A Liberal Dose, April 1, 2021 "Flags, Mascots, and Outrage: Empathy Is the Key"

 

Flags, Mascots, and Outrage: Empathy Is the Key

Troy D. Smith

I talked in this column before about the differences between liberal and conservative approaches. Liberals, I pointed out, are usually focused on changing things –from their perspective, for the better and moving toward the future. Conservatives, on the other hand, want to keep things the same or change them back to how they used to be –in effect, to “conserve” the status quo. This makes conservatives real strong on maintaining tradition. Liberals are also real big on trying to be more “tolerant, accepting of different cultures, and willing to accept new ideas and new ways of doing things.” (Yes, I just quoted myself.) There is also the difference in how the two groups think the government should spend money, but we are not going to focus on that part much this time. Instead, we are going to take a couple of examples that are in the news right now, both nationally and in the Upper Cumberland, and see how liberals and conservatives approach them and what that tells us. Spoiler alert: the key is empathy.

Recent studies indicate that the more empathetic you are, the more likely you are to lean left. Now, bear in mind, empathy is not the same thing as compassion. Conservative people can be extremely compassionate when it comes to helping people in need. Empathy has more to do with understanding how those other people feel. This comes down to the previous definition of terms. Conservatives want to preserve the status quo, and believe everyone else needs to get with that program. Liberals are more likely to value several perspectives on things rather than a straight this-is-good, that-is-bad, nothing in-between approach. One frequent by-product of this is that, as a result, Democrats have usually been more easily divided than Republicans. This is what led Will Rogers, a century ago, to say things like “Of course Democrats don’t agree with each other, if they agreed with each other they’d be Republicans” and “I am not a member of any organized political party, I’m a Democrat.”

Let’s get to our examples. The first one: athletes kneeling in protest during the National Anthem. Many conservatives go crazy over this one. I know senior citizens who are lifelong football fans who refuse to watch an NFL game because athletes are allowed to protest in this manner and still have jobs. More specifically, when black athletes and their non-black allies protest the pervasive police killings of unarmed black men. To many conservatives, this is such a profound flouting of tradition –and lack of respect for that tradition –that it is unjustifiable. They tend to see it simply as “hating America,” and not –as liberals tend to do –as a peaceful, even respectful, gesture protesting the fact that, in that specific area, America needs to be better. People incensed by kneeling have probably never read the stirring words of Frederick Douglass’s (I hear he’s doing great things) 1852 speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” They may have a hard time wrapping their minds around the fact that the great (and Republican) baseball star Jackie Robinson said, in 1972, “I cannot stand and sing the anthem; I cannot salute the flag. I know I am a black man in a white world.” Never having experienced what it is like to be treated as a second-or-third-class citizen in one’s own country, white conservatives rarely seem to imagine how they would feel and how they might want to attract attention for their cause. Or, perhaps even more telling, when white conservatives feel their absolute right to exercise power and say what they want with no social consequences is being impinged, they cry to the heavens about how persecuted they are –without ever seeming to realize that other groups have suffered and are suffering far worse indignities than they are.

There were white people just as incensed, and saying many of the same things, about African Americans peacefully sitting in protest at lunch counters in the sixties. Many today are primarily angered at the “disrespect” and violation of tradition in this form of protest (kneeling). Now, we have to admit, there are a large number of white Americans today who would be incensed at any form of black protest, peaceful or not, and who are enraged at any mention of the Black Lives Matter movement. And we also have to admit to ourselves, white American neighbors, that a lot of people who have chanted “Blue Lives Matter” were among the seditious mob who tried to beat cops to death with fire extinguishers and flagpoles a couple of months ago, so there is more going on there. By more, of course, I mean blatant racism. But I know that is not true of all conservatives. So let’s look at my other example, and then tie them together.

Protesting Native American sports mascots is not a new thing, as many people seem to think. Lakota activist and future American Indian Movement spokesman Russell Means was leading protests in Cleveland against their baseball team’s name and mascot in the 1960s. Other major league sports teams were being regularly criticized by Native American organizations by the early 1970s. While many people argue that American Indian-themed school mascots are meant to honor indigenous people, most Native Americans find them to be offensive on several levels- appropriating and trivializing Native culture and identity, reinforcing insulting stereotypes, and profaning things that many Native people hold as sacred. For example –and you probably didn’t know this –the ceremonial long feathered headdresses worn by Plains tribes, and appearing on many school mascots, have a very specific meaning. It is both spiritual and social. Only certain people in a tribe earn the right to wear them, and each feather represents an act of courage or service to the community. Dancing around in one without earning it is kind of like dressing as the Pope but covered with Purple Heart medals. Which many conservative Americans would find extremely offensive.

Nothing, though, is as insulting to indigenous people than the mascot used until recently by the Washington NFL team and still used by public schools around the country. That particular word has never been considered an “honor”- dictionaries literally define it as insulting and offensive. It is a racial epithet of the sort that used to be publicly applied to various minority groups but which now get bleeped out on television (appropriately). And yet when Native individuals protest such mascots –even “the R-word” –they are frequently harassed, intimidated, and even targeted with death threats (I’ve seen it happen).

Empathy would teach you that Native Americans’ feelings on this matter are very similar to your own feelings when your treasured cultural traditions are treated in a way you find insulting. But too many people only see how things affect them or their group, without trying to imagine the feelings of the other side. I wish everyone would try an experiment for a week or so- every time you want to say “political correctness” substitute the phrase “human kindness and decency” and see how your sentences sound.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

www.troyduanesmith.com

A Liberal Dose, March 25, 2021 "The Difference Between Liberal and Conservative"

 

“THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LIBERAL AND CONSERVATIVE”

Today I want to once more explore some political terms and put them in historical context. This time we’ll tackle liberal and conservative, and touch on progressive. As discussed in a previous column, “liberal” originally referred to the protection of individual liberties. By the twentieth century, though, it had come to be understood more in the sense of its other meaning, “generous” or “open-handed.” A government, like a person, that is liberal seeks to extend the benefits of government to as many people as possible. This is done by being an “activist government” that gets directly involved. That means spending money, and that means raising money to spend, which is done through taxes. Liberal has also come to mean tolerant, accepting of different cultures, and willing to accept new ideas and new ways of doing things.

Joe Biden’s stimulus was extremely liberal. Every Republican in Congress voted against it –even though the vast majority of their own supporters were for it –because they are conservative.

Conservatives, of course, conserve. They wish to conserve in a fiscal sense by calling for a government that spends less –though, in reality, for the past few decades conservative administrations have tended to spend more money than liberal ones. The difference is how and on whom they spend it. There tend to be fewer beneficiaries of that spending, and they tend to be corporations or extremely wealthy people. Conservatives also call for less taxation. When the economy takes a dramatic downturn, conservatives tend to want the government to spend less, and to lower taxes on the wealthy. They argue that if the people at the very top are taxed less, they will have more money to invest and grow their businesses, which will create jobs and raise everyone’s status eventually. A liberal government, meanwhile, tends to spend more during an economic downturn- on federal projects that create jobs, and by getting money into the hands of the poor and working class who will spend it for their needs and boost the economy by doing so. Countless studies have demonstrated that the conservative “trickle-down” theory does not work. When wealthy people get more money (via tax cuts), they tend not to go out and spend it but rather to hold on to it, which does no one (but them) any good.

Conservatives also tend to conserve, or protect, traditions and the status quo. If things have always been done a certain way, then that’s how they should continue to be done. This applies to traditional ideas about family, church, sexuality, culture, etc. I am reminded of the words of the great western novelist Elmer Kelton, who said, “I don’t write about good guys in white hats versus bad guys in black hats. but about two guys in gray hats, one trying to institute change and the other resisting it.” In such a story, depending on your point of view, either character could be the protagonist. In their own point of view, each one honestly believes he is the hero. This also sums up the liberal/conservative divide in America, though obviously it is more complex and layered. Nonetheless, it goes back to the balance between the individual and the community that has been a point of discussion since this country was founded.  

For over a century now, the Republicans have been the conservative party and the Democrats have been the liberal one. For most of that time, though, there was always a liberal wing of the Republican Party and a conservative wing of the Democratic Party. It was sort of like the the taijitu, or Yin-Yang symbol  –two oppositional forces created balance, in part due to the fact each one incorporated some elements of the other. Liberal Republicans started disappearing in the Reagan years, and by the 21^st century were pretty much gone. Instead of liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats, today we have a handful of “moderates” in each party –who really aren’t that moderate, inasmuch as they vary only slightly, and only occasionally, from their party lines. If that has been true of politicians, it has become equally true of their voters.

Allow me to restate my earlier definition: liberals embrace change, conservatives resist change. They want things to stay as they are, or maybe even go back to how they used to be.

Among other things, this is demonstrated in how each group views the Constitution. Liberals are often “Loose constructionists” who say the Constitution is a living document that changes to meet the needs of the time. Many conservatives are “strict constructionists” who believe the Constitution says what it says, and nothing more –and that even what it says has to be examined in the light of what its framers understood in the 18^th century. Since I’m a liberal and this is my column, I’ll go ahead and put this out there- if the Constitution remained unchanged from the 1700s, women would not be able to vote, Native Americans would not be citizens, and there might still be slavery. I would add that, since the Constitution itself as originally written provided for amendments to be added, you can’t argue the framers never wanted it to be changed in any way.

I said earlier that Republicans have been the conservative party for over a century. But it wasn’t always that way. From the party’s formation in 1854 and for decades thereafter, it was the liberal party and Democrats were the conservatives. 1800s Republicans wanted to change the status quo: they wanted to expand civil rights, expand the role of government in protecting them, and end slavery. 1800s Democrats wanted the opposite of all those things. One thing that has mostly remained unchanged from the 1854 Republicans, though, is the idea baked into the party that if everyone is given an equal shot they have a chance –with hard work and a little luck –at success. I think that the big difference between the parties today on that point lies in determining what an equal shot looks like and how you guarantee is –and that’s how political parties should work. We agree on what is right and fair and each propose our plan on how to get there.

The Populist movement took hold in a big way in the 1880s. Farmers and workers joined forces to protest the “robber barons” of the Gilded Age, which led to the creation of a third party in the 1890s (the Progressive Party), which won several governorships and congressional seats. Among other things, they wanted to expand workers’ rights. By 1900, Democrats and Republicans alike started adopting Progressive policies and for about twenty years every politician was progressive to some extent. Some argue that when that situation ended after WWI, around 1920, is when Republicans and Democrats starting switching poles as to who was conservative. Certainly those poles were fully reversed by the 1960s. Eventually, liberals started calling themselves progressives because liberal had become a dirty word.

But here’s the thing. You can’t stop change, at best you can only slow it down. Things that are considered normal today were considered too liberal a generation or less ago.

I guess the real difference is between “Make America Great Again” and “Make America Greater Than Ever, Now.”

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.