The
following article by a student in one of my Osher Lifelong Learning Institute
courses last year at Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Benjamin D. Gordon, a
retired pediatrician, is reprinted with his permission. It is originally dated
December 7, 2013.
I started in the practice of Pediatrics in 1955. In
those days, I made house calls as my father and uncle and cousin had done
before me. As others have found, sometimes we learn things from the simple
directness of children.
On a house call one evening, I’d finished seeing the
sick child and was crossing the living room on the way out. A four-year-old
sibling was on the floor playing with his toy cars. Looking up, he saw me and
said, “Hi, Dr. Gordon. These are my cars. The red ones are better than the blue
ones.”
I smiled at the immature remark and thought, ‘He
will learn you don’t tell the value of a car by the color on the outside.’ But,
the next thought was a startled, ‘some people do that with people.’ The worst
red-neck bigot would think you an idiot if you told him that about a car. He
knows you judge a car by the efficiency of its electronic system, the
effectiveness of its brakes, the smoothness of the ride provided by the shock
absorbers, the absence of leaks in a rainstorm, the quiet of the motor, the
quality of the tires, the comfort of the upholstery, etc. You judge a person by
their trustworthiness, their honor and honesty, their efforts at justice and
fairness, and their competence at what they do.
But the child was appropriate. We all learn the
simplest thing first, i.e., how to characterize and distinguish things by
physical characteristics: size, shape, weight and color, because honor, trust,
justice and morality require further maturation of the brain. Judging a person
on the basis of skin color, eye shape or any other physical quality is
functioning at the level of a 4-year-old child.
There are other reasons for prejudice, of course,
based on the fundamental factors of fear (the basis for most irrational
behavior) and doubt about self-worth.
In the latter case, a person will search for an
unchangeable difference—skin color, religion, ethnic or geographic origin—and give
to that difference a meaning it does NOT have, namely “that difference means ‘I’m
better! I’m worth more.’” This is why the prejudice (judging before we know) is
clung to so fiercely. It is supporting a weak ego. This, also, extends to the
wealthy elite, many of whom use that wealth and social power to reassure
themselves of their worth. Members of that group who really are worthwhile have
found ways to care about others. They don’t need the specious reasons to blame
those in need for their own problems. The carpenter, plumber, electrician and
mechanic who knows his field and how to do a good job has no problem. He knows
what he’s worth as a human being. He’s able to give value and help to others. I’ve
alwsys taught the teenagers, a time when we all struggled with this, that the
secret of being significant is always how much you can help, never how much you
can hurt. Those who create fear in others, thinking that makes them ‘significant’
are really creating those who, at the first opportunity, will pay them back.
I am white. One of my roommates (during) my last
semester at college was black. The poem from my collection The Nohnlove was dedicated to him.
ON RACIAL PREJUDICE
(for J.G.)
The
judging of one before
His
meeting
Is
such an obvious idiocy
It
gives the mind a pause
In
wonder.
The
zygote of this seed
Originates
with two –
As
any other
First,
not to doubt a father’s teaching,
Then,
to get him—live or dead—
To
give approval:
“See.
See. See.
I
do the same. The same as you.
I
hate the same. I love the same.”
The
key’s an antithetic one
The
Blindness leads to Sight.
A
learned achromotopsia
Must
lead us out of fright.
Dr. Benjamin D. Gordon's collection of poems can be found at:
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