Sam Smith –
One reason I couldn’t get too upset about Joe Biden hugging people in a way
that bothers some was because I grew up in a family of six and learned early in
life that others don’t do and see things the same as you. I also have 15
nephews and nieces, including three who are Scottish and four Puerto Rican. There
was even a time when my oldest sibling, then energy director of Puerto Rico,
was trying to build an oil port there while my youngest sibling was fighting
one in Maine.
Other things taught me
that my views and values were just a micromind in the world around me. In ninth
grade I took what was then one of two high school anthropology courses in the
country, spending a whole year studying people who thought and acted
differently than me. I would become a journalist, a job that requires a lot of
listening to others without telling them what you think about it all. And, as a
writer, I often felt a minority of one
finding refuge in the printed word for thoughts that I would not hazard in
casual conversation.
Finally, I went to a
Quaker High School in Philadelphia, one run by a meeting that had opposed
slavery as early as 1688. Quakers, however, were not only advocates
of individual rights but
of the concept of reciprocal liberty, which is to say that I can’t have my
liberty unless you have yours. As David Hackett Fischer described it in Albion’s Seed:
The Quakers extended to others in
America precisely the same rights that they had demanded for themselves in
England. Many other libertarians have tended to hedge their principles when
power passed into their hands.
As I put it about a decade
ago:
This
is what diversity is really about. It is not about forcing your values on
someone else. It is about sharing space with those of different values in a way
that no one is hurt.
This
is not a new concept in American life, although it seems to have faded from
view. Absent these days, for example, is the concept of reciprocal liberty. As
Thomas Paine said, “Where the rights of men are equal, every man must finally
see the necessity of protecting the rights of others as the most effectual
security for his own.”
Describing
David Hackett Fischer’s discussion in ‘Albion’s Seed’ of the difference in the
view of freedom within the American colonies, Leonard J. Wilson writes, “Their
contrasting concepts of liberty are among the most visible today. The Puritan
concept of liberty, ‘ordered liberty’ in Fischer’s terminology, focused on the
‘freedom’ to conform to the policies of the Puritan Church and local
government. The Virginia concept of liberty, ‘hegemonic liberty’, was
hierarchical in nature, ranging from the great freedom of those in positions of
power and wealth down to the total lack of freedom accorded to slaves. The
Quaker concept of liberty, ‘reciprocal liberty’, focused on the aspects of
freedom that were held equally by all people as opposed to the unequal and
asymmetric freedoms of the Puritans and Virginians. Finally, the Scotch-Irish
concept of liberty, ‘natural liberty’, focused on the natural rights of the
individual and his freedom from government coercion.”
The
good thing about the Quaker notion of reciprocal liberty is that you don’t have
to approve of the other person’s behavior to accept his or her right to engage
in it.
America,
at its best, knows that you don’t have to like someone or their beliefs to
extend to them the same freedom to be right or wrong. As Walt Kelly said, we
have to defend the basic American right of everyone to make damn fools of
themselves.
For
diversity to work, no one gets to approve its membership. It exists because
that’s the way the world is.
The
distinction is whether diversity is merely different or if it hurts someone. If
it hurts someone – as with ethnic discrimination or the physical mistreatment
of women – then society rightfully gets to call a halt to it.
And
if we understood and practiced such a principle of reciprocal liberty we might
feel much better about our land and about each other.
Reciprocal liberty,
however, tends to be strongest in strong communities. I notice it, for example,
in my small town in Maine where I hear few harsh criticisms of others. Given
our larger society, however, with atomization brought by social networks,
identity politics, the rise of the extreme right, and the growing number of us
living in non-communal large urban areas, it becomes easier to have real
opponents rather than just people who differ from you.
Still if you want
diversity to work, you have to keep in mind that most people are going to be
different from you.
1 comment:
Not every difference is just a difference, Sam.
Post a Comment