This weeks reading in ‘A New Religious America’ left me feelings unfulfilled. The title of the chapter was “Are We Afraid Of Ourselves” and the opening paragraph illustrated what the forthcoming pages may be about, the way in which Americans have an fear and intolerance of otherness (in this case of religious differences), but then the author did not expand on this idea or illustrate any intellect about the subject. Instead the pages were filled with example after example of the violent acts that have been committed upon various religious establishments. Examples are always good, and it can be said that we learn from the mistakes of others, but I think that amount of examples the author used was rather excessive. There was no depth to this chapter and it seems that the author just cut and pasted facts about incidents together, very quickly, and did not give the incidents or the motives behind the incident any intellectual thought. What is driving these people to a state of fear in which they act out in violent ways? She mentioned the hijab (the head piece that women choose to wear) but she did not give that any intellectual thought, but just mentioned about how women who choose to wear the hijab have judged by the way they look. There were so many aspects of this chapter that she left untouched by intellect and I did not enjoy reading this chapter at all. Why didn’t she interview the ones committing these violent acts and ask them why they feel the way they do, why do they commit such violent acts and what societal pressures are they dealing with in which they feel like their violence is somewhat acceptable? Is their violent acts rewarded by their society and or their peer group? I felt like this chapter did not go in depth about what it introduced, but just skimmed the surface of what could have become a very powerful chapter. That jump into awesome writing was never made.
There is one factor that the author did touch upon, at least in minimal detail was the idea of fear of others within society. We are a country governed upon fear. Fear is a tool that we have used against each other since the beginning of time. Why did people supposedly follow Jesus and jump into christrianity? Because they were told that if they didn’t they were going to go to hell and spend their entire afterlife in the flames of damnation. So in that aspect could the beginnings of religion be based on the idea that people can overpower and control others through fear?
These crimes illustrated in this chapter were hate crimes, which essentially are crimes against humanity. The people who commited theses crimes are most likely uneducated and have been fed hate, labels and stereotyped through their peer groups and immediate family and obviously these are negative viewpoints where they have somewhere along the way received some sort of positive reinforcement, something telling them that their actions are somewhat acceptable, and that leads to these behaviors.
These people who are committing these unacceptable hate crimes are victims of the typical American white heterosexual male viewpoint that being such is the norm of American society, and any variation from this man-created stereotypical norm is considered other and should not be tolerated and welcome in this society. If people would just educate themselves and learn about that they have “othered” that other category would go away and everyone could view each other as human beings. If we get rid of our labels of others, then this othering would not exist and the tension between difference would disinagrate and there would be the possibility of equality. This could mean equality not just amongst the various religions of the United States, but also amongst the very different races that are present in the United Sates, and also amongst the different sexes and sexual orientations.
I must say that these uneducated people committing these hate crimes spend an awful lot of time and energy to hate so much. They probably find it exausting to live their daily lives and maintain such a level of ignorance and rage against other human beings. How do they do things such as go to the grocery store? Do simple daily tasks like grocery shopping become stressful situations? Are they walking up and down the grocery store aisles in fear of maybe running in to that “other” and constantly debating in their own head how they are going to react in that particular situation? I have a hard time understanding this level of hatred and the energy it must take to maintain it.
This is the way that the current government has been able to maintain control. The bush administration tells the American people that there are terrorist among us and those terroists are ready to attack and unless you trust W bush then these people will take over our safe country of America. The government is reinforcing this othering of other people, which in a way is justifying the behavior of these hate crimes as in these people feel that their fear is encouraged and accepted by the government. Fear installed into the American people has allowed the current government to do what it wants and have its way within the power structure, and look at the damage that has been caused. All in the name of hate and intolerance. It’s a sad situation. A sad situation that could easily fixed if people took a deep breath and let go of all there inherited sterotypes and open their eyes to the diversity around and realize how boring the world would be if we truly all were the same.
There would be no forward progress without the diversity that is present in the united states today. Change and enlightenment could come through education, and most importantly a new form of government that does not prey on its people through the tool of fear