Choking Communities

    

Are you Choking Communities?  

How do you view and speak about otherness, when in angst, burnout or culture shock? Unknown or hidden prejudice easily comes to the surface when pressure builds up in Intercultural settings.   

Southern hemisphere residents reference colonialism when faced with any form of presumptuous and condescending superiority. Some expats, in asserting their presumed superior paradigms, refer derogatorily to ‘inner city’ or ‘third world’ paradigms.

  

I once heard a tired and frustrated Caucasian missionary talk of ‘Negroids’ in Africa.  Though venting in anger, her desire to put them in ‘their place’ was evident. I doubt she was aware of dominionism’s effect on her worldview and the cognitive dissonance lived out.  

This ‘power over’ approach is exhibited when academics refer to lack of training to "Band-Aid" dilemmas while skilled but nonacademic experts retort with talks of diploma snobbery. What occasions these intercultural clashes and potential fallout? Endless meetings of ‘peace-making’ and reconciliation often have apparent resolution until the next fallout. Purim celebrates the deliverance of a people sold to be annihilated (Esther 7:4a). A man by the name of Haman was not content with his power and sought to exert it unreasonably on Jews restrained by their belief to bow before God alone.  The form in which he expected them to respond to his authority was an offense to the faith of the Jews.  Their protests to his oppressive demands were deemed insubordination and deceptive restraint was like dynamite with an unlit fuse.

 

Glocality requires an honest evaluation

What gets swept aside, though, is how concealed toxicity chokes the life out of intercultural collaboration and productivity. Glocality requires an ability to honestly evaluate our human fallibility and the temporal nature of our vocation. We can contribute immensely when we are aware of our privilege but also of our dispensability. Haman misunderstood the interconnectivity of his time in his myopic local grandeur;  

When Haman himself saw that Mordecai didn’t kneel or bow down to him, he became very angry.  Esther 3:5 (CEB).  

In our pursuit of petty righteousness, are we missing something of our interconnectedness and how that contributes to the wholesome wellbeing of community? What perceived rights blind us to our humanity and falsely elevate us to dangerous god-complexity? To distinguish between the trees and the forest requires honest evaluation by stepping back to get a bigger picture. 

  

The fragility of privilege 

The fragility of privilege manifests itself in demagoguery, racism, tribalism, and classism etc. When you are divided, you become sitting ducks for easy conquest by extremists and divisive politicians. All this polarization festers into a toxicity that hinders possibilities of a healthy community. Privileged economies stoop to referring to Inner city or Ghetto mentality while the poor protest by complaining of their oppression through unjust laws and their enforcement. Privilege can accord an insidious comfort as Mordecai points to Esther in his “such a time as this appeal” (Esther 4:13,14) and Martin Luther King Jr echoes something similar in his letter from Birmingham when he decries not “the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”  

In the book of Esther, a powerful figure abuses privilege (Esther 3:1). His Babylonian privilege came with uncommon perks to which this figure, Haman. quickly became entitled (Esther 3:2a). The fortune of the Jews had changed but he still saw them as they had been brought - as subjugated captives into servitude. He did not understand the changing times. Though some Jews had returned in freedom and dignity to their land (Ezra 1:2-4) and others occupied prominence in society (Nehemiah 1:3c), he saw them as inferior, but pompous, and resented them.  He lost joy over little issues like Mordecai not paying him homage (Esther 3:5). Annoyance with one individual dredged up heinous grudges such that he plotted to annihilate a whole people. What perceived loss of privilege would make humans genocidal?  Have we earned the right to the privileges we feel entitled to? Does subjugation of trafficked humanity grant it to us? Do historical conquests justify it?  Remember Haman was an Agagite (1 Samuel 15:20) and Agag had led Amalekites against the Israel as she fled from Egypt (Exodus 17:8-16), Perhaps the myth of revolting slaves was passed down to Haman as a child and was formative. What lies of superiority have we believed and why do we fight to sustain or retain them? What injustices and crimes are we prepared to commit to pursue the alleged dominance? Haman was driven enough to plot to kill! His backbone was weak enough to be bent by sycophantic dribble (Esther 3:3-6). Do we think critically enough to discern our fragility and what feeds it? 

How then should we live? 

  

The denigrated communities existed before us and will adapt and continue to exist without us. Those who have gone before us can teach us through the legacy they wrought. Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela sought to serve the people before them. That was rarely ever through pomposity but a humble desire to serve and make things better. They would be surprised if they saw the globality of their influence when they were only aiming for local transformation.   

How then should we live? What would help transform our view of otherness so that we are not robbing ourselves of the wealth that diversity devoid of tokenism has to offer? Inferior minds will continue to tokenize others to boost their blinkered profile but broken and shallow relationships will continue to expose their myopic perspectives.  

Are you choking the life out or breathing in wellness where you are at? 

  

© Moses Kariuki 2019