It's Them.

This is not a post about social media, but it is about social networks and the dangers of closed networks that have lurked in diverse culturs ever since there were diverse cultures. it is the outgrowth of an incident that took place a few years back in Austin, Texas. I was sitting at a bar discussing politics with an old friend. I was telling him that one of the few places I respected George Bush was on his humane approach to the immigration problem, that was, at the time, just emerging into a national and hotly debated issue.

There was a guy a couple of stools down who heard something I said. probably it expressed the sympathy to Mexican who risk lives and suffer humiliation to cross borders so that they can feed their families. That's when he jumped in. The following is a paraphrase of what he had to say. I chose more polite words than he used to describe ethnic groups, and I use the rhythms of my writing. His terms and rhythms are much harder than my own. The remainder is less exagerated than you may think.

"It's them. It's the crawly, grimy dirty bastards that are coming into Texas in the dark of night. They are spreading their filth and their seed from here into all states. We ought to build machine gun turrets, you know, like the ones they have at prisons, and when we see those suckers coming, we ought stop 'em in their tracks. Right there and let the flies and the buzzards get 'em. That'll stop the rest from coming. They don't speakex de English so good, but they will understand bullets. We don't need expensive walls, that they'll figure ways around. We need bullets.

You guys, you bleeding heart pansies, you just don't see it. They are the biggest problem we have. Health care. These people don't even belong here, but they are filling up our hosiptals. Soe them jump in fron of cars just so the can get a nice clean hospital bed. Overcrowded schools, who the fuck do you think is over crowding them. These people breed like rats. Before we send these people back, we should have them fixed, just like I did my bitch dog.

Its not just the Mexies either. It may be them today. But it's always someone, those blacks, those Jews, those Chinese. There's always someone who wants to sneak in here and enjoy all the benefits of the USA. They want to milk the freedom we have. But it's our freedom, not theirs. And we need to defend it against them."

I'm writing about this today because I may have had a Middle-Age moment. I thought I had already written thi. I thought I had posted it years ago and was proud of it. I referred a friend to it, and was surprised when his search did not turn it up. Did it get lost in cyberspace? Perhaps I just thought I had written it and four years ago, decided not to post it because it would be too controversial, too off-subject.

That's not my view today. Closed communities, who trust only people like themselves exist everywhere. They hate our culture enough to raise children to explode themselves if it will hurt us. They pray to their god to consume the rest of us in fire and brimstone because we are them, those nonbelievers, those infidels, those devil worshippers, those goyum or Hebes. They want to make a democracy into a Christian democract where those of us who may not be Christian will some how be reduced to lesser citizens, perhaps relegated not to sit at lunch counters in respectable neighborhoods. People cluster in secrurity near people like themselves and fear those others, those people who speak in different tongues or even accents, who dress differently, whose food does not smell like our food, whose children's games are played differently, whose prayers are chanted at different time, whose music has a different rhythm.

Much if my life is centered on social media's impact on culture. I look at how technology breaks down barriers such as language and I hope so very much that people will see that the Dalai Lama's observation is true:

"We are all alike."

Sometime, listen to the cry of a baby from another culture. Watch school kids playing a game. Listen to fans cheering. Watch people from another place as they leave work. Look at face different from your own, stuck in traffic or waiting to check out in a supermarket lane.

I believe social media helps us see a very fundamental point. "Them" very much is "us."

Comments

[Nadine]

I agree with you 100% and I want to believe you. We desperately need more understanding among peoples.

[julien]

solid point. i just came back from an web-related gathering here in Austin, Tx, interestingly enough. we're all definitely coming together because of the social web. it makes it harder to hate people when you see they're pretty much exactly like you.

[John]

I'm with you on immigration being the one thing where I think Bush has got it right and so many others are wrong. I think it's his experience as governor of Texas coming into play, and that's why I find it so depressing that the kinds of sentiments you're talking about are heard pretty regularly here in Texas. I sit here in my Houston neighborhood looking out the window at my neighbors - who come in all shades and beliefs - and think, here, of all places, we should know better.

The social web never brings everybody together. It brings like minded people together, and can enable a big network of people who are convinced we'd be better off if we could just kick all the Mexicans, gays, and liberals out of the country just as easily as it can enable anybody else.

[Joshua March]

John, yes that's exactly the point - it brings likeminded people together. It doesn't matter what colour or culture you're from, it allows people to connect on many different levels.

It has huge potential for showing people that we're all the same, for showing areas of similarity where before people only saw difference.

[Pamela Slim]

So true Shel, and beautifully expressed.

I live in Arizona now, having formerly lived in the Bay Area. I am really shocked at the difference in how people view and speak about illegal immigration here. The hatred with which they speak of the Mexican people is astounding. And it doesn't matter if it is a college student who was brought to the U.S. at 1 years old, or an old grandma, or a young working man. It reminds me of the old tapes of school integration in the South, with people holding picket signs and spitting.

I really thought we would be past this at this point in our history. It makes me sad.
But what really grinds me up is the hypocrisy. My husband is Native American (Navajo) and his relatives often wear a popular tee-shirt which shows a group of warrior chiefs sitting together. Under the picture is written "Who is the illegal immigrant?"

Funny how that is forgotten when discussing immigration today.

Despite this history, many traditional prayers are finished by saying "we are all related."

Thanks for reinforcing this basic human truth.

-Pam

[Omar Ha-Redeye]

Great post.

I've always said that them is us too. We work against racism and xenophobia the world over, irrespective of whom it is directed towards.

[Sam Lawrence]

In person, it's hard to quiet our mind enough to see past our own prejudgments and really listen to what other people have to say.

In groups, it's hard not to be swept by energy and passion even if it's rooted in misdirection.

Generally, it's hard to listen to ourselves and to individual voices. But the promise of the web has always been to neutralize that noise and connect us together so that we can focus our attention on what's really being said. So we can listen. And while not everyone yet participates in that activity, more now then ever before, really do.

Let's hope that this new, growing, listening-and-dialog networking has enough power to crack the seemingly insurmountable change needed to bring us all together in a peaceful, patient and understanding way.

Thanks for the refreshing post and healthy reminder.

[Ben Tremblay]

"about social networks and the dangers of closed networks that have lurked"
The group protocols and methods we had in place in the early 70s came out of projects like, say, doing community work (60s was about bringing it to the streets, yes?) or, well heck, keeping a band of jesters happy on a long road trip ... just keeping the bus running!

I have watched the dilution of those dynamics. It's almost binary ... probably quantum ... if participation isn't more than a buzz-word then it's just authoritarian hierarchy of one sort or another. (When declared and explicit that can work like a charm ... it's time proven. But when it's taboo and implicit then it's mind f**k of the worst kind; pretending to emancipation while strengthening the double-bind / withdrawal of affection paradigm.)

Everything I learned about production methods I learned from RD Laing's work on politics of personal experience ... when an individual knows only rank / in-group/out-group then that's all s/he knows ... re-framing is an exercise in futility.

[C. Morrin]

I am conflicted. I want to help those less fortunate, but I know that you cannot innundate a community without major impact. The negative impact I see is the accelerated failure of an already strained school, medical, and criminal justice system.
While I am conflicted contributing the pros & cons of more or less diversity, I am not conflicted in the belief that a nation has the right to control immigration.

Aside from the bigots and haters on both sides, the primary issue is enforcing the law. We have laws and procedures that enable immigration. We cannot restrict trained or skilled workers from Ireland or Germany or India, but have no filters on unskilled, unvetted, unsponsored emigrees.

It is obviously wrong to stereotype, but there are some pretty ugly truths that are universal regarding the lowest sector of ANY country (higher % of health, criminal, economic problems,etc).

I welcome continued immigration, but it must be orderly, planned for and LEGAL.

[Ivan Chew]

Thanks for this post, Shel. I'm not a US citizen. I don't plan to live or work in the US either. That being said, I see this post as more than just US policies. It's a little about human beings and Being Human. It's about how there are extremists everywhere in the world. And a reminder that thankfully there are also rational like-minded people like yourself.

[Green Card Marriage]

We certainly need more understanding among people. Thanks for the article.