I was walking by the Church building a few days ago, and I encountered a scene that made me smile. I saw three young men standing together. Curiously enough, one was Black, another was White and – believe it or not – the third was Asian. They all were talking together, and then the sweetest thing happened. It seemed they were about to disperse, and immediately, the Black student took the White student's hand in a unique kind of handshake – not the common, everyday handshake we are used to, but one that had very many movements up and down, and up and down, with squeezing and snapping, in fluid, rhythmic, quick motions of the hand; and as they shook each others' hands in this new way, they both spoke Street, and as they spoke Street and shook hands in their quaint way, I could hardly tell which one was Black and which was White – it almost seemed to me that the White boy was Blacker than the Black one, because he seemed to have the new handshake method down pat, and his Street was even more fluent; I heard him say things like: "Aight, men; cool; holler at you later; sahweet; peace out,” or things to that effect. I looked at the two of them, and my heart welled with joyful, hopeful pride.
I believe in unity. I believe in the power of peoples to come together and celebrate their differences. I believe that we are different chiefly to do this. If we were all the same race, the same gender, and the same age – I think that would be very stupid. I think that the beauty of the world lies mainly in the fact that we are different. It is because we are different that we can celebrate life in a creative and spirited way. Life to me is a game, and we cannot all be in one team to have a good game. Girls are in one team; Black people are in one team; White people are in one team, and so on. Boys, when they are little, try to score points against the girls and so forth. I recall a scene from a movie, where a boy accused another boy of playing ball like a girl. The accused boy went mad. To him, that was the gravest insult possible, and it led to a fight.
Similarly, Black people try to identify themselves by the way they speak, dress, and practice their culture. On Sundays, White and Black and Hispanic peoples select largely different churches, according to their cultural proclivities. They do this to seek some form of identity. When they have identified with people of their own demographic distribution, they can, while still being part of their own class and creed, reach out and associate with people of other demographic distributions. It makes the game of life in my opinion that much more interesting. I think there would be no game at all if we all were just the same.
The problem in my opinion is that we take ourselves too seriously. We realize a few years after we are born that we are White, or Black, or male or female, and we are taught that we should act in one way; that the people of the other camp, those that do not look like us or that believe something else, or that have a different sexual orientation, are the out group, the bad guys, and we must hate them; that part of being a faithful member of our own group consists in hating those perceived to be of another group; that loyalty to our own group, the price for fitting in, should necessarily consist in wiping off the other race, or at least keeping them subdued. There used to be a practice in some ancient Eastern cultures, where men would wake up and face the rising sun, raise their hands to the sky and say: "Thank you O God that I am not a woman." This is wrong, in my opinion. They forgot that it was the same God that created women as well.
People should respect others, by not taking themselves too seriously. They should not believe the stereotypes that they hear of other people. Not all Blacks for example are athletic; some are academic. Not all Asians can do math; some may be as dumb as a bottle cork. These stereotypes prevent us from actually getting to know people as deserving individuals, who are to be loved and respected. I think it is appalling that when a person has so immersed himself or herself in the tenets of his or her own race and imbibed his or her own culture, he or she then practices the fiercest ethnocentrism, believing albeit erroneously that his own race or her own way of life is better than everyone else's. We should all be able to look beyond our noses and see what is good about another person's race or religion or way of life and try to relate with all people in the ways that would foster harmony for all peoples.
Nations should respect other nations and grant them their sovereignty without grudge. Religions should accept other religions and grant them their truth. A story has in this regard been told, of the six blind men of Hindustan. They went to experience the elephant. One touched his belly and said the elephant was a wall. Another touched his tail and averred that the elephant was a rope. A third touched his leg and said the elephant was a tree; a fourth touched his ear and said the elephant was a fan; a fifth touched his tusk and said the elephant was a spear, and the last touched his nose and said the elephant was a hose. None of them experienced the elephant in full, so none had the prerogative to have a monopoly on the anatomy of the elephant.
Organizations should respect other organizations and grant them their productivity and market share. No one company should seek to own all the assets and write all the checks of an entire economy. This cut-throat mentality will not be good in the long run for the economy. Powerful industries must protect our environment as well, and make sure that their industrial activities are not in any way harming the environment, especially in a globalized world. In short, everyone should look after the other, in this global village of ours.
One way to do this is first to assess what it is we claim to know about our own culture. What are the things that define us? How were we socialized; what were we taught to believe? We need to assess and know our self, because it is this self that we give to others, ultimately. A Latin maxim says we do not give what we do not have. We have to have ourselves by knowing ourselves, so that we can give of ourselves, when we are in possession of ourselves. So we should understand our background. Who taught me what I know? How have I been socialized?
After learning about myself and my motives and hang-ups and biases I should then evaluate them according to the larger reality about me. I should ask questions about other people; I should get to know them; I should operate with them, engage with them, learn about them and work with them. In that way, I get to understand them, their own socializations; their own experiences of being White, maybe; or female, or Buddhist, or gay or rich, or whatever they are. Having learned of myself, and then learned of them, I can seek areas of homophily, areas of least conflict, and emphasize those areas. I should strive to look for objective activities we both could be interested in. We both for example could like sports; we both could like music – there are many things we could like.
These areas of convergence will go a long way to build affinity, which in turn will facilitate our mutual understanding of one another, and will make us live in peace. For example, I once lived with a suite mate from London. We were very good suite sharers, because we emphasized our commonalities; we shared gym workout time, even though he was far better at it than I am, and I tried out his cooking. I always sought to emphasize the common. So that it was only the common I saw – where did all the so-called difference go? I do not know. I recall back in Nigeria some of the missionary priests we had from Ireland. They loved us so much that they gave their lives for us; some actually died and were buried in Nigeria, like Fr Ambrose Windbacher, and Fr Dennis Slattery, and so on. These people became so Nigerian that I forgot they were White.
I believe in sharing cultures, and mixing the experiences of different groups. Even though groups should retain their identity, they should reach out as they are: White, Black, old, young, gay, straight - reach out as they are and love and get along with others, as those others are, without seeking to change or assimilate or reduce, or level. Each should reach out as he or she is, not simply to tolerate the other, but to respect and love the other. I recall a scene from one of the episodes of Family Guy; one character said to another: I do not just look like you - I am you. In a sense, in my opinion, we all are the other person. If we look more closely, the artificial lines that separate us dim and fade, and slowly but surely, like in the last lines of Animal Farm, when the animals looked from pig to man and man to pig and could not tell the difference, we too will not be able to see any demarcation between us and them; it would be all us, and no them. It is my dream for the world.
I once saw a photo, the memory of which will be fixed in my mind. It was a photo of Nelson Mandela, arguably the greatest Black man alive. He was sitting regally in a chair, and as he sat, he was flanked by two young school boys. To his left was a handsome, White African boy in a shirt and tie, looking very smart indeed; and to his right was a sharp-looking Black African boy in a traditional dress. All three of them were smiling very widely. And as I looked at the photo, I welled with optimistic pride; for in that photo, I saw the hope of unity: the melding of races and ages; an interracial, intergenerational mix; the mix of age, race, culture, creed – a testament to what is possible when peoples ignore the petty issues that tend to drive us apart, and embrace our common humanity. I saw a slice of a larger dream: interracial, inter-faith; inter-sexual – if there be such a word – interdisciplinary, inter-everything that unites us – in short I saw humanity as it can be, an ideal of mixes; a peaceful world, a blessed world, where everyone is equal and important, but more importantly, where everyone is united in perfect love. I want this world to be; I want it to be even now.
I believe in unity. I believe in the power of peoples to come together and celebrate their differences. I believe that we are different chiefly to do this. If we were all the same race, the same gender, and the same age – I think that would be very stupid. I think that the beauty of the world lies mainly in the fact that we are different. It is because we are different that we can celebrate life in a creative and spirited way. Life to me is a game, and we cannot all be in one team to have a good game. Girls are in one team; Black people are in one team; White people are in one team, and so on. Boys, when they are little, try to score points against the girls and so forth. I recall a scene from a movie, where a boy accused another boy of playing ball like a girl. The accused boy went mad. To him, that was the gravest insult possible, and it led to a fight.
Similarly, Black people try to identify themselves by the way they speak, dress, and practice their culture. On Sundays, White and Black and Hispanic peoples select largely different churches, according to their cultural proclivities. They do this to seek some form of identity. When they have identified with people of their own demographic distribution, they can, while still being part of their own class and creed, reach out and associate with people of other demographic distributions. It makes the game of life in my opinion that much more interesting. I think there would be no game at all if we all were just the same.
The problem in my opinion is that we take ourselves too seriously. We realize a few years after we are born that we are White, or Black, or male or female, and we are taught that we should act in one way; that the people of the other camp, those that do not look like us or that believe something else, or that have a different sexual orientation, are the out group, the bad guys, and we must hate them; that part of being a faithful member of our own group consists in hating those perceived to be of another group; that loyalty to our own group, the price for fitting in, should necessarily consist in wiping off the other race, or at least keeping them subdued. There used to be a practice in some ancient Eastern cultures, where men would wake up and face the rising sun, raise their hands to the sky and say: "Thank you O God that I am not a woman." This is wrong, in my opinion. They forgot that it was the same God that created women as well.
People should respect others, by not taking themselves too seriously. They should not believe the stereotypes that they hear of other people. Not all Blacks for example are athletic; some are academic. Not all Asians can do math; some may be as dumb as a bottle cork. These stereotypes prevent us from actually getting to know people as deserving individuals, who are to be loved and respected. I think it is appalling that when a person has so immersed himself or herself in the tenets of his or her own race and imbibed his or her own culture, he or she then practices the fiercest ethnocentrism, believing albeit erroneously that his own race or her own way of life is better than everyone else's. We should all be able to look beyond our noses and see what is good about another person's race or religion or way of life and try to relate with all people in the ways that would foster harmony for all peoples.
Nations should respect other nations and grant them their sovereignty without grudge. Religions should accept other religions and grant them their truth. A story has in this regard been told, of the six blind men of Hindustan. They went to experience the elephant. One touched his belly and said the elephant was a wall. Another touched his tail and averred that the elephant was a rope. A third touched his leg and said the elephant was a tree; a fourth touched his ear and said the elephant was a fan; a fifth touched his tusk and said the elephant was a spear, and the last touched his nose and said the elephant was a hose. None of them experienced the elephant in full, so none had the prerogative to have a monopoly on the anatomy of the elephant.
Organizations should respect other organizations and grant them their productivity and market share. No one company should seek to own all the assets and write all the checks of an entire economy. This cut-throat mentality will not be good in the long run for the economy. Powerful industries must protect our environment as well, and make sure that their industrial activities are not in any way harming the environment, especially in a globalized world. In short, everyone should look after the other, in this global village of ours.
One way to do this is first to assess what it is we claim to know about our own culture. What are the things that define us? How were we socialized; what were we taught to believe? We need to assess and know our self, because it is this self that we give to others, ultimately. A Latin maxim says we do not give what we do not have. We have to have ourselves by knowing ourselves, so that we can give of ourselves, when we are in possession of ourselves. So we should understand our background. Who taught me what I know? How have I been socialized?
After learning about myself and my motives and hang-ups and biases I should then evaluate them according to the larger reality about me. I should ask questions about other people; I should get to know them; I should operate with them, engage with them, learn about them and work with them. In that way, I get to understand them, their own socializations; their own experiences of being White, maybe; or female, or Buddhist, or gay or rich, or whatever they are. Having learned of myself, and then learned of them, I can seek areas of homophily, areas of least conflict, and emphasize those areas. I should strive to look for objective activities we both could be interested in. We both for example could like sports; we both could like music – there are many things we could like.
These areas of convergence will go a long way to build affinity, which in turn will facilitate our mutual understanding of one another, and will make us live in peace. For example, I once lived with a suite mate from London. We were very good suite sharers, because we emphasized our commonalities; we shared gym workout time, even though he was far better at it than I am, and I tried out his cooking. I always sought to emphasize the common. So that it was only the common I saw – where did all the so-called difference go? I do not know. I recall back in Nigeria some of the missionary priests we had from Ireland. They loved us so much that they gave their lives for us; some actually died and were buried in Nigeria, like Fr Ambrose Windbacher, and Fr Dennis Slattery, and so on. These people became so Nigerian that I forgot they were White.
I believe in sharing cultures, and mixing the experiences of different groups. Even though groups should retain their identity, they should reach out as they are: White, Black, old, young, gay, straight - reach out as they are and love and get along with others, as those others are, without seeking to change or assimilate or reduce, or level. Each should reach out as he or she is, not simply to tolerate the other, but to respect and love the other. I recall a scene from one of the episodes of Family Guy; one character said to another: I do not just look like you - I am you. In a sense, in my opinion, we all are the other person. If we look more closely, the artificial lines that separate us dim and fade, and slowly but surely, like in the last lines of Animal Farm, when the animals looked from pig to man and man to pig and could not tell the difference, we too will not be able to see any demarcation between us and them; it would be all us, and no them. It is my dream for the world.
I once saw a photo, the memory of which will be fixed in my mind. It was a photo of Nelson Mandela, arguably the greatest Black man alive. He was sitting regally in a chair, and as he sat, he was flanked by two young school boys. To his left was a handsome, White African boy in a shirt and tie, looking very smart indeed; and to his right was a sharp-looking Black African boy in a traditional dress. All three of them were smiling very widely. And as I looked at the photo, I welled with optimistic pride; for in that photo, I saw the hope of unity: the melding of races and ages; an interracial, intergenerational mix; the mix of age, race, culture, creed – a testament to what is possible when peoples ignore the petty issues that tend to drive us apart, and embrace our common humanity. I saw a slice of a larger dream: interracial, inter-faith; inter-sexual – if there be such a word – interdisciplinary, inter-everything that unites us – in short I saw humanity as it can be, an ideal of mixes; a peaceful world, a blessed world, where everyone is equal and important, but more importantly, where everyone is united in perfect love. I want this world to be; I want it to be even now.
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