Saturday, May 22, 2010

Let's Lose That Word, "Hate".

I'm sorry to say that I know Hate.  I know it from news of young men tied to fence posts and left to die in a snowstorm because other young men were afraid of their sexuality.  I know it from pictures of houses torched because the owner was planning to sell it to someone of a different race or religion from the rest of the neighbors.  I know it from the personal experience of escorting patients into the Planned Parenthood clinic...shouting, angry men waving bloody overblown pictures at women who mostly were there to get birth control so that they would never have to make the choice the men abhorred.  That didn't matter to the wrought-up men.  They spewed their fury at anybody who walked in the parking lot.   I know it...just once...from the snarled words of a man who believed that God hated women ministers and needed me to know it.   It was just once, but I remember it well.  Words of hate, someone said, leave footprints in the mind.  


Hate is dislike gone rogue, and there is no doubt it exists in our world and does terrible damage.  It's a stage of conflict where you're not looking for a solution or even a separation, or even an effective end to your pain.  All you want to do is hurt the one you hate.  


It's a strong word, and when hateful behavior needs to be named and stopped, we need a strong word.  


So...let's not waste the word "hate" on the current immigration debate; at least, not the part of the debate that is taking place in the most civil and democratic way, as it is in Arizona.  Call Arizona bill 1070 misguided, unconstitutional, dumb, ineffective; point out all the ways it will hurt the innocent, like children separated from parents and legal residents who don't happen to have their "papers" on their person when they have run a red light, and all of us as our civil rights are eroded.    Work endlessly for it's repeal, march and write letters and refrain from entering such a backwards state if that's how you feel.


But let's not throw around that word,  "hate."   No doubt there is some, but the majority of legislators who passed it don't hate anybody, and they know it.  They are trying to solve a big problem that nobody else has been willing or able to solve and they may be misguided and the result unconstitutional and dangerous, but I see absolutely no evidence of hatefulness.  It is possible to do great harm, be foolish, and hurt people, all without hate. 


To call someone hateful is a very strong accusation.  Do it too much and you lose a word which you need when someone has been lynched, when a wayward policemen has spit into anybody's face, when emotions are way out of control and doing terrible, memorable damage for the sheer hell of if.  Throw that word "hate" around too much and those you accuse start writing you off as inarticulate and without a real case.  Call other people and the causes they think are legitimate "hateful"  and it gets harder and harder to convince people that you are standing on the side of love, harder and harder to join the fight, harder and harder to make the compromises which are the essence of politics.  


The Buddhists call that "unskillful"; a word which, for it's sheer, understated glory, is unmatched.  

3 comments:

Lilylou said...

Excellent, Christine, thanks.

Steve Caldwell said...

Christine wrote:
-snip-
"[Arizona politicians] are trying to solve a big problem that nobody else has been willing or able to solve and they may be misguided and the result unconstitutional and dangerous, but I see absolutely no evidence of hatefulness. It is possible to do great harm, be foolish, and hurt people, all without hate."

Christine,

I agree that the word "hate" has been overused in this case.

But I also think the idea that illegal immigration is a "big problem" is a claim that isn't supported by the available evidence.

Illegal immigrant crime wave? Apparently only in Bill O'Reilly's fevered imagination:

"Stop O'Reilly's Immigrant Crime Slurs"
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4075

Illegal immigrants are a burden on state and local governments? This isn't the case. Most studies show that both legal and illegal immigrants are a net economic benefit:

"Assessing the Economic Impact of Immigration at the State and Local Level"
http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/assessing-economic-impact-immigration-state-and-local-level

So ... maybe we could say that Arizona SB1070 is a reaction to an alleged or perceived "big problem" until we have evidence that a real problem exists outside the minds of nativist politicians?

KJR said...

If it isn't a law motivated by bigotry (if you are uncomfortable with hate), what is the motivation? In our local papers there are letters excoriating illegal immigrants, with no evidence here that it is causing suffering to the writers. All cited grievances in these letters, in the few cases anyone cites any problem beyond the mere fact of illegality, are not based in fact. Perhaps this is not the case in Arizona where numbers are larger, but when even the police chief in Tucson is suing the state about the law, it has to be a matter more of bigotry than addressing any reality.