While we can laugh, even sometimes much later, at the tensions that happen in our family lives, some of in the US often have little idea what it's like to live in a culture in which such a freeze out happens not only in families, but in greater society.
When it's really easy to surmise many things about a person just by looking at them, whether it's race or ethnicity, marital status, religion, level of education, or economic status, the world is a different place. In some places, making such off-the-cuff assumptions is treated as an art form - or maybe a survival mechanism.
Sometimes it takes getting out of context to see things.
Now, imagine that being friends with an outcast person or member of a marginalized group - maybe even as superficial as having a conversation or participating in dialogue - could cost you your job. Could cost you your own stability and safety. Could negatively impact your spouse or children. What then? What if you had been friends before they were outcast or marginalized? Can you afford to stay friends with them or speak to them in an intimate manner?
Flash back to high school - I remember clearly how there were rules to follow...the white rules. Make no mistake, being "white" involves a LOT more than skin color; now some of those secrets are leaking out...coded language, election decisions, where people choose to live - when they have a choice. Lots goes into that structure and there is hell. to. pay. if you don't, especially in the South of the 1980's - I can only imagine what it would have been like in the "old days".
I'm often in a state of shock when I hear flippant dismissals by some travelers of the mechanisms of social violence employed in other cultures as "exotic", "cute", "traditional" or "tribal". It's easy to dismiss mechanisms that marginalize and hurt people in other countries. I used to think that it was more of a reflection of cultural superiority rather than something some of us are trained to do from the minute we learn our place in our own society.
We are all masters of ignoring systems of violence when it's convenient or necessary.
And we are also adept at pointing out those cultures of violence when we have little to lose from making such assertions.
I've often said that things in Indonesia are just the same as in the US, but different. I tried to figure that out, but now I make a simple claim based on something my mother told me during my term as an Elder in my church. Wherever there are people, they are going to act like people.
We may be more connected now than ever and we may be learning that we're not as different as we thought, but remember this: we all, everywhere, are still are busy with what to do with the ones that don't fit, as well as with the ones who deserve to be heard - or not.
We just go about it in different ways, but it happens. Everywhere.
I pray for greater awareness and peace. I want to know when to keep my mouth shut and when not to, but most of all, I want to try not to participate in systems of violence.
The problem is that the definition of violence is as fluid as the oceans that divide us.
Tenth Avenue Freeze Out - Bruce Springsteen
Well I was stranded in the jungle
Trying to take in all the heat they was giving
The night is dark but the sidewalk's bright
And lined with the light of the living
From a tenement window a transistor blasts
Turn around the corner things got real quiet real fast
I walked into a Tenth Avenue freeze-out
Tenth Avenue freeze-out
And I'm all alone, I'm all alone
And kid you better get the picture
And I'm on my own, I'm on my own
And I can't go home
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