Month: March 2016

This is not about sex.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 1 Comment

I think that the reality is that most of the judgments we make of other people and how we may ‘gaze’ at them  are not specifically about sex or their fitness for procreative success. They may be unconscious moral judgments about their fitness to be part of the in-group. 

 

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/q/schedule-for-monday-march-14-2016-1.3490076/photographer-captures-the-dirty-looks-strangers-give-her-1.3490082

So, I listened to the CBC’s Q this morning while waiting in the car for Carolyn to come out of appointment with her optometrist. The interviewee Haley Morris-Cafiero is a fine arts professor at an American University and she’s just recently published a book called Watchers. Obviously, listening to the radio, I couldn’t see what she looked like, but the host, Piya Chattopadhyay’s questioning made it obvious she was trying to get Morris-Cafiero to admit that she was fat and that’s the reason people were glaring at her askance.

The book and the interview are revealing for a number of reasons. I’ll deal with a couple here. For one, people judge each other constantly. It’s a part of being a human being. If a person stands out in any particular way, is a statistical outlier by being super tall, super small, super thin or super fat, tattooed all over the place, a different colour or ethnic group than everybody else in a group, then there will be stares or at least oblique glances or gazes. This we cannot avoid. Morris-Cafiero’s documenting of the oblique glances at her because she’s fat, is what’s interesting here. She is unapologetic for being fat and why should she apologize? Well, some of us see obesity as a moral failure for which we need to apologize. Others see it as just a problem of overeating: we should just stop eating so much. We make fun of fat people. The internet is full of blogs and commentary objecting to obesity. Morris-Cafiero actually reports that there are blogs set up just to make fun of her size. She’s now chasing them down to mock how they look if she can find photos of the bloggers and commentators. Morris-Cafiero claims to be perfectly happy with herself and the way she looks. I have no reason to doubt her.

Her book is not about the issue some women have of being stared at because they are ‘attractive’ to someone or other. They may not be beautiful in any normative sense, but they can and do attract the carnal attention of some men or women. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Of course the fashion industry has no qualms about deciding for all of us who is attractive and who isn’t.

On another CBC item this morning I heard a comment about women’s bodies being a battle ground. Men stare. Men comment. Men catcall. Men, men, men. Of course we do. Some of us are stupid and have no moral or social brakes, so we catcall and make rude remarks. Some of us admire from a distance and would be mortified if a women called us out for staring at her. Some of us get caught on the odd occasion stretching out a glance at a particularly attractive woman and we’re soon reminded of our misdemeanour. Some of us are not attracted to women at all so we only admire feminine beauty from an aesthetic place. But most of us look and assess. We check out people. We watch. We undress people we find attractive with our eyes only. Sex is sex is sex. We may be offended by people looking at us with a carnal look in their eye, but we may be just as upset if they didn’t look. Of course men get looked at too. This is a two way street.

Dress often makes things interesting too. It’s easy to dismiss a focus on dress as just a side issue to the real issue which is physical attraction. Women and men in their dating years often dress provocatively if they can. When they do, it’s hard to feel sorry for them if people look a little too long or too closely. That said, I’m not making any apologies for sexism and discrimination based on sex. It’s just that us humans are geared for sex and that’s a two way thing. Sexism and sexual discrimination mean treating people unequally because of their genitals, not their brains.

Thankfully, us older people are less subject to the overheated, pheromone soaked dating world younger people are subject to. In fact, I think that us older types are more easily capable of thinking of people of the opposite sex in terms of their qualities and characteristics other than their sexuality and sensuality. That said, even as an old man, I can appreciate the aesthetic qualities of a younger member of the female sex. Those inclinations don’t just disappear overnight. I’m sure the same goes for women.

I think that the reality is that most of the judgments we make of other people and how we may ‘gaze’ at them  are not specifically about sex or their fitness for procreative success. They may be unconscious moral judgments about their fitness to be part of the in-group. I think that goes for most people, young and old. We even look at children in strollers and unconsciously assess them for their future potential. We just do.

Being human is pretty funny if you can figure out how to get under our common prejudices and ‘see’ other people for what they are. It’s not easy because we have sexuality, procreation and morality all vying for attention and complicating things no end.

 

Deep down, are we all racist?

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 2 Comments

Deep down, are we all racist and xenophobic?

In my last two posts I wrote about a book by Dom Benoit published in 1904 about the Catholic missions in the mid 19th Century in the Canadian West.  The book is a biography of Mgr. Taché, second archbishop of St. Boniface (1853-1894).

Was I unfair in singling them out for a special call-out for being racist?  Yes and no.

It’s pretty obvious that the missionaries understood that the indigenous peoples of the area were human, but that they were significantly different from themselves, especially in the fact that they weren’t ‘children of God.’ The derogatory manner in which they describe indigenous peoples, especially plains peoples, would immediately label them racist in most people’s books.

Their mission’s objective was to make ‘savages’ into ‘children of God’. They may have thought they had accomplished that by baptizing as mahy as possible, but that apparently still didn’t make them equal to white folk in the eyes of Canadian governments, all of which had institutionally racist practices and values regarding indigenous people. There is no doubt that Sir John A. Macdonald’s government was racist to the core. It’s hard not to conclude that most Canadian governments over the decades, both federal and provincial have been racist. Their policies prove it, the Indian Act proves it, all their actions prove it.

So, along with the missionaries of the mid 19th Century, are they special in their racism? Are governments racist, along with a few bad individuals, or are we all racist, deep down? Some of us may deny it vehemently, but the impetus, the imperative, the drive to characterize ‘other’ groups of people and their institutions as inferior or undeserving because of some national or group trait is pervasive. Can we avoid being racist and xenophobic? Can we avoid labelling groups (gender, age, colour, etc.) and nations with sweeping generalizations that deny human individuality and capacity for free thought?

The short answer is that I think we can, but it takes a lot of effort and thought. It means letting go of a lot of ‘isms’ some of which we love dearly, like patriotism.

If we believe that our society, our way of life is the greatest thing on earth, it makes it difficult to just accept others as they are and not to try to convince them, by ideology or coercion, that they should change. The Catholic missionaries of the Canadian West obviously thought that their religious beliefs and practices were the only ones that could lead to salvation, that is to eternal life in the presence of God. It seems to me that they would feel a holy obligation to try to ‘convert’ as many ‘savages’ as possible to save them from being condemned to an eternity in pergatory or hell. One could argue that their drive to ‘save’ the indigenous people is no different from a compulsion we might have to pull someone out of the way of a speeding train in order to save their lives. It’s just something ya gotta do.

So, yes, if we feel we have the only road to heaven, or to salvation, the good life, prosperity or whatever you might want to call it, it’s hard not to want to share it or conversely, to prove to others that ours is a superior way by kicking their asses just to prove it. If, however, we can express some humility in the face of the diversity of human (and other) life on this planet, we can begin to overcome prejudice and ignorance. It’s not easy and it’s not even likely to happen on any scale until the structural and historical conditions in place currently on the planet that make prejudice and ignorance possible and even inevitable are still dominant. 

My rant here is not intended to make you feel guilty or bad because you may harbour secret prejudices or make sweeping generalizations about people. It’s more of an invitation to humility and to critical thought about your world and how it works.

If you ever get a chance, watch a 2003 documentary film called Flight From Death: The Quest for Immortality. It does a beautiful job in visually summarizing my argument above. You can do that, or you can rummage around the archives on my blog to find references to Ernest Becker’s work Escape From Evil. The film is based on his work.

Prime Directive: Save Them Savages.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 3 Comments

Without the benefit of anthropology and archaeology it would be difficult indeed to come to North America from Europe in the 19th Century and not wonder where the indigenous people originated. In fact, Europeans imbued with Christian principles and values must have wondered, wherever they went outside of Europe, what could be the origins of all the strange and wondrous human beings they encountered. The clues had to be in the Bible or as logical extensions of ideas expressed in the Bible. They tried hard, but it was tough to deny that indigenous people were not human because they readily mated successfully with European explorers and colonizers all the time. The following is my translation of an excerpt from La Vie de Monseigneur Taché by Dom Benoit. I find it fascinating how the author grapples with the descent of the indigenous people and how these ‘savages’ became so ‘degenerate’. Read on:

On page 47*:

“From  whom do the savages descend? They are men therefore they are descendants of Adam. I might add: Noah was their ancestor and Sem their father as the red or American race is mongoloid, differing less from them as Noah’s three sons differ amongst themselves. It is clear that America was populated by peoples from Asia or even from Northern Europe. Everybody knows how easy it would have been to migrate to America from Asia even if the distant wanderings of these travellers were not supported by means any more sophisticated than those of today. This last proposition seems improbable to me; I am convinced that the savages were more civilized at one time than they are now, that they abased themselves by turning away from traditions that connected them to God, just as they will redeem themselves by accepting the teachings that bring them closer to their maker and to their end.

So, the author concludes that the ‘savages’ were no doubt more civilized at one time but because they turned away from the traditions that kept them attached to the teachings of the Church, they became lost to God. Seems reasonable, I guess, but I’d like to see even just a little evidence. Nevertheless, the only rational way that ‘savages’ could be brought back to God, obviously, is by missionary work. What a job they were tasked by God and the Church to do: bring back the godless savages to the bosom of the Church and to God. Further in the book, the author also warns that the situation is urgent and critical because their work could be thwarted by the ‘methodist’ missionaries who were eager to have the ‘savages’ turn against the Church of Rome. Tough competition required urgent measures and an army of priests had to be deployed as soon as possible between the Red River settlement and the Mississippi. That’s when the archbishop of St. Boniface at the time, Msg. Provencher, appealed to Monseigneur de Mazenod, the bishop of Marseilles and founder of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate to send as many ‘troops’ as possible for the battle ahead. This was in the middle of the 19th Century, before 1853. Travel was treacherous. It took roughly 8 or 9 weeks depending on the weather to cover the 1400 miles from Montréal to St. Boniface by canoe before the railroad was build a few decades later. War can be hell and there is no doubt that the Oblates were tough and disciplined in their urgent mission to save as many ‘savages’ as they could.

*From: La Vie de Monseigneur Taché, Archevêque de St. Boniface by Dom Benoit, Superior of the Regular Canons of the Immaculate Conception of Canada. Published in a limited edition in 1904 by the Librairie Bauchemin, Montréal, Québec.

Savages Among Saints.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 2 Comments

Years ago while rummaging through a used book store in Victoria I ran across and bought a two volume biography of the archbishop of St. Boniface, Manitoba who was installed in 1853. His term ended with his death in 1894. The biography was written by Dom Benoit, Superior of the Regular Canons of the Immaculate Conception of Canada after 1894 and was published in 1904. Dom Benoit’s story is worthy of a blog post in and of itself but his recounting of the life of Mgr. Taché is truly monumental, running to over 1400 pages. Much of it is based on Taché’s letters and reports but Benoit’s research is far-ranging and comprehensive. Of course this isn’t a critical biography. It’s definitely written by someone who admired and respected his subject. Still, the work that went into producing this work is impressive.

That said, when I first opened the pages of La Vie de Mgr Taché, Archevêque de St-Boniface I was struck by the narrative’s accounts of travelling long distances in birch bark canoes with very few of the comforts most of us would find necessary on a modern camping trip. It was about how saintly and long-suffering the missionaries were. I was also struck by the depictions of the First Nations people the missionaries encountered on their travels. They were at best condescending and at worse blatantly racist towards them. But, it’s complicated. We should not feel superior to the missionaries Dom Benoit follows in his narrative. In fact, the default setting in our relations with people we encounter in the world who are not like us is racism and/or xenophobia. It’s the rare person in our culture who can see beyond the blanket prejudgments of others that is pervasive in our workplaces, our communities, our playgrounds, our restaurants and our homes. Beyond the overt racism,which I expected, in the excerpt you are about to read , there is another message that I found even more interesting.

First, read the following:

From: Vie de Monseigneur Taché, Archevêque de St. Boniface by Dom Benoit, Superior of the Regular Canons of the Immaculate Conception of Canada. Published in a limited edition by the Librairie Bauchemin, Montréal, Québec, 1904.

On page 44, Benoit quotes a book by Mgr Laflèche the title of which is Etat général des Missions de la Rivière Rouge.  This is the text in my translation. It’s not clear when this quotation was written but it was around 1850.

“From the moral point of view, a distinction must be made between  the woods and the prairie savages. The prairie savages, who are the Blackfoot, the Assiniboine, the Cree and a large part of the Saulteux, are the worse type and I do not believe it is an exaggeration to say that these people occupy the lowest rung of the human ladder. This state of degeneration and wickedness derives from their way of life; they can be found in large camps of 60 to 80 lodges and often more, and they lead a wandering and lazy existence following the innumerable herds of bison that feed and clothe them. When we witness the disgusting lives of these savages we understand that the penance of toil imposed upon man by his sin has been for his happiness and not for his misfortune…If the prairie tribes have become the bilge of all the vices that degrade man, that is, when theft, murder and everywhere terrible debauchery have become daily practice for a large number of these barbarians, it is because work is unknown to them.”

Benoit continues:

“The woods savages, who are the Montagnais, some Cree, Maskegons and Sauteux, have a way of life much different from the former. The poor quality of the lands they occupy forces them to live apart from each other and the land is sparsely populated: on first coming to this land one would be tempted to believe that mankind had yet to settle since there is so little evidence of its presence. They do not have, like the former, herds of bison to feed them when they are hungry or to clothe them when they are cold. They prey on somewhat rare and wary deer. They sometimes fall upon roaming herds of cariboo, but it takes time and patience to kill one. Fishing in certain rivers also offers them a resource to fend off hunger. It is such that these nations must live a much more active existence than the others if they do not wish to disappear. It is rare to find more than two or three families together and these families are always related to one another. It is to this active and remote existence that we must attribute the different morals between the woods and the plains savages. They are generally at peace with the world, are horrified at the thought of theft and murder, just like white people. Although they practice polygamy they are nowhere near as debauched at the others and we do not encounter crimes against nature as is evident on the plains.”

Alright, so it’s obvious the writers have no time for the plains nations. They are much more sympathetic towards the woods nations. Why? Well, according to them, the plains nations are idle, ‘lazy’ and indolent. They (only applying to the men, of course) only ‘work’ intermittently when in need of food or clothing. The woods nations on the other hand had to work hard to make a living.  Their lives were not easy. Laflèche’s argument, echoed by Benoit, is that the problem with the plains ‘savages’ is that they didn’t understand that their fate for original sin was toil. According to the Bible, when Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden, what was their fate? They now had to work for a living. Apparently the plains people just didn’t get the memo. Their bad.

It’s easy to argue that the writers here are racist, but John A. Macdonald, the first Canadian Prime Minister said some equally racist things about aboriginal people many times and completely unapologetically. So did my parents, and they are not exceptional. I don’t believe that people today are, on average, any less racist or xenophobic than the people of the mid-nineteenth century. We may express it differently today, but generally, we are no less racist than we were 150 years ago. Times have not changed much.

In my next post, more of Dom Benoit.