficiently and effectively, then you should be rewarded. Rewarded with more responsibility, pay, and respect. My brother's value system has nothing to say on the subject of being 'nice' to other people. Sure, he is nice enough to customers as that's part of the job. But, according to my brother, being nice to co-workers isn't part of the job.
The store manager at first really liked my older brother. He especially liked how hard my brother worked. Whether it was unloading the truck, organizing the back rooms (warehouse?), putting products up on the shelf or setting up the ad (putting the sale stickers up), my older brother was faster and more accurate than anybody else. Eventually the manager said that he was going to get my brother into a lead or even a management position. My brother agreed, as that seemed like a good reward for being a hard worker.
That's where the wheels fell off the wagon. The manager had almost no power in promoting anybody. There aren't really any 'lead' positions in the store. At least not positions with an official title or any kind of pay bump. And he was just as powerless to get people into management positions as anybody else was. This is a large corporate store and they have their own methodology of selecting managers. So when nothing happened, my brother started to get bitter. Then hateful. And then he started using that hateful word.
Nigger.
Now if you asked my brother he'd say he is simply using the 'true' definition of the word. According to an old dictionary, nigger is defined as "A stupid and ignorant person". That definition is still listed in some dictionaries, but it's far below the definitions as an offensive word to describe people of color. My brother would occasionally use it against stupid white people, but almost all the time it was used to describe black people he didn't like. It's as though my brother knew it was a racist term, but didn't want to admit that using it made him a racist.
I cringe every time I hear my brother say that word. Even if I could accept that old, no longer relevant definition... even if I could think it acceptable to use that word against honestly stupid and ignorant people of color... those don't apply to this manager. This manger is intelligent, creative, and mostly good willed. If anything that good willed nature worked against him. He over promised what he could deliver to my brother who saw that promise as a well deserved and earned promotion. When it didn't come through... when none of my brother's suggestions came to fruition (suggestions like firing all the lazy people), he started to dislike the manager. Only then did he decide to start calling him a nigger. It's not like my brother suddenly started thinking the manager was stupid or ignorant... he just wanted to use a hateful word for someone that he was starting to hate.
If this were a friend, I honestly think I'd end the friendship. If I couldn't confront him about it, then I'd simply stop hanging out with him and let the relationship wither and die. But it's my brother. I love my brother. That kind of racism isn't unique to my brother. My grandfather was racist in the same way. Sure, he would say that he had no opinion on black people, but Tiger Woods was that 'nigger' that tried to play golf. My grandfather at least had history on his side. Right or wrong, racism was far more accepted in his time than it should be now. My brother has no such excuse. Even my beloved mother has problems with race. In 2008 in the privacy of the election box, she let her racism shine. She honestly disliked Senator McCain and couldn't imagine him as president. She liked everything that Senator Barack Obama talked about. She decided not to vote for president though, as she just couldn't imagine a black man as president.
Then there is the homophobia. I can't think of a term to properly describe it though... it's not a 'fear' of homosexual people that my family exhibit.... its the same sentiment as racism. They dislike them. They mock them. They hate them.
A couple years ago, my second cousin came out to her mother. She is a lesbian. She had a girlfriend and they were going to go to the senior prom together. My cousin had what could honestly be called a conniption, telling her daughter that she wasn't gay and that she was acting this way only to hurt her. I'm not saying that no teenager acted a certain way to upset their parents... but saying so in front of your daughter's girlfriend? Acting angry at the thought of your daughter not sharing which gender to share her love with?
I got to hear all the gory details from my aunt and my mother. After telling me about it they both looked at me and asked if I could believe it. I had to think long and hard before answering. My initial reaction was to say "Good for her. She's found and accepted herself and hopefully one day her mother will continue to lover her as a daughter and decide not to hate her for not being straight." But obviously this wasn't the response my mother and aunt were expecting. They wanted me to nod along and show some disgust if not outright rage at the thought that any family member of mine could possibly be... The Gay.
I think I ultimately just nodded and said "Good for her" and let them think I was talking about the mother. I know that my own mother later realized that I was in fact talking about the daughter as I followed this statement with getting up and leaving their presence for the remainder of the day. After a tumultuous few months my 2nd cousin ('The Gay One' according to my aunt... her name is rarely spoken by my family) told her parents that she was moving out west after high school with her girlfriend. She was going to attend a community college there. The whole family acted as though this was a stupid move... but I could only see a young woman wanting to leave a place where she was hated because of her sexuality. Sure, leaving your family is hard, but it can't be all that difficult when your family hates part of you.
Sadly most of the news I get on my 2nd cousin is filtered through my aunt. Naturally I hear about all the bad things going on, and these things are all told in relation to how she is gay. As if being a lesbian made her have a car accident or get bad grades. Eventually my 2nd cousin returned to her parents home. When I was told this my brother chimed in "Oh, did she break up with her lesbo girlfriend, or did she realize that she wasn't gay after all'. There wasn't a response from my mother or aunt.... just giggles.
I tried to talk to my mother once a few years back about gay marriage. I knew that she wouldn't be a vocal supporter of it, but was surprised to learn that she actively believed on restricting gay people from being married. She was as proud of our state having an anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment as I was embarrassed by the same fact. I kept trying to feel her out... trying to let her say what exactly was wrong with gay people getting married. I shouldn't have been surprised that it came down to the fact that my mother thought it was "just wrong". That her religion said so, and therefore they shouldn't be allowed to get married.
Even from a devoutly religious person, that don't make sense to me. They bible says that we should worship their God, and that doing otherwise was wrong... but they don't seem to have a problem with Jewish, Muslim or people of other religions getting married. Some people interpret the bible as saying that marriage is for having children... but they don't have a problem with people getting married knowing that they can't have children. Or getting married and simply not having children.
I let the discussion go as I was afraid that I'd actually kill my mother's 'religious' argument and eventually force her to admit that she was just simply being homophobic. That she was being a bigot. That she didn't like the idea, let alone the reality, of homosexual people AS people and that only her mistrust, hatred, and bigotry was keeping her from accepting that two people who love each other should be as welcome in the state institution of marriage, no matter what gender they are.
But even beyond these overt (to anyone willing to admit to them) forms of bigotry, I see honest hate in my family. Hate for people that they just don't like.
During the same conversation where my aunt and mother giggled at my 2nd cousins 'lesbo' relationship breaking up, they told me about my cousin (my aunts son) and his daughter. Before I tell you what they said (and it's the main reason I'm writing this post), let me tell you about my cousin and his daughter.
My cousin is an ass. He's still my cousin, and I still love him, but man he can be a real asshole. I'm sure you know people like him. Whenever good things happen to him they are always the result of his hard work, effort, and rewards for him being a good person. Whenever bad things happen to him, it's because people are out to screw him. His way of defining people is simply; if you agree with him then you are either smart or a good person. If you disagree, then you are either stupid or a bad person. He's cocky. I mean REALLY cocky. He'll brag all day long about the 'things' he has. And if you mention something nice of yours... something that perhaps is better than his... he'll make sure to point out every flaw and try to make you see that what he has is actually better. If that doesn't work he'll move on to something else that he has just to show that he has something better than you. I've tried being nice and complimenting him on things (he DOES have some nice things), and I've tried ignoring him. It doesn't mater though... he'll just keep talking and talking and talking until he finally has to leave. He's been this way since he was a teenager. I swear, once my brothers and I started playing Dungeons and Dragons, he just had to follow suit. Where we scraped out money together to get the new 3rd edition rules book and slowly added other books and monster manuals, he went out and bought every book and manual just so he could have the best most complete set.
The only problem.. he didn't play Dungeons and Dragons. None of his friends did, and he wasn't part of our group. He would have been more than welcome to play with us, but he didn't want to. He just wanted to have something better than we did. \
It should be no surprise that his daughter is quite a bit like him. She acts nice and sweet around us at the holidays (the only time we see her), but she's been kicked out of school for violence and bad grades. Where my cousin will sit and boastfully brag about his 'things', his daughter will talk about her things in a sickly sweet voice. But both are doing the same thing... they just took different roads to brag city.
Anyway, she eventually went on to college and found the whole experience difficult to deal with. I don't hear much about it from my cousin, because it's not something he can brag about... especially when he isn't helping her out financially (that part wouldn't fit into his narrative about how he loves and helps his daughters out any way he can and how he makes all these huge piles of cash). So my news generally comes from my mother, who gets it from my aunt.
Well a few days ago I was listening to my mom and my brother talk about how Christmas went (remember, I was in prison for Christmas Day). They told me about the food and good times and then complained about my cousin and his daughter. Evidently she wasn't there and my cousin was talking shit about her. I knew that she had recently had her college loan canceled (she dropped so many classes that she no longer qualified for them... and had already spent all the loaned money), and I figured that he was bitching about that. But no... he was complaining how she told him that she had been raped.
I immediately sat up straight and put my full attention into the conversation, worried about her. Understand... I don't like her. I wouldn't say I dislike her as I don't know her well enough, but I don't DISlike her and I certainly don't think that her getting raped is something to be flippant about. But that was my family's reaction.
I asked... unbelieving that this was mentioned as casually as it was... if I had heard them right. Was she actually raped?
They didn't know. They didn't ask. They weren't concerned. All that I know (know is probably too strong a word... all I've heard is probably a better way to say it) is that she went to some frat party and called her dad in the middle of the night (waking him from a sound sleep... as if THAT was the bad thing going on), claiming that she had just been raped and needed help.
I guess my face showed the horror and confusion I was feeling, as my brother added something like "Well she didn't go to the police, so no she couldn't have been raped.". I guess it doesn't matter to my brother (or my mother who nodded along) that 60% of all rapes go unreported. That if a woman who's just been violated in an incredibly humiliating and powerful way doesn't immediately go to the police and continue that humiliating and demeaning situation, then she wasn't raped.
I could almost.... almost.. understand their reaction if my cousin told them that she later recanted what she said. But so far as I know he never said that. And they didn't ask. They heard that a relative of theirs had been raped and didn't care enough to find out more. I sat dumbstruck for several moments and tried to add some reason to the conversation saying that the majority of rapes go unreported and that simply not reporting it doesn't mean it didn't happen, to which my brother said something like "I'm sick and tired of all the little cry baby girls complaining. It's like when they dress up all sexy and then complain and bitch when you dare look at them."
I left the conversation at that point. I could no longer stand to be in his presence. If I had stayed we would have gone quickly from a heated discussion to an argument. A mean one. You see, I didn't believe what my brother did. I didn't believe that any woman can dress any way that she wants, and not have it be an invitation to be looked over as a piece of meat. I didn't believe that it's possible to hear that someone I don't like (someone I know... someone who is family!) got raped and to not feel sick to my stomach and full of rage. And since I didn't believe what he did, then obviously I"m wrong. And that would be the end of the conversation as far as my brother would be concerned.
I'm getting angry just thinking about it.
So... with all of this out in the open (hidden away here on a private blog), does it change how I feel about my family? Do I stop loving them? Which is stronger... my love of family or my hatred of bigotry, intolerance, and willful ignorance? Right now I can't say. And considering that I looked upon my love of family as the bedrock of who I build myself up to be... I think not being able to answer that question says more than I'm willing to admit as is.
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