Surviving Prejudice, Surviving Hate

Yesterday, I promised a rant on my blog today. Brace yourselves.

The next Survivor will see tribes divided by race.

Now, let me be clear. I don’t watch Survivor (anymore). I might have been tempted to tune in for the first episode, just to see the Cook Islands, because I’ve always wanted to go there.

But this stunt has guaranteed I’ll never watch the show again. Ever. I find this concept exceptionally offensive. Now, men vs women doesn’t irk me, in part because there are a healthy number of extreme feminists out there who are always asserting they can kick a man’s ass in anything. So let them try. I couldn’t care less. Boring. I think they did a Survivor that was men vs women? I don’t know. It long ago got old, and they should have known when to quit. It’s like Dallas for heaven’s sake. A show that just went on way past its prime.

So, the gender thing wouldn’t irk me, but race definitely does. Have we really not moved forward at all? As the article says, Black Tribe! White Tribe! Latino Tribe! Asian Tribe! Survivors ready ... let the social Darwinism begin!

I mean, come on. If they wanted to stir interest with controversy, why not have the Jews and the Islamic fundamentalists on two opposing teams? Can the producers of this show really be so ignorant as to think that it’s a good idea, or even just OKAY to play with old prejudices?

Just the other day, I was >reading this column – are Hezbollah and Hamas freedom fighters or terrorists? The ‘war on terror’ has become the new war of hate, like WWII and the Cold War with the Soviets. Is there a right and a wrong? Is it all as simple as we think?

No, of course it isn’t. But as the columnist astutely points out, we’re in the midst of decided what side we’re on, if we haven’t already, and prejudices are being formed. Prejudices that will cut deep and mark society. Prejudices that, in some cases, will set us back decades, maybe cause irreparable rifts.

We experienced that in varying ways after 9/11. Kevin and I had a trip planned, to Tunisia. So it wasn’t a hotbed of terrorism – it was still a Muslim country, still too close to that ‘bad part of the world’ in many people’s minds. We had a number of people criticize us for not canceling our trip. I remember phoning the travel agent, and being assured we could have all our money back before we even got the question out – all we wanted to know was that we could still go.

And when we got there, people would come up to us in the market and clasp my hand and tell us, in varying degrees of broken English Thank you for coming. Thank you for not blaming us.

How could I? Blaming one Muslim country for the actions of an extremist group is like blaming America for the actions of televangelists. Or cult leaders. Religious extremism is often not a ‘national’ issue. It may be more prevalent in some countries…

But instead of identifying the source of the prejudices so that they can be addressed, perhaps corrected, we put up barriers of hate. We refuse dialogue. At what point do we become as prejudiced and narrow-minded as the people we accuse?

Now, I’m not saying any of this in defense of terrorists, believe me. But when I was in Munich back in 1989. I went to Dachau. At the concentration camp, they have a film and it covers some of the history leading up to the events that happened at the camp during WWII.

I was 18 and naïve, and I’d thought it was so fucking simple to say the Germans were all wrong. But a lot of them were deceived. If you read the history of how Hitler came to power, how he used economic problems and reigniting national pride as a basis for preaching hate, you see that it wasn’t so simple. Oh, with some, sure. Some were people filled with hate already and only too happy to jump on the bandwagon and start locking people up. There are always those who crave power.

But there were a lot of people who were misled, one small step at a time. It’s always easy to look back later and see you’re off course. But if it takes a while before you realize it, it’s a lot of work to get back to the point where you first wandered off the path.

I grew up in a town that was essentially all white. A token black family (from South America, so just add in the complexity there of shattering a prejudice – what? You’re not from Africa?) and the people who ran the Chinese restaurant. A few Native kids in school, but, for the most part, white.

I knew a lot of people who were pretty narrow-minded.

And I never got that. Ever.

I know I’ve mentioned it here before, about how when I was quite young, there was a Japanese family living down the road. Their son was my age, a classmate in our school. They lived in town less than two years, and I clearly remember Ben phoning my house to see if I could go ride bikes, and my parents having a debate about whether or not to let me play with him.

Because… why? His eyes were ‘slanted’? His skin was darker than mine? It wasn’t that he was a boy – most of the kids my age on my street were and I played with all the other ones without issue. So, why?

And why was it such a big secret that my hometown was one of the places where Japanese people were set to “internment” camps during WWII?

Yeah, we bury our shame down deep and never address it, never really, truly let the wounds heal.

The original Survivor concept was a good one, if for nothing more than the intrigue of watching people sink lower and lower in their quest for fame and fortune. It was one of those baffling things, how people who’d essentially done nothing became celebrities.

Really, the appeal of the original Survivor - and reality shows to follow, like Big Brother - was to satisfy the perverse curiosity of the viewers. It’s all very Then Again, Maybe I Won’t adult-version, with film crews filling in for binoculars as we sneak a peek at the person undressing in the house next door.

Now, whenever discussions have come up on Val McDermid’s forum about could she please please please let Carol and Tony have a roll in the hay, I find it amusing. And, on occasion, disturbing. Do I really need to see the two get up close and personal? No. If that was essential to my reading, I’d read romance or erotica. I always wonder what it is that makes people want to watch.

Of course, someone did point out to me that it can be about wanting to know we’re normal ourselves. Which raises a whole other topic about what is normal, because we all know that there’s more than one way to have sex and not everybody likes everything. And that’s about as far with that tangent as I’m going to go at the moment.

So, there are two things about reality shows that are interesting, to me, as a writer. One is what it is that makes people want to “spy” on others.

And the other is, what it is that makes people want to live in a fishbowl.

Now, you might say, But you’re here, blogging, sharing your personal thoughts with anyone who walks by. Isn’t that living in a fishbowl? No, it isn’t.

I have the choice over what I put here. Nobody forces me to expose anything I don’t want to. That’s a marked difference between a blog and a forum – on a forum, anyone can start any topic. On a blog, the blogger retains control of the conversation. I’m very free, and the usual crew who comment are awesome, so the only thing I’ve ever had to delete is spam.

I know that ‘celebrities’ like actors and musicians do live more of a public life, but even their lives aren’t as exposed as the lives of the people on reality shows. Big Brother even had an internet feed you could subscribe to, so that you could watch people between episodes. There truly was no moment of privacy in their lives the entire time they were in the house.

Now, if I were to follow this tangent, I’d end up launching into a discussion of ‘front-stage’ and ‘back-stage’ theories, going back to one of my pet topics (communication theory) but I’ll spare you. Suffice it to say one of the reasons blogging works for me is because it’s the interactive online option that gives me the most control over my life and what becomes public.

I’ve had my private life exposed in a way that nearly destroyed me, many years ago. Fucking Christians. Okay, a generalization, I’m sorry, as I do have many good friends who are Christians, and some people still call me one - I prefer not to talk about my beliefs, or lack of beliefs. Some specific fucking Christians, who thought they had a divine right to meddle. They had a natural talent for being self-righteous assholes, I’ll grant them that.

If there’s one thing I learned – and by this I mean practical knowledge, for I knew it in my head, but this is what made it hit me in the heart - through that experience, it’s that you can be judged on multiple levels. Not just for gender or for race, but for what you’ve endured in your life.

You can be ‘not good enough’ because you’re ‘damaged goods’. And it’s no fault of your own, it’s just what is. But there are those who will still set themselves up as better than you. And it isn’t just ‘do you believe’ or ‘do you not believe’ but how much do you believe, do you go to Church on Sundays, how much do you pray, have you read your Bible this week, do you speak in tongues, what spiritual gift do you have? Because all of that is going to prove how ‘righteous’ you are, or aren’t, as the case may be.

I lived with that for too long. I’ve explained here before how I ended up (raised atheist) turning to religion in my teen years. What I might not have explained at the time was that it came down to slashing my wrists or finding some shred of hope in humanity to hold onto so that I could keep going. So, in many ways, my religious experience saved my life, only ten years later to spit me out the other side when some of the worst things that ever happened to me nearly destroyed me, and the people I knew were only too quick to say I wasn’t good enough to be one of them because I was contaminated. Too much sin in my family.

It’s been ten years since that happened, almost to the day. And sitting here typing this, I can feel the anger in me still and tears burn in my eyes. I’ve been sexually abused as a child, physically assaulted as a teenager and endured more emotional torment than I could stand for many years, but it was Christians who taught me how to hate. Yes, I hate those specific people. (And I still have a knee-jerk reaction as a result - tell me what to do and I'm going to argue, even if you're right.)

And so I look on this “new” concept of Survivor with disgust. Let me tell you, I always favour my right foot, the one I partially severed. I still get shooting pains sometimes, and so if I’ve been walking a lot and my feet are sore, it’s the first to get rubbed or soaked or whatever. There are some things that, even once ‘healed’ always have to be treated with care. I know the pain when I push too far.

And I know emotionally what a journey it's been to try to come to terms with some things just in my own life. I've seen my husband's family come through that, after his brother committed suicide. There are multiple levels of forgiveness and healing, and we don't get through it all in the snap of a finger. There is a time that the wound is still covered with a thinner skin, and it takes less to break it.

There is a time to just let things be so that they can begin to mend.

At a time when there are so many who could be easily persuaded to hate and fear those who are ‘different’ this Survivor is exploiting old prejudices for ratings and money. Am I the only one who finds this deplorable?