After describing some of the hostilities he’s encountered on online Anglican boards, Jacobs writes -

I have thought a lot about why people get so hostile online, and I have come to believe it is primarily because we live in a society with a hypertrophied sense of justice and an atrophied sense of humility and charity, to put the matter in terms of the classic virtues.

Late modernity’s sense of itself is built upon achievements in justice. This is especially true of Americans. When we look back over the past century, what do we take pride in? Suffrage for women, the defeat of fascism, Brown vs. Board of Education, civil rights and especially voting rights for African-Americans. If you’re on one side of the political spectrum, you might add the demise of the Soviet empire; if you’re on the other side, you might add the expansion of rights for gays and lesbians. (Or you might add both.) The key point is that all of these are achievements in justice.

I’ll admit to contributing at times to uncharitable discourse online – my desire to be right outweighing common human decency and a respect for truth. The level of discourse in many areas of our society has seemingly plummeted to new lows (or, at least, that discourse is simply more public now). Either way, I share Jacobs’ concern for a return to humility and truth based discourse. I get that. Where I am having a hard time is the blaming of this sort of vicious dialogue on a modern overinflated sense of justice.

My first issue with that is that from a historical perspective there truly is nothing new about such vicious pursuits of so-called justice. Yes, late modernity’s self of sense is based on achievements in justice, but the same could be said of any number of historical periods. The tales we claim as shapers of our cultural identity and heritage are all rooted in the intense pursuit of what was believe to be just and right. To avenge the kidnapping of Helen the Greeks launched a war against Troy that spanned a decade. The much loved tale of Hamlet would be nothing if he chose not to right the wrong of his father’s untimely death. Without the pursuit of liberty, equality, and fraternity the French Revolution would never have occurred. Nor would have the American Revolution without the response to the injustice of taxation without representation. For that matter one merely has to open scripture to see this particular sense of justice manifest. From Samson’s burning the Philistines’ crops after he discovered that his (presumed abandoned) wife had been given to another man, to the Israelites’ slaughter of the Benjaminites in response to the rape and murder of the Levite’s concubine; or from Simeon and Levi’s murder of the recently circumcised Shechemites in retaliation for their sisters Dinah’s rape, to Absalom’s murder of his half-brother Ammon for the rape of his sister Tamar – we can clearly see that violence for the sake of a just cause is nothing new. Such actions have defined cultural identity since the beginning of recorded history.

What bothers me though is that in suggesting that modern justice is disconnected from humility and charity without acknowledging similar historical instances of the same, Jacobs promotes our culture’s incomplete understanding of justice. As the examples above illustrate we all too often simply reduce justice to its retributive aspects – sometimes even using the term when we actually mean revenge. Tales of justice often celebrate its violent manifestations (because, let’s face it, that makes for better stories). There is nothing new about conceptions of justice that are devoid of charity or humility, history is full of such tales. But instead of ascribing our modern cultural problems to this particular sense of justice sans charity, I believe it would have been more helpful to acknowledge that throughout history there have been those who hold to an inaccurate sense of what justice is all about which has often led to a lack of charity. In our culture today (and in ages past) we have lost a biblical sense of justice and have sadly assumed that the pursuit of rightness must involve violence of some sort. But trying to fix a broken world through just acts of revenge and violence has nothing to do with true justice. In this sense fighting amongst ourselves in order to seek what we know to be good and right in this world has less to do with an overinflated sense of justice and more to do with a misunderstood sense of justice.

Justice is not about using force (physical or verbal) to establish righteousness. Justice itself is righteousness – or right living. True justice is rooted in charity and humility – it is the extension of love and mercy to all. As Derrida suggests, justice (which is love) cannot be deconstructed or codified, it simply must be lived in an ever unfolding and changing world. When we codify it and turn it into simply a way to make demands of others through threats of violent retribution, then what we have is not a hypertrophied sense of justice at the expense of charity and humility, but a lack of all three. If we were to care about biblical justice, a justice that places that very charity at its core, then it would be nonsensical to speak of an inflated sense of justice. For how can we ever say that we have too much love or mercy?

Justice that seeks righteousness for the world does so through the very virtues that Jacobs claims have been lost. I agree with his call to reclaim such virtues, but am wary of language that sacrifices another mush needed virtue simply because of the ways it has been misunderstood over the centuries. Our culture has its issues and desperately needs to return to a respect for truth and love, but as I see it, throwing justice under the bus isn’t exactly the best way to achieve those ends.

Why do we do this whole Christian thing? Why do we go to church and proclaim the faith that we do?

I’m sure that there are a number of readers who will call me an idiot for even asking that question. The expected answer of – “because we love Jesus” (or something like that), is all the answer they desire. In fact, for some, any other answer is inappropriate and evidence of a compromised faith. But honestly, I hardly know what that answer even means for many people these days. “Loving Jesus” is the rote response, but the problem with rote responses is that they are often a poor substitute for real introspection. The pat answer suffices when in reality one hardly knows one’s own soul well enough to even begin to answer the question.

As much as people want to make everything all about Jesus these days, Jesus has unfortunately become a shield to protect us from deep engagement. People start asking questions, a dialogue develops, differences emerge and instead of letting truth be sought with courage someone at that point suggests that we just need to refocus on Jesus and stop all the arguing. Jesus is what it is all about, so thinking anything more complex than just evoking his name gets shut down. But who is that Jesus to them? Without reflection or introspection, how can Jesus even be known apart from being simply an icon that we worship?

Faith is complex. Our motives for belief are complex. No one simply goes to church for the pure unadulterated reason that they love Jesus. We go because something in the environment resonates with us. Be the church hip and relevant (whatever those mean), or soaked in art and beauty, or thick with tradition – our souls find a home that we can be comfortable in. A home where we can best find the paths that lead us to God. Or we go for the community. Be it the stay-at-home moms who find a support system in the two hours of adult contact they get each week at church. Or simply the friends who can connect over a shared discussion of theology, the church offers the communal connections our souls cry out for. We go for the music, the emotional high, the networking opportunities, the dating opportunities, the playground, the coffee, the need to feel right, the intellectual stimulation, the need for encouragement, the reminders of childhood, the desperate need to feel welcomed and included. We go for a million different reasons.

And yes we go for Jesus. Sometimes this is a two dimensional Jesus we call upon to shield us from asking the hard questions. Sometimes it is a Jesus we are imperfectly trying to follow. Sometimes it is a Jesus who has transformed our lives. So yes, we go to church for Jesus. But also for all these other reasons. And in truth there is nothing wrong with any of it. We are complex creatures, piecing together meaning in our fractured world in whatever way we can. Faith feeds off culture which feeds off community. Jesus is there, but he is incarnate in all the muck and mire and breathtaking beauty just as much today as when he was born in that stable. There is nothing to be ashamed of or to reject out of hand in admitting this complexity.

Where the problem lies is when we can’t look into ourselves and ask these questions. When we are too afraid to know ourselves well enough to admit these truths. When we slap on Jesus like a shield to protect us from the hard work of knowing, then we’ve stopped actually following Jesus. Following Jesus should never be our excuse to stop pursuing truth or to stop asking the hard questions. Following Jesus shouldn’t force us to pretend that we are above the cultures of this world or are too good to be influenced by basic human needs (like the need to be loved). Maybe a flat image of Jesus we project can form a wall strong enough for us hide behind, but the real Jesus can’t do such a thing because he is deep in the midst of all the realities of life, and culture, and doubt, and longings.

Asking ourselves why we are Christians should never elicit a simple straightforward answer. We are complex people who worship a complex God – we need to allow God to be in even that complexity. Our answers might end up sounding less holy or more self-centered, but at least they will be honest reflections of reality. Hollow answers, although sanitized and religious sounding, do a disservice to the God we claim to follow. I think Jesus desires our whole self – neediness and cultural baggage included – more than some unreflective protestation of devout worship. To make it all about Jesus, we have to admit that it’s never just all about Jesus. And that’s okay.

In my article for the Common Ground News Service on A Christian response to the Islamic Community Center I wrote -

In the continued confusion and misunderstandings sparked by the events of 9/11, I all too often encounter a culture of fear and revenge. Some Christians unfortunately say that the terrorists’ actions represent the heart of Islam. They project their fear and hatred onto all Muslims, blaming them for those events and asserting that they desire the destruction of Christianity and America’s freedoms.

Ironically, many of these same people are the first to argue when so-called Christians commit heinous acts that they do not act on behalf of all Christians. They go so far as to say they aren’t actually Christians, much less representative of the religion, as we saw recently when members of Michigan’s Hutaree Militia were arrested for planning to slaughter law enforcement workers.

But this same distinction is rarely extended to our Muslim brothers and sisters.

I wish I could offer an apology on behalf of those who hold such misinformed beliefs – for those Christians that fail to follow in the way of Jesus and who instead oppose the rights of Muslims to worship freely in our country. But I don’t speak for them. I can only live my life and use my voice to represent a different side of Christianity, one that truly believes God’s love and mercy extends everywhere.

And I can hope with Bloomberg that the building of this community centre will achieve its goal of working for reconciliation and "help repudiate the false and repugnant idea that the attacks of 9/11 are in any way consistent with Islam."

It hurts to see so many Americans and so many Christians believing lies and spreading fear. It hurts to know that we don't love our neighbor. And it is uncomfortable to realize how few fellow Christians are speaking out in defense of our Muslim brothers and sisters. I am not a Muslim, there are many parts of Islam that I disagree with (as there are with parts of Christianity), but I am embarrassed and ashamed by how I see America and the church responding to this issue. May God forgive us.

Sad thing, even as a disabled person the only reaction I ever heard about ADA was negative. People complained about the hassle of making space for the disabled. They said it was unfair that the disabled were being given special privileges (yes, seriously people were stupid enough to say something like that). And, most of all, they complained about the cost. And being in the church world, where I heard that complaint most often was from churches. Now I understand that churches often don’t have a lot of money, and to add another few hundred thousand onto a renovation budget to be ADA compliant is difficult. A church I was at once attempted to renovate their sanctuary to fit in more seating, but in the end we lost seats because of the ramp we had to put in to make the stage accessible. It was hard and forced the church to rethink where the money was to be spent, which of course led to some choice words being said about the “liberal nonsense of the ADA.” But in truth, I had to wonder why the church wasn’t the one out there doing whatever they could to include the disabled – even without being forced to by law. Jesus went out of his way to be with the disabled in his society, the church could at least do the same.

Where this gets confusing for me is the intersection of disabled people and worship. Straight-up, there is a lot that churches do in worship (especially in more experimental experiential worship) that is just plain inaccessible to the disabled. There have been a number of times at my current church where I have just sat quietly in my seat because whatever worship activity we were doing would have been impossible to do with one hand. And I always cringe a bit when we do active things, or create art, or meditate on a film and exclude the wheelchair users and the blind in our congregation. I similarly don’t wish to exclude the say, kinesthetic or visual learners in the church, but it sometimes feels as if there is no awareness of how a disabled person could enter into the worship experience. As a church have we forgotten how to go to the lengths of cutting open a roof and lowering our disabled friend in through the ceiling just so they could meet Jesus?

So as we celebrate these twenty years, I think it should be as a reminder of how far we still have to go in our culture and in the church. There are still churches that ban the disabled from serving as priests. And there are churches that see disability as a result of sin or of a lack of faith in the Lord to heal. I’ve been told to just have enough faith and the Lord will grow my arm, or to at least look forward to having two perfect arms in heaven. Disabled people need to be included in worship, but first, we need to be accepted as who we are. Not as people to be pitied or to be cured, but as children of God created the way God wanted us to be. We want to be included in community not because a law forces us to be put up with, but because the church desperately wants to love us and desires to hear our voice.

I love freedom; I appreciate the freedoms I have. What I find intriguing though are what exact freedoms it is that we celebrate in this country and which ones we could care less about. The freedom to hold a sign with a racist slur about the President is apparently something we hold dear, as is our “right” to have free and immediate access to porn (not to mention guns). The government had better not interfere with our access to junk food or dare tell our kids how to eat healthy; we’ll develop diabetes and drive up insurance rates if we want to. But we’re okay though with the government tapping our phones and having a kill switch for the internet. And apparently we are also okay with the government allowing companies to sell contaminated meat to our schools and passing laws making it illegal for us to publicly question the companies that do so. Let’s just say our relationship with freedom is complicated.

Anthony Bourdain addresses the food contamination issue in his latest book, Medium Raw, wondering why we are okay giving up the freedom of our access (our children’s access) to uncontaminated food. His snarky, uncensored take on the subject is one of the best I’ve read yet. And this is from Bourdain, the guy who is not shy in his frequent mocking of vegetarians or the organic/locavore movements. He writes on the meat industry in America -

In another telling anomaly of the meat-grinding business, many of the larger slaughterhouses will sell their product to grinders who agree to not test their product for E.coli contamination – until after it’s run through the grinder with a whole bunch of other meat from other sources. Meaning, the company who grinds all that shit together (before selling it to your school system) often can’t test it until after they mix it with meat they bought from other (sometimes as many as three or four) slaughterhouses. … It’s like demanding of a date that she have unprotected sex with four or five guys immediately before sleeping with you – just so she can’t point the finger directly at you should she later test positive for clap.
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I believe that, as an American, I should be able to walk into any restaurant in America and order my hamburger – that most American of foods – medium fucking rare. I don’t believe my hamburger should have to come with a warning label to cook it well done to kill off any potential contaminants or bacteria. I believe I shouldn’t have to be advised to thoroughly clean and wash up immediately after preparing a hamburger. I believe I should be able to treat my hamburger like food, not like infectious fucking medical waste. I believe the words “meat” and “treated with ammonia” should never occur in the same paragraph – much less the same sentence. Unless you are talking about surreptitiously disposing of a corpse.
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Is it too much to feel that it should be a basic right that one can cook and eat a hamburger without fear? To stand proud in my own backyard (if I had a backyard), grilling a nice medium-rare fucking hamburger for my kid – without worrying that maybe I’m feeding her a shit sandwich? That I not feel the need to cross-examine my mother, should she have the temerity to offer my child meatloaf? P.98-100

Seriously, when did cheap and convenient become more important to us than avoiding consuming fecal matter, chemicals like ammonia, and deadly viruses (or for that matter the right to question the presence of such things in our food)? In the wealthiest and most technologically advanced nation in the world, that we have given up the freedom of knowing that the food we eat is safe is telling. Or perhaps it’s just that we value the freedom of the meat-industry to serve us contaminated food more. Like I said, our views of freedom are complicated. Or just plain crazy.

Read the article. It’s a fascinating report on the state of gender in America. Most specifically it cites the statistics showing that by far more women than men are receiving higher education degrees these days and that women are now the majority in the workplace and in managerial positions. I’ll admit, I am not a fan of Hanna Rosin nor her approach to writing about gender issues (her piece on breastfeeding seriously pissed me off). And this article is as equally annoying as it is fascinating – most fascinating of course being who is responding to it and who is most offended by it.

The article basically tries to explain why women dominate schools and the workforce these days (numerically at least, men still earn more and hold the top positions of power). She explores why men are more likely to be out of jobs, unmotivated to get higher education, and unwilling to adapt to the current age. She writes –

What if the modern, postindustrial economy is simply more congenial to women than to men? For a long time, evolutionary psychologists have claimed that we are all imprinted with adaptive imperatives from a distant past: men are faster and stronger and hardwired to fight for scarce resources, and that shows up now as a drive to win on Wall Street; women are programmed to find good providers and to care for their offspring, and that is manifested in more- nurturing and more-flexible behavior, ordaining them to domesticity. This kind of thinking frames our sense of the natural order. But what if men and women were fulfilling not biological imperatives but social roles, based on what was more efficient throughout a long era of human history? What if that era has now come to an end? More to the point, what if the economics of the new era are better suited to women? … The postindustrial economy is indifferent to men’s size and strength. The attributes that are most valuable today—social intelligence, open communication, the ability to sit still and focus—are, at a minimum, not predominantly male. In fact, the opposite may be true.

When the world no longer defines success according to certain supposedly male characteristics, then those men no longer dominate. Women have opportunities to achieve that were denied us before and we are ready and willing to take advantage of them while the men mope about the changed world. And moping they are. Predictably, the loudest outcry about these statistics is coming from the strict hierarchicalists within Christianity. Those that believe women should be at home in the kitchen while men prove their headship by providing are naturally upset that that women now comprise a majority (albeit slight) in the workforce. As Al Mohler writes regarding the importance of this article –

God intended for men to have a role as workers, reflecting God’s own image in their vocation. The most important issue here is not the gains made by women, but the displacement of men. This has undeniable consequences for these men and for everyone who loves and depends on them.

The failure of boys to strive for educational attainment is a sign of looming disaster. Almost anyone who works with youth and young adults will tell you that, as a rule, boys are simply not growing up as fast as girls. This means that their transition to manhood is stunted, delayed, and often incomplete. Meanwhile, the women are moving on.

What does it mean for large sectors of our society to become virtual matriarchies? How do we prepare the church to deal with such a world while maintaining biblical models of manhood and womanhood?

The elites are awakening to the fact that these vast changes point to a very different future. Christians had better know that matters far more important than economics are at stake. These trends represent nothing less than a collapse of male responsibility, leadership, and expectations. The real issue here is not the end of men, but the disappearance of manhood.

According to those who uphold the so-called ideas of biblical manhood and womanhood this trend spells disaster. Matriarchy! The end of manhood! The fearmongering has begun. Not only can they blame women for original sin, the demise of the church, but now the complete destruction of our culture. And in part they are right. The idea of manhood as defined by strength, aggression, and dominance that they have constructed and sold as the universal way God created all men to be is under attack. For a time in history that definition of a man (which played into men’s selfish desires of what they wanted to do anyway) prevailed, generally at the expense of women, racial minorities, the disabled, and men who did not fit those molds. But culture has changed and those traits assumed to define manhood are no longer most suitable for success in our society. In fact aggression, rugged individualism, and testosterone driven egotism won’t get you very far these days (except in the church).

Rosin rightly points out that perhaps the gender stereotypes that we once viewed as universal are in truth merely cultural. If we keep defining men according to what put them on top in ages past, there is going to come a point where men are going to fail (which according to the article is happening now). Men don’t have to fail for women to succeed, but they will if they keep being fed lies about what it means to be a man. There are two ways we can respond what this article reveals. We can value the character traits that work in a postindustrial age – which are neither masculine nor feminine – and encourage people to develop those skills (social intelligence, open communication, the ability to sit still and focus according to Rosen). Or we can keep banging the drum that our cultural stereotypes are universal and in fact God-given and freak-out about the end of the world.

In my opinion these proponents of biblical manhood and womanhood are sailing a sinking ship (and aren’t that biblical either). They are so afraid of their cultural assumptions being challenged that they’ve lost sight that those assumptions are in fact cultural. While others will read this article and celebrate that women now have opportunities and then work hard at helping men and boys overcome years of false programming regarding what they were told a man had to be, some will continue to live in fear of the idea that God values and gifts women as well as men. That truth is finally being seen in society in major ways. The question remains if Christians find ways to help both men and women succeed, or will the church continue to fail men in its attempts to keep women down?

The organization Stop Islamization of America, a self-proclaimed human rights group, organized the protest on Sunday. This group’s mission is to ensure the preservation of freedom of speech against Islamic supremacist intimidation and attempts to make the United States compliant with Shari'a [Islamic law]. After reading about this group and seeing some of the photos Samir Salmanovic posted from the event as he stood in solidarity with Muslims (including the one here), I couldn’t help but reflect on the tendency in this country for us to fear and hate the other.

It is an odd balance American’s strike between forgiveness and hate. On one hand we become obsessed with stories of extreme forgiveness. The Amish women who chose to forgive and love the families of the man who killed their children so captured our attention the story was even turned into a movie. We prize such extreme acts of love almost to the point of fetishizing them, and yet when the offenders are too different from us we cling to our hatred. I remember listening to my grandfather’s tales of World War 2 and first realizing this strange tension between forgiveness and prejudice. He fought on the German front as a naval officer, he was part of the D-Day invasion, ferried Patton across the Rhine River, and had his best friend blown away in the foxhole next to him. Year later as a man of German descent himself, he had easily forgiven the Germans for the war and yet still spoke with extreme contempt about the Japanese. Forgiving those like us is easy; extending mercy to those who are other is where our fear often strangles our compassion.

This fear of the other prevents us from seeing the world clearly. Our belief in our own rightness clouds how we see the other. During my time at Wheaton College there was much debate about changing the school’s mascot from that of Crusader. While it was eventually changed to the Wheaton Thunder, many people could not understand why there was any reason to change it at all. They thought it was preposterous that any person (especially Muslims and Jews) would be offended by the image or judge modern day Christians by the past actions of historical Crusaders. Yet, even in the church we daily judge Muslims by the actions of a few of its members. So while we applaud the Amish women for their acts of forgiveness, the fear and hatred sparked by the events of 9/11 still inform the average American’s opinion of Muslims. So to the protesters, the building of a Muslim center and mosque so near the site of Ground Zero is just another act of violence – a threat to American supremacy. There is no forgiveness of the terrorists and the grudge against them is extended to all Muslims.

I, like many of the Muslims involved, understand the need to tread carefully here. Even in working for peace and reconciliation one has to be aware of how one’s actions might offend people who have been previously hurt. This is why Wheaton eventually did change its mascot, out of a desire to promote love and healing instead of reopening old wounds. But it is pure fear of the other that is sparking some to say just having Muslims near Ground Zero is offensive. It is heartbreaking knowing that many of the protesters are there claiming to represent Jesus while they scream their message of hate. This isn’t just about protesting political ideas, but a demonstration of our bondage to sin. The images of the protest hurt as they mock everything the faith I follow claims to uphold. As I wait to see how this current drama unfolds, I can’t help but wonder what it will take for American Christians to move from just fetishizing forgiveness to actually letting mercy and compassion for all rule our hearts.

Lost, a story about the redemptive power of community, forced the viewer to enter into the communal act of storytelling. Instead of consuming a product that told us what to think or enjoy, or even what questions we should be asking, Lost provided the space for the viewers to participate in the unfolding narrative. Our story intersected with the stories of the passengers of Oceanic flight 815; who we were, what we valued, what truths mattered to us simply became another thread in the developing story. The questions we had, the mysteries we debated were not thrust upon us by the writers of the show, but formed through the community brought together around the common center that was Lost. The finale gave us a glimpse of how important a community formed around a certain event can become, and invited us as viewers to continue to create meaning out of the never ending intersection of our own stories.

This isn’t what TV is supposed to be about; this isn’t what modern storytelling is even about. And it’s certainly not what the modern American individualist has been conditioned to be all about. But the way Lost captured our attention and the way it (especially the finale) connected us on a visceral level to the longing to be a part of something bigger than just ourselves demonstrated that perhaps “the way things are” is not how they are meant to be. “Live together or die alone” was a central theme to the series, utterly undercutting the messages most of us have been taught to believe our whole lives. Participating in community, understanding the world and even our whole lives as communal rather than individual acts, is unsettling and challenging to some, but spoke to the hearts of millions of viewers who were all wanting to be part of something more. Perhaps it is just that Lost was truly the first postmodern television series, but it took the pieces of what was expected of a TV drama, and handed them to the audience to hold in faith. That act of trust allowed us to then step outside the binds of convention and discover larger truths that held far more meaning than a momentary “a-ha” ever could have dreamt of.

In reflecting on these themes in the Lost finale, I was reminded of this paragraph from Colin Greene and Martin Robinson’s book Metavista: Bible, Church, and Mission in an Age of Imagination –

The world we inhabit is a labyrinth of unfinished narratives, stories and plots. As we intentionally or accidentally bump into them and enter these often strange, perplexing and disquieting worlds, so we become implicated in their intertwining, overlapping, sometimes imploding and at other times rapidly expanding plots and subplots. As George Steiner contends, we may have to make a wager on transcendence, that there is in fact a hidden code, teleology, or design to these narratives that it is our task to decipher. But to do so necessitates that we construe the text, the story or the plot in a particular fashion. To refuse to do so as individuals and communities is to refuse to indwell the text and to become hearers only of the word and not doers (Jas. 1:24-25). In other words, what has taken place is a failure of constructive imagination.

Lost has changed the way television works. Sure, the old patterns of merely entertaining an audience and feeding them the nightly moral of the story will continue. But with this one show, we were invited to not just reflect on the nature of community but to enter into the communal act of creating our own meaning out of our intersecting threads. Our entire life experience – the books we’ve read, the films we’ve viewed, the philosophies we’ve debated, the religious paths we’ve trod – contributed to the construction of this particular narrative. We had to take that wager on transcendence and were rewarded with a mirror into our own souls. Storytelling must change in the postmodern world as our apparent interconnectedness is unavoidable. Lost was the herald of that change.

A topic that I’ve repeatedly returned to this past year or so are the ways we have to contain the voice of the other in a safe and nonthreatening package in order to begin to hear it. In its most negative fashion this involves the essentializing and the trivializing of the other. We reduce other cultures to just the physical artifacts of their culture – their food, their music, their dance, their tourist appeal. Being open to the voice of the other simply becomes being willing to eat a new type of food, watching a film about an African safari, or putting on a cd of “world beat” music. On one hand, I know people who are so closed off to understanding anything outside of themselves that they can’t even accept these essentialized versions of the other. From those who think it is too exotic or weird to try new foods to those who think it is un-American to eat tacos, stepping outside of the known can be difficult for some people. That said it is often far easier to contain different voices in our interpretation of their cultural trappings or in an amusing stereotyped version of themselves than to actually engage.

So I find it interesting that one of the few places in American culture where the non-white male is allowed a central role and non-essentializing voice in the realm of sci-fi and fantasy. I first started think about this awhile back when I read the plea to Pixar to make movies about “non-princess girls and the adventures they go on.” So many of the movies and books targeted to children are about boys and their adventures (with the occasional girl sidekick). If there is a widely popular story of a girl going on an adventure it almost always takes place in a fantasy world. Lucy steps through the wardrobe into Narnia, Alice falls down the rabbit-hole into Wonderland, Dorothy is whisked away in a twister to Oz, Meg travels along the tesseract. Apparently little girls doing strong things like adventures can’t happen in real life, so they must be told in the realm of fantasy. (all those character’s mental stability is questioned when they return to the real world as well). Women having a voice and strength and power is a safe topic if it is contained by fantasy.

This ability to safely present the voice of the other under the guise of fantasy is well known in the world of Star Trek. When the first Enterprise embarked on its five year mission it truly went where no one had gone before by challenging the way race was portrayed in Hollywood. Women and minorities were cast as scientists and officers instead of in stereotypical roles (even as they still made use of stereotypes). The first interracial kiss on television was between Captian Kirk and Lt. Uhura (although to do so they had to pretend Uhura was possessed by a white alien at the moment). Challenging those boundaries through the setting of  futureistic outer-space was the safe way the conversation could be handled by the average viewer.

I recall reading an interview with one of my favorite actors, Alexander Siddig, on why he appreciated his role at Dr. Bashir on Star Trek: DS9. He said that for the first and only time in his life he wasn’t cast as “the Arab” instead Star Trek gave him the chance to play a brilliant doctor who just happened to be Arab. Since the series ended (and especially since 9/11) he has only been offered roles of strictly Arab characters – generally as some sort of terrorist. (since the interview he has played the non-race restricted roles of the Angel Gabriel in The Nativity Story and Hermes in Clash of the Titans – once again both roles set in the realm of fantasy and the supernatural). In the “real world” we are only comfortable seeing the Arab man as a terrorist, it is only in fantasy that he can have a voice as a person and not just a racial stereotype.

I am really torn with this “safe packaging” approach to listening to and respecting the voice of the other. It is demeaning and essentializing to say that women or minorities can only have a voice in the most trivial of ways or in futuristic or fantasy realms. But at the same time, presenting visions of the way we want the world to be through story form is the easiest way to get people’s subconscious to change. There is power in story and certain people who might resist respecting someone different from them in real life can suspend disbelief within the confines of the “impossible.” I guess what I am wondering is, can we even say the subaltern has a voice if it only appears within these sorts of safe packaging? Is that a real voice? Should this habit be undermined, or is it the best we have to work with at the moment?

I address these questions (and then point out why I think those questions miss the point) in a new post I have up at RELEVANT Magazine's Reject Apathy Site. So if you've ever wondered about what sort of impact you can really have, I suggest you check out my post and then share your thoughts!