We Didn’t Start the Fire – Billy Joel (an amazing “ballpark” concert last fall!)
The Jeep
I was driving around in my 2004 Jeep yesterday. Though it’s an older vehicle, I updated the sound system to “modern” times – blue tooth connectivity, all new speakers, no CD player (or tape or eight track). On longer trips I use my phone to select what’s playing. Sometimes it’s classic rock, especially on those summer excursions with the top down and the sun tempered by the breeze. Often, it’s MSNBC keeping up with the constantly shifting politics. And sometimes its lectures: the Civil War, the Federalist Papers, Constitutional Law, and all cued up for this spring’s travel season, the American Revolution.
But if I’m going on a shorter trip, I don’t go to all the technical trouble of setting my phone for the audio presentation. I just listen to the radio – either a classic rock station, whatever ballgame is on WLW (like my father before me), or National Public Radio (NPR). All that, to explain the brief excerpt I heard on NPR that led to consideration of the “isms” of our time.
CRT
We all know about Critical Race Theory (CRT). It’s a study of the impact of legacy racism on the legal system. The term was intentionally misappropriated to become the “watchword” of the right. They use it to explain any attempt to diversify our educational system, or correct the injustice of history lessons written to intentionally protect racist actions. It’s an inappropriate “shorthand”, but because it sounds bad: “critical” like near death, “race” with winners and losers, and “theory” like the science that the “right” disparages, it works for them. It’s sounds so much better than just being “racist”.
CRT is just another battle of the soon to be minority white culture warriors, trying to maintain power. Gerrymandering and voter suppression are two more battlefields in the same conflict. And while I sometimes despair for what my country has become, there is an inevitability in the census statistics: America will ultimately be a diverse nation without a single “majority” racial or ethnic group. We will change, willingly or not.
Ageism
But there are other, less well known “watchwords” that try to explain our cultural behavior. “Ageism” is used to describe the discounting of the older generation, what in slang seems to be defined in a single, now pejorative term, “Boomer”. The impact of ageism is subtle. As I arrive at the “age”, I’m just beginning to notice it. It’s not just the slightly slower and louder speech pattern some take with me. As a highly qualified sixty-five year old who didn’t get a job to a highly qualified thirty-eight year old, the thought can’t help but creep into my mind – was it the gray hair and long resume?
The other day there was a long Facebook response to my “rant” about Covid (I’m Done). Part of their argument compared the total US death rates from the flu (pre-Covid) to Covid deaths of those under sixty-five, trying to show how the flu and Covid were kind of the same. My first thought was that those sixty-five and over were part of the flu deaths, so the argument was inherently flawed. But even more, why would discounting the deaths of those sixty-five and over from Covid be an “OK” argument to make? Are their lives less valued by their gray hair or slowed gait?
Ableism
Or the term I heard on NPR the other day, “Ableism”. That’s the watchword used by those who have disabilities to explain the inherent bias against them in many physical and social areas. What we think of as infra-structure issues: ramps and elevators versus stairs, the “jokes” about braille on the drive-thru banking machines, are only part of the issue. Like the gray hair, does a wheelchair change the opportunities for employment?
The speaker pointed out that those who are disabled are often “written-out” of the conversation about Covid. For example, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the Centers for Disease Control, stated that those with “co-morbidities” had the highest risk of dying from Covid, but that for most others there was less risk. While the statistic is certainly true, it includes many people with disabilities. Her using it to justify how well the vaccines are doing seems to them that, like the “sixty-five and over” crowd, they are somehow in a different category that discounts the importance of their deaths.
Perspective
I’m sure that’s not what Dr. Walensky meant, but hearing it from a different perspective is important. Just like the casual “sixty-five and over”, the “co-morbidity” argument denies humanity. Sure Colin Powell had a long-term cancer. Sure he was weakened by the treatments. It made him “less-able”. But to say his death from Covid was somehow less tragic or less important is wrong. But for Covid – Colin Powell would still be alive. The blood cancer didn’t kill him: Covid did.
And a final point on “ableism”. Millions of Americans had Covid infection. Some are left with “Long Covid”, varying symptoms that don’t go away. So the ranks of “persons with disabilities” are likely to swiftly increase from the impact of Covid. How will they be treated in the future? Will our current national desire to “forget” Covid include forgetting them?
Fight the Fire
Racism, Ableism, Ageism, Sexism, Audism (against the deaf), Cissexism (against transgendered), cultural appropriation; are all just some of the list. It all reminds me of the Billy Joel song, We Didn’t Start the Fire, with his verses of lists:
…Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal suicide
Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz
Hypodermics on the shore, China’s under martial law
Rock and roller, cola wars, I can’t take it anymore.
We didn’t “start the fire” of these “isms”. As Billy Joel put it:
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning, since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it.
Labeling is always the first step in a battle. The “right” won on that count: Critical Race Theory now means so much more than an obscure legal theory. All of these “isms” represent real issues for the American future, for an America that should welcome diversity and differences. That’s what makes a better.
To get there, we’ve got some fighting to do.
