| Law's little book, The Wolf Shall Dwell With the Lamb, is less a formal study than a report about his experiences trying to facilitate diverse dialogues in churches. He lays out the issues in a very basic and yet quite thoughtful manner, as a pastor speaking to other pastors. The context he is discussing is especially interesting because, as I've noted before, most of the major community organizing groups, today, focus on congregations.
Law simplifies things quite a bit in this book. But this kind of simplification can be very illuminating as long as we remember that's what it is. As usual, remember that any generalization about "culture" never applies in any simple way to any real context or person.
Law focuses on the difference between whites and people of color, but I have argued in earlier posts that the pattern he describes is really more about class than anything else.
Culture
Law gives a basic introduction to ideas of culture. His take-home message is that we don't recognize most of the subtle ways our cultures influence our actions. The most influential aspects of our culture are not the food we eat, or the clothes we wear, but the
hidden internal culture that governs the way we think, perceive, and behave unconsciously. This is what I call the 'instinct' of our culture. . . . [These practices] are implicitly learned and are very difficult to change. We are conditioned to react to our environment in particular ways that are not very different from an instinctual physical reaction to stimuli. . . . Internal culture is like the air we breathe.
One of his own "'instinctual' reactions to conflict"-as someone raised in a particular Chinese American context-"is to be silent," something that it took him a long time to recognize.
In a white English-speaking environment, when I disagreed with what was going on, all I knew was that people ignored me. I could not understand why they did not read my message of disapproval. I did not realize that they probably interpreted my silence as consent, indifference, or incompetence. Even though I am consciously aware of this now, my initial reaction to most conflict is still silence.
In general, then, "most cultural clashes" are not conscious. Instead, these clashes
happen on the internal cultural level-on the instinctual level where the parties involved are not even conscious of why they feel the way they do. Since each person thinks only in her own thought pattern, she cannot even understand why the others do not perceive things the way she does.
The underlying sources of conflicts like these are difficult to identify, and they are difficult to change even if one can identify them.
Power
Middle-class white Americans are taught that they have the power to change society and make a difference.
If a white, middle-class person is mistreated by the system, her first reaction would be to speak up, fight back, and undo this injustice. This is the behavior of a person who perceived herself to have power.
Of course, white middle-class people experience much less oppression, so that oppression seems like an anomaly to them. They expect "fairness," and bristle when they don't get it.
A person who perceived himself to be powerless would just accept the injustice as part of life that a powerless person endures.
It's important to stress that he's really talking about people's sense of individual power. Supposedly "powerless" people often prove quite powerful in broader social contexts. Members of the working-class, especially, can draw on quite deep traditions of collective action and solidarity. Middle-class professionals too often end up stuck "processing" their individual perspectives, or waste their energy on individual lifestyle changes (look at my Prius!) instead of efforts to generate collective power.
This brings Law to a key observation. As the collective economic power of middle-class Americans has declined, he notes, they have sporadically
tried to be in "solidarity with" the poor but found their efforts fruitless and frustrating. This is because even though in reality they may be equals in terms of economic and political power, their attitude and behavior based on their difference in perceptions of power still separate them.
Interaction in Groups
As Law worked to facilitate multicultural groups, he repeatedly found that "the white members of the group would disclose their insights and thoughts verbally and freely while the people of color would just sit and listen." Overall the pattern he found is this one:
Whites
White [middle-class, professional] group members participate as they always do, and talk when they have something to say. If they disagree with someone, they disagree with them verbally and openly. Pretty soon, they realize that some others are not speaking. So, with all good intentions, they try to include them by giving subtle kinds because it is not considered polite to put people on the spot. . . . The more they try, the more the people of color close up. As a result, they make decisions without the input and concordance of the people of color members, even though they appear to have consented to it. Then, the people of color get blamed for not participating. Occasionally, some what members feel guilty about dominating the group once more.
Working-Class People, Poor People, and People of Color
People of color [again, he's really mostly referring to working-class and poor people] take part in the group by expecting an authoritative leader to tell them what will happen and what to do. Instead, they hear many people talking without being invited to speak first. The assumption then is that these people must have a great deal of power and authority; so they let them talk and do not challenge them. Then, the white members of the group start hinting that they should be talking also but without a direct invitation. . . . When the meeting ends, they leave and refuse to come back again.
Again, Law is talking about churches, one of the most class-segregated settings in American life. When people come together from different churches, they often come from very different institutional ways of interacting. One need only think of the stereotype of middle-class professional Unitarians--always reading the hymn one line ahead to make sure they agree with it. This is fundamentally different from more pastor-led and tradition-centered practices in working-class and poor churches. Interactions between people from different classes across congregations often exemplify these issues in especially poignant ways.
Distributing Power Equally
The solution, Law argues, is to find ways to run group dialogues that distribute power more equally. His solution is a model where each participant "invites" other participants to participate, so that everyone eventually contributes.
While this solution seems quite useful for intergroup-dialogue sessions, the different organizers I have spoken to haven't really seen it as a workable model for organizing sessions, where the goal is to get something done, not to listen carefully to each other's personal experience. Sure, it could be a useful addition, but not a practice that would work overall for the specific needs of social action.
That's why I proposed different power equalization strategies in the last post:
First, create spaces where people from non-middle-class groups can work together without many middle-class folks around.
Second, have at least some people from working-class and poor groups come into mixed groups as representatives of their groups, something that research has shown to empower these representatives to participate on a more equal basis.
Whether or not these seem workable, hopefully it is clear to folks why trying to train a large and shifting group of participants to act differently with each other is not likely a winning strategy.
Update
There is a danger in being this short. Let me just add that my point, here, is NOT that training or talk about these issues isn't important. Groups that don't do this are likely heading for a disaster. We need to engage with and learn about our differences and the ways these differences drive us apart and can bring us together.
But I'm still not convinced it will solve the problem. |
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