January 17, 2011: Earning Civility from the Inside Out

I visit my local library every weekend to select a stack of books for my classroom students, and usually I can't help but slip in one or two for myself. This week one book caught my attention -- a shiny photo-journalistic book about the plight of migrant families.

I was stunned by the scope of human suffering portrayed within its pages. "We were so poor that we couldn't have went to California or nowhere else," said one mother who was representative of the more than 200,000 migrants who made their way to the Golden State.

Photos of these families' makeshift dwellings, thrown together with whatever wood, metal or canvas they could find, were heartbreaking, as was the exploitation they faced from crop owners who preyed on their desperation with low wages for their back-breaking work.

About these migrant families, the author wrote, "They were labeled 'shiftless' and 'ignorant,' and were accused of stealing jobs." People would continually tell them to "Go home!"

I was struck by the sorrowful degree to which native Californians demeaned these families -- after all, it's not as if they were illegal immigrants from Mexico. They were fellow American citizens, even white just like them, who were escaping the worst environmental catastrophe to ever befall the United States, the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

In current debates about illegal immigration, "the law is the law" argument is difficult to refute. "If you break the law, you're simply a criminal," people often go on to say. But zealots from either end of the political spectrum often brazenly undermine laws with which they disagree, so one could argue that the law's sanctity conveniently depends on personal taste.

Nevertheless, the epic human catastrophe of the Dust Bowl, when Americans abased fellow Americans, provides evidence that upholding the principle of law really has little to do with the scorn and in some cases overt hatred that is directed today toward Latinos in our country, undocumented or otherwise. The law, in this case, is merely a basis for rationalizing or expediently excusing vile rhetoric.

None of this is a criticism of people from one particular state or another. Nor is this a commentary about our country or our values. The truth actually is more sobering, namely that our fear of outsiders and our willingness to dehumanize them (given the right conditions) is a universal element of the human condition that has played itself out everywhere throughout the course of history.

Human nature, however, does not let those who would peddle in fear- and hate-mongering off the hook because although fear is a base and primal instinct, it is one that is relatively easy to defy. It merely takes knowledge. And whether we accept the effort it takes to know the unknown is a choice all of us can make.

The context today might be immigration policy. Tomorrow it could be health care or education reform. But in any case, increased knowledge hardly ever leads to easy answers. In fact, quite the opposite, solutions will likely appear frustratingly complex or even elusive -- how could they not in a country of 300 million people?

All of this explains the essential importance of a well-informed public. Without it, there is no proper counter-balance to the viewpoints of those who refuse to see issues through anything but a black or white lens. And whereas our system, even in these polarized times, tends to ultimately produce compromise, if there is no critical mass of folks who are at least able to understand the perspectives they oppose, we are bound to end up with laws that don't possess enough credibility to be defended.

I don't necessarily know that we are more polarized or that the media is more inflammatory today than at other times in our history. The demonization of our fellow neighbors is not new to our times, as the Dust Bowl era shows.

In ages past Americans have found reason to rally and re-unite around perceived external threats, a condition that exists today but without the same effect. This may be a time where we as a people will have to earn our civility from the inside out, with visionary leadership and a deliberate return to reason and dialogue.