Who's racist or ableist: the Implicit Association Test

When you aren’t on a deadline or scrambling to get done the essentials (but your brain is too tired to either pursue your serious interests or get you moving toward something truly restful), there is something you do at your computer in that state of numb fog.

It might be browsing through pictures of cute animals on Facebook or playing Tetris or Solitaire. It might not always be the same time waster, but chances are you have certain habits. I wonder if those habits say something interesting about your personality.

My numb-fog habit is browsing through sociological and psychological statistics. If one’s numb-fog habit does say something about one’s personality, I am pretty sure mine says I’m a hopelessly weird variety of nerd. But there you have it.

Creative Commons image by Whisperer in the Shaddows photostream

Sociology and psychology statistics are like mental candy. I know that they don’t always mean what they appear to mean and they aren’t always good for me. But they strip things down to outlines and make the world appear much more orderly and predictable than it actually is, even if its predictability is in how absolutely nuts and irrational most people are.

This is why I’m the type of person who takes the Myers-Briggs personality test for fun and tries to get my friends and family to take it too. And yes, I got a very weird (or at least statistically uncommon) result on that test.

On one of the rare days when my kids were away and I didn’t have to work during the winter break, I indulged in my numb-fog hobby instead of either sleeping (which would have been the responsible choice) or doing something fulfilling or useful. And what I found was an intriguing online study out of Harvard called the Implicit Association Test.

It’s actually a series of mini tests that cover everything from your subconscious preference for light skin or dark skin to your preference for randomly selected previous presidents versus Trump and from your positive feelings toward straight people versus gay people to the degree to which you subconsciously view Native Americans as “American” or “foreign.”

If you’re curious, I turned out to slightly prefer African Americans over white people, have no preference on gay versus straight, harbor a moderately strong assumption of Native Americans as more American than white Americans and (weirdly) I subconsciously slightly preferred Trump to Richard Nixon.

Needless to say, my results on these tests tend to be on the minority side, with the exception of my subconscious lack of interest in the difference between gay versus straight people, which appears to be fairly common.

The results of these tests can be surprising, both on the individual level and when taken as an overall statistic. I went into the race test knowing that the vast majority of respondents present a subconscious bias against African Americans, including more than half of African Americans themselves who subconsciously prefer white people over people who look like them.

The test goes so fast that you can’t really try to control it or even remember much of it, but there was one of the black faces with big, beautiful eyes that looked kind of like one of my friend’s kids, and maybe that’s what tipped the balance for me subconsciously. I’ll never know because the test doesn’t explain why we have subconscious associations, it just ruthlessly alerts us to them.

Many people find that even though they state vehemently anti-racist views and truly believe they are “color blind,” they still have implicit, subconscious biases, even against their own group. This study is proof that we don’t live in “a post-racial world.”

It is one thing to fight discrimination and prejudice through equality laws, but what do you do when the people perpetuating problems of inequity and prejudice don’t even know it or condone it? It’s tough, but there are people whose test results come back without bias or with a bias in favor of those who have been historically marginalized, like mine did.

In addition, though society makes much of sexual preference as a scandalous personal detail, most people actually don’t much care about other people’s bedroom activities, according to the Harvard test results. So there must be some way to mitigate prejudice.

I am pretty certain that, if I had taken this test twenty years ago, the results would have been different. I remember how, as a college kid coming from rural, eastern Oregon, I was nervous whenever I saw a black person coming toward me on the sidewalk.

I had nothing “against” black people. And in fact, I couldn’t understand why they had faced discrimination “years ago.” I didn’t really know any black people, except for my mom’s college friend who died of cancer when I was a child, but I did secretly wonder if the continued ruckus over “race” wasn’t just coming from a few who wanted to “feel special.”

I report this all with a bit of shame, but I think honesty helps. This was my view around 1995. As hilarious as it may sound now, I thought that we were completely “over it” back then. And had I taken the Implicit Association Test on race at that time, I am sure I would have had implicit bias against black people, though I would have consciously believed I was unbiased.

What changed? Both life experience and conscious focus.

First, I spent four months in Zimbabwe as a student, almost always the only white person in a room or on a street. Even though most people were wonderfully kind to me, I learned what it is like to be a highly visible racial minority in a country with hot political and racial tensions. I then spent several years covering racial and interethnic conflict as a journalist, mucking around in every type of divide from South America to Eastern Europe.

Finally, I adopted children who are not white and we live in a country where racial boundaries and prejudices are deeply intrenched. When my children were little, I started to experience first hand how race is truly viewed in majority-white societies. And I started reading copious amounts both on race theoretically and from Black, African, Native American and Asian authors. I chose racially diverse reading and dolls for my children and spent hours to find them, not to mention several times the amount of money necessary to buy “white race” toys.

It has taken years, but now I have very different views than I did as a young student. Not only do I know very well that our society is far from a post-racial world and I am hyper-aware of things like police brutality toward black people in America, I also have gained enormous gratitude and respect for the persistence, courage and patience that so many people of color have given our society throughout history.

That last is what I think made my test result skew in favor of black faces. After two decades of focusing on the positive contributions and articulate stories of people of color, my subconscious attitude has shifted. It is that also which causes so many African Americans to harbor more negative views of black faces.

Most people in our society are not immersed in stories, media and images that present people of color positively. In school or in the mainstream media, one cannot help but absorb mostly negative images of people of color and mostly positive images of white people. But I do not consume much mainstream media and it has been a long time since I was in school.

After all that, of course I was curious about what the test would say about attitudes toward people with disabilities. Popular assumptions would tell us that most people do not really dislike people with disabilities but possibly pity them or objectify them. Despite the occasional discrimination and harassment I’ve encountered which was clearly due to my disability, I thought surely actual hatred was reserved for people of some marginalized racial group or non-standard sexual orientation. I assumed, before seeing the results, that most of my difficulty with inclusion in social groups has to do with my physical inability to make eye contact and read non-verbal cues.

Here again, the results upset my assumptions and those of wider society as well.

I wondered if I would personally have a slight bias against people with disabilities myself. I have a rugged, self-sufficiency streak and people with disabilities often do better in a more collaborative and mutually supportive community. Even I do, though I might wish otherwise. So, I was prepared for the test to tell me I am just as “self-hating” as all the anti-black African Americans.

But that isn’t what happened. I turned out to have a slight implicit positive bias in favor of people with disabilities or at least in favor symbols associated with them.

Only 9 percent of people who took the test share that implicit bias in favor of people with disabilities, while a whopping 78 percent associate people with disabilities with negative thoughts, including roughly half of that number who have strong negative associations with disabled people.

That left me gaping and shocked. The negative bias against people with disabilities outstripped racial or homophobic bias. The words associated with people with disabilities on the negative side were things like “selfish”, “dishonest”, “hate”, “anger,” “despair” and “disgust”. It wasn’t even primarily about pity.

Those results are deeply disturbing to me and my afternoon of casual browsing through statistics turned sour.

To be strictly accurate, let me emphasize that these were the views of nearly 80 percent of the people who happened to take the Harvard Implicit Association test, which is mostly something people run across online or are assigned to do for a class. That isn’t really very comforting, however.

It is likely that if the demographic of the test takers is weighted in some way it is skewed toward more educated and connected people. And these are the people who have such overwhelmingly negative implicit associations when shown images and symbols associated with disabled people. This wasn’t measuring a sample of mostly uneducated or isolated people.

It is particularly concerning given that people with disabilities are usually the last group added or are completely left off of those ubiquitous lists of people we should include and center in progressive circles. I always figured that people with disabilities got left off of such lists or added as an afterthought because people thought we were generally viewed positively and there wasn’t much need to emphasize non-discrimination against people with disabilities.

Now that dismissal takes on a different connotation. People with disabilities are often left out even in diversity culture and when they are added in, it is as a prop, never as a voice. At this point I’m still reeling from seeing these results and I don’t have any idea why there are such negative stereotypes about people with disabilities.

But my own experience with overcoming racist biases makes me think that what we need is a significant, pervasive promotion of the voices, images and stories from people with disabilities with an emphasis on our altruism, unselfish contributions, intelligence, helpfulness, capabilities, honesty and dignity. Without such promotion throughout society, I doubt these attitudes will change.

To take no shit or to tough it out - a rebel's view

I’m going to write about an incident here that I have never openly acknowledged before. I didn’t promise to never discuss it. There was no non-disclosure agreement, but I’m sure my high school principal assumed there was a gentlemen's hush-hush agreement.

He should have known. I’m no gentleman. Part of the point was that I’m not a man at all and was not a boy.

Creative Commons image by Craig Cloutier

I graduated from high school in a desert town so small that they changed the population sign when my family moved in from 150 to 154. My father was a rookie teacher and had to take whatever post came his way. The sophomore class I entered had six students. I got a study-abroad scholarship and spent my junior year in Germany, but I spent two years with them.

By the time I was ready to graduate I was also more than ready to get out of that tiny desert town. I had again lined up scholarships, this time to an exclusive, liberal arts school half a continent away. I had big dreams of international journalism—and more importantly—escape.

My grades and SAT scores were enough to land the scholarships. The other kids mentioned something about me being valedictorian and I was surprised we would have one with so few of us. Even so, I wasn’t without competition.

My study-buddy Faye, who was one of the best friends I had during my entire school career, was college-bound and savvier than me about most things outside of books as well. She would no doubt have had straight As, if her home life had been more like mine—i.e. stable, two-parents, and you know, a house with separate rooms for each kid rather than a tiny trailer.

But as it was, she wasn’t even in second place. I won’t pick on the kid who was by name because I doubt any of this was his fault, though his parents might have been involved.

In the early spring of my senior year, I was called into the principal’s office and told that I wasn’t going to graduate. I already had a college settled and full scholarships. The news hit me so hard it literally knocked the breath out of me. The principal said that, although the school had initially agreed that my credits from Germany would be accepted without any grades being counted against my GPA, he had determined that that wouldn’t be possible.

He gave me two choices. I could either repeat my junior year to make up the credits or take the grades given on my German report card into my GPA and accept that “pass” grades, of which there were several would be counted as Cs.

I had even gotten a real C on that report card—in third-year chemistry. I had never taken first- or second-year chemistry and it was in German. The teacher was a sour-faced traditionalist who probably was being “charitable” by her standards in giving me that C. I couldn’t follow the class at all and there were no accommodations for the fact that being legally blind I couldn’t see the chalkboards or read the tiny-print, light-blue-ink books.

If I accepted those grades I wouldn’t be going to college at all, given that my scholarships would evaporate. There was no way I could work my way through school without being able to drive or do the hurried physical labor of most minimum-wage jobs at fast-food restaurants. The principal maintained a level, uninterested tone as he delivered this soul-destroying ultimatum.

I went home in tears and was confused by my parents’ strange lack of concern.

Most of what they said was a blur to me, but I remember my mother at one point stating, “You need to stop grabbing everything for yourself.” Finally, I got what she meant. My mother was always fanaticly against selfishness and at one point she hinted that it was understandable and even justifiable for the town to want the son of a prominent local rancher to be valedictorian, rather than an interloper who had only been there for two years.

But it was my father who explained it to me plainly. I would not be allowed to graduate as valedictorian. It wasn’t actually impossible for me to graduate with a good GPA, but no one could say out loud that the issue was who would be valedictorian in our class of six. However, my father also didn’t seem to think that taking another year of high school would be such a bad thing, even if I had already taken every class the school offered and more than half of my senior year had been independent study and distance learning classes.

I was an emotional and loud-mouthed teen and I cried bitterly over it. I wanted more than anything to lash out, to go into the school yelling and demand justice. I wanted to talk to the other girls and tell all. This was what my parents made me understand I must not do. If I made any kind of fuss, I really would not graduate or would graduate with a GPA that would erase my scholarships.

It was my first major lesson in bowing my. head to injustice and keeping silent, and I think my parents thought it was a good and needful lesson in general, because I had given them a lot of mouth over the years and had a reputation for yelling, “It’s not fair!” at the slightest provocation.

They didn’t tell me exactly what to do or say, but I was actually a quick learner. Figuring out what to do wasn’t the hard part. It was swallowing the bile in my throat that was tough. I didn’t need the accolade of being valedictorian. That wasn’t really the issue.

I was a teenager and so at least somewhat selfish, but I think if someone had come to me and said, “Hey, you have your college thing worked out. Can we let one of the other kids have this valedictorian thing so that they have a fighting chance?” I would have given it up willingly. I just hated being scared out of my wits during that terrible moment in the principal’s office and bucked at being forced by authority to bow to something blatantly unjust.

Still I managed it. I walked back into the principal’s office a few days later, folded my hands in my lap and tried to put on a show of being a sweet and submissive young girl.

“I see that some misunderstanding has come up here, and I think we can solve it easily,” I said. “When I went to Germany, I agreed with the school that my grades would be counted as pass/fail, and clearly pass/fail grades can’t be counted toward someone being valedictorian. Having those pass/fail credits obviously makes me ineligible to be valedictorian, even if they don’t change my GPA.”

The principal was silent for a moment and then nodded and made a gruff sound of assent. It was settled and not a word was ever spoken about the matter again. I graduated with a 4.0 GPA and went off to college. I don’t know what happened to the kid who was valedictorian, but Faye, who wasn’t, became a lawyer for labor unions and did just fine.

A few more times in my life, I have had to formally bow to injustice. Once I was told explicitly by a hiring editor at a newspaper that I wouldn’t be hired because of my disability. I could have spent the best years of my journalism career finding a lawyer willing to gamble and suing the guy, and I might have won. But instead, I swallowed the bitter pill and went my own way.

Another time an editor insisted on switching the sequence of events in a news article I had written. I wrote that the NATO-led bombing of Kosovo in 1999 preceded the flood of Albanian refugees leaving the province, and showed that the newspaper’s own archives backed me up. But my editor stated that it was “policy” to say that the NATO-led bombing came only “in response to” the flood of Albanian refugees, “forced to flee” the province.

It was the clearest instance of political censorship I encountered as a journalist and I felt a bit like Winston in the book 1984, when he held incontrovertible evidence of vast lies in his hand for a brief moment. But I was a rookie reporter, scarcely more than a kid, and I was beyond grateful to have the relationship I had with that editor.

The bit of backbone I showed that time was to request that no false statement should appear under my name. I asked the editor to either remove my name from the article or allow me to rephrase that part vaguely enough to skirt the issue. We agreed on the latter solution.

Why am I digging all these skeletons out of my closet at this point? Mostly because I had pretty much forgotten about those incidents and when reminded of them, I realized that no one involved in any of those incidents has any power over me any more. I can say these things and any sanctions that might be brought against me can no longer harm me.

The same can’t be said for the situation I found myself in last fall with the climate action movement Extinction Rebellion. There, I was asked to keep silent about abuses of power and to accept being the only person explicitly excluded from leadership positions because our leader took a dislike to my questions and inability to swallow hypocrisy.

The stakes for me were emotional and social this time instead of the future of my education or my job. That’s a blessing of sorts. While the climate crisis threatens all of our survival, this exclusion and discrimination didn’t threaten my personal survival. It only threatened to cut me off from friends and a source of hope that the movement had become to me and many others.

Finally, the stress of being constantly blocked and excluded by those in powerful positions along with the demand of the organization to keep such issues quiet became too much. The impact on my emotions, physical health and even family life was getting out of control and after a particularly rough period of two weeks of daily harassment by one person assigned by the power clique to hound me, I did what they wanted and simply ceased all contact with the local Extinction Rebellion group.

I still text with friends inside the climate action movement and my friends have asked me to come to talks with the leadership. I understand why my friends ask it. I was a powerhouse of positive energy when I was part of the movement and my work involved supporting others rather than the power games that have poisoned our corner of this otherwise admirable movement. My friends who are committed both to real climate action and to a healthy internal culture in the movement want me back.

But those who excluded me have their own reasons for holding the talks. I was far from the only one to run afoul of them and they are understandably under fire for their unethical tactics in an organization that claims to be both supremely inclusive and non-hierarchical. I was one of the more prominent people to run into trouble, however.

The small group being paid “expense assistance” to run the “all-volunteer” organization would like to erase the stain on their reputations (and possibly even their consciences) caused by them hounding the only significantly disabled leader out of our national branch.

This is a current crisis and again I am being asked to bow to injustice and keep silence about it. The last agreement they pressured me to accept was that I would be considered blameless (since there wasn’t anything they could find to accuse me of) and yet I would be excluded from positions of authority. In exchange, I would not be openly harassed and the big autumn actions we had planned would not be disrupted.

As it happened, I was still harassed. And the exclusion was much more widespread than the agreement hinted.

What will their next “agreement” offer? I can’t really imagine. I think I will go to the talks for the sake of the friends who have asked me,, but I will make clear from the outset that I will no longer bend and bow to hypocrisy and exclusion. I will speak openly about harassment and abuse of power. And if I am excluded and harassed personally, I will simply leave.

I am glad that I am no longer a child or a young employee physically under the power of others. The ability to vote with one’s feet without being destroyed is the very definition of empowerment.

The sci-fi mystique of 2020

“It is the year 2020 and the first annual conference of sentient artificial persons is about to begin. One of the first agenda points is a resolution demanding that humans stop using the derogatory term “robot,” which comes from the Slavic word for “work” and gives the connotation that we should be the servants of humans forever…”

Wait a minute. That won’t work anymore. Sci-fi writers always have to push their stories ahead a couple of decades to give themselves enough room for imagination.

As a kid, I was confused about why George Orwell thought the year 1984 had a dire, futuristic feel to it. For me, it was just the mostly boring year I had our near neighbor as a second grade teacher, so that when my mom called me in sick so that i could go sledding in the first fresh snow of the winter, I got caught.

Photo by Arie Farnam

For my generation, 2020 was the year that sounded futuristic, cool and a bit scary. 2019 and all the other years since 2000 just looked weird written down and we had a hard time saying them at first. We were used to saying, “Nineteen ninety something.” So we naturally tried to say “Twenty” but then we had to say “Twenty O one” and “twenty O two,” so it just didn’t work.

But “twenty twenty” works nicely and it was safely remote enough that we could freely imagine a futuristic world, either utopian or dystopian. We were really expecting flying cars, robot soldiers and at least basic food replicators by now. Touch screen tablets actually turned out to be way cooler than our sci-fi could imagine and drones are a bit more boring than we pictured.

However, our sci-fi failed utterly to predict social and cultural changes. To be fair, sci-fi pretty much by definition has to go to extremes. Either the culture will be hopelessly jaded and cruel or we will somehow banish racism, ableism and bigotry of all sorts along with the common cold. Naturally, neither of those situations has fully materialized.

Sure, today’s culture is jaded and unhealthy in ways that we couldn’t have dreamed in the 1980s or 90s. The effects on general mentality and interactions that social media, nonstop video games and blanket advertising have had are way more depressingly banal than sci-fi authors of the past would have envisioned.

But I recently got a kick out of explaining to an ESL student studying professional English usage that the pronoun “his” is now simply considered wrong—rather than “politically incorrect”—in the sentence, “I’m the kind of employee who always stays late when his boss asks,” given that the student is female.

The ability to choose any music, video, book or magazine in a second and surround yourself with ad-free, thoughtful and wonderfully diverse voices (if you so choose) is also pretty amazing. The ability to buy almost everything online and rarely have to go to any store except the local mom-and-pop store on the corner is downright awesome.

Knowing that the casual homophobia my kids are exposed to in elementary school will be countered with a much more open-minded online world once they are a few years older gives me a little peace, while the continuation of deeply engrained racism and ableism in almost all social spaces fills me with despair.

Other than the touch-screen devices, the thing that is probably the truest to the science fiction and fantasy of my youth is the global disaster of climate change looming, while political and cultural leaders enact the modern equivalent of “the folly of Rohan”. Tolkien would only have been perplexed about how our Gandalf turned out to be a teenage girl with pigtails.

While it looks like life in 2020 is going to be just as mundane as it is every year while we’re living it, this coming year is the year we once envisioned as dramatic and decisive. And although it is just one more year in a series of numbered years, we could take that up. We could choose to make our resolutions less about losing weight or saving money and more about the kind of world we want to make real through our actions.

In 2020 Americans will participate in the election of another president, very likely the last president to have a real chance of averting catastrophic climate change. Vast numbers of people in Asia, Africa and South America are gaining a middle-class lifestyle, and through global interpersonal communication, we have more opportunity than ever before to expand our concept of “us.”

And yet many of us are struggling with personal lives that already feel survivalist, where every day is on the edge. My. hope for the new year is to find a clear path through the storm, a sense of direction.

May 2020 be a year to remember for much needed change.

Is your family gathering inclusive or just quiet on controversy?

There has been a rash of articles and posts about avoiding arguments and political or religious disagreements around the holiday table this year. The focus of most of these pieces is on peaceful, quiet and controversy-free gatherings.

Tensions haven’t been this high across family tables and between generations in half a century. Many of us are exhausted from the sheer complexity of modern life and by hardships and pain that seem to come out of nowhere. No wonder most of us just want peace more than anything.

Creative Commons image by Neale Adams

And yet, quiet is also what happens when someone dies, prison doors close or bullies smirk in satisfaction.

When I read those posts on avoiding controversy, the picture that builds in my mind is of a woman or a few women—sweating and bone-weary—checking the turkey. Then, the man of the house comes and carries it to the table amid applause, though the only other time he touched it was when he commented critically on its size early that morning as a woman was putting it in the oven. He cuts it and magnanimously passes out pieces, while the women wash up the spatters and hurriedly take off aprons or tuck up hair as they run to take their places at the table.

One woman at this gathering with a chronic illness hid in the study and now she comes to sit down at the same time as the other women, hoping maybe no one will notice she wasn’t helping because of her physical pain and praying no one will ask her if she’s still trying to get pregnant or why she doesn’t just adopt. At the table, the LGBTQ+ teen sits silently, head lowered, with inner turmoil, fear and doubt hidden.

The aunt with a husband of another race and mixed race children is mysteriously absent after last year when someone brought up her husband’s professional advancement probably being due to some kind of affirmative action. The disabled child is told she’ll have to leave the table if she doesn’t stop asking for something. The solitary uncle with Asperger’s Syndrome is chided for putting his hands up by his ears… again.

The child is frightened into silence. The uncle is still. Everyone says something they are thankful for. Even the teen mumbles something about being grateful to be alive, which most laugh off as being teenage petulance. They eat and watch football.

That is a family table without controversy.

And I want no part of it.

I am not saying it has no merits at all. We are fortunate to have families like this. Many people with disabilities like mine who will spend this winter holiday entirely without family could probably teach me a thing or two about the virtues of gratitude.

But I just want to say that silence and a controversy-free table shouldn’t be our goal. The pain at that all-too-common table I described is no less than the pain at many tables where there are hard words spoken. The goal instead should be empathy and gentleness—yes, even gentleness toward those with too much privilege who may be oblivious to the difficulties faced by others.

It is a hard thing to pull off, but here are some tips I would like to implement for a holiday gathering that is a safe zone amidst conflict. You are welcome to join me in this effort.

• Ask those who can to bring something or help out. Help children and teens to make some contribution. Give older people and sick people possibilities to contribute while seated, for example by watching a baby, folding the host’s laundry that otherwise won’t get folded, cutting up the salad or any number of other things that require little energy. Or encourage those you know are exhausted to relax.

• Make sure that the same people who are usually working long hours in the kitchen during the holidays are pampered a bit and have as much help as possible. Make sure to appreciate contributions in front of others, including contributions that happen outdoors or which are less visible.

• At the beginning of any such important family meal it is helpful for the host or other senior member to make a statement about inclusion and caring for all, such as, “I want everyone in our family to know that we love you and accept every part of you. We will love you and accept you at our table no matter how you dress, who you marry or don’t marry, what you do or don’t do for a living. If you’re in trouble, we are with you in sickness and in health, as best we can stand by you. The only way we’d have to love you from a distance is if you abused others and wouldn’t stop. Family by blood, by oath or by choice means belonging.” Studies have shown that even just mouthing words about inclusion really does decrease incidents of abuse and exclusion. And surely it would also comfort some who have reasons to fear rejection.

• If your family has a ritual of prayers or thanksgiving before these big holiday meals, encourage family members to bring quotations or prayers that resonate with them from various cultures and traditions, whether spiritual or secular. Be clear that all are welcome, even when you’re speaking to those who you know have a firm religion. This will help to prepare them for including others, and will go a long way toward welcoming those who might feel marginalized. One way to make this particularly fun is to bring a lot of different quotations and prayers on slips of paper and let people draw them out of a hat to read or choose from a pile in the middle of the table.

• When (for most of us it isn’t a question of “if”) someone protests the inclusion of traits or beliefs they consider to be wrong, have a clear response prepared to refer them to, such as, “In this house we don’t allow exclusion or derogatory comments about traits someone can’t control or about beliefs that don’t harm anyone else. Please respect the house rules, if you wish to stay.” There is always the question of tolerating the intolerant. The only way I know to solve this one is to say that what we tolerate is what harms no one, while we don’t tolerate that which infringes on or harms others. We don’t insult someone who suffers from addiction. Yet, we also don’t let someone force harmful smoke on others. If you are unlucky enough to run into the argument that being gay or trans is a “choice,” you have my sympathy and I suggest simply sticking to the facts that medically it is not considered voluntary and that these traits do not harm anyone else.

• It is hard to ban all “political” discussion in a world where almost everything personal is political, but it may be a good idea to ask your family to refrain from discussing political figures or specific proposals during the holiday gathering, if you know there is division in your family. There is a difference in the provocation in a statement like, “I want to toast to the health of Bernie Sanders. May he live long and lead well as president next year,” versus something personal but also potentially fraught with politics like, “Hi Grandma, this is my partner Sydney.” Laying down the rules on that difference is worth the trouble.

• If things do get heated, remember that silence usually favors the privileged and helps abusers. It rarely comforts the vulnerable or the unjustly rejected. Favor those who are generally marginalized in any moderating of discussion. Remember that tears and anger as well as withdrawal are common reactions to hurt and exclusion. Defend anyone who is disrespected for circumstances beyond their control or for harmless beliefs. Ask those who attack or belittle others to be silent first, when trying to put down open conflict.

• Most of all listen and work toward actual empathy. As hard as it is, if and when words are spoken on difficult subjects, listen to what is expressed and try to reflect back to the speaker in a way that assumes good intentions. “Uncle Brad, I am hearing you say that you feel like liberals want to let in all these refugees but we don’t even talk to our next door neighbors. I know you’re the kind of guy who helps anyone stuck by the side of the road and I believe you really do care about people.” Then if you really don’t want to talk politics, stop there. Don’t try to give your side. Just ask if Uncle Brad is willing to put off the discussion to another time.

• Consider asking your family to use a gift spending limit or a homemade gift exchange. Whatever we can do to lessen the level of consumerism in our lives will help in many ways. Beyond that, as wealth inequality widens and families become more diverse, wealth inequality within families also widens. If you haven’t yet witnessed a family conflict sparked by accusations or insecurities over differences between gift values, you definitely don’t want to find out what such a fight is like. Sort names randomly in advance and encourage family members to make a homemade gift, a gift of a shared experience or simply a gift under a reasonably low price limit. Or alternatively, encourage homemade gifts for everyone (such as soap, candles, cookie tins, ornaments, potholders, photos, artwork, etc.) and encourage those who don’t do crafts to buy only small gifts for everyone of similar type (pens, chocolates, gloves, etc.).

• Get to know the individual needs in your family as best you can. You may have only vaguely heard that aunt-so-and-so is sick long-term. Find a moment, on the phone beforehand or privately during the event to ask if there is anything she needs. She’ll probably say “no,” even if it’s not true, so be on the lookout thereafter. This isn’t “being a mother hen.” It’s just being a healthy family member. The same goes for family members with long-standing, known disabilities. You may think you know what your brother on the autism spectrum or with a vision impairment needs, but the chances are that since he grew up he has learned a lot more about what he needs himself that he didn’t know before. Ask how this family gathering can be made easy and comfortable for people with infants or older people or anyone else who might have uncommon difficulty. It may seem like extra effort that has to be put out in the beginning, but the savings in stress and effort over the long run are enormous.

• Many winter holiday celebrations, beyond Thanksgiving, incorporate a ritual of stating one’s reasons for gratitude. This is a beautiful tradition, however it does entail a focus on forcing everyone to be cheerful, regardless of circumstances. A good addition to this might be to state what one is thankful for and also a mistake one would like to make amends for. This may make those most privileged a little uncomfortable, but no more than the gratitude thing makes those less privileged uncomfortable. It balances and makes the ritual “real.” Alternatively, each person might state something they would like to heal or rectify in themselves or their family over the next year.

• As the previous point implies, not everyone is happy and cheerful during the holidays. It is wonderful when we can gather around with genuine smiles and belly laughs full of shared joy. But there are times and circumstances when we can’t. Be aware of those in your family, including yourself, who might be struggling to be cheerful. A hug, an offer of a quiet place to withdraw when needed and an acknowledgement that “it’s okay to not be okay,” go a long way toward real inclusion and are likely to bring on more smiles.

This list probably isn’t comprehensive. It is just my ideas and at the same time it is overwhelming for one person to take on. If you have a family which is consciously trying to transform interactions and make a more peaceful and inclusive gathering, it may be helpful to print this list out, cut each point onto separate pieces of paper and let family members choose to be in charge of encouraging and implementing one or two points.

The person who chooses a given point then becomes the family advisor on that issue for the gathering. They make an effort to implement the point personally or organize any group activity involved and they may also gently remind others of the shared goal of inclusion and peace when tensions rise.

Above all, remember that this is not easy but it is worth the effort.

Peace be on your house and may love infuse your winter holiday celebration.

Gratitude lessons

Seven fifteen on a Monday morning.

I’ve managed to get the kids up and dressed. I didn’t manage to do my meditation before dawn. It was another interrupted night, but I’m at least half awake.

My fourth-grade daughter is eating her cereal when she cocks her head, frowns and declares, “I forgot about some homework for today. I have to find out about the Age of Gold and tell about it in class.”

We don’t live in one of those kind, gentle school systems with lots of second chances. There are cumulative consequences and my daughter is already struggling. She cares a little but not much, and her multiple learning disabilities make it easy for her to forget. This time she asks for help… nicely for a change.

The kids’ encyclopedias are missing from their places and both claim no knowledge of their whereabouts. I rush to start the computer. She has to leave by 7:30 to get to school in time. And the research info has to be in Czech.

Wait… “The Age of Gold?” I didn’t know there was one.

I do a quick Google search and find dozens of advertisements for gold jewelry, endless gratuitous references to something being “the golden age of …. whatever” and nothing on a historical “Age of Gold.”

“MOM! I’m going to be late!” my daughter’s voice isn’t nice any more.

Creative Commons image by Liz West

I try another type of search. I am sure by now that no one refers to an “Age of Gold” in English histories, but that doesn’t mean the Czechs don’t have one. It could have been the era when royalty in the valley of Bohemia got a bunch of gold for one of those ridiculous crowns that make you pity young medieval kings—for all I know.

“Stupid idiot!” My daughter curses her younger brother in a loud hiss from the hallway, “Get out of the chair! I want to sit there!” There is only one chair for putting on shoes in our tiny hallway.

He shrieks in pain. It’s the standard thing that happens if I’m not there to physically separate them while they get there coats and shoes before school.

And I come unglued.

I tried to help her because she did ask nicely and the consequences of completely blowing off the assignment will be harsh. There are no accommodations for kids with learning disabilities. But I make a massive effort to teach my kids both responsibility and kindness.

My daughter regularly has to do “do-overs”. to speak nicely or do push-ups and squats for hitting and pushing or do “time out” for total freak-outs. She gets the consequences of poor grades regularly and we talk about cause and effect while tucking the kids into bed.

It isn’t the forgotten (or possibly blown off) homework that really gets me. It isn’t even the constant hitting, pushing and general meanness, it is the utter lack of awareness that someone is doing something FOR her. I’ll admit that I’m oversensitive to this at the moment because I find it to be a chronic deficit among the adults in my vicinity as well.

In the environmental organization where I volunteer, we had a crisis a couple of months ago We had several major actions set up but no one willing to volunteer to guide journalists around the site and answer questions. I would have done it myself, except it all had to be done in a language I speak with an accent (and occasionally creative grammar). No one wanted me in that role—least of all me—so I went looking for volunteers with the promise of my presence and support.

Finally, I found a petite young mother who wasn’t in a position to do the major organizing roles or to do direct action—given that she had a toddler in tow—but she was passionate and wanted a volunteer job. So, with a crash course in media relations she went into action. For two months she threw herself into the task. Finally, we had the media issue covered.

But then a competent professional came along. As a journalist, I’ll be the first to admit that he knows his stuff and he’ll likely do a great job. But there was one small problem. He didn’t thank the young woman, who had set everything up for him and held down the fort through those first rugged months. The organizers didn’t thank her for saving our bacon back in August. She was overstepped by the professional and dismissed.

I also worked as a full-time volunteer for two months last summer. I had some time off of work and time when my kids were with their grandmother. Instead of taking that time to write a new book or study medicinal herbs, I threw myself into the struggle for climate justice because it is the burning issue of our times and self-respect demands it of me..

I didn’t go into it because I wanted to be thanked or even appreciated, anymore than the impromptu press spokeswoman did. But I will admit that the respect I felt from other activists for the work I did was a major source of my intense physical and mental energy in those months. It was a much needed boost.

Through the summer, I welcomed, nurtured and trained hundreds of new volunteers. And I have been thanked at times, and once the people in my closest team commissioned a chocolate cake with my name on it when I stepped down as coordinator to give someone else a shot at the role. Thanks isn’t why you do it, but it matters.

As I breathe in the crisp air of late autumn in my withered garden, I discover something unexpected to be thankful for. The power dynamics I witnessed as an activist this time around have given me an unforeseen gift—just the plot twist I needed for a novel outline I’d been stuck with for more than a year now.

I come in with my cheeks burning from the cold, get some tea and head to my writing corner. While last year my writing muscles were exhausted and I could barely get through these blogs, let alone start on another book, I’m ready. Really ready.

That is something to be thankful for.

I am, of course, thankful for the tree just outside my door. I’m thankful for my husband, imperfect as he is who none-the-less means I’m not doing it all alone. I’m thankful that, after long struggle, our children are home. I’m thankful for mostly functional technology that makes the life of a mostly blind person much easier than it otherwise would be. I’m thankful for the literal fruits of my garden, my animals and this first blast of cold winter wind. I’m thankful for the warmth from my radiator and other small luxuries, for the very fact that I can write and my words do not stay silent in a box.

Gratitude is the most necessary element of relationship, even when it is the mere acknowledgement of a helpful presence or a mundane task done well for others. Gratitude is likely at least part of the key that we are missing in our disconnected world.

I am not a vegetarian for health reasons. But I am mindful in the way I eat and live. My thanks goes out to the animals and plants that I need to eat in order to live. And I wonder how the global crisis of meat production might be altered if everyone would take a moment to thank each animal consumed. It isn’t that often or that much for most of us. Many cultures used to do it and that one thing alone, might make all the difference.

P.S. There isn’t an “Age of Gold” even in Czech. She meant the “Age of Bronze”. or the Bronze Age but got her metals mixed up. Another frantic search in which the only purpose was caring for a child as best I can.

The car stole my pants: Petty tyrants and rental cars

At a deserted, minimal-service campground in the Washington Cascades a jet-lagged Czech tourist pulls to a stop in a rented Nissan.

When he cuts the lights, the night is black. He spent longer than he meant to hiking before finding a cheap campground.

The air is surprisingly cold for late summer when he opens the door. It’s the altitude. He turns off the ignition and leans the driver’s side seat all the way back in preparation for sleep.

Then he gets out, stretches in the crisp night air and walks around to the back of the car. He pops the hatchback to take out a sleeping bag and tosses it into the reclined seat. Then he strips off his jeans and socks and lays them out across the backs of the rear seats to air out.

Creative Commons image by Ninian Reid

He just came from the Seattle airport after an 18-hour flight. He rented the car from the Alamo desk. And tomorrow night will see him to Northeastern Oregon where his children are visiting their American grandmother. This is his only night on the road alone, so his “camp” will be basic. The back door bumps his head and he shuts it.

It must have been the rocking of the car when he shut the back hatch. In the light coming from inside the car, he watches the driver’s side door, which he left open, swing shut on its own. The sound of the radio he left on is muffled as it clicks closed. While he makes his way back to open the door again, the lights in the car go out.

Now the night is blacker then black. He fumbles for a door handle and pulls. Nothing. It’s locked hard and fast.

Worry niggles at him as he reaches for the adjacent door handle. Still nothing. Frantically, he feels his way around to the far side of the car in the dark and tries the other two doors.

“Kurva!” he yells into the night. No one in hundreds of miles could possibly know his Eastern European curse words. And his bare feet are burning from the cold by now. It is 35 degrees Fahrenheit.

Barefoot and in his underwear, he has no protection and the temperature of the high mountain night is still dropping. He curses himself for a fool and the out-of-date car for its archaic locking mechanism that went out of style twenty years ago in most places. He thinks wistfully of the phone stuck to his dashboard, but it wouldn’t matter that much. He noticed that it lost signal twenty minutes ago, as he wound his way up this mountain canyon on.a lonely little road.

Now this is the end of the road and it’s 9 pm. It’s unlikely anyone else will be up here tonight. He is in for a very bad time of it.

Unless of course, he can get into the car.

I have debated this in my head. I think a wealthy person would be more likely to break a window of the rental car than a non-wealthy Eastern European, because a relatively wealthy person would know they could technically afford the cost. In this case, he is a professional, confident man, a senior surveyor at the Czech National Highway Administration, but he still makes only around $15,000 a year. (Not a typo. Per year. Not per month. That’s just how Eastern European salaries are.)

I know all this, of course, because the man caught out in the night far from home in his underwear was my husband. He was on his way to my mother's house to pick up the children after I left them there for a visit a few weeks earlier. He had a little experience with rental cars, having rented a handful of times in Europe but I was the one who put in the initial order in English and it was my first time ever. It felt momentous, but then there was this and I wasn’t there to help or to suffer with him.

Of course, I didn’t know about it until days later. My husband, being frugal but unaware of auto parts pricing, used a rock to carefully break the smallest window at the far back of the car. He cleared the broken glass from the edges and then put his arm through to open the back door from inside. He hoped—erroneously as it turned out—that this small window would be cheaper to replace than a larger one.

Being an Eastern European, he also did not think immediately about insurance. He assumed he would have to take the hit for this one way or another. But the choice was between that or freezing or possibly attempting to walk more than ten miles barefoot and in his underwear to the last sign of civilization he had passed.

Why didn’t he realize the door might lock automatically and take precautions? Well, no modern car has been equipped that way for a long time, either in the US or in Europe. This was the kind of thing funky old cars used to do, but he hadn’t encounter anything like it in many years. It simply never occurred to him that the car would automatically lock with the keys still in the ignition, though turned off.

When he made it to my mother’s house the next day with the small back window taped up, her reaction was much more typically American.

“That’s terrible! The car company is responsible for this! They endangered you! They had better provide you with a new car. It is unbelievable that they didn’t warn you about those dangerous locks!” She called the company and gave them a piece of her mind. The representative immediately agreed that the company would cover the cost and exchange the car.

My husband then drove an hour an a half to another city to pick up a promised new car, only to find that it wasn’t there as the company representative had assured my mother it would be. That was a warning sign of things to come.

It wasn’t until a month and a half later though, that we got the mildly threatening letter in the mail at home, saying that Alamo had determined the incident was in fact my husband’s fault and that he would be billed for the damages.

We tried everything we could think of to get them to see reason. But someone at the company had decided to use their little bit of power in life to deny him insurance coverage, despite the fact that we had paid extra for an upgraded insurance policy.

The company never did answer my most basic question, “What precisely did the company expect him to do?” I wonder if becoming seriously ill from exposure is actually on their options list?

They. had not warned him about the strange and out-dated locking mechanism, which made this a malfunction of the vehicle. The car’s malfunction endangered him with serious physical harm. In such a case, the damage to the car does not appear to fall under the categories of “voluntary” or “willful” by any stretch of the imagination.

But apparently the Alamo rental company would rather my husband suffered grievous physical harm and later sued the company, rather than take reasonable steps, which in the end caused less than $400 in damage.

This is the kind of absurdity that plagues the modern human world. We often complain about it, as if no one is really responsible. But in truth human beings make these kinds of decisions. It is on us to use common sense and basic empathy, whenever we are put in a position with a small amount of power over another.

The people at Alamo didn’t use either common sense or empathy in handing over a car with this odd and dangerous malfunction or in assessing the damage claim. I wish I could say that I’ll find a better company next time, but the best I can do is to find a different company. This is why so many of us dislike corporations in general, and will choose any small business in favor of a corporation. The size and impersonal nature of corporations make common sense or empathy much less likely.

The death of plastic

On Monday nights, I have to turn the porch light on, because a man from a local farm drives up sometime between 8 and 9 pm to drop off our milk and yogurt in pretty glass jars with white lids.

The glass jars are just like the ones I remember from a first-grade early reader I had as a kid—tall, skinny jars with no handle that taper even further toward the lid. I remember reading the little photocopied booklet as a little girl in a cabin in Oregon after churning butter from the cream skimmed fresh milk from our cow. i remember thinking how far people must have come, what wonderful progress it was that we had plastic milk jugs.

Creative Commons image by Quinn Dombrowski

Seriously, I remember that. Well, I’m not sure if I read the book directly after churning the butter. I did churn butter in an old glass and metal crank churn. And I did have the book and I did notice those pictures of old glass milk bottles that the family in the story had delivered to their doorstep. To me at the time, in the early 1980s, it seemed so quaint and old-fashioned, regardless of the fact that my family still owned our own milk cow at the time. It was the idea that there had once been a world without plastic that struck me.

Our plastic milk jugs at the time were big, white gallon containers with small lids and sturdy hollow handles, which filled with liquid just like the rest of the jug. My family had them, even though we had our own cow. We didn’t use them for milk, even though they were called “milk jugs.” Instead we used them for hauling water.

My dad was a builder and both of my parents worked on tree planting contracts some summers. We would live out in the woods in tents and the kids would run around in a scraggly-haired. unwashed pack. Sometimes we could be persuaded to help the adults by carrying water in the “milk jugs”. to slake the thirst of seedlings and tree planters alike.

i never questioned the term “milk jug”. any more than I questioned the term “butterfly”. or the fact that milk jugs were filled with water in my little child’s world. Or I didn’t until the day that Pa left paint thinner out in an unmarked plastic milk jug and my baby brother cried that he was thirsty. I held it up for him like a good big sister and he gulped it down. (He survived but that was our big childhood trip to the emergency room.)

Another major marker of my childhood was returning cans and bottles to stores for a few pennies. That was our main source of funds as children and mostly the only way we got the teeth-rotting, brightly colored candy that Mama avoided. It was a time when that kind of recycling was slightly profitable and although disposable culture was revving up, it wasn’t all-pervasive yet.

In my childhood, food was stored in the refrigerator in glass jars and Tupperware was eventually a major revelation. Dishtowels and tinfoil were more common in the kitchen than plastic wrap, we washed plastic picnic utensils and reused them. Mama’s giant mixing and salad bowls were ceramic and weighed a ton to a child. Later we had plastic containers but that was only because we no longer had a cow and yogurt came in them. We washed the containers out and stored them in a bin.

Plastic was at the time mainly reserved for children’s toys. I had plastic dolls, legos and G.I. Joe figures. Even our clothes were mostly cotton. When you look back at photos of the 1980s and think how absurd we all looked in those clothes, spare a moment to consider difference made by synthetic fibers.

Since then the world has gone vastly plastic. Our ever-present electronics are incased in the stuff. Our clothes, kitchen utensils and appliances, much of our cars and furniture, not to mention all the packaging is some form of plastic. Recent campaigns against single-use plastic have alerted some people to the environmental costs of all this plastic, which is manufactured—when you get right down to it—from crude oil.

For the past twenty years, plastic has become synonymous with poverty and mass production. Wealthy people are able to avoid it for their own aesthetic reasons, and partly just because of the status of having a choice when most people don’t.

But finally the tide seems to be turning back. The glass milk bottles on my porch are just the tip of the iceberg. It is now rare to find stores that load customers down with free plastic shopping bags where I live. I recently went to a pharmacy and came out with a bag that felt strangely silky to my hand. Letters on the side touted the fact that it was made of a hemp-based compound that looks like plastic but decomposes within a few days.

It may well be that someday history books will mention a 50-year Plastic Era between about 1970 and 2020 when plastic was everywhere. It meant that objects could be had for a tiny fraction of what they once cost. People in the future will likely marvel at how people in the Plastic Era could have used and thrown away so much plastic without even considering what would happen to it or where it came from.

While I feel sweet relief while washing out my glass milk bottles for the farmer, people in the future will likely do it with the same humdrum necessity as putting dirty clothes in the laundry. I look forward to a world with more glass jars, hemp bags, covered baking dishes and wooden toys. But I do hope we don’t use up resources so drastically that plastics that cannot be replaced with other materials, such as medical devices and some synthetic fibers, will disappear as well.

Marginalized groups in XR: Will you come or will you go?

Macrocosm

Storm winds are surging within the climate justice movement Extinction Rebellion. Just as in a physical storm the clouds and waves are occupied with their own internal turmoil and any given droplet of water within them is both ineffective and blameless by itself.

In October, a small group in London claiming to be part of Extinction Rebellion mounted an unpopular action, blocking a subway station by gluing themselves to trains and climbing on top of trains during rush hour. The rationale behind such actions is similar to the actions blocking bridges and road traffic. The point there was not so much to be against cars as an unsustainable form of transportation. It was simply to sound a high, loud alarm.

The message of XR blockades is “STOP! Just stop business as usual! Pay attention! There is nothing as important as the climate crisis now!”

The reasoning behind it is that the warnings given by scientists, saying that we have a very limited amount of time left in which we can realistically avert massive disaster and uncountable deaths from hunger, storms and extreme heat, are real.

And we either believe that a consensus among ninety-nine percent of the world’s scientists is a serious matter, that facts are real and the laws of physics actually do apply to us, or we don’t. If we believe those things, there isn’t really any other common sense response than to do whatever it takes to bring about changes that might just be able to save millions of lives.

Photo by Arie Farnam

That’s the intention. Extinction Rebellion hasn’t distanced from the group of activists who carried out the London subway blockade because the rules of the movement are also real. If someone subscribes to the ten principles of XR, including non-violence, refraining from shaming, mutual support and challenging power structures, they can call themselves Extinction Rebellion. That is what the London subway blockaders did.

But the vast majority of XR members voiced vehement objections to the action. Some simply felt that the movement shouldn’t target reasonably carbon-light transportation alternatives, such as rail transport of any kind. After all, subways and light rail are the kind of things we need to be moving toward, even if Extinction Rebellion refuses to put out exact specifications for solutions.

The movement insists that a people’s assembly—chosen through a jury system, rather than through a heavily financed election—should decide how we move forward to solve the climate crisis. But rail transport is one of the non-controversial assumptions about what that solution will have to entail.

Others have more complex reasons for their complaints. The trains blocked in this particular action happened to come from some of the poorest parts of London, full of immigrants and ethnic minorities on the way to minimum wage jobs with harsh tardiness policies.

Extinction Rebellion is not immune to the accusations leveled at most environmental organizations that it’s a place for middle-class white people to work out their rebellious streak and generalized anxiety. Extinction Rebellion has made an effort since the beginning to keep a permanent focus on inclusion, but this action felt like a slap in the face to a lot of people of color.

One of the ten XR principles is “We accept everyone and every part of everyone.” It’s supposed to be inclusive and the small print talks about inclusion of every kind of vulnerable group. But some people of color have expressed that they don’t feel nice and cozy and safe when they hear this principle. Instead they immediately wonder if the white supremacist parts of some people might be included in that blanket acceptance statement.

There are other principles that point toward inclusion and much of the in-depth but technically non-binding structural documents that make up the DYI systems to set up XR branches in every city around the world go into detail about cultural sensitivity, inclusion and recognizing the different experience with police that people in vulnerable groups may have. Extinction Rebellion tries, but it is still an attempt at sensitivity by a bunch of white people.

“Rebels”. (as XR members call themselves) have employed a popular chant over the past year when police intervene to force an end to a blockade. “Police, we love you! We do this for your children!” has echoed in every English speaking country as well as quite a few where the words are foreign. In Prague, the Czech rebels at our October blockade yelled it in thickly accented English, while police hauled away 130 of our friends, injuring some.

And yet, black people back in the UK, where Extinction Rebellion started, and across the water in the US have said essentially, “Ahem, that’s not going to work for us.” Love just isn’t happening in the relationship between black people and the police in the UK or the US, where random police interactions with black people wind up with way too many black people dead. Most black rebels in these countries are not even sitting on the blockades and getting arrested.

While white rebels risk a night in jail, a fine and a misdemeanor record, black people risk their lives just walking or driving, let alone poking the police bear. It is less that black rebels don’t want to say the chant as it is that it sounds like white people wallowing in white privilege.

Now, after the Autumn Rebellion, many XR groups online and off are tackling the issue of inclusion. I’m glad they are because I see this as the Achille’s heel of this movement, which has achieved a great deal in one short year. If Extinction Rebellion fails to fuel massive public demand for climate justice at every political level, it will be because we fail the inclusion part.

That isn’t just because we should be good people or that we need the numbers that vulnerable groups could provide by joining us. It is most importantly at the core of what has made XR successful so far. We should include people of color, people with disabilities and all the other vulnerable groups not for their sake, but for everyone’s sake. Everyone has some vulnerability and it is when we see those more vulnerable than us truly included that we can fully commit our energy, time and resources to this kind of effort. Inclusion isn’t just for those we shouldn’t exclude.

When it is there, it permeates the entire culture. When it isn’t there, no one is safe, and social interactions are a constant battle of individuals trying to stay in the center of the herd, furthest from exclusion.

Microcosm

When I first joined XR, I was glad to find that no one made much of my disability. They were happy to try to accommodate my vision impairment by letting me know who was who, and I was so grateful to be treated a bit better than the immediate social stereotyping and dismissal that I encounter on a daily basis in society.

But as time went on and more and more people joined XR, I have watched that early focus on inclusion fade and thin. New people often come from a non-activist environment and they bring with them the exclusionist assumptions of the wider society. Those who have been there longer are tired and desperate to reach some kind of tangible goal. Inclusion starts to feel like a luxury we can’t afford.

I have been reticent to write openly about the difficulties I’ve run into with exclusion within XR over the past few months, because i too am focused on the ultimate goal. But the events of recent weeks around the world have convinced me that we must talk about these things openly. Because it is exclusion that will take us down.

It is not a luxury. It’s the heart of the matter.

There may be a few exceptions, but by and large the people who join XR are open-minded and informed. They are people who believe in science enough to put their regular lives on hold and do something about a crisis that for most of us—in white-majority countries at least—is still largely theoretical. They are also demonstrably people who take personal responsibility and eschew laziness, because rather than simply talking about the crisis, they are doing something.

These factors mean that even though XR has people from both the political left and the political right, most are already tolerant, nice people. They don’t think of themselves as racist, ablest or otherwise exclusionist. Many even consider themselves actively anti-racist or anti-ableist. And a lot of them feel like this should be enough.

But as with the London subway blockade and the police chant, it clearly isn’t. For me, as the only significantly disabled person in my local XR group, I have to agree. My group has been wonderful in consciously working to include me. I truly appreciate that, and yet I know that most people with disabilities in my place would have left long ago and I am constantly close to leaving the group myself.

I asked a friend who uses a wheelchair to join and she just laughed ruefully. I couldn’t really argue. The group says they want a person in a wheelchair at the blockades because it would make for good press photos, but no one has ever even mentioned the fact that we’ve never held a meeting in a place that was even remotely wheelchair accessible. They want a person with a wheelchair as a prop, not as an organizer.

There are two categories of issues I can identify that cause me to feel excluded in the group even without the issue of physical accessibility. which given the conditions isn’t really their fault.

First, there is a tolerance for intolerance, as that principle about accepting all parts of everyone implies. While most people are inclusive and welcoming, there are those who are not and the group not only tolerates them but insists that I must tolerate them. If I speak up, even very discretely about exclusion and hate directed toward me, I am told that the urgency of our goal demands that I tolerate it and don’t rock the boat.

Second, there is a lack of understanding about the effects that exclusion in the wider society have had on me and a marked lack of tolerance for any reaction I have to social exclusion.

In one prominent example, a person in a position of power in my group decided early on that she did not like me. Her explanation focused primarily on communication issues, specifically that some of my texts were too long. Being a writer, I can be a bit wordy, but when I can, I go back and edit. Written communication usually isn’t a problem for me.

But in this case, we were using a phone app for daily communication within the group. I can’t type on the tiny phone screen very well because it is too small for me to see, so I was dictating my texts. This meant that my texts were especially long. When we speak, we naturally use more words than when we write. To add to this, editing on my phone in extremely small print is next to impossible for me. Yes, blind people use audio interfaces that make it technically doable but it is excruciatingly slow. Sometimes i do spend literally hours editing a few texts for the group to make things readable. But most of the time, with my work, household, children and all, I didn’t have time. I just dictated texts and sent them, oral vagueness and all.

So, the dislike this person initially developed toward me was based on something that was a symptom of my disability. She is a person steeped in European good manners and social justice thinking. I am certain that she would never intentionally exclude a person over a disability or some other irrelevant trait. But she did—likely obliviously—develop her antipathy for me over something that was part of my disability.

She and the rest of the group chose to call it “a difference in communication styles,” and despite my explanations, refuse to see it as disability related or reconsider her conclusions. When she initially adopted her negative view of me, I was utterly confused. We had, only one day before, had a wonderful conversation in which she told me that I would be working with her closely and expressed a lot of support for my work in the organization. And then suddenly, I was cut off from communications and told that she no longer wanted to work with me.

She later said that my reaction shocked her. After a lifetime of social rejection and even complete isolation for years at a time, I don’t take abrupt, unexplained rejection well. My first reaction was to cry, then to try to defend myself and later to bargain. For so many people with disabilities social rejection is a real visceral danger and I am no exception in that.

It is understandable then that my reaction came across as out-of-proportion and overly pushy to someone who felt she was simply setting some boundaries with an annoying individual who writes overly long texts.

But here’s the thing. After many months of informal exclusion, I was forced to accept an agreement in which we would be sensitive in our communications with each other and I would stay away from powerful roles within the organization in order to minimize contact between me and this person in power. This was the only way i could stay in the group at all.

That may sound like a reasonable compromise, and it did to most of the local XR rebels. But imagine if this had been a black person instead of a person with a disability. Imagine that someone expressed dislike of a black person because of the way they spoke or dressed or some other cultural attribute and started excluding that person. Imagine then—it isn’t hard at all—that the black person got intense and up in that person’s face because they have been excluded and dismissed way too often by white people, and subsequently that the those in power limited the black person to low-level roles as a means to avoid further conflict.

Realistically, most black people—and most people with disabilities—would not get intense. They’d just leave. That is ONE of those reasons that there are so few people from marginalized groups in XR and similar organizations. But it is not at all difficult to imagine this scenario, because like me, some black people stay and fight.

Now, in the scenario with the black person most anti-racist white people are now educated enough to see the problem and to call this exclusion. We aren’t perfect yet and i’m sure this does happen in Extinction Rebellion to black people. But very few abled people are informed enough to see the same situation clearly when the issue is disability. For whatever reason, that’s just the dynamic.

The end result is that, if I want to continue to be part of Extinction Rebellion, I have to constantly bump up against the antagonistic walls set for me, where I am not allowed to take on national roles in the group. And I have to constantly see the XR messages urging us to put people from marginalized groups in positions of power and to feel their hypocrisy.

There are a very few people of color in our local group as well and none of them have significant roles. I don’t know them well enough to discuss the reasons why personally. But the fact is that our group has the option of putting people with disabilities or people of color in visible and/or powerful roles and it doesn’t. In fact, it has barred a person with a disability from national roles, based on symptoms of the disability and post-traumatic responses to social exclusion.

We’ve got a problem.

And I—like many other rebels from marginalized groups—now have to decide day by day if I stay and fight for the soul of this movement I believe holds our best chance for the future or if I let it go and take care of myself.