I am Irish-American, so I never had to contend with color prejudice or religious discrimination. My African-American husband assures me that I’m not missing anything. I have an uneasy feeling that when people don’t like me it’s my own personal flaws that are to blame, but overall I’m grateful for the unspoken acceptance that my appearance ensures in most situations.
Surprisingly, I’ve had extensive experience arguing with someone who assumes my inferiority. You see, I’m among the damned.
My mother accepted Jesus Christ as her personal savior. She is going to Heaven. I’m going to rot in Hell. I have no spiritual life. I have no relationship with God.
When I was young, I got into endless arguments with her, trying to use reason to defend my spiritual equality. If I managed to do some good things, we both knew that I often failed to be as good as I wanted to be. When I pointed out that my friends were good people who I loved and that they did not deserve to go to Hell, she accused me of having low standards. When I told her I had a spiritual life, she said it wasn’t real spirituality because I was the wrong religion.
Anything good that came from non-Christians was a fluke. Christians could do the most atrocious things, but they were good at heart, and quickly forgiven.
Sometimes I would maneuver her into some logical corner, but she’d just walk right through the wall. “Don’t argue with me,� she would say, “argue with God, He said it.�
Thank the gods that blood is thicker than water. She’s my mother, I love her, she loves me. It still hurts that she takes as fact my spiritual inferiority, but we try not to go there.
I give this story from my own life as an example of a Devil’s argument that is not worth having.
When someone declares themselves to be the standard of righteousness, or intelligence, or normality; and challenges you to defend your equality — don’t. At that point the conversation has run off the tracks of civility, and into the ditch. Your challenger is standing on the height of his own self-regard, and he’s put you down in the place where dwells the pogrom, ethnic cleansing, segregation, and every form of dehumanization large and small that we visit on one another.
Dr. James Watson’s remarks to The Sunday Times were the verbal equivalent of a rock through the window. There is room in a free society for controversy and scientific inquiry, tough questions and debate. There is also a responsibility to challenge statements that are an invitation to bigotry. If Dr. Watson did not enjoy so much prestige, his hurtful and insulting remarks would only damage people in his immediate circle, but unfortunately they are broadcast worldwide and given the validation of ‘science’. Dr. Watson is trying to claim that he was misunderstood, but his meaning is all too familiar.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, the 79-year-old said he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really.”
He went on to say he hoped everyone was equal but that “people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true.”
Scientists are supposed to be precise and objective, but this is not science, it’s faith in a favored status called ‘white’. It’s faith in an ‘us’ and a ‘them’, along with a suggestion that he’s been getting his information from people who are having trouble finding good help these days.
I don’t understand how someone who has had opportunities to work with colleagues from all over the world has been able to hold on to so much prejudice — not only against people of different races, but women, homosexuals, fat people and people who don’t meet his personal standard of health and beauty. I don’t know how a man who grew up during World War II could fail to see what happens when a group of people define themselves as supermen and others as subhuman.
But tunnel vision is not rare, or confined only to dumb people. Watson has apologized, and he will try to say he was only being provocative and controversial. He has coasted on positive regard all his life, and he would have a very long learning curve if he ever had to climb over the hurdles faced every day by people who fight racism and other forms of prejudice. He’s denying that he said what he said, though he has a long record of similar statements.
My mother hasn’t had such an easy life, and she’s used to being a voice in the wilderness, so to speak. She’s tougher than James Watson in that way. She’ll stand by her words and tell me right to my face that I’m going to Hell.
Recurring Nightmare 
I fear, Dr. Watson needs a Sherlock Holmes to investigate his runaway mouth. No one can dispute the great accomplishments of Watson and his research partner Crick in understanding the wonder of the structure of DNA. But none of us is immune to the depredations of time or foolishness and both circumstances seem to have overtaken Watson. As do politicians, scientists stray from what they know best and sometimes allow egotism to let their inner fool loose as they pontificate on everything from the price of corn (at worst a harmless deed) to defining our neighbors, friends or family by “race” and ascribing unfavorable qualities to the term (an absolutely intolerable error that cannot go unchallenged). Clearly any apologies from Watson cannot undo the harm or hurt he has caused. It is sad that this stain on a long and accomplished career will remain, but it would have been far worse to allow the remarks to go ignored or unpunished.
LikeLike
I like your relating spiritual bigotry to race bigotry, because it seems the two are just about equally pervasive in the current political climate. It’s telling, to me, that I have absolutely no problem being as out as out can be as a lesbian—my sexuality is very nearly as visible as my race to all but the fiercest denialists—but I often find it incredibly daunting to go on record as an atheist, and I’m far more likely to test the water before coming out in the latter regard. It baffles me that there’s so much stigma (pun intended) attached to believing a separate mythology, or none at all.
LikeLike
A couple of points. First, to Teresa: “outing” oneself as an atheist is the hardest to do because the font of so much prejudice is religion. And, the mere existence of separate mythologies is a threat to most fundamentalists, because it opens the door to the possibilty that theirs is just one belief among many, rather than the ONE true belief. Hence the inability even to consider evolution.
I don’t want to sound like I’m anti-religion; on the whole, it’s been a benefit to humanity. But OTOH, we all know the problems it causes.
The second thing: Watson is an excellent example of the depth of bigotry in our society. Here is a very intelligent man, a scientist, and yet these attitudes are just imbedded inside him and no amount of reasoned thought can pry them loose. It’s such a telling example of the virulence of racism. So many on the right try to deny its continued existence, but then someone like Watson opens his mouth.
LikeLike