[Oe List ...] conversation on white trash racism

[John Epps via OE]

Thanks for your thoughtful provocation of this dialogue, Marshall. As has
often been the case you pose difficult and profound issues. I apologize if
my initial response seemed to trivialize the genuine concern (“those folks
give white trash a bad name”), but sometimes a bit of humor buys time for
more thoughtful consideration. Here’s the current result of that, and
thanks again for initiating the conversation.


I was reminded of the occasion in Malaysia when, en route to facilitating a
conference of 35 CEOs from a holding company, I discovered our rental car
had 3 tires and the spare tire stolen. Later lamenting to a friend, I said,
“What kind of person would do such a thing?” His answer that stopped me
was, “A desperate person.”


So perhaps the apparent hatred coming from your neighbors – and, as you say
– from many others, is an expression of desperation, and the question
becomes, “For what?” Any attempt to address the situation cannot be direct
or rational. These people and the hoards like them care about something
that is being taken away. Clearly much is – jobs, status, and influence
being among the major items. And it’s not minorities, immigrants, or
government that’s doing it: those are only scapegoats. Technology and
globalization are the more likely “culprits,” but they’re more difficult to
blame. A thorough and sensitive analysis of this tendency towards prejudice
is in William Cash’s classic *The Mind of the South*, (New York: Random
House, 1941).


So what to do? Obviously, I don’t know. But there is a classic sociological
principle that goes “Groups attacked from the outside tend to unify
themselves.” That seems to be what the administration is trying to do in
making N. Korea into a (real) threat, and villainizing immigrants. Another
more helpful principle is that people of the widest possible diversity can
work together effectively on a goal to which all aspire. That’s the one
thing that our society seems to be lacking, and which POTUS tried to supply
with his (empty) slogan.

Maybe our facilitation colleagues can help contribute to the development of
a vision to which we can aspire.


Thanks again for initiating this conversation.


John Epps

On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 8:23 AM, Ken Fisher via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
wrote:

>
>
>
> Friends,
>
> Both through recent experiences and 'our daily Rohr', I’d like to share
> with you my wording of a current secular ‘pater noster'.
>
>
>
>
> Compassionate cosmos...
>
> In which we live,
>
> and with whom we find our meaning,
>
> Grace us with your presence.
>
> Support our freedom to be love as we are loved.
>
> Trusting in your never-ending hospitality,
>
> So be it.
>
>
>
> And, as I have already shared, I love this poem by Hafiz.
>
> The sun never says to the earth, “You owe me.
>
> Look what happens with a love like that.
>
> It lights the whole sky.
>
>
>
> Feeling the warmth of the sun (the immediate sustainer of our habitat) and
> wanting to ‘be sun too’,
>
> Ken
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> OE mailing list
> OE at lists.wedgeblade.net
> http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net
>
>
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