Category: Opinions

2013: My senior year of high school. The year 45.3 million people were living in poverty. The year my family qualified for welfare. The year I was fully submerged in microaggressions when people realized I was poor.

‘College is really expensive, Dani.’ ’You know you’ll have to work, right? Students don’t get welfare.’ ‘Can you afford a school like that?’ Peers, teachers, and advisors thought they were just ‘looking out for me.’ They meant no harm, they were just trying to prepare me for the real world, right? Wrong. Every reference to my socio-economic status and recommendation for an ‘affordable community college’ was laced with an implied assumption of failure.

Though the ‘American dream’ has been the motto for success, America was built by and for the privileged. While there may be some exceptions, most, if not all of our founding fathers were college educated, and from middle and upper class families. Society has continually changed, however, poverty has not. It has come to be seen as the black plague of modern America; the illness one no one wants to contract, yet so many are infected with.

One specifically horrific side effect of such an ailment includes the use of government assistance. People are so afraid of this symptom that they are going hungry to avoid it. They are ashamed, ashamed at the prospect of humiliation and judgment. Shame is defined as a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior. Poverty is not shameful; what is shameful is making people feel as though it should be. Defining who people are based on their socio-economic status is shameful. Treating the poor as if they are lepers is shameful. And accepting government assistance when you have no other way to provide for your family is most certainly not shameful.

Recently I saw a photo that was supposed to be a comparison between the refrigerator in a middle class home and a jobless home. The fridge in the jobless home was filled to the brim with name brand foods and drinks. The middle class fridge, however, was nearly empty, containing just a few items. The sharing of this photo on social media and online forums contributes to the stream of stereotypes surrounding government assistance. These stereotypes provide perceived justification of microaggressions.

Poverty does not discriminate. Despite popular belief, it does not just affect the lazy, the drug addicts, or the alcoholics. America is a prideful nation, we do not like to admit failure. Poverty is perceived as failure; failure to succeed, failure to provide, and failure of fulfilling dreams. The constant reminder of failure through microaggressions is painful. Imagine if you needed a tutor to pass a class and people subtly reminded you on a daily basis that you needed someone else’s help in order to succeed.  You would probably feel offended and hurt. This is exactly how people living in poverty feel when they’re subjected to microaggressions.

Poverty is not a disease. Poverty, like any trial presented in one’s life, is an opportunity to glorify God. The poor are not exempt from God’s love, so why does society treat them like outcasts? No more. No more shaming. No more reminders. No more judgment. Jesus did not avoid the poor, he did not cast them out, and he did not make them feel poorly about their financial status. He dined with them, he prayed with them, but most importantly, he loved them.

So be conscious of what you say. Words, judgements, and stereotypes can be sharper than knives, and just as damaging.

Everyone has opinions.  I’ve got a lot.  Sometimes, being generous, I like to share mine.  Sharing apples leaves one with fewer apples; sharing opinions is cost-free.  Come by; I’ll share.

It’s nice when you and I have the same opinion.  I don’t have to explain myself.  Indeed, I don’t have to think at all.  We can be at ease, even if wrong!

But sometimes your opinion differs from mine. This can cause difficulties. Not always; some things just don’t matter. And when both of us agree that it doesn’t matter, we are good. Let’s go to lunch.

We sometimes disagree about things that do matter. Or I think they do.  Sometimes I choose to keep my opinion to myself.  (It’s true!)  Disagreements about things that matter can fray relationships.  And sometimes the relationship matters more than the differing opinions do.  Let’s just not talk about it, ok?  We’ll go to lunch, but talk about something else.

There are times when I want to know what your opinion is. I’ll ask.  Maybe just hearing your opinion is enough.  You said so and you should know.

But sometimes I need more.  I need to know more, to understand more fully.  I need to understand why you hold that opinion, what reasons there might be for thinking that what you believe to be the case actually is the case. Maybe I have no opinion myself.  Maybe I have a contrary opinion.  Maybe I even share yours.  Nonetheless, I’m seeking reasons.  What do you have to say in favor of your opinion?  And if all you can say in favor of your opinion is that it is yours, put it in your autobiography.  In the chapter on trivia.

Giving reasons can be hard, sometimes nearly impossible.  But when I ask, please don’t do a power play with me.  “Because I said so” is the redoubt of last resort for the insecure (and the route to sanity for parents of toddlers). If that’s all you’ve got, I’ll seek wisdom elsewhere.

I do have a point.  There is an ethic of opinion giving—and opinion seeking—grounded in the basic ethical concept of respect.

But first consider three types of relationships, varying in authority and responsibility.  There are relationships of equality, those between friends, teammates, spouses or colleagues.  There are relationships of significant difference, those between parent and child, coach and team member, professor and student, doctor and patient, plumber and client, or Creator and creature.  And there are relationships of contingent difference in which the difference in authority is not grounded in inherent differences between the parties. Consider an R.A. and a student resident. Yes, one has responsibilities the other lacks.  And with those come a certain kind of authority.  Yet the two roles could easily be reversed.  The same holds between committee members and committee chairs, department chairs and department members, team captains and team members, and, often, between employment managers and their subordinates.  Even between presidents and senators.

Those on this third list each involve shared tasks, and shared tasks require structure, including some division of labor.  Leadership is one—only one—necessary role.  Countries, committees, and colleges all require leaders.  But these are only roles, contingently held.

You’re the R.A. because you were selected from among other qualified applicants.  You happen to be the department chair, but not because you are smarter or know more than your colleagues.  You were chosen to be captain because you are liked and respected, but other team members could do the job just as well.

Now, my two ethical points about opinions:

First, opinions about things that matter should come with reasons.  Not always.  Less often in relations of essential difference.   Usually in relations of equality.  And they are very important, but too frequently avoided, in relations of contingent difference.   Give an opinion, often in the form of a chosen course of action, from a position of contingent authority?  Be prepared to give reasons.  Respect for others involved in the shared task requires it.

And second, those who contingently occupy positions of heightened responsibility should seek the opinions—and accompanying reasons—of others who share the task.  Respect—and good decision making—requires it.

The original impetus to write this article stemmed from a frustrating discussion on Marx and the plight of the proletariat in one of my philosophy courses, however things took off after I saw one of VOCA’s inserts on a table in the cafeteria. In advertising their resumé workshops, VOCA juxtaposed the outcomes of both a good and bad resumé. On the top half of one of the ads,  VOCA slapped the bolded phrase “GOOD RESUME” over a white male dressed in business casual, sitting with his laptop in a high-rise office building; an image that screams moderate-to-high paying corporate job. The bottom half featured the phrase “NOT SO GOOD RESUME” superimposed over a grocery store worker pushing carts in from the snowy parking lot, dressed plainly in khakis, work boots, and a fluorescent vest; the typical effigy of the working class.

VOCA’s message to Houghton students is anything but subtle: get your resume together or else you will end up like the poor sap working the dead-end job pushing carts, instead of sitting on a leather couch in a suit and tie. This is perhaps the most explicit shaming of the blue-collar worker and blue-collar jobs in general that I have seen thus far at Houghton. Last year’s “Theology +” advertisements to “find your calling” hinted at a similar message: a “calling” or a vocation is more than “just a job,” which is what I would guess most people here on campus would characterize blue-collar work as. This glorification of vocation over a simple job imposes an unavoidable value-judgment on those with a vocation versus those with “just a job.”

Whether it is intentional or not, this trend of shaming blue-collar workers and devaluing their jobs is disturbing. I am well aware that those of us attending a private liberal arts college intend to find jobs in a more white-collar environment, and I want to clarify that I’m not attacking anyone’s desire or preference to do so. Regardless of the fact that Houghton plays a crucial role for those of us seeking these types of jobs, it does not give the institution or its members the right to devalue jobs. After all, there are plenty of blue-collar workers here at Houghton. How offensive is it for VOCA to put out these public advertisements that devalue their jobs, their livelihood, and their vocations?

It should be no surprise to anyone here that people have an overwhelming tendency to equate a person with their job. Let me elaborate. People in suits, men and women who have their names on office doors and degrees hanging on their walls, are accorded respect and a sense of status by the vast majority. People who work at McDonald’s or wear fluorescent vests at work are rarely given the same level of respect, let alone thought of as having power or status in society. Thus, we equate the value of the work with the value of the person: those doing work that is valued higher socially (white-collar) are personally accorded more value and respect, while those working lesser valued jobs are, more often than not, seen as lesser in status, and thus given less respect and subsequently value. This value-driven attitude, however subconsciously it may arise, is reinforced practically everywhere–including Houghton–and inevitably, it creates a culture of white-collar superiority, so to speak.

In emphasizing the importance of a vocation–and of a good resume to get there–the message that comes across emphasizes this attitude of inequality. It tells students: Do this or you’ll regret it. What I am proposing as the alternative is not some “how-to” on “grinning and bearing it” through some sort of blue-collar purgatory, rather a change in perspective on the value of “just a job”. Perhaps it is as simple as this: the value often awarded to white-collar jobs is based on some cost-benefit analysis related to various factors, happiness being a popular one. For some, money buys happiness, for others respect, power, and status do, ergo we flock to white-collar jobs. However, a recent survey done in 2012 by City & Guilds on “Career Happiness Index” shows that those with more blue-collar jobs (e.g. florists, hairdressers, and plumbers) have the highest happiness indexes that range from 76%-87%, while white-collar jobs follow closely with the highest index ratings ranging from 69%-75%. Interestingly enough, bankers and IT workers wind up in dead last, with happiness index ratings ranging from 44%-48%. I bring up this study to demonstrate that, at least in terms of happiness, working a blue-collar job is not a death sentence; there is value to be had.

What I’m recommending is not that everyone work a blue-collar job, or that white-collar workers are inherently crummy people; I’m asking primarily for there to be a shift in attitude on this issue towards equality. Whether you end up as a doctor researching a cure for cancer, a successful lawyer, an electrician, or a retail employee, you–and your job–deserve an equal amount of respect and value.

Last week’s STAR described recent mandates concerning the 1972 Federal law on gender equity known as “Title IX” to the problem of relationship violence on campuses.  Students at Houghton can celebrate that they live in an environment free of much of the outwardly destructive behavior that characterizes many schools.   What, then, does Title IX have to do with Houghton?   The goal of Title IX at Houghton is to promote the education of students, specifically as this relates to Houghton Goal #5:  “Ground students in a strong biblical worldview in the Wesleyan tradition that allows them to be deeply and thoughtfully Christian so as to transform culture through redeeming action.”    Much of the conversation I hear around campus falls short of the standard of being “deep” or “thoughtful” and much of our energy seems devoted to defending a particular stereotyped vision of gender roles rather than invested in “redeeming action”.   Houghton must do a better job of preparing its students to be leaders in the area of gender equity.

Former President Jimmy Carter’s A Call to Action:  Women, Religion, Violence, and Power states, “ . . . in my opinion, Jesus Christ was the greatest liberator of women in a society where they had been considered throughout biblical history to be inferior.”  If we are followers of Christ, we must be fearless in opening ourselves to the possibility that the privileges we enjoy hinder us from seeing the extent of the work yet to be done.   In calling us to be agents of redemption in the world, is Christ calling us to be “Human Rights’ Activists”?  If so, what does this look like?  Perhaps just as importantly, what are the distractions or petty disagreements that seem to draw us away from our calling?

My job as Title IX Coordinator is to encourage thoughtful consideration of questions such as, “In what ways are we influenced by the larger culture regarding gender in a way that is harmful to our understanding of what it means to be created in God’s image?   How do both women and men contribute to and sustain the difficulties we have in relating to one another in Christ-honoring ways?  How does language impact our views of women and men?  What implications are there for using the word ‘girls’ to describe females over 18 and using ‘men’ or ‘guys’ to describe males over 18?   Why don’t we have a universal policy of gender-friendly language for our course syllabi?”

If they are to follow Christ’s lead in gender justice, Houghton graduates must wrestle with questions, such as, Why does the self-confidence of girls decrease sharply just as they reach puberty?  Why is it okay to use disparaging comments when referring to girls and women (e.g. “You throw like a girl” – see SuperBowl 49 commercial)?  Why do women speak less in mixed groups, including during class discussions?  How much should it concern us that the phrase,” I totally raped you!”, is likely to refer to beating someone in a videogame?  Why is it that so many young women, including Christians, feel that they owe a man something if he compliments them and pays attention to them?  How can Christian women be empowered to have a voice and to assert themselves while nurturing the belief that Christians are to place service to others above self?   How does a culture of patriarchy within the church contribute to a climate of female restraint and male entitlement that hinders the full development of both men and women?    How do we respond to the complaint from a sister or brother that something we have said or done has negatively impacted her or him, regardless of any lack of intent to do harm?

Transformation needs to occur, but first we seek the truth with humility. Thankfully, Christ and scriptures such as Galatians 3:28, which states “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus”  give us direction.   As Emma Brittain noted in, How Houghton Handles Racism,  “. . . if we are not sensitive to race, we can’t be intentional about combating racism.”    We must open ourselves up to conversations that are difficult, that make us uncomfortable, and on which we disagree. This is the best way to hold ourselves and one another accountable.   There is work to be done at Houghton.

Last weekend, I and a group of eleven other Houghton students attended the tenth annual Faith and International Development Conference at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I’ve been thinking for the past month or so about what it means to be graduating with a degree in International Development. International Development is a relatively new area of study which means that there isn’t one established way to think about it or really any major areas of agreement at all. For every issue there are at least three sides, and the literature is filled with vehement arguments. Learning about development entails learning a lot of different ways of looking at the world and evaluating the arguments for each of them.

The framework used by a lot of Christian development practitioners is known as transformational development; it is the framework typically used by the speakers at FIDC Calvin. Transformational development, as defined by Bryant Myers in Walking with the Poor, looks at poverty as an economic, relational, and spiritual phenomenon, not only present in the lives of those who suffer from resource poverty but in the lives of those who are rich. And I think the transformational development framework should be used by any Christians who are interested in engaging in any way with the world, which should be all Christians.

Fundamentally, transformational development is concerned with seeing the world as it really is, not the way we want it to be. The opposite of transformational development is willful blindness to reality for your own benefit. President Mullen, in her chapel message at the beginning of the week, talked about how many of the problems in our world have been caused by the self-deception of those in power. At one point near the beginning of the talk, she said: “…Sooner or later, this pattern of not calling things what they really are stops being a matter of the mind… and starts being a matter of the heart.” Practitioners of transformational development are not simply witnesses to the process but are themselves transformed.

At the conference this past weekend, the theme was “Healthy Humility: Learning to Learn,” particularly from the people whose perspective we typically ignore. One of the best sessions was a devotional by Dr. Ravi Jayakaran, a member of the Lausanne Movement and pioneer of participatory development. His message was taken from the story of Simon the Pharisee and the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet. Jayakaran stressed the importance of being in a posture of orienting ourselves to the marginalized. The passage he referenced in Luke 7 reads that “Jesus looked at the woman and spoke to Simon”.

This is what we are all called to do as Christians. We are called to be a prophetic voice in society, aligning ourselves with the needs of the marginalized rather than the desires of the powerful. Liberation theology, born out of the experience of the Catholic Church in Latin America, has sometimes been controversial but it emphasizes something that Western Christianity is in danger of missing. One of the key elements in liberation theology is God’s preferential option for the poor—our God is a God who looks at the poor when speaking to the powerful.

I don’t mean to suggest in any way that the international development industry has always or even often aligned itself with the cause of the oppressed. That is unfortunately and sadly untrue—counterexamples are too numerous to number. USAID has a long history of granting aid for reasons of foreign policy that has been used by the elite members of developing societies for their own benefit.

I do think though that at its best a Christian theology of international development has the right view of the world. Listening to the speakers at the conference—Kurt Ver Beek from the Association for a More Just Society in Honduras; Pauline Muchina from the Future African Leaders Project; Scott Sabin from Plant With Purpose; Michael Woolcock from the World Bank—I was inspired by their clear passion for righting injustice whether through environmental interventions, the empowerment of women, or the promotion of a legal system that works for rather than against everyone.

As a graduating senior looking toward the rest of my life, I want to be one of the people that looks to the powerless rather than to the powerful. I want to give preference to the marginalized rather than deference to the celebrated. I want to see the world the way it really is.

“And when the saints go marching in / I want to be one of them”.

The Subtle Side of Racism

We live in a world today that doesn’t pay attention to anything mediocre. Miley Cyrus has to either come in like a wrecking ball wearing, well, nothing, or Beyoncé has to drop a self-titled album out of literally nowhere. And thanks to technology that rivals that of the Jetsons’, we have become subconsciously conditioned to ignore things that don’t immediately grab our attention.

Love it or hate it, it is the shock factor of Miley Cyrus that keeps her famous. By taking time out of our day, we, the consumers, allow for extremes that keep Miley Cyrus twerking, while celebrities like Hilary Duff (who also started as a child star) look on in the post-Lizzie McGuire life, largely unnoticed. And unfortunately for us, this culture manifests itself in other aspects of life outside of Hollywood and the gossip-starved media; it manifests itself in conversations that really matter to human co-existence, like racism.

I like to think that at Houghton, racism is a common enemy; something we can all rally against, kind of like seeing “ice pellets” on the weather forecast and still not getting classes cancelled (unless you aren’t bothered by that, in which case… who even are you?). And for the most part, I think most of the Houghton population could adamantly deny being racist—at least, not intentionally.

This is where the problem lies.

The media does not talk about a celebrity’s everyday life if it does not draw out extremes and intense emotions. Likewise, our community does not talk about the more subtle side of racism, the more nuanced side of it, if you will, because of the lack of internet and emotional outcry against it. But there is actually a word for this kind of racism: it is called micro-aggression.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term micro-aggression, it is defined as any form of unintended discrimination against minority groups—in this case, ethnic minority groups such as Asians. Whether that’s asking if I “speak Asian” or “am really, really good at math,” these sometimes humorous and even well-intended questions can act as a form of micro-aggression. Maybe this was some of you yesterday, and maybe some of you have never even thought about it. And that’s understandable, though perhaps not excusable, because we as a community have failed to talk about the everyday subtleties that micro-aggression manifests itself in. While we are quick to address more evident issues of racism, for which I commend Houghton, I think it would serve us well to think about the everyday realities of attending a majority-white school as an Asian. What does it feel like to be the only non-white student in your class? What about people assuming you know a certain Chinese student because, well, she’s Asian? Or what about even hearing compliments from people who tell you your “English is very, very good”?

This is not to say that everyone at Houghton has been either a perpetrator or a victim of micro-aggression. And this is most certainly not to say that race should be a taboo subject because of the potential awkward moments it could create. Rather, what I am trying to convey is that in order for us to fully understand the presence of micro-aggression that exists even on this campus, there must first and foremost be a sense of awareness and humility. There needs to be a realization that good intentions are simply not enough—it’s time to ask ourselves what kinds of effects our words may have on others, a continual process of self-reflection. And from there, engage in open dialogue with those who may be otherwise prey to acts of nuanced racism, to micro-aggression.

Just to be clear, I am not the only Asian voice on campus, nor am I even a representation of the majority Asian perspective and experience at Houghton. But if this article has done nothing else, let it at least be a tool from which you can start helpful and tactful dialogues with other Asian students.