Offensive? Are you sure?

If I were black in 1850, I’d be uppity.  If I were gay in 1980, it would show.  But it wouldn’t have to be that way.  I could be a quiet, docile black man, like the Sambo and coon stereotypes we never hear about anymore.  I could be a closeted gay man, an ‘older gentleman’, hoping silence would help my career or avoid scandal.

It’s Christmas, 1890.  You bring your working-class girlfriend home.  Your upper-crust mother cries and everyone is mad at you for upsetting her.

It’s Christmas, 1940.  You bring your black girlfriend home.  Stephen Foster is playing on the radio.   You note the obvious racial epithets, caricatures and stereotypes in the lyrics.  Dad is aghast that you can’t let everyone enjoy a simple song.  Your mother cries and everyone is mad at you for upsetting her.

It’s Christmas, 1970.  You bring your gay boyfriend home.  Dad glowers, appalled that you would be so disrespectful.  Mom cries and everyone is mad at you for upsetting her.

It’s Christmas, 1982.  Your brother tells you that a woman got the job he wanted.  He says she’s bitchy and conniving and tells his friends she slept with someone to get the job.

It’s Christmas, 2010.  You mention that you’re an atheist.  When the Hallelujah Chorus plays, you note that Christianity, being monarchical and autocratic, makes a strange partner for American ideals.  Your sister is bewildered that you can’t just enjoy it for its musical stature.  Mom cries and everyone is mad at you for upsetting her.

What should we do in situations like these?  Everyone likes to get along, so saying nothing is a good option.  Why rock the boat?  What is to be gained by speaking when you know others will be offended or uncomfortable?

In normal situations, in normal times, I would go this route myself.  But there are times when the old culture collides with the new one; where the advancing wave of change buckles the pavement.  I largely missed the great civil rights shift, where blacks very slowly became integrated into our society at all levels.  Every time a black was hired for a good job or an interracial wedding was held there were those who were offended.  Should blacks have stayed in their place to avoid offense?

What do we owe people who get offended?  No one wants to be deliberately offensive.  But what, exactly, is offensive about a black girlfriend, a gay boyfriend, an ambitious woman or an atheist insight into religion?  Offense in these cases just is the collision of cultures.  It is the feeling people have when you aren’t playing by their rules.

What effect does ‘being offended’ have?  It’s a topic-changer and conversation-stopper.  And it’s a threat:  “Say certain things and my mood will quickly change for the worse.  I won’t be content until you stop and promise not to offend me again.”  Now, we all have the right to draw boundaries.  If I don’t want to be in the presence of certain people, for any reason, I don’t have to.  But the easily offended don’t do this.  They want to go anywhere and speak with anyone and have their sensibilities respected.  This is cultural control, plain and simple.  When we welcome people into our lives, they are not programmable like the devices we carry around.  We live in a pluralistic society.  We don’t have to celebrate diversity, but it is a fact.  If we don’t like it, we can withdraw, but we can’t redraw things to our liking.  That is segregation.

We all feel threatened from time to time, but to be loving, tolerant, inclusive people we want to make room for unfamiliar views.  If we reactively say we’re offended, we run the risk of silencing someone who could enrich our lives.  We also have to admit that the cause of our fear may lie in us, not them.  Human reactions to threats are rapid, primal functions that don’t consult our higher cognition.  If we want religious or racial bigots to reconsider their prejudices, then we have to do the same.  As with our other instincts, we can pause when this one strikes and think it through.

So we can be mistaken about what is offensive.  It’s likely, then, that we can be mistaken about what is not offensive.  Because of the place religion has in our culture, it is hard to see it from other angles.  We have been trained to see it as a force for good, but religious words often conceal bigotry and disrespect.  We don’t notice them because they are familiar.  The Lord’s Prayer, for example, says “Thy Kingdom come”.  This is a call for other religions to be wiped away and replaced with Christ’s reign on earth.  It’s hard to imagine anything more disrespectful to non-Christians.  It also conflicts with other values we may hold, like equality and justice.  Troubles like these are commonplace in religious talk but familiarity masks their malignancy.

We find a parallel in our natural patriotism.  America might make mistakes, but we never doubt our good intentions.  When people on the Left dare to question our good will, we are called unpatriotic.  I suppose, in a way, we are, if patriotism means blind love.  But that’s not what it means to me.  Since I love my country, I owe it my honest appraisal.  If America’s actions are wrong, but we think they are right, then we are in love with an illusion.  We see this when we have a friend in an abusive relationship.  She’s likely to resent our honest input about her husband’s philandering.

So it is with religion.  If we love our faith, then we owe it our honest appraisal.  If it is solid, there is nothing to fear in inspecting the foundations.  The problem arises when we inspect the foundations of other people’s houses.  Are we right to do this?

It depends.  If they live alone, perhaps not.  But almost every city in the world inspects houses.  It’s a safety issue.  If your religion shuns medical care in favor of prayer, the tribe needs to get involved to protect your children.

Most cases aren’t of this type.  Most believers are good parents and citizens and I don’t accost them.  I write essays and post articles, but I’m not going to directly subject their faith to my unwelcome analysis.  But when we are in relationship with them and they bring religious ideas into the conversation, I think it is wrong to be silent.  It is wrong because it is dishonest and it maintains the impression that religious beliefs have no social consequences.

Most people I know rarely mention religion.  But when they do, they expect no reply, or benign assent.  This expectation is justified by the countless incursions religion has made into our culture without comment.  “In God We Trust” is on the money.  It’s on the money, right there with “Liberty” and “E Pluribus Unum”.  What greater stamp of reasonableness and universality can something have?  But slavery and segregation were once legal, too.  We are simply living in a time where religion still has an unquestioned public image, that of a wholesome force for good.  People spoke out against slavery for centuries.  The objections grew louder in the decades before the Civil War.  Desegregation took another hundred years.  We can expect a similar, slow process of realignment in how we discuss religion.  The goal is plain old honesty.  Religion’s great assets will still be noted, but it won’t be taboo to call out problems.  Liberals already do this with conservative religious beliefs.  Why would we ignore issues that are found in our own?

What should we do when we hear racist music?  Racist speech?  American, Iranian or Nazi nationalist speech?  Supremacist religious lyrics?  We can choose not to speak up to avoid offense, but there are cases where being silent is itself offensive.  Social pressure works to maintain the status quo.  The civil rights movement showed us that change won’t occur without confrontation.  The great achievement of Parks, King and others was that they confronted our culture nonviolently, even though they received violence in return.  They refused to be silent.  They made people uncomfortable, but these were people who shouldn’t have been comfortable in the first place.

We don’t want reverse discrimination.  We don’t want religious people to cower silently, either.  We simply want to make real the promise of ‘a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.’  Silent is not equal.  Sometimes, taking offense is social pressure to keep others silent.  We don’t want to offend, but we can’t keep silent.  No one should.

If you keep your religious beliefs private, no one will comment on them.  If you bring them up, put them on the money or insert them in the lyrics of songs, someone might speak up, and often they should.  When ideas have social consequences, silence is complicity.