||| ORCASIONAL MUSINGS by STEVE HENIGSON |||

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Kristen Wilson was dismayed by my reference to “the Chinese Disease.” She worried that by openly attributing COVID-19 to the Chinese, it would somehow adversely affect her adopted daughter, Paris, who was born in China and is now in college in Maine.

I want to reassure Kristen that nothing that I write or say could possibly affect Paris. First of all, that’s because I doubt that anyone in Maine reads my weekly column, published for an Orcasian audience. But also, in a much wider sense, nothing that I write or say could have any effect upon the workings of a bigoted mind. If someone is angered merely by the color of Paris’s skin or the shape of her eyes, then nothing that anyone writes or says, positive or negative, could have any effect on that bigoted person’s opinion.

Bigotry is not a rational state, and thoughtful arguments cannot affect a bigot’s mental operations, attitude, or behavior. While prejudice, usually based upon a rational decision, can succumb to thoughtful argument, or to experiment and experience, the bigot’s beliefs are so deeply based upon purely emotional perceptions and so deeply protected by defensive fears that they are unavailable to dissenting thought. As the modern adage has it, “Haters are going to hate.” It’s what they do.

I have to admit that I write this from direct experience. I am a Jew who spent most of his childhood in a Catholic-majority neighborhood in New York City, and I have the scars and bruises to prove it. At that time, it was no longer the Irish who were the dangerous bigots, but rather it was the Puerto Rican newcomers. The Irish had moved up in the world economically by then, and had made themselves comfortable within New York’s ethnic diversity by joining the middle class. But the Puerto Ricans were so new to the city and the culture, and so low on the economic totem pole, that they were deeply insecure, and that insecurity translated into militant and vicious bigotry, particularly against Jews. The funny thing about it was that I was saved from serious beatings by Puerto Rican kids, several times, by my best friend, a slightly older and much more robust Irish Catholic.

And that brings up the important question: How shall Paris, or, indeed, any victim of bigotry, handle the bigot’s hate or defeat the bigot’s attack? I think that the answer I prefer to offer is contained within a few comments on a friend’s life. My close friend, Sat Guru Singh, was a short, tubby little man who dressed in very strange clothing. Everything he wore was sparkly-clean white, and always included an intricately wrapped turban. He had a long beard which he neither cut nor shaved, and, had you removed his turban, you would have seen that he never cut his hair, either. “Funny looking” wasn’t the half of it, and he also looked “foreign.” Foolish people who saw themselves as “real Americans” would occasionally get on Sat Guru’s case, and give him a hard time about his clothing and, specifically, about his turban. The more foolish among them sometimes referred to him as “the Q-Tip,” and many others were convinced that he was some sort of “A-Rab.” He wasn’t. He had been born in Chicago, of born-in-America parents, and he was a Sikh, an adherent of a religion based in the northwest of the Indian sub-continent.

Sat Guru may have been short and fat and funny looking, but he had a very tough job which he did very well. He was a teacher, and, because of his special skills, he ran the “opportunity room” of a big-city public high school. (The term “opportunity room” was school-administration-speak of the time for the place where they isolate the really bad kids, just to keep them away from the other students.) Sat Guru not only supervised this isolation room, but he also had good success in converting some of those bad kids into model students. That was the result of his special skill. You see, Sat Guru Singh was a true Sikh, through and through, which meant that he was a real warrior, unafraid of anybody. The bad kids just couldn’t intimidate him, so they ended up admiring him, and then, finally, they ended up imitating him as well.

Sat Guru was short and fat, but he had a commanding presence and what he used to call a “command voice.” When he drew himself up and used that voice, people took notice, people listened, and people obeyed. When he had had enough of being harassed by some “real Americans,” and had heard “Q-Tip” one time too many, he would stiffen, seem to grow an inch or two, and then he would use that “command voice,” and those annoying bigots would get very quiet and slink away.

Bigots are, for the most part, cowards. They back off as soon as their intended victim shows strength and resolve. I therefore suggest to Kristen, and to Paris, that there is very little to fear from an unreasoning bigot. The best defense is neither appeasement nor rational argument, but rather strong body language and the “command voice.” I also suggest that the same tactic works equally well against today’s “cancel culture.” If someone tries to “shut you down,” I suggest that you display resolve, get into that “command voice,” and just keep on talking. It worked for Sat Guru Singh, and it will work for you.


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