ON THE BIAS

Well, these days, you don't have to be a Hollywood star to be a racist--but it certainly seems to help.

Unfortunate comments by the likes of Michael Richards and Mel Gibson have received an inordinate amount of attention from the national press, How can the people who come into our homes (via the media) turn out to be so, well, ugly under pressure? Of course, people have been uttering hateful rhetoric for centuries, but with the absurd levels of coverage our media gives TV and movie stars, it seems like a major shock that deep seated biases exist in "the beautiful people"as well. (Of course, for truly "deep-seated" shockers, perhaps one turns to Brittany Spears and her friends and their apparent fruit-of-the-loom boycott. The nerve of us expecting young women to wear underwear when out in public! What will they think of next?)

As always, bigotry has its roots in fear. Sure, alcohol can help release the inhibitions that usually keep us from saying the inappropriate. And when in a stressful situation (as the heckled Mr. Richards claims to have been), we may express ourselves with epithets that come out of deeply-rooted anger, which is a close neighbor to fear. But mostly, we are frightened by that which we don't fully understand and by those who we sense are different from ourselves. Which, of course, means everyone.

In Tourette's Syndrome, many people "tic," swearing and saying the most inappropriate things that most people would normally not say out loud, even if deep down their minds may think it. It's an OCD-related compulsion, and their innate, self-censoring mechanism malfunctions. This would seem to argue that, in short, we all harbor inner bigots along with our inner children. We just hope that our inner censors will prevent the world from seeing how fearful we really are. We are taught that it's not nice to point out people's differences, and so we neurotically conceal what we notice, hiding our responses to various cultures. We are urged to be politically correct.

But the process of denying our differences--racial, sexual, economic--doesn't solve anything. It just makes us more neurotic. Repression results in a build-up of tension. And with the right amount of pressure or stress, any one of us might well blurt out that which we're spending so much energy holding in. We are all walking powder kegs of racial and sexual insensitivity.

Now you may be wondering--is he therefore telling us to hurl hateful language at each other? Go ahead and be hateful? Let it all out? What IS he getting at?

It's this: maybe instead of trying so hard to pretend there are no cultural differences (a futile activity that saps positive energy), we need to learn to embrace and acknowledge our differences. It is because we are all different that we are also all the same. We each bring our uniqueness to the table and THAT is our common bond. Nobody wants a garden where every flower is identical--it would be visually pointless and ultimately boring. The diversity we have among us is bracing and enriches our lives. Let's acknowledge it. Yes, there are cultural differences we don't understand in our neighbors and our co-workers but that's what makes them interesting people and gives life its spice. Pretending that we don't notice, sitting on our impressions (that scientists say are formed within milliseconds) is a wasteful activity. If we recognize and enjoy our differences, even those we don't understand, then we neither need fear nor repress them--which may mean there will be less to pop out so inappropriately when arrested for drunken diving or when being heckled on a nightclub stage. Of course, it would be a good idea for us to explore and understand these different cultures better. And we may want to spend the time trying to understand WHY we fear those who are not like ourselves. And you might even think that those who are in positions of privilege, like Mr. Richards or Mr. Gibson, have the time and money to explore these fears and come to understand them so that their behavior is more responsible. But ultimately, all of us need to stop repressing fears and start accepting our neighbors as they are--the world is just too much of a power keg already.