On Personhood

Frederick Douglass, perhaps the greatest of American abolitionists, wrote plaintively that if “the colored man…come[s] as a gentleman, a scholar and a statesman, he is hailed as a contradiction to the national faith concerning his race, and his coming is resented as impudence.” These words were spoken 129 years ago when hatred and anger were freshly open among people of different races. If Douglas were alive today he might discover that it was not only the recognized desire for betterment among black people that frightened whites, it was the fear that the other might be more like us than we thought!
More Like Us

It is not only race that can separate people. Sunnis and Shias kill each other regularly, just as Serbs and Muslims did in the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. Then there was the terrible strife between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland that went on for hundreds of years. And these people all looked like one another! Perhaps it is not so much the diverse appearances among us that become a problem, perhaps it is the denial of personhood we refuse to give one another that sets us apart.

Denial of Personhood

How many times have we come across stories of people who become less suspicious of each other when they sit down to a cup of tea or a meal together? How much easier it is to fear the shadowy, unnamed stranger…of any color… walking down the street than the smiling boy who brings our paper to the door? What might have happened between Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman if they had granted each other the power of their personhood? If they had just talked a bit…and listened to each other?

Less Suspicious

Over 50 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said that the law could keep him from being lynched, but it could not legislate love. No, it couldn’t and still can’t but we can choose it by beginning with the recognition of one another as genuine persons. This may be the only way that we can resolve differences, recognize samenesses and become real at last to each other.

Real at Last

It is really hard to continue to fear the other when we find he has the same wants and needs that we do. He wants his family to be happy, his children well educated, and his household secure…just as we all do.