Justice is Black & White

 

An Editorial/Letter to the Editor

Star News, McCall ID – July 2nd, 2020, A5

 

 

In our nation, black and white are in confrontation. Our major cities are convulsing with anger. We, even those of us in our quiet rural region, are in crisis. For us, it is masks; for them, it is justice. Let us focus on justice. A true story from a previous social crisis, the government shutdown, may help our current turmoil. A local middle-aged white resident’s work was decimated, and he faced an impending financial disaster. His paychecks had stopped. He could budget enough for the coming month’s mortgage; however, next month’s bills were going to be impossible to pay. He reached for his phone to find help from the Customer Service rep at his national bank. An African American woman answered and listened to his plight. She worked him through his options, and they arrived at a workable solution. Amid the unfolding solution, guilt welled up within him. He realized that her broader community, African Americans, had rarely received the kindness he had just received. Images of racism, bigotry, and stories of financial rejection by banks toward African Americans came to mind. He stopped and offered an apology to the woman, a woman he did not know nor would probably ever know, for the injustice she had received. She was taken aback, accepted his apology, and mused on how no one had ever apologized to her for social injustices that had impacted her life. Both left their conversation with a sense of healing and unity. How do we capture that instinct for our crises in this time and place?

Sadly, as a land of immigrants, we bring a bevy of practical ethical formulas with us that worked in past turmoil. Many now collide into conflicting recommendations for needed solutions. To find our way, we must fashion an old yet new broader ethic that might replace the fragmentation of all our localized colliding ethics. We need law and order; however, we also need justice. We need both together. I define an old/new meta-ethic of needing both sides of a conflict as Complementary Ethics. Each side bears truth. Each side deserves a voice. Yet both sides must mutually learn to live in peace and unity.

Ancient civilizations and their spiritual traditions teach us a pathway on how to get through our current crises. Ancients have captured that impulse to peace and unity in many of their symbols. Our spiritual naturalists, this region’s dominant spiritual community, could naturally draw on ancient Taoist thinkers who gave us the symbol Yin/Yang. A curled very white side is mated to a curled very black side. Yet within each curl is the opposite, a very black circle and a very white circle. And both curls are encompassed within a circle, a symbol of wholeness and unity. This symbol calls all of us to respect our differences yet live in unity. Each side must be true to itself, but both must live together to create peace and harmony. The reality of human creation being found naturally in male and female coming together was an obvious source of the perpetual desire for living together to create peace and unity. However, the social energy derived from a relationship must be greater than the social energy it takes to sustain it.  How did the ancients accomplish this feat?  Other traditions as well can instruct us.

Taoism is only one of many of our spiritual traditions that uses what I define to be Complementary Ethics. The theology of Christianity is built on the concept of opposites uniting: the human/divine Jesus and the three persons of the Trinity. Early Christian leaders were convinced that Jesus was human, and therefore could not be divine as the two are mutually exclusive; others were convinced he was divine, and therefore could not be human. The battle raged. The solution that became a Creed was to agree that Jesus was both human and divine, an impossibility logically but not spiritually. The Trinity does the same with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This modest lesson from historical and spiritual thinking might help us in our current social collisions. What if we discovered that those who are opposite might be our complement, a productive force in one’s life, and not our adversary, a destructive influence in life?

Complementary Ethics encourages its practitioners to find and to embrace one’s opposite to discover a whole new way of living life successfully, even in politics. As hot defines what is cold by being in relationship with its opposite, conservatives can be best defined by being alongside liberals. One is only a conservative until a person who is more conservative is beside you; then, you are a liberal if someone so chooses to define you. In complementary ethics, conservatives need liberals and liberals need conservatives. Now that is radical.

We need a healthy political society. A healthy political activist is one that seeks the best of society and works to make it so. A healthy conservative’s relationship with healthy liberals helps to define both, and both are needed for a healthy society. A healthy conservative’s perspective to maintain law and order needs a healthy liberal companion so that justice can be meted out to all. Both need to be in a meaningful relationship, not seemingly mortal antagonists. How do we begin with this ancient and yet new (to some) proposal?

Let us begin in our homes. Your significant other is likely quite different from you if not a distinct opposite. However, mated opposites can be very productive. The electrical energy of combined opposites that gives us light from batteries can be a meaningful illustration of our potential to produce social energy. Unfortunately, that same energy can tear apart a relationship if not channeled well. Therefore, pledge to each other to channel social energy, newly felt in so many stay-at-home families, into transforming your family and neighborhood. How can your neighborhood be better and where might you find the energy to accomplish the task? Namely, within your unified opposite relationships. If we can channel our personal social energy, we can then move on to our fragmented community governance, state, and then federal governmental structure.  We must vote to affirm or to change government; however, we can do more than just vote. We can act to heal our people and our land. Then, it will not be a rare occurrence for a white man to apologize to a black woman for injustices of the past. Then, our healing and unity becomes transformative for all.

Dr. L. Bryan Williams, Social Ethicist, President, McCall College