Anchors dropped in yesterday

There are any number of people who take up space in the present, but who are living, thinking, and emoting, in the past. The Lunatic Left is still fighting the Vietnam War, prosecuting Watergate, and voting for Kennedy (or maybe even Roosevelt). Blacks decide on policy from a past in which Klansmen lynched "uppity niggers" and poll taxes were perfectly legal, and see anything other than enthusiastic acceptance of their decisions as an attempt to reinstitute slavery. Women see any criticism as an attempt to ban them from the workplace, take away their franchise, and chain them to a stove. Their perspective is not based in the present time, but is anchored in the past.

Looking at the cartoons, a non-Muslim wonders how they could possibly have given such offense. How could a few juvenile, satirical drawings of the prophet Muhammad have created a global crisis? It seems inexplicable, until you think about American reactions to a word we hesitate even to write for fear of giving offense, calling it instead the "n-word."

The African American experience reminds us that there is a rage so deep and abiding that it can be triggered by a small comment, an unintended slight, a remark perhaps meant as a joke but heard as a grievous insult. The legacy of slavery left behind that residue of anger. It created taboos that protect what Sigmund Freud described as the sacred totems of cultural identity. It established boundaries where outsiders -- in this case, white people -- are not allowed to venture. That's why the n-word is so powerful -- it is the symbol of the suffering that a people experienced at the hands of others.

Well, yes. Blacks were enslaved in the US, but no living Black has suffered under US slavery. (There are Blacks in Africa who are still enslaved, but that's another story.) Discrimination has faded to the point where we need professional tea-leaf readers to find some way to spin absolute trivia into evidence of subtle, covert racism. After a certain point, holding on to past injury is a sign of deliberate refusal to heal, a play for sympathy.

And ethnic strife the world over depends on anchors dropped in the insults and turmoil of yesterday.

Maybe the Muslim world will someday be able to laugh off slurs against the prophet Muhammad, but not now. The wounds are too raw; the sense of victimization is too immediate. I travel often to Muslim countries, and I am sometimes astonished at how hundreds of years of history can seem condensed into the present, so that every current injustice is magnified by the weight of every past one. I don't understand it, but then, I have to remind myself, I'm not a Muslim. I haven't lived it.

And you know what? Neither have many Muslims. Everyone who lived through the events of only one century ago is dead. The raw feelings of victimization were planted by parents, teachers, and other leaders.

It's one thing to remember the past, that we won't repeat it. It's another entirely to drop anchor in it, and refuse acknowledge change when it has occurred. To live anchored in yesterday is to cut yourself off from the good that has arisen over time. It also makes it less likely any changes for the good will continue. Those who have gone to the effort of changing or effecting change in others need some sort of recognition, or they'll become discouraged and stop trying to help.

I'm willing to meet the Other half-way. I believe 90% of Americans are willing to do the same. But if the Other refuses to even consider meeting us half-way, only a tiny minority will make the trip, and we all lose.