As human beings, one of the things that we do to understand our world is create systems of meaning that help us to organize the sensations, experiences, and objects we encounter. I think of a time I was reading with my oldest nephew, Connor, as he was learning different categories of animals—how a dog is not a cow and a cow is not a zebra. What the animal looked like, how it sounded, and what it ate all factored in as he learned how to identify these different species. Similarly, we have created categories like nationality, race, ethnicity, sex, religious affiliation, political party, marital status, and so on to organize and make sense of humankind’s diversity. However, too often we use these seemingly descriptive systems to determine the worth of others. These human-made hierarchies of value can cause division, contention, and skewed understandings of self-worth.
But then I sat and thought more about
how externalities like wealth are used to ascribe value to individuals. It
reminded me of Edith Wharton’s novel, The
Age of Innocence. In that text, Wharton satirizes the intricate set of codes
that the very wealthy used to dictate behavior and measure worth in gilded age
New York. People who abided by these strict codes were accepted into high
society as a valued member. Those who did or could not abide by these codes
were dismissed as vulgar, low class, and the worst of all designations,
“unpleasant.” When I teach this novel, my students have no trouble laughing at
these characters and their shallowness. But we as early twenty-first century
folk too have codes that separate the “hots” from the “nots” (to quote a Facebook
page that has been in the local news recently). As a class, we started to
identify various markers or codes that could be used to rank others and came up
with a list: what people wear, what cell phone they have, what laptop they use,
what car they drive, what bands they listen to, what size their jeans are, what
status their relationship is in, what apartment complex they live in, what
films they watch, what facial hair they grow, and so on. My students found that
these things that seemingly describe actually prescribe certain behaviors and beliefs deemed important to
acceptance and worth.
Whether we like to admit it or not, it
is human to rank and ascribe value to others, and more often than not, we
ascribe higher value to people who are like us than to those who are different.
It is now cliché to say this, but we fear what we don’t know, so difference is
made suspect or “bad,” whereas familiarity breeds comfort, so sameness becomes
more valuable. In addition, fear of coming up short or fear of not being enough
often propels these negative behaviors. Because we fear we are less somehow, we
seek to elevate ourselves over others to convince ourselves that we are
valuable.
Obviously, these systems that elevate
some and denigrate others are destructive and have led to wars, enslavement,
and discrimination—violence of a social and global scale.
One of my favorite works of
literature is Lorraine Hansberry’s play A
Raisin in the Sun (1958). This play examines the ways that socially
constructed categories of worth can grind down individuals and offers a
corrective. The Younger family is poor, black, and living in Southside Chicago
after WWII. The degradations of racist housing and hiring practices have worn them
out, eating away at familial relationships and draining each individual of hope.
At the beginning of the third act, the Younger family is reeling from the news
that Walter Lee Younger’s actions have lost the small inheritance that could
have helped them better their situation. His sister Beneatha turns on him,
saying he is no longer a man, but a “toothless rat.” Her mother corrects her, reminding
her that she taught her to love him, to which Beneatha replies, “Love him?
There is nothing left to love.” Indeed, the oppressive weight of racism has
told the Youngers that they are worth nothing so many times that they are
starting to believe it. Yet, Mama rightly says in this memorable speech:
There is always something left to love. . . . Child, when do you think is
the time to love somebody the most? When they done good and made things easy
for everybody? Well then, you ain’t through learning—because that ain’t the
time at all. It’s when he’s at his lowest and can’t believe in hisself ‘cause
the world done whipped him so! When you starts measuring somebody, measure him
right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done take into account what
hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is. (145)[i]
In fact, one of my least favorite words is “tolerate” because its popular usage assigns a superiority to the speaker and an inferiority to the object of their speech. You “tolerate” somebody else’s person, beliefs, or actions, which implies that your own person, beliefs, or actions are superior.
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