Sam Smith - I'm constantly reminded these days of something that rarely gets discussed in the coverage and debates about people of different ethnicity or gender, namely that we live in a multicultural world that even the virtuous among us more often treat more as a problem to be resolved rather than an asset to be absorbed and enjoyed.
I early discovered the differences in the world. I had five brothers and sisters, which has become rare these days. I learned early in life that others near you don't necessarily see the world in the same way. I had a liberal father and brother, and two quite conservative sisters. My brother lived in Puerto Rico and married a Puerto Rican. One of my sisters lives in Great Britain and I have four Puerto Rican nephews and nieces, one of whom I'm close to in part because he's the only other journalist in the family. In short, I was introduced to multiculturalism early in life.
Then in ninth grade I took one of two high school courses in the country in anthropology. As I wrote about it later:
In the middle of the stolid, segregated, monolithic 1950s, Howard Platt showed us a new way to look at the world. And what a wonderful world it was. Not the stultifying world of our parents, not the monochromatic world of our neighborhood, not the boring world of 9th grade, but a world of fantastic options, a world in which people got to cook, eat, shelter themselves, have sex, dance and pray in an extraordinary variety of ways.
Mr.
Platt did not exorcise racism, and he did not teach ethnic harmony,
cultural sensitivity, the regulation of diversity or the morality of
non-prejudiced behavior. He didn't need to. He taught something far more
important. Mr. Platt opened a world of variety, not for us to fear but
to learn about, appreciate and enjoy. It was not a problem, but a gift.
It was such a powerful course that when I got to Harvard University, I decided to major in anthropology. As I described it in a speech I gave at the 100th anniversary conference of the Berkeley School of Anthropology:
If
I had chosen one of the conventional majors, I might never have made it
through. Fortunately, or inevitably, I found my way -- academically and
geographically -- to a backwater of the university: the anthropology
department, which lived like an Amazonian tribe well off the main campus
in the dusty, dim recesses of the Peabody Museum. Out of some four
thousand undergraduates, only about 20 majored in anthropology, five of
them former students of Howard Platt.
Thanks
to the distractions of my interest in journalism I graduated from
Harvard magna cum probation. As the sainted anthropologist Cora Dubois
wrote of my analysis of the Nagas, "This is pretty good journalism but
it is bad anthropology."
But anthropology would aid my journalism
for decades to come, making me realize that while many of my colleagues
treated news as though it was mainly about the powerful I had learned
how the true complexity of cultures was a major force of change.
Upon
graduation I started my work as a Washington journalist. One of the
things about DC that gets little attention is its history as an
ethnically diverse city. For example, within a decade of my arrival the
city had become 70% black. I ended up providing media assistance to a
young activist named Marion Barry, head of the local SNCC chapter, which
I continued until the national chair, Stokely Carmichael, announced
that whites were no longer welcomed in SNCC, at one point arguing that
""integration is an insidious subterfuge for white supremacy."
This
was deeply alien from what I had learned in a majority black DC where I
met people like Chuck Stone - former aide to Adam Clayton Powell Jr -
who said you should treat everyone like they were a member of your
family. It doesn't mean false sensitivity or false harmony, but it does
mean a sense of reciprocal liberty, underlying solidarity, and a
willingness to share the window seat.
I sometimes think of good politics as the art of turning selfishness into virtue and I think good multicultural relations often work the same way - which is why ethnic restaurants are so popular. It's a good deal for everyone.
Just like living in DC's ethnic minority had been a good deal for me. Among the reasons:
-
Black Washingtonians understood loss, pain, suffering and
disappointment. They helped me become better at handling these things.
- Teachers, artists, writers and poets are highly respected in the black community. As a writer, I liked that.
-
As a writer, the imagery, rhythm and style of black speech appealed to
me far more than the jargon-ridden circumlocution of the white city.
- White Washington always seemed to want me to conform to it; black Washington always accepted me for who I was.
The
other thing that was different about Washington was that it had learned
to bring people together by shared issues. The first big local story I
covered was about a planned freeway to go through the heavily white
neighborhood of Georgetown. The two strongest groups involved were a
white Georgetown organization and an all black group called Niggers
Incorporated. The freeway was killed.
The lack of self
government in DC was another issue that brought blacks and whites
together. You learned in DC to organize by issues.
As a writer I
value thinking independently but to do that I must live in a culture
that supports it. That not only respects cultural variety but enjoys
it.
We need to stop dealing with our ethnic and gender
differences as only a problem and treat it as something to appreciate.
If I could learn this back in ninth grade, maybe politicians, academics
and journalists could give it more of a try now.
