A Squirrel and a Crow Walk Into a Bar

Oct 29

AndrewPolitics and Nation, Society and Culture , , 1 Comment

As I was pulling into the parking lot at work, I saw a squirrel and a crow picking at the same layer of grain that lay smashed across the road. It was probably someone’s hamburger, dropped on ground before the last bite, ground into the gravel by a couple dozen cars driving back and forth over it since yesterday. This morning, it became a grand feast for two little creatures and blatant multi-cultural symbolism.

As much as the economy has sort of trumped any news stories lately including, remarkably, anything to do with the presidential election next week, I’m surprised the race issue isn’t more of an issue. It seems like Obama is the perfect target for the peculiarity of American-ized intolerance. It surprises me that religion is the greater trepidation. Romney was targeted for being Mormon, a few years ago, Lieberman was a controversial pick largely because of his religion, and even McCain has been charged with being deliberately vague about his faith. On the face of it, Obama is the ideal target to lobby slurs at from both sides. Either the fact that he’s black, or the fact that he’s not black enough will do. Everyone can take their shot.

Have we suppressed the bigotocracy? I would be doubtful except that when it was Clinton against Obama, there again, gender was a largely besides the point (unless you count the Hillary has a penis jokes but maybe those were kind of inevitable.) But is the alternative that we are more actively avoiding making the election about bigotry, that we aren’t judging our candidates based on stereotypes of race and culture but treating those things as ancillary?

Any talk of diversity acceptance (because let’s face it, tolerance is just a kind way of saying “out of sight, out of mind”) is supported only by anecdotal evidence. Even if Obama is elected, it’s hard to quantify just how much race affected, or not, people’s vote. Maybe a McCain/Palin ticket is just that hard to swallow (though it’s more likely that the Bush has set up the entire Republican party to be perceived by the general public as V.E.N.O.M.) But that’s just it. If that is true, then has race really not factored in by any substantial measure? That would be remarkably heart-warming.

I typically hate conversations about diversity because I think they largely miss the point. It is emphatically not about bridging the gap of racial and ethnic boundaries just for the sake of this “we are the world” shit. People are different, raised from different stock and with different traditions across huge cultural divides that make humanity so varied and interesting. Embracing the traditions and values of other cultures and ethnic groups (at least in so far as respecting their prerogative to celebrate those traditions away from you) just suggests that you are open-minded. Which is great for a short-term goal.

But the end goal of diversity should be about looking at the individual and seeing each person not as broad swaths of cultural and ethnic fabric, but as one person with all the idiosyncrasies, talents and quirks that separates us from one another. True diversity is looking to the individual and stripping away the broad categories. Then you can judge and embrace and accept as you see fit because you aren’t making sweeping generalities about one person based on your perception of a whole group of people who by and large are representative of their cultural upbringing and traditions, but not the sum total of it.

That is, in part, what fascinates me about this election. To all appearances, we have done that with our candidates. Sure, it’s not a perfect analysis. Racial and cultural biases are deeply ingrained in all of us. But there does seem to be an almost conscious effort not to give in to stereotyping and expansive generalities when talking about the candidates (except, and this part is strangely ironic, when it comes to Palin.)

Yes, all of that came to me while watching a squirrel and a crow share a meal on the road. But if they can do it, then we can too.