Exclusivity

Why is "exclusive" a positive adjective when applied to celebrity wedding locations, clubs, parties, and educational institutions, but not religions?

Even where one suspects that privacy might be a reasonable desire--a wedding, say--no one troubles to be troubled by the substitution of the word "exclusive." A private wedding and an exclusive wedding are two very different things.

Exclusivity in this sense depends on the deliberate cultivation of the desire to be included. That is, it's not an exclusive wedding if no one but the invitees wants to come. It's not an exclusive college if no one applies. Exclusivity requires desirability. One must constantly and conscientiously widen the circle of people who want to be included, even as one narrows the circle of those who are.

Exclusivity in this sense also depends on the opacity and difficulty of the entrance requirements. If it were clear how to dress to get the bouncer's approval, everyone could do it, and then it wouldn't be an exclusive club.

Race, family heritage (often conceived either in ethnic or religious terms), and income level are among the most effective inclusion requirements, because they are easy to evaluate and difficult or impossible to change.

Social connectedness is less straightforward, and it works just as effectively for exactly that reason. If no one with sufficient standing within the community is willing to vouch for a newcomer, he remains on the outside. But "sufficient standing within the community" comes from a complex computation of largely unarticulated factors. Who knows how to become an Important Person, important enough that one's coattails are worth riding?

All of this is frankly disturbing.

But no one is disturbed.

To become a Christian, all one has to do is want to become a Christian. To become an acknowledged member of the Body of Christ, all one has to do is declare oneself willing to follow its head, the Crucified and Risen One, and willing to be called upon to live up to that public commitment.

Christianity is the only "exclusive" group whose standard and method of inclusion is so clear, so straightforward, and so entirely in the hands of the person desiring membership.

And yet its brand of exclusivity is the most vilified.

The Dark Side (so to speak) of Liberal Support for Obama

The findings of the experiment summarized in this article are sad and, for the most part, unsurprising: our political inclinations influence our perceptions. No surprise there, of course.

The particular form that influence takes in this case is, likewise, the opposite of shocking. The experiment demonstrates (or supposedly does--the article does not mention if or where it has been published) that the skin tone of a biracial man (President Obama) is perceived differently depending on one's political orientation, on one's presumed evaluation of his politics.

Conservatives appear to perceive Obama's skin color as darker both than liberals perceive it and than it actually is. That is, Obama's blackness is so magnified in the eyes of conservatives (who are presumably more inclined to evaluate Obama negatively as a political leader) that it is not only constitutive of their overall perception of him (there is no way for them to perceive him other than as a black man) but disproportionately emphasized in their ostensibly objective physical (visual) perception of him.

Depressing, obviously, but hardly shocking, right? Something in the nature of studies that show overeating causes weight gain, or that the proverbial fat meat really is greasy?

This article deserves more attention for two reasons, however.

First of all, the author's disinclination to probe the other side of the coin is troubling. Conservatives see Obama as blacker than he really is, and liberals see Obama as whiter than he really is. The author of the study (the interviewee) seems careful to mention both sides of this equation when asked an open question, but the journalist seems disturbed only by the first half. The final two questions (and answers) of the interview aptly highlight why it's a problem that conservatives see Obama as darker than he is.

There is no corresponding question dealing with why it might be a problem that liberals see Obama as lighter than he is.

And that is the second reason: it is a problem that liberals see Obama as lighter than he is, and (apparently) to a greater degree than conservatives make the opposite mistake (five times vs. two times more likely).

The author of the study explains the phenomenon well: "Which means that liberals, who are going to think that Obama is generally good and generally American, may have these subtle associations linking him to the concept of white, which is reflected in their representativeness ratings. The opposite would be true of conservatives."

But the implications he and the journalist ponder together lament only the conservative side of the equation: "It suggests that there are still deeper challenges to overcome before we can truly understand the perspective of someone we disagree with."

What challenges remain, however, in the presence of someone we agree with?

It is not good news, in other words--nor even neutral news!--that liberals do not perceive Obama as darker than he is, because they still perceive him as whiter than he is. Liberals and conservatives alike still participate in the racist dichotomy, even if liberals participate in the dichotomy in a way that allows them, ultimately, to support "even" a black man for president, if they agree with his policies.

If, for example, pictures of Alan Keyes or Clarence Thomas were substituted, liberals would, presumably, commit the error that conservatives commit regarding Obama: black skin = bad man, white skin = good man. The fact that they are able to see men who agree with them as participating in whiteness to some degree is small consolation. They still frame their approval in terms of whiteness.

The study also raises the question whether a blacker black man could achieve the same success. Is President Obama's success made possible only because of his biracial heritage? If it were impossible to code him as even partially white--if his speech patterns, his skin color, his physical shape were more insistently associated with Blackness--would it prove impossible to code him as intelligent and capable for any but the most rigorously race-conscious liberals (that is, those conscious of and attentive to issues of race)?

It is an accomplishment--with congratulations due both to President Obama and to the American people--that the Oval Office no longer has a "For Whites Only" sign on the door.

But it remains a bittersweet accomplishment, in light of this study. Even Obama's presumed supporters need him to participate in whiteness to some degree.

I do not envy him the tightrope he must walk, and my respect for the relative grace with which he walks it mounts daily.

Something the Lord Made

Even though this movie was recommended by a normally reliable source, I can't say that I had terribly high expectations of it--at least not after looking at the back matter. An HBO film? With, well, Mos Def?

I mean, I thought it would be "loosely based" and formulaic (like Remember the Titans or some such), with stupid dialogue and trite sermonizing. But, I thought, at least it would deal with "important issues" or something, so it would be worth watching.

It was none of the things I had thought.

Well, yes, it dealt with "important issues" (see here for the historical background), but so gently and subtly that it didn't feel like an "important issues" movie.

It was not at all formulaic, either. And the dialogue was restrained, well-written, appropriate.

And Mos Def did an outstanding job. His Vivien Thomas was gentle, subtle, restrained, yet completely compelling.

I keep using those words--gentle, subtle, restrained. That's how I would characterize the whole movie, actually. With the exception of Alan Rickman's southern accent (which is about as successful as Kevin Costner's British accent in Robin Hood), nothing was larger-than-life or overdone. It felt real--no small feat for a movie portraying incidents of another era, one with high probability for emotionalism and sermonizing.

If I had one negative thought about the movie, though, it was that Vivien Thomas was a rather "safe" black hero. He was a man who suffered quietly the insults he was offered more often than not, who accepted with gratitude the recognition he was finally given (decades late and still fairly inadequate), and who cared more about the life-saving work he was doing than what he had to endure to do it--or how his using his gifts benefitted and enriched everyone but himself.

Yes, his character is a shining example of Christ-like virtue (patient suffering and self-giving in the face of others' vainglorious pursuit of "success"), but he may have been rather too easy on Blalock and Johns Hopkins--and, by extension, us. It was too easy for Blalock to enjoy the material and societal benefits of his association with Thomas (who enjoyed only the moral satisfaction of his work), and to atone for it at the end of his life with the recognition that "I have some regrets."

And too easy for us. As James Cone supposedly said at a recent AAR conference (I'm getting this third-hand, so my apologies if I'm getting the story wrong), "You white theologians always wanna talk about Martin. When are you gonna talk about Malcolm?" If our pantheon of civil rights saints is limited to figures like Vivien Thomas and, yes, even MLK, we (white America) are letting ourselves off rather too easily.