A Liberal
Dose
May 11, 2023
Troy D.
Smith
“A Final
Word (For Now) on Perception”
About twenty years ago, I wrote a novel about our local
Confederate guerrilla Champ Ferguson. Champ was a divisive character in both
history and historical memory (how groups remember something). At his graveside
here in White County there is a historical marker describing him as a martyr
and a hero; at his birthplace in Clinton County, Kentucky, there is a marker
describing him as a terrorist. White County was mostly Confederate, Clinton
County was mostly Union- and that still affects people’s perceptions. I tried
to be fair, and present Champ as a flawed human being with some good and a lot
of bad. I was apprehensive about how readers would react- I thought everybody would
be mad at me on both sides. But I was surprised. What happened was that people
who already revered Champ told me how much they liked the fact I showed he
wasn’t as bad as people say; people predisposed against Champ told me how much
they liked that I showed how bad he really was.
Perception.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the blue dress/white dress
thing, using it a means to demonstrate people’s difficulty seeing things from
the other side’s perspective, and I mentioned racism as an example. My friend John
-rightly -pointed out that I was being selective in my own points. Therefore, I
spent several weeks looking to various movies and TV shows from recent decades
to explore -and try to understand -the pent-up anger in many white, middle
class, MAGA, Trump supporters, which led to a violent attempt to overthrow the
government by a few individuals… and a disturbing amount of support for those
rioters from many on the right. My conclusion was that, although I vehemently
oppose their actions and many of the ideas behind them, in order to understand
them I have to have empathy for the frustrations and emotions that led them to
that point. We have to recognize those things in each other if we are going to
find peaceful resolutions, we can’t just all hate each other and call each
other evil. We have to see each other’s humanity, and that works both ways.
I feel like John may have missed my point. In his response
last week, John seemed critical of my effort to look for shades of gray rather
than black or white. He pointed out that all the characters in my examples
broke the law and did evil, and that fact was what ultimately mattered. This
took me somewhat aback, as my whole point was trying to understand the anger on
the right by looking more deeply than the actions of January 6. I believe those
people broke the law and performed evil deeds, as did the various criminals in
my examples… but I was proposing we look at WHY, so as to prevent it in the
future. And I did so because I felt remiss in doing so in earlier discussions.
Too often, on social media and in real life, I hear people
on my side of the political fence othering conservatives or rural America (or
the South) in general, by tossing around hateful stereotypes and painting them
as evil and/or stupid. Of course, there is plenty of that from the other side…
I’m tempted to say there’s more, but it’s hard to tell. It’s like we all hate
each other without thinking- and definitely without showing empathy or trying
to see the other side. I see something similar with a lot of my conservative
friends when they react -not to what I said -but to what they had presupposed I
was GOING to say, to the extent they start responding before they’ve even
listened.
That said, though, I stand beside those individuals and
groups who feel like the other side is out to strip away their rights or even
their existence. I draw the line at empathy for Nazis and Klansmen.
--Troy D.
Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at
Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.
You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE
A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE
Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com
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