With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
Compassion and Honesty During a Crisis
When I was in high school I was very involved in my church and was there maybe three evenings a week, as well as several times on the weekends. Getting to the inner city from the country took a lot of highways, and there was one underpass with a mural in particular that has stuck in my memory. At the time I thought it was cheesy, but as I’ve gotten older and seen more of the world I appreciate it more. It had a rainbow, flowers, and children of different races, and the slogan “Seal Your Children’s Fate, Teach Them Not to Hate. Be Colorblind.”
Do you remember how the mid-late nineties and early two-thousands were all about teaching our generation not to be racist? That a different skin color or eye shape does not make someone less of a person than you? Do you remember learning about Dr. King, and why most every city in the nation has a major road named after him? Do you remember Mother Theresa, and how she treated people?
Growing up I was always taught that everyone was made in the image of God, and that I should treat everyone with the same respect and dignity that I would show to Jesus. There was a time when my sisters and I wanted to make fun of Bill Clinton, because he had a different political position than we did. My mom put a stop to that really fast—even though she didn’t agree with him, he is still a child of God and worth my respect as a person. The homeless guy on the street corner, the kids running wild in the grocery store, the angry boss breathing down your neck—we don’t judge them or mistreat them because, in spite of everything they are going through and everything they’ve done, they are still people who deserve our respect.
And it would seem to me that the next logical step would be that if you can’t make fun of one person based on their differences, then you cannot make fun of a whole nation because of those differences. The hatred against Japanese-Americans during the 1940s was horrifying. Yes, the Japanese soldiers had very barbaric practices. But because we lumped all people of Japanese descent together, white American adults decided that their Japanese-American neighbors were less than human, and that it was okay to put them in concentration camps, and to indiscriminately kill the Japanese on their home soil.
When you hear the term “concentration camp” you think of the Germans, and how they treated the Jews, and you’re horrified. Right? Because how could an entire nation commit those horrors against their own citizens? And if you think that the United States has never, could never, do anything so atrocious then you are sadly the victim of history revisionism. Killing thousands of innocent men, women, and children is evil, no matter who does it or how it’s accomplished.
What really makes me lose heart is that the generation that tried so hard to teach millennials not to hate is the generation that seems to be expressing the most racism right now. I’ll be labeled an entitled, spoiled millennial who is part of the problem. Because how could the greatest generation and their children, who lived in the best time, and taught me everything I know, be wrong? Right?
Let me repeat myself.
YOU CANNOT TREAT SOMEONE AS LESS THAN HUMAN BECAUSE YOU DON’T LIKE THEM.
Maybe that wasn’t clear enough.
There are many reasons to dislike people, individuals, or entire nations. I don’t like Kim Jong Un or President Putin. But I don’t mistreat Koreans or Russians because of the actions of their leaders. I’ve been emotionally abused by older white women who thought I owed them something. But I don’t hate all older white women because of my experience with a few of them. That is the kind of behavior that we try to teach our kids, right? If someone hits you, you don’t hit them back. When the school bully punches you and steals your lunch money it’s probably because he’s seen his dad hit his mom, and doesn’t know how to act any different, and you pray for him.
Do you see where I’m going with all this yet? Am I arrogant and presumptuous for taking to heart the teachings of the people who won’t practice it themselves? I’ll be blunt.
YOU SHOULD NOT USE THE TERM CHINA VIRUS.
If you want to stop reading now, fine. If you want to become one of those angry white women who start to emotionally abuse me because you don’t like me or suddenly think that I’m being rude/inflammatory/unpatriotic/liberal/entitled/take your pick, fine. I don’t care what you think of me. Unfriend me. Block me. Call me names. But own up to your own prejudices.
If you use the term China Virus to refer to coronavirus, you may be working from a prejudiced assumption.
And if you deny a bias but keep saying it, then you may also be hypocritical and cynical.
I’ll repeat myself again:
ALL PEOPLE ARE CREATED IN THE IMAGE OF GOD AND DESERVE YOUR RESPECT.
If you don’t believe in God, then I’ll put it another way:
WE ARE ALL THE SAME UNDER THE SKIN.
You, me, your generation, my generation, we are adults. We have a responsibility to act like it.
