Erik Hare, click
here to update your pages on AuthorsDen.
Blogs by Erik Hare
Stamp Them When They're Small 3/3/2008 7:20:50 PM
Welcome to Tuesday, also known as “Alamo Day” for Senator Clinton. Will she do it, or will she be humbled? We’ll know soon enough. The one thing you can count on are insightful letters from the fans of this humble blog answered blithely by me. I’ll start with a favorite topic:
I always wonder why someone who freely confesses to being a “pale male” becomes interested in racial issues in the first place.
That’s a good question, and if I ever get off my ass and write my memoir I think I can answer it. The short version is that I’ve seen the city of Miami burn over racial tension, and I’ve seen people die because of our racist policies. It takes a lot for some of us stubborn Europeans to “get it”, but somewhere in there it was enough even for me.
What does it take for everyone else to “get it”? Your mileage may vary. I find it very frustrating myself, which is part of the reason I find it so difficult to write about. While I love Saint Paul it is full of people who really haven’t experienced the destruction of racism closely enough to understand it.
My favorite story comes from being in line at a Target store and having an African-American woman come up behind me with a toddler who was having a toddler’s day of fuss and energy. I told the woman, “You go on ahead of me, you need to keep moving.” She said, “Thank you very much, that’s so kind!” and after a pause just long enough to let the conversation fall into the abyss, “You must not be from around here.” I told her I wasn’t with a smile. She smiled back, and dragged her recalcitrant child on ahead to get it all over with. It was then that I realized that what is stamped on your forehead is often something much bigger than “CAUCASIAN”. I liked whatever was stamped on mine, though I have yet to spend enough time fawning over a mirror to determine just what it is; besides, I’d only read it backwards.
Do you really think that a new approach to literary theory is justified? It seems like there are enough as there is.
That wasn’t what I set out to do, but I’m starting to like the idea of calling myself a “Universalist”. If nothing else, it suggests a kind of Unitarianism that leaves a lot of room for a healthy dose of agnosticism. I do think that the key to understanding just about everything in this world is understanding our relationships – or, to use James Burke’s word, Connections.
It bothers me when people say the world is getting smaller, because anyone who is living this life has to realize that the world that is available to them is, if anything, only larger; complicated would be a better word. If we understand the relationships we have between things, however, we can continue to make sense of things that otherwise might not make sense on their own.
What is happening in, say, Ecuador and Colombia right now isn’t necessarily something everyone can possibly process as that information is thrown at them. What we can understand is how we personally relate to that part of the world through people we know and love. That should personally be good enough if for no other reason than more would be completely without context. It's what I call "Cultural Autism", the constant over-stimulation of too much information we can't possibly make sense of.
I think literature has to be looked at the same way if it’s going to have any meaning at all. What matters is the relationship, even as that relationship changes. That may open the door to far too much relativism, but I don’t really care. Someone can tell me that they may not be a writer by they know what they like, and I’m perfectly fine with that.
That’s about all I have space for today. Did you see something enlightening? Something so dull it lowered your IQ several points? Either way, have a nice cup of tea and stay warm while you send me mail as wabbitoid47 at yahoo.com. I promise you a thoughtful response that hopefully will still appear thoughtful when you read it.
