The first time I heard the term ‘intersectionality,’ I wondered where it had come from.
I had a friend studying at a small university who told me one of her classes spent quite a bit of time talking about it. I’m not sure, but I may have rolled my eyes. Aha, I thought. Another pseudo-intellectual exercise designed to condition impressionable students to ‘see’ the emperor’s new clothes.
Then the George Floyd riots started, and I learned I was a racist because I was white.
This surprised me. For much of my life growing up in the 1960’s and 70’s in Utah, I encountered very few people of any other race than mine, and had had exactly zero opportunities to form the opinion that I was superior - or inferior - to a person because of a difference in our skin colors.
I grew up being taught that racism was that - the belief that people perceived superiority or inferiority because of skin color or race.
Now, this intersectional idea of racism was new. Now, racism was simply acknowledging that there were differences in races.
The simple fact that I grew up knowing nothing of what it was like to be a person of color was now being called ‘micro aggression.’ My very lack of experience or exposure to other races was a micro aggression.
But I grew up being taught that all people are children of the same God. I was taught that the greatest sifter and separator before God was how we obeyed His commandments - particularly - our choices of how we treated each other.
I heard continued and increased rhetoric of racism - which curiously ramped up at the time the United States elected its first black president. My university friend told me that in her course on intersectionality, race was only one of the circles that intersected in the beloved Venn diagram: race, gender, sexual orientation, and eventually perceived gender became further ways to separate the human family from each other.
Into tribes.
This is how humans turn each other into ‘Other.’ ‘Other’ becomes a verb - and we turn a brother or sister into Someone Who Isn’t Me - someone to be feared, mistrusted, and someone who is probably hostile to me.
This is higher education and enlightenment?
To me, that kind of approach to learning about others seems primitive. What on earth can be accomplished if, when you first meet another human being, you lead with, “Let me tell you all the ways you don’t understand my life by putting a label on myself - or you.” ?
It also seems that these labels which siphon you off in the delightful Venn diagram have only one purpose - to eventually create a Venn diagram with only two circles. One circle is marked ‘oppressed’ and the other is marked ‘oppressor.’ And they don’t intersect.
The more I go into my world as a disciple of Jesus Christ - a circle on the diagram marked ‘oppressor’ by many of the diagram makers, by the way - the less I have experiences which separate me from others. The less other humans become Other. There's one practice that's more simple than you might imagine, becomes more simple the more you do it, and has made life more full and rich and fun than I can begin to describe.
The practice? Look in their eyes.
When I meet someone new - anywhere - it makes my day better to look in their eyes, because I can nearly always instantly see the biggest and most important commonality in the ultimate Venn diagram with 8 billion circles intersecting in only one place: child of the same Father.
Brother.
Sister.
Fellow traveler on this planet.
Look in someone’s eyes and you can see worry, fear, exhaustion, delight, humor, purpose, desire, ambition, hope or hopelessness - depending on when you’re looking.
Just like you.
If you look, you will see another soul - an immortal soul with hopes and dreams and goals. Some will be fully intentional in the moment you look, purposeful and deliberate. Some will be less so - distracted and a bit on auto-pilot, possibly consumed with other worries you know nothing about.
The fact isn’t that their worries place them in a different circle from you. It's the fact they have worries which places you both in the same circle.
The fact isn’t that their goals place them in a different circle from you. It's the fact they
have goals that places you both in the same circle.
Discovering this is what elevates humanity above tribalism. How can humanity ever keep the First and Second Great Commandments - loving their common Creator first, and loving their common brothers and sisters second - until they learn this?
Start with looking not at anything which would separate you into different circles. Start with looking and finding all the ways you’re alike.
Start with their eyes.
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