October 24: Mongolian Idiot, Rights of the Intellectually Challenged, My Sister

Billy's daughter Barbara came in later that day.  She was all doped up, had the same glassy-eyed look that poor old Edgar Derby wore just before he was shot in Dresden.  Doctors had given her pills so she could continue to function, even though her father was broken and her mother was dead.

So it goes.

She was accompanied by a doctor and a nurse.  Her brother Robert was flying home from a battlefield in Vietnam.  "Daddy--" she said tentatively.  "Daddy--?"

But Billy was ten years away, back in 1958.  He was examining the eyes of a young male Mongolian idiot in order to prescribe corrective lenses.  The idiot's mother was there, acting as an interpreter.

"How many dots do you see?" Billy Pilgrim asked him.

This passage pisses me off.  I know that the term "Mongolian idiot" was once acceptable, even common.  "Down syndrome" didn't come into use until the early 1970s.  Slaughterhouse was first published in March of 1969.  Kurt Vonnegut was a product of his time.  That's why he calls the young Down syndrome boy an "idiot."  I notice that  Vonnegut even depersonalizes the character even more by using the term "male" instead of boy.  Suddenly, instead of a living, breathing human being, Billy is treating a specimen:  the Mongolian idiot male.

As many of my disciples already know, I have a sister with Down syndrome.  So, I have been exposed to all sorts of cruelties.  My mother fought hard for my sister all her life.  Fought to get her in school.  Fought to keep her in school.  Fought for classroom funding.  Took on principals, school superintendents, and instructors who saw my sister as hopelessly unteachable.  When my sister was born, the doctor told my parents to put her in an institution and forget about her.

This all happened right around the time that Vonnegut was writing Slaughterhouse, which explains a lot about the passage.  Doctors, educators, and brilliant writers all saw people with Down syndrome as idiots, oddities, sideshow attractions.  I don't blame Vonnegut for his ignorance.  I understand it, in the social context.  Vonnegut was involved in the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-war movement, the anti-nuke movement.  Most of his books are thinly veiled social commentary.  Yet, at the time of Slaughterhouse, he wasn't aware of the incredible insensitivity of calling someone a "Mongolian idiot."

We have come a long way since the publication of Slaughterhouse.  It's now legislated that public schools must provide educations for children with mental and physical impairments (for now--the current Education Secretary, Betsy Devos, is trying to change that).  However, just like the battle for Civil Rights continues, so does the battle for the rights of the intellectually challenged.

I'm ashamed to say that I don't think of this cause every day now, despite how personal it is for me.  My sister has been out of the education system for over 30 years.  Her current issues are health and memory.  Like most older people with Down syndrome, she is developing symptoms that could be the beginning of Alzheimer's or dementia.  That is her daily struggle now.

Vonnegut is not a bad person for calling his character a "Mongolian idiot."  He is the product of his culture, as we all are.  And, sometimes, culture needs to change.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for his sister, who is not an idiot.

March 7: Black Ghetto, Detroit Riot of 1967, Realities

Billy's smile as he came out of the shrubbery was at least as peculiar as Mon Lisa's, for he was simultaneously on foot in Germany in 1944 and riding his Cadillac in 1967.  Germany dropped away, and 1967 became bright and clear, free of interference from any other time.  Billy was on his way to a Lions Club luncheon meeting.  It was a hot August, and Billy's car was air-conditioned.  He was stopped by a signal in the middle of Illium's black ghetto.  The people who lived here hated it so much that they had burned down a lot of it a month before.  It was all they had, and they'd wrecked it.  The neighborhood reminded Billy of some of the towns he had seen in the war.  The curbs and sidewalks were crushed in my places, showing where the National Guard tanks and half-tracks had been.

Vonnegut is touching on racial tensions in America.  There were several riots that took place during the summer of 1967 in the United States, the most serious occurring in Detroit during the month of July.  In the Detroit riot, 43 people died, and 1,189 people were injured.  Over two thousand buildings were destroyed.  My family was living in Detroit at the time.

From everything that I've heard, that summer was hot.  Really hot.  Of course, riots don't just happen because people are overheated, although the high temperatures were probably a good reflection of the kind of racial tensions that were simmering in the Motor City.

I am not going to get all political about racial inequality in the United States here.  There is no questions that it exists.  Whether you believe in the Black Lives Matter movement or not, you can't overlook that fact that African American men make up 37% of prison inmates, even though African Americans comprise only 12 to 13% of the population of the United States.  Those a startling numbers.

Back in the late 1960s, when Kurt Vonnegut published Slaughterhouse Five, he knew that the country had race problems.  Obviously.  The Civil Rights Movement was in full swing, and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X had just been assassinated.  Bobby Kennedy, too.  The United States has a pretty ugly history when it comes to race relations.  And gender relations.  And LGTBQ relations.

So, the ugliness that has been on display during and after the 2016 Presidential election is really not all that shocking.  It's simply a reflection of the warty underbelly of American history.  For a long time, it wasn't really acceptable for haters to hate openly.  It was shameful.  Criminal.  I miss that time.

Again, I am not taking a political stand here.  I'm just pointing out realities that a lot of people seem to be forgetting.  Less than a hundred years ago, women didn't have the right to vote.  A little more than fifty years ago, African Americans took their lives in their own hands if they wanted to participate in the election process.  The Stonewall Riots happened in 1969, and today we are still trying to deny the rights of transgender students in our public schools.

Jesus Christ talked about loving people, not judging people.  For any Christian reading this post, I have to ask:  where do you think Christ would stand on the issue of Syrian refugees in the United States?  Of Muslim bans?  Of illegal immigrants?  Answer those questions honestly, with the same love and compassion that Jesus preached during His time on Earth.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for the Constitution of the United States.  Remember that little piece of paper?