Me and him, Ferguson and Baltimore

He sits and talks to me about the stress and anxiety he feels trying to keep his business running during these changing times.  He feels it was much easier when his father ran the business, and I have to agree with him. His father had it easier sending him to college than it is for him to send his daughter.  Finding employees who are reliable and sophisticated is difficult he says. I don't quite agree with him on that because I don't pull away from everyone who speaks with an accent.

Soon we are talking about Ferguson and Baltimore the Black Deaths, the protests, and the riots.He agrees that many police people misuse their power.  Sometimes enforcement seems almost arbitrary.  And the court system is a mess.  He knows; he's been sued a few times on matters even he and the judge couldn't understand. But it still cost a lot of time, money and aggravation.

But what about those kids in the streets. That's a mess too, he says.  It drives people away, he says, even those who feel sympathetic to the cause.

Would anything change if they stayed quiet? I asked.

He gave me a look that said "Oh my God, you're one of those!"

Maybe it's really a good strategy. It certainly gets attention." I said, feeling that I had overstated my case and gave the kids too much credit for actually having a strategy.

Then I didn't ask what he thought about so many Black men being in jail, most of whom for things white men don't go to jail for.  And while you're in jail you can't be with your family and be a role model for your son.  And when you get out of jail you can't get a job because you've been in jail.

So then you stay mad at the white cop who arrested you for smoking a joint, or for giving him attitude, or for just being big and Black on a dark night in the city. And you son gets angry too.

While I wasn't saying all of those things my friend asked me why these kids didn't just take advantage of all of the new educational opportunities being offered to them.  Why didn't they stay in school and get good jobs.

I asked him how many would somehow get $70,000 to go to NYU with is daughter. I didn't bring up my concern about new studies which show that if kids are undernourished, impoverished, abused or neglected their brains don't grow as fast or develop as completely.  And how Black children face the same problems in school that they do on the streets: they get suspended and expelled for things that white kids are made to stay after school.  I did say that in those elite, often privately funded special city school that have small classes. long days and a lot of structure, many of those inner city kids do very well.  But most inner city public  school are underfunded and poorly equipped. They have large classes. That's because the wealthier white kids are down the block in private schools and their parents don't vote to expand the school budget.

It's all complicated.  It all goes in circles. It's difficult to sort out cause or effect.

Then he asked me why these kids end up in gangs and sell drugs to their neighbors and ruin their own neighborhood.

They like to be in groups, I said.  Most of us do.

Those are the wrong groups, he said.  And he left to join his friends for dinner at the country club where he paid $100,000 to join.  It's good for business to be a member.

I told him to hire someone with an accent.  Isn't that what "job creators" do?

The Gentics of Ferguson?

The crisis in Ferguson, MO, continues, with lots of heated debate on both sides.  It is an excellent example of how complex our lives have become. Because we humans are such complex creatures, with uniquely evolved brains that allow us to plan, compute, design and build, we seem to have created an environment in which many of our ancient innate tendencies have become counter-productive

I have been reading all about Ferguson, talking about it with to some of my poorer, angry patients – people who aren’t prejudiced, they tell me, but who feel that Blacks are getting all the breaks—and also reading E.O. Wilson’s new book The Meaning of Human Existence. (How’s that for taking on a big topic at an old age?)

Wilson makes that point that there are two kinds of adaptations our genes have made over the past few million years.  One kind is to increase the likeliness that the genetic material of our individual selves, and our specific children, survive.  Whatever gives us an advantage: size, speed, tool making, problem solving, more fertile sperm, bigger hips, cuter smiles, anything that will increase the likelihood of a next generation, and of one after that, will remain a part of our genetic material, while those who do not have enough of those traits will drop out over time.

The second kind of genetic adaptation, that Dr. Wilson points out, is that we keep  the kind of genes that help our group survive.  We are one of the few creatures in the history of the earth who have learned the benefits of group cohesion.  Certain, very successful colonies of ants are among the few others.  People seem to have evolved to control the earth in the space of the larger creatures, while those ants not only out number us by billions, they are by far the most successful at surviving and multiplying of all the creatures.

Humans have very evolved skills at discerning what others are thinking, at communicating our moods, at anticipating threats. We have learned how and when it we should lead and when to follow, and when to act altruistically so that it helps our group.  We have learned that stronger groups get more resources, eat better, and raise the chances that more of our children will survive.  This is true of the ants also.

Some of that is what makes our racial problems so difficult.  We live in a country that professes to welcome all people, and offer all people equal opportunity.  Yet, Black people have never really been seen as part of that.  Many have ancestors who were brought here by force and were used as a source of energy, and not regarded as people.  Many people live in white enclaves and have very little contact with Black people.  They don’t know them as people.  They see them as part of a competitive group.

This was probably true of Officer Wilson.  I don’t know how many Black people are his close friends, probably not too many.  It was too easy for him to quickly classify Michael, Brown as a “demon,” which makes him not a human, not somebody’s child, but a part of a competitive group.  I am sure that this was not conscious.  His brain acted way faster than his mind had a chance to think.  It was all primitive emotion, acting to survive. Also, he had a badge and a gun, which gave him a very different mind-set than Michael Brown, who must have felt cornered by an enemy.

If America is to finally going to do better, we have to know one another as people.  To do that we really need to integrate our neighborhoods and our schools and our social clubs.  Since I won’t hold my breathe for that, it would be helpful if we did have regular gatherings, social gatherings, of all kinds of people, all of whom bring all kinds of food, play all kinds of music, and really get to mix and meet. We have to take the “otherness away.”  We have to have some real relationships.

This should happen in Ferguson, Boston, Selma, Topeka, L.A. and Akron; all over. For far too long our politicians have used the formation of opposing interest groups to split this country apart.  That is easy to do, and it works.  Except only in the short-run.  We have already put some people on reservations and keep them apart.  We already had a Civil War, from which we have never totally recovered.   Perhaps we could realize that it’s time to learn that the people in this country should be considered all a part of same group, and that we are not each other’s enemies.

That’s tough.  It goes against some of our genetic predispositions.  But the world is different.; we are all much more interconnected.  We are not separated by mountains and live in independent tribes.  That world, of 1000 years ago, will never be again.  There is no guarantee that the U.S. can do well in this new one if it goes to war with itself with tanks and automatic weapons.  We have to adapt.