Let’s talk about our siblings.
This is a change of pace for my conversations. For the past year or so I’ve been focusing on learning Haitian Creole. And that has been a good journey that I’m still continuing. My instructors keep pushing me harder to learn their language to become a fluent speaker and competent listener. It is a journey that will take many years, and I intend to continue to proceed for as long as I can.
The primary reason I’ve pursued learning this new language comes from my respect for my Haitian friends. I am afraid I was ignorant about their culture so much so that I discounted their language. They were so very kind to me to gently correct me, and then suggest that I learn their language.
And so I began that journey back in March 2022. In the past year, I pushed myself through daily practice and three or four hour-long instructional lessons to learn to read, speak, write, and listen to my friends’ language.
In the process of doing so, I also acquired a much deeper respect of my friends’ lives and culture. Learning a new language requires an acquisition of knowledge about the location and environment where that language developed. All languages have different stories, but all languages share some things in common about their development: people need to communicate with the people they live with, and for humans, language is still the best way to exchange meaning and to make connections.
Haiti exists as a nation comprising Black Africans kidnapped from Africa to serve as dispensable bodies for labor. Millions died in incomprehensible pain and agony, many of them alone and unnamed at their deaths. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, Haitian people revolted against their enslavers (France), beat them in the field of battle, and set up the first Black republic of people who freed themselves from their enslavement.
That self-freedom and self-definition of what it means to be Haitian is a source of immense pride. Haitians, whether they live in Haiti or live abroad in the Diaspora (which is spread throughout the world), are incredibly proud of their country. In contrast to the U.S. Constitution with its emphasis upon property rights for white males, the Haitian Constitution represents a focus on the human and upon liberty for all. Haiti has a far more just view of humanity and freedom. Its most famous national symbol is the Nèg Mawon (“the Black man”) holding a machete in one hand to fight for freedom against those who would seek to put them back into enslavement, and a conch shell in the other to call for all Haitians to rise together to fight for freedom. Nèg Mawon and the Sitadèl are perhaps the two main axes of Haitian politics and national identity: Look, world, what we did, and look, world, how we will protect ourselves.
Their language is part of this pride. It is developed from several roots, from French and West African languages, with additions from Spanish, English, Arabic, and Taino. It’s developed by Haitians over the centuries as they built a common language for themselves that was theirs and not a language simply adopted from another nation or culture. Learning the language gives you insight into Haitian culture and history and current events, and to become fluent requires a deep understanding of Haiti and Haitians. (There are so many idioms that refer to Haitian history or events.)
But what I find in that entire situation is the humanity of Haitians. The people are elevated. It’s just understood among people that all people are equal not just under the law but also in the reality of daily living. “Tout moun se tout moun” is a familiar expression: “All people are always people.”
So now I will contrast this with some troubling threads in America today, focusing on the question of “what makes someone human?” This is not just to say “well, people are people” and leave it at that. We unfortunately live in a nation where an entity constructed as a business has the same property rights as a human being, which often leads to a business having more flexibility to exercise that right because often humans don’t have the same financial or social or economic power to be equal to a business. (As an example, a truck driver who fled his truck to survive a blizzard lost their job because the business expected them to stay with the truck even if it meant their death because “the truck was valuable,” and that decision to fire them was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.)
Americans unfortunately are seeing an erosion of their human rights. It’s done subtly and politely with words that “make sense” but with actions that lead to dehumanization fueled by an intent to do so.
Here locally in Washington state, we have a fairly liberal electorate that voted overwhelmingly to support marriage equality, for example. Because every human is equal to another, the voters affirmed that any two adults can marry each other and hold a legal right to all that marriage gives them without any restriction. No person, no policy, no belief that is contrary to that right can supersede that right. A business or organization that refuses service to a married couple with same-sex partners but does not refuse service to a married couple with opposite-sex partners can and will be held accountable before the law because we in Washington state believe that people are people—tout moun se tout moun—and that whether any of us might not agree with that in our beliefs, the law is the law, and marriage equality is guaranteed and protected.
This doesn’t sit well with some people for various reasons. It’s hard to accept a change in the world if it goes against something you grew up thinking. We tend to think that the environment that we were raised in is the “normal” way of life, forgetting that even in our generation things were different than previous generations.
In my youth divorce was generally forbidden, for example, and women who were divorced were seen as a social scandal. Prominent people who were divorced were often pushed aside from power. Nelson Rockefeller, a nationally known politician who was Governor of New York, probably lost his chance for the presidency because he was famously divorced and remarried.
Yet by the late 60s and into the 70s, divorced men began to become present in national politics, leading to the election of Ronald Reagan, America’s first divorced president.
Within 20 years, America had gone from no acceptance of divorce to equanimity about divorced people holding political office.
And so in Washington state, we have people who think that the freedom of two people to marry is a terrible problem to be resisted and, they hope, overturned. In my opinion, their resistance comes from a deep desire to put things back the way they were when they were younger, when things were “great,” even if things weren’t so great for anyone else, such as two people in love who wanted to marry but were same-sex partners.
Similar to these fears is the rising fear, whipped up by certain media channels, against the idea that people might not necessarily feel comfortable with the gender assigned to them at birth. For whatever reason, what someone does with their own life and own body is something to be opposed. Rather than say “people are people,” the resistance is attempting to dehumanize these people who would like to be identified in the gender they’re comfortable with.
It’s hard to come right out and say “we don’t want people who want to be called a ‘man’ to be allowed to do that.” I mean, what is the harm to you when your neighbor says “I’m Sam” when previously they were “Samantha”? You have to readjust some of your assumptions, but it’s no more difficult than when your neighbor who was always “Ms. Smith” comes to you and says, “now I’m Mrs. Jones.” You accept a change that they made voluntarily, and you move on because you are a decent person. Then you talk about when it’s the best time to trim your rose bushes.
With the social reaction to the idea that you want to stop people from exercising their freedom to be human, you have to find other ways to pursue your desires to put people back in their boxes.
You have to find a better, more plausible argument than just “I don’t like change!”
Recently a Washington state non-profit is setting up community meetings to “talk about the problems in our schools.” The meeting announcements are bland with a slight hook using the idea “don’t you care about children?”
So I took a look at one that will be held locally in my community hosted by this organization. So very little in the announcement describes anything about what will be covered. Even the web page of the hosting organization about this doesn’t have any content other than some bland statements about the need to talk about what’s going on in our schools, as if parents in my community are ignorant about our local schools. (The idea of asking local teachers what they do seems to be a missed opportunity.)
I spent a little more time digging into the organization and found their “About” page, which stamps this organization as a conservative Christian organization that wants to push their conservative religious dogma into state government.
There it is: a minority of people in Washington state who hold to a viewpoint of human rights that excludes gay people and trans people from exercising their full human rights want to push for this state to roll back those human rights to establish a minority religious viewpoint as the policy of the state, to be enforced by the state upon everyone.
Under this view, my friends and family who are gay or trans would be stripped of their full human rights, not because there’s any good reason, but because there is a minority religious viewpoint that they want to impose upon others.
What’s lacking here is the “because,” though.
“We want to do this thing, to strip human rights, because…”
I don’t know the “because.” I don’t know the logic of pushing our gay and trans siblings back into silence and erasure. I don’t understand why someone would so despise another person as to attempt to deny their humanity.
I don’t understand the need of people to control others in the name of their religion. I can understand the psychological need to make people do what you want, but to take a religion that is not coercive in its roots and turn it into a tool of dominion and oppression seems such a bad take.
If you have a belief that satisfies you and helps you to act like a decent person with others, then well and good. You might also have no beliefs and yet act as a decent person, and that’s also well and good.
But shouldn’t your religion be about seeing the stranger and seeing them as your sibling?
Rather than seek to deny the humanity of gay people and trans people, what about using your religion to help you decide to know more about them so that you can love them better?
Whether it is in learning a new language because you love and respect the people in your life who speak that language, or learning a new way of understanding marriage and equity because you love and respect the people in your life who have different ways of expressing their commitment to each other, love and respect are the key to building a strong community, and all the better if your beliefs push you to be a better person.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay