June 8: Hatred, New Poem, Tolerance

Today, I've been thinking a lot about hatred and intolerance.  It always amazes me to encounter blatant bigotry--racism or sexism or ageism.  Homophobia.  Since my wife was diagnosed with bipolar, I've encountered a great deal of misunderstanding about mental illness.  All biases are based on fear.  People are afraid of things they don't understand, that are out of their scopes of experience. Mental illness, unless you suffer from it or know a person who suffers from it, generates a great deal of discomfort.  It's a category of illness that is still socially acceptable to mock, fear, or reject.

I have spent the last ten years battling the hatred and fear of mental illness.  It's easy to blame a person with mental illness for being different.  My wife once bought a pair of mountain bikes for five hundred dollars when she was manic.  She couldn't control herself.  It was her illness.  Most people in my family don't understand that.  People can't control skin color or gender, but most people can control their behaviors.  Unless brain chemistry gets in the way.

I'm teaching a Good Books class this fall.  I've decided to focus on novels and memoirs dealing with mental illness, because I want to promote understanding and acceptance.  People need to realize that mental illness isn't a personal choice.  An African American can't choose to be white.  A man or woman, for the most part, can't choose a gender.  And a person with a mental illness can't choose to be mentally sound.  That's what I want my students to get this fall.

I know people who hate.  For the most part, their hatred stems from personal insecurity.  They feel somehow inadequate in their own lives, so they look for people who are weaker to attack, to blame for their problems.  Rather than hate the haters, maybe I should pity them, try to understand them.  That's not an easy task.  But it's a task, as a Christian, I'm supposed to accept, even embrace.  Dammit.

My new poem is about a person who hates.  I use humor.  I mock.  I try to point out the absurdity of hatred.

Sing with  Saint Marty:


We shall overcome, we shall overcome,
We shall overcome someday;
Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe,
We shall overcome someday.

Parable of Hate

There was once a proctologist

Who went on vacations

To meet new people to hate.

He traveled to Texas

So he could say the words

Spic and wetback, slap

Locals on their shoulders,

Drink tequila shots, eat

Rattlesnake cooked over

Fires filled with smoke, venom.

He flew to San Francisco,

Ogled fags and queens,

Watched them parade along

Streets, up and down hills

In heels and fishnets,

Wished he could breathe

His repulsion into their

Bloodstreams, got nostalgic

For the early days of AIDS.

His next stop, the Upper Peninsula

Of Michigan, where he hit

A doe with his rented Audi,

Told his traveling companions

The problem with the U. P.:

Too many deer and Indians.

He blamed the Blacks

Of New Orleans for being

Too stupid and poor

To flee the waters of Katrina.

His latest trip, scuba diving

In the seas of Guam,

A place peopled by fat,

Lazy Polynesians, heifers

So unhealthy he couldn’t

Eat the whole week,

Survived on straight shots

Of spite and scorn.  The proctologist

Always returned from his journeys

Sure of his place in the world.

Doctor.  Healer of assholes.
Physician, heal thyself.

 


Code dickhead, Code dickhead