Thursday February 24, 2022

Oliver is a peaceful little town of 5,000, nestled in the south end of the Okanagan Valley. It describes itself as the “Wine Capital of Canada.”

            Earlier this month, though, an apparently racist incident outside the high school made headlines. While a “Freedom” rally went on outside the school, a young mother was caught haranguing a student. The video clip where she directed profanity and racial slurs at a high school girl has since gone viral.

            I won’t give the mother’s name; she’s suffered enough humiliation already.

            She has been fined. She has apologized. The regional newspaper has published her letter expressing regret.

            Even so, one sentence in that letter caught my attention: “My intent was never to cause anyone any harm.”

            Right there is the problem with prejudice. We -- speaking generally here -- seem to assume that prejudice has to have some kind of ill intent.

            The essence of prejudice, in fact, is the failure of the persons expressing prejudice to recognize that their words and actions HAVE any ill intent, that they may cause harm -- or pain, or humiliation -- to someone else.

            Even a southern white supremacist would never admit that he was prejudiced. He’s just telling it the way it is.

The eye of the victim

            I’ll go so far as to claim that no person expressing prejudice ever thinks they act with ill intent. Only the person on the receiving end can feel victimized by prejudice.

            Yes, that’s a risky statement. Some people may well be paranoid, seeing prejudice and discrimination where none exists. Like Senator Joe McCarthy, seeing a Red under every bed.

            One time, my wife hired a Sikh as a print-shop operator. Over the next weeks, a chain of errors all traced back to this one person. When she went to discuss the issue, he accused her of racial discrimination.

            In fact, if she were prejudiced against Sikhs, she wouldn’t have hired him in the first place.

            Despite that unfortunate example, I maintain that only a victim of prejudice can recognize it.

            As I’ve written before, only a left-handed person can recognize the many ways tools and clothing are designed for right-handed people. Trouser zippers that only open to the right. Kettles with the fill gauge on the hidden side. Keyboards with the number pad positioned for the right hand.

            Right-handed people cannot recognize these handicaps, because they don’t experience any inconvenience.

            Similarly, white people have no notion of the privileges they inherit. They’re never singled out the way black, immigrant, and aboriginal people regularly are.

            The organizers of Canada’s Residential Schools would vigorously deny any ill intent. Aboriginal families had no difficulty discerning the prejudice the schools were based on.

            If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then discrimination is in the eye of the victim.

In a current context

            I won’t, I can’t, attempt to apply this insight to the current divisions in Canada, because I cannot put myself in the flesh of those who feel oppressed by various governments.

            I can only speak for myself.

            And I feel victimized by flag-brandishing “Freedom” convoys, rallies, and blockades. My freedoms, my rights, have been disrespected, discriminated against.

             No flood of assurances that no harm was intended, that whatever was being done was being done for my benefit, can change that feeling.

            I, and only I, know how I’m feeling.

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Copyright © 2022 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.

                  To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca

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YOUR TURN

Regarding my comment last week that I was feeling mentally lethargic, Cliff Boldt wrote, “Maureen and I have felt that way for almost a month. We put it down to COVID and not getting enough exercise.”

On the subject of T-shirts, Doug Martindale wrote, “I was once a walking billboard when I was a student and wore a jacket with a Brock University crest on it. My bragging about my university, as I see in hindsight, came to an abrupt halt when I talked to a shoe repair chap who was an immigrant from Czechoslovakia. He asked me why I needed to advertise that I was a university student? In his view it should be obvious from the way I spoke that I was an educated person. In the Soviet Union, he said, prisoners wore a number on their prison garb and he likened my university crest to that of an inmate in the Gulag. These observations had a profound impact on me and since that day in April 1970 I have never [almost never?] worn anything that advertises any product.” 

Bob Rollwagen remembered being “a Boy Scout; we wore our uniforms because they represented the ‘good deed’ motto and the ethics that surrounds citizenship -- having the best interests of others front of mind. There was also ethics in how we handled and respected the National Flag.

            “I have never seen so much disrespect for our flag than I have witnessed coming from the mobs across Canada these past weeks.”

On another subject, Margaret Marquis wrote, “Your paraphrase of Psalm 37 was spot on for our times.” 

            JT: That’s a fortunate coincidence. The Revised Common Lectionary was not designed to fit current news elements.

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Psalm paraphrase

I keep coming back to this paraphrase of Psalm 99. 

1          Like a halo of holiness, the spirit of God envelops the earth.
In the stillness of space, God's spirit gives life;
let us acknowledge our insignificance.
In the emptiness of infinity, God's spirit creates life;
let us acknowledge our interdependence. 

2          Look up if you would see God;
raise your sights beyond your repetitive routines.

3          But do not attempt to face God as an equal --
fling yourself face down on the earth
before the creator of the heavens.

4          God, you love to do right.
In your dealings with your creation, you are always fair. 

5          We humans grovel before your greatness.
Humbly, we kiss the humus from which you fashioned us.
You are holiness itself.

6          The humus holds the recycled cells of those who came this way before us;
Step by step they searched for you, until you found them. 

7          By the pillar of fire and the whispering breeze,
by bonfire and whirlwind, by prophecy and parable,
you showed them your way. 

8          Because they tried to follow you, you forgave them their failings;

9          So pledge allegiance to the Holy One!
Gather at the foot of the mountain, 
where even the rocks reach up in awe.
You are holiness embodied.

You can find paraphrases of most of the psalms in the Revised Common Lectionary in my book Everyday Psalmsavailable from Wood Lake Publishing, info@woodlake.com.

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TECHNICAL STUFF

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PROMOTION STUFF

To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. Some spam filters have blocked my posts because they’re suspicious of some of the web links.

                  Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca He’s also relatively inexpensive!

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ALVA WOOD’S ARCHIVE

                  I have acquired (don’t ask how) the complete archive of the late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures. I’ve put them on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. You’re welcome to browse. No charge. (Although maybe if I charged a fee, more people would find the archive worth visiting.)