bearing blog

Victor Davis Hanson writes approvingly in National Review of his father's policy of teaching his kids to employ age-and-racial profiling when evaluating the threat posed by passersby:

[Attorney General Eric] Holder[, in an address to the NAACP,] noted in lamentation that he had to repeat to his own son the lecture that his father long ago gave him….about the dangers of police stereotyping of young black males….

Yet I fear that for every lecture of the sort that Holder is forced to give his son, millions of non-African-Americans are offering their own versions of ensuring safety to their progeny.

In my case, the sermon — aside from constant reminders to judge a man on his merits, not on his class or race — was very precise….[H]e once advised me, “When you go to San Francisco, be careful if a group of black youths approaches you.” Note what he did not say to me. He did not employ language like “typical black person.” He did not advise extra caution about black women, the elderly, or the very young — or about young Asian Punjabi, or Native American males.  In other words, the advice was not about race per se, but instead about the tendency of males of one particular age and race to commit an inordinate amount of violent crime.

It was after some first-hand episodes with young African-American males that I offered a similar lecture to my own son. The advice was born out of experience rather than subjective stereotyping. 

There's so much wrong with this.  I hardly know where to start.

(1) "The advice was not about race… but instead about the tendency of males of one particular age and race to commit an inordinate amount of violent crime."

Let's deal with the misdirection first.  It's rather precious to claim that a statement about "males of one particular age and race" is, not in fact, about race.    Especially when you take care explicitly to point out that males of the same age but of different races are excluded.

Second.  A "tendency" is something an individual, not a population, has; it means a "proneness to a particular kind of thought or action."  There are certainly individuals out there who have a tendency to commit an inordinate amount of violent crime.  An example of a person who had a tendency to commit an inordinate amount of violent crime would be Ted Bundy, who certainly committed more than his share.  You can, I suppose, generalize to some groups by using a bit of circular reasoning, and truthfully say, "Serial killers have a tendency to commit an inordinate amount of violent crime."

But you don't get to say, "young black males have a tendency to commit an inordinate amount of violent crime."

You can say something like, "Statistically speaking, young black males are overrepresented among perpetrators of violent crime."  This is, sadly, true.

And it is not equivalent to the statement that Hanson made, which implies that any young black male has a tendency to commit crime — not just A crime, but "an inordinate amount" of it!  No evidence of malfeasance visible?  The tendency must be latent!  It's just lurking deep inside him, waiting to leap out!

Am I being pedantic?  Yes, because I believe that words have meanings that matter. 

Perhaps Hanson was being careless with his language, but perhaps not.  Perhaps the lesson sank in exactly as he describes it.  Young black males are dangerous.

(2) "The advice was born out of experience rather than subjective stereotyping."

More misdirection.  What Hanson means to say is that his decision to stereotype was born out of experience — anecdotes that he, personally, lived through.  It's understandable that Hanson wants to justify himself by explaining where the decision came from.  It's laughable to pretend that somehow that makes it not "stereotyping."

(3) These are the words of someone who doesn't live in a neighborhood with many young black males.  I live in the residential urban core of a medium-size American city.  I live blocks away from several public schools and charter schools and a Catholic school whose stated mission is to serve students from underprivileged backgrounds.  If I was to "be careful" every time I was approached by a group of black youths, I'd have to "be careful" every time I went outside.  Especially right after school let out.  

It would be positively ridiculous for me to give this advice to my kids as they head out the door, because it would have to be enacted so often as to be entirely useless.  Roughly a quarter of the other children on the playground, many of the people they pass on the way to the convenience store for candy, the motorists who stop at the light to let them cross, will be "young black males."  

Hey, I understand human nature.  The unfamiliar sets off internal alarms.  That's one of the ways we protect ourselves and our kids:  by "being careful" when we see the unfamiliar.  When you first move into a neighborhood where lots of people are a different race from you, or culturally different from you in some other way — if it's the first time you've ever lived in a place where that's the case — the internal alarms are likely to go off way more than they should.   Because all the people are unfamiliar in some, obvious, way, and you haven't learned — as you will with familiarity — to ignore this red herring and returned to judge the safety of people in more useful ways.

And there are many more useful ways.  There are, in fact, other cues that you should be looking for to tell you whether someone, or a group of someones, is up to no good.  There are environmental cues that you should be looking for to tell you whether you are in a place that is relatively safe, or in a place that is relatively dangerous for you.  A good overview of these cues can be found in Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear.  Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his own reply to Hanson's piece, gives some examples:

Those of who have spent much of our lives living in relatively high crime neighborhoods grasp this particular stupidity immediately. We have a great many strategies which we employ to try to protect ourselves and our children. We tell them to watch who you are walking with, to not go to neighborhoods where you don't know anyone, that when a crowd runs toward a fight they should go the other way, to avoid blocks with busted street-lights, to keep their head up while your walking, to not daydream and to be aware of their surroundings.

When you start getting down to particular neighborhoods the advice gets even more specific–don't cut through the woods to get to school, stay away from Jermaine Wilks, don't go to Mondawmin on the first hot day of the year etc. There is a great scene in the film The Interruptors when one of the anti-violence workers notes that when she sees a bunch of people in a place, and then they all suddenly clear out, she knows something is coming down. My point is that parents who regularly have to cope with violent crime understand the advantages of good, solid intelligence. They know that saying '"stay away from black kids" is the equivalent of looking at 9/11, shrugging ones shoulders and saying, "It was them Muslims." 

(4)  When police release a description of a suspect who's been seen in such-and-such a neighborhood, the description usually includes age, race, and gender.  I have heard people use this as the rationale for evaluating the threat level of passersby via age-race-gender profiling.  But here's the thing:  The reason for including very obvious but general characteristics like age, race, and gender in a suspect's description is not to pinpoint a suspect ("young black male" or "middle-aged large woman" would describe a large number of the inhabitants of many neighborhoods) but to quickly exclude people who do NOT fit that description from the search.  It's like reading resumés:  when the pile is too big to deal with, you make it smaller as simply as possible, by throwing out all the people who obviously don't have the credentials you're looking for.  The pile that is left may or may not contain your target, but at least it's more manageable.

Apply this concept to the "be careful of young black males" advice, thinking, "Well, it's just a quick way to size up the situation, maybe you don't have time to conduct a more thorough evaluation," and you're treading in dangerous territory indeed:  the unspoken belief that people who aren't young black men can automatically be trusted not to be dangerous!  Here's the thing:  If safety is on the line, you owe it to yourself to conduct the thorough, reality-based evaluation, not the cursory evaluation based on externals that aren't actually predictive.

(5)  Still not convinced?  Still think it's a handy safety rule to teach your kids to avoid young black males?  (After all, they are overrepresented among perpetrators of violent crime!)  

Let's suppose, for a rather awful moment, that growing up with an ingrained fear of young black males would, in fact, marginally increase the safety of our youngsters.  Suppose what Hanson seems to believe were really true.

Would the end justify the means?

Would a tiny increase in safety — caused by an increase in caution around Those People — caused by drumming into our children a fear of Those People — be worth the damage we would be doing?

I don't want my kids to grow up judging random people's dangerousness on superficialities like age, race, and gender.*

I'm not confident that you can undo the damage from "young black males are potential trouble" by following it up with "but you should always judge a man on his merits"  (as Hanson claims his father did).

I think it's a short mental step from "that kind of person is likely to be more dangerous" to "that kind of person is likely to be less worthy."

I think it's a short mental step from "sometimes, judging people on looks alone is the right thing to do" to "often, judging people on superficialities is the right thing to do."

I think kids might take that extra step without their parents knowing.

I don't believe a marginal increase in safety justifies even every useful precaution one might take.  I enjoy downhill skiing, and I don't stay on the easy slopes just because they're safer.  I could keep my kids physically safer by locking the doors and never letting them outside; but they have growing to do, and that growing will be so much healthier if they can do it out in the world where there are dangers as well as wonders.

Even if teaching them to be more fearful of people who are of particular races would make them safer on the outside — I won't risk what it might do to their hearts.

(My heart hurts when I think about how many times I have not been able to shield their ears from some other adult saying to another, "You know how those ______ are," in some family gathering or another.  Or the jokes.  I'm not anti-joke.  Humor is complicated.  But I am anti-make-impressions-on-my-impressionable-kid.)

And, frankly, I haven't seen a whit of evidence that it would make them safer.  I can think of many reasons why it wouldn't.  I have to agree with Coates that "this is the kind of advice which betrays a greater interest in maintaining one's worldview than in maintaining one's safety."

 

 __________________________________________

*She says, although admittedly she tells children that when they need to choose a safe person to ask for help in a strange situation, they should seek out a woman.  A mommy in particular.  (This is advice straight out of de Becker's book.)  But I maintain that the situation of "you are vulnerable and need help in a stressful situation, choose the right person to ask for assistance" is a bit different from "you are not in any particularly dangerous situation, choose which people to be afraid of".  Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

I have sort of hit a wall trying to decide what to do for Religion in our homeschool this year.

 

All my school-age kids are enrolled in parish religious education, a good program that uses the Faith and Life series. I am confident that the basics are being covered there, but I like to supplement it at home. My second-grader is, of course, preparing for First Confession and First Communion this year, and there’s so much take-home work that we’re not going to do anything “extra” for her, but the others have me flummoxed. Since the “basics” are covered at church, I should have room to get into things that interest them particularly or that develop other skills, but I think I am overthinking it.

When my oldest was nine and ten, I used the Baltimore Catechism as memory work, since I wasn’t doing any other sort of memorization with him. That went really well; he enjoyed the challenge and he’s just the sort of kid who likes questions and answers.

My current almost-10-year-old, however, is not that kind of a kid, and H. (my partner in co-schooling) has been doing poetry memorization with all the four-to-eleven-year-olds. (She divided them up by gender and went with what they responded to. Last year the girls did assorted poetry heavy on the nature themes — my daughter developed a taste for Wordsworth — and the boys learned Robert Hugh Benson’s Old Testament Rhymes.) So there isn’t a memorization-gap that needs to be filled. He is pretty interested in stories of saints (the bloodier the martyrdom, the better) but he doesn’t like to read very much even though he’s quite capable of it — he is plowing through Harry Potter and completely bored with every other book in the Entire World.

I was originally planning to have my history-buff 8th-grader do a survey of the OT but he said he didn’t want to do that this year (even though we spent last year putting it in context with a history of the Jewish people…) and I am trying to be flexible. What he really wanted to do was Church history. But all the good curricula I can find are upper high school. Normally I am cool with putting together my own curricula for things but I am kinda swamped right now and would need a LOT more time for that one. I suppose I could narrow the scope. He is, I think, mainly interested in understanding the story of the Protestant reformation (both German and English flavors) and the Counter-reformation. A commendable goal for an 8th-grader. I don’t know where I would start. Other than assigning him Come Rack, Come Rope!, which is sitting on my shelf waiting for the right moment.

 

Wait, I just now while writing had one idea. Maybe we could use Hilaire Belloc’s The Great Heresies as a sort of “spine” and do a unit on each and attack Church history that way. If you aren’t familiar with this book, it’s a not-very-long one in which Belloc considers in turn Arianism, Islam, Albigensianism, Protestantism (as seen from Europe in the beginning of the 20th century — so the American evangelical flavor is not really represented), and “modernism.” The book has a number of features, though, which make me reluctant to promote Belloc as a particular, central authority. He has an opinion and he is going to give it to you with wit and clarity, which makes him persuasive and fun to read, but… I like my history resources to have a more neutral tone unless I am either (a) ready to endorse the author’s entire attitude as exactly right or (b) illustrating one point of view among several.

 

(And no, I am not saying that I teach that all points of view are equal, but it is important to me to convey a strong impression that multiple points of view exist about historical events — i.e., one should never take it for granted that there is One Acceptable Interpretation of Events — and that reasonable, well-meaning people can hold to different interpretations.)

I have thought about using the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church simply for a jumping-off point of family discussion — me, my 13- and 10-year-olds, my husband from time to time. Not from the very beginning, but specifically the third section, which is about living the Christian life. Just sit down a couple of times a week with a pot of tea, read what it has to say a few questions at a time, talk about why it matters, maybe assign some journal entries or writing assignments. There is definitely something about that which appeals to me — partly because I could maybe manage both boys at once — but it’s so much more spontaneous than I usually roll that I feel uneasy about it. I might find myself brushing it off from week to week because of less time to sit down with that tea. I always get wrapped up in the things to do and write and see and plan that it is very hard for me to just sit down and spend time with the kids. Which maybe is a reason to go ahead and do it. I haven’t been able to find any pre-prepared curricula based off the Compendium (or off of YOUCAT — even though I would rather use the Compendium, anything based on YOUCAT should work too since they have exactly the same structure), which would force me to be much more freewheeling than usual. And it has the disadvantage of not being a response to what either boy suggested he would be interested in studying. Although I could maybe send each one away with different reading to do, tied to what we’re discussing together, but reflecting their individual interest. How did such-and-such a saint Iive out this commandment in a heroic way? How did such-and-such a historical event present particular moral challenges to Christians affected by it?

 

If I don’t come up with anything better, I may have to do it that way, if only because I won’t have time to come up with anything else!

 

From extemporaneous remarks during a catechesis given by Pope Francis on June 17 to the Diocese of Rome.  

I want to tell you something.

In the Gospel there's that beautiful passage that tells us of the shepherd who, on returning to the sheepfold and realizing that a sheep is missing, leaves the 99 and goes to look for it, to look for the one.

But, brothers and sisters, we have one.

It's the 99 who we're missing!

We have to go out, we must go to them!

In this culture—let's face it—we only have one. We are the minority. And do we feel the fervour, the apostolic zeal to go out and find the other 99? This is a big responsibility and we must ask the Lord for the grace of generosity and the courage and the patience to go out, to go out and proclaim the Gospel.

The catechesis was reportedly inspired by these words from the First Letter of St. Paul to the Romans:  

“For I am not ashamed of the Gospel. … We who were baptized … are not under the law but under grace.” 

I find this alteration fascinating, and not a little unsettling.  Has he turned the Gospel on its head here?  Is this legitimate?  Is it a commentary on the difference between the culture back then and the culture now?  

When I think of the parable of the lost (singular) sheep, I often wonder about the ninety-nine being left without a shepherd.  Are they, in fact, safe in their numbers?  Maybe it's a sort of promise that the ones who stick together in the wilderness will, in fact, be okay, and the Shepherd will look out for the ones who have somehow struck out on their own; we should trust.  I don't know; maybe if I knew more about sheep I'd get it.

 

Matthew's version

In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 18, the ninety-nine-and-one sheep are identified with "little ones" who, in context, are "those who believe in me" and have "become like little children:"

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them.  And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

“If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea…

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.

 “What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off?  And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish."

It's all stuff about how much God values every individual person, even (especially?) the insignificant or those who choose to make themselves insignificant, and his special care for those that "wander," or sin.  It goes on with advice about dealing with sin and forgiving sinners:  

“If your brother or sister sins,  go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.  But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’  If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

“Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven…

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”

Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times."

You get the impression that the earthly shepherds' part in going after the one lost sheep has a lot to do with instruction combined with ready forgiveness.

(I confess I'm not sure what Jesus means by "treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector."  I assume that the inspired evangelist knew what that meant.  Sounds like a question for a historian.)

Anyway, notice the question that Jesus uses the parable to answer:  "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?"  The parable comes late in his answer; after he explains that one must become "little" and "lowly"  to be the greatest, he uses the sheep parable to explain that one individual is very valuable to God.

 

Luke's version

Luke places this parable in an entirely different context.  From Chapter 15:

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus.  But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Then Jesus told them this parable:  “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?  And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’  I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent."

Here the lost sheep parable is an answer to the question the Pharisees and teachers of the law did not ask aloud:  "Why do you welcome sinners and eat with them?"

The lost sheep who is found, who inspires the rejoicing, is "the sinner who repents."  I find it interesting that the Pharisees and teachers of the law only asked about Jesus eating with "sinners,"  but Jesus answered as if the question was "Why do you eat with repentant sinners?"

If they'd asked it that way, they would have seen it was a stupid question.  But maybe not; maybe the Pharisees don't really believe in repentance, so they can't see the difference.

I think this same mistake is often made today.  It's really quite remarkable how many of the interlocutors' questions have turned out to be repeated over the centuries.

The "rejoicing" Jesus identifies is over not sinners, but "sinners who repent;" not lost sheep who remain lost, but lost sheep who are found and carried home.  The ninety-nine sheep left to fend for themselves (or each other, anyway) let us know that even one repentant sinner is tremendously valuable.  It is essentially the same point made in Matthew; but the difference in context — because the parable is in answer to different questions in the two Gospels — gives it a different flavor.  

 

Francis's twist

… So here we are with Francis's "parable," which he turns on its head:  Now the many are missing and the few are faithful.  Now it isn't the shepherd who leaves the faithful to go in search of the lone wanderer — but the few faithful sheep told to disperse courageously "to the outskirts" (Francis's words) where they are to proclaim the Gospel to them.

What's different?

Well, to start with:  In Jesus's version, the shepherd is still present as a walking, talking, human teacher.

In this modern-day version, we have no visible shepherd.  We've been wandering (all together, "found") in the wilderness without him.   (What's he doing?  Off finding lost sheep from the fold and bringing them back one at a time?)

There's a couple of ways we could read this.  One might be to wonder if Francis has ever actually spent any time around sheep, and if this departure from the prepared script were really all that well-considered.  

But giving the man the benefit of the doubt, we could consider it a reminder of the lessons from the original parable, flipped a little bit because of the numbers.

Back then, the "righteous" were (apparently) mainstream and the "sinners" were (apparently) fringe.  Jesus could make the point that a few sinners are at least as valuable as a whole lot of righteous people; that is to say, that value (when it comes to persons) doesn't scale linearly.  

Today (Francis says), sin is mainstream and "those who believe" are fringe.  Depends where in the world you are, okay, but fair enough.  Probably true in Italy.  But maybe when you're a righteous fringe you're especially prone to thinking yourself extra special.  Extra valuable.  The Remnant.  The One Percent.  

Maybe there's a huge temptation to turn inward and cluster into a little protective bunch.  

I don't know.  Do sheep do that?

Anyway, if the lessons of the parable of the sheep (original version) are that

    (1) greatness in heaven belongs to those who become little or insignificant on earth and 

    (2) an individual repentant sinner has inestimable worth, maybe more than a person who doesn't need to repent

then this message of Francis — that we the "found" sheep must go out to bring back the "lost" sheep by proclaiming the Gospel — carries with it a subtext of "do it not as a great person but as an insignificant person, with instruction and ready forgiveness, and acknowledge the potentially  inestimable worth of the sinner you seek to instruct and forgive."

If you're a "found" sheep out in search of a "lost" sheep, then the lost sheep's safe return is perhaps to be treated as if it is more valuable than yours.

Going to the outskirts is not going to be without risk for any of us.