(Edited from a homily given by Kenneth Germanson on April 3, 2022 to the Congregation of the Living Spirit, an ecumenical group in Waukesha, WI.)
I’ve been watching with awe as Ukrainian refugees are being accepted with wide-welcoming arms by most of the people of nearby Eastern European nations, particularly Poland. Rarely have nations received displaced peoples with support, not only with food, water and shelter, but with such open acceptance. Usually migrants are treated with disdain, disgust and horror. Nowhere has it been truer than in our own country.
Sadly, too, the treatment of migrants has become a political football. Donald Trump, of course, helped to stoke the fires of resentment to immigrants when he announced his candidacy for President while riding down the escalator on June 16, 2015 and said:
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us [sic]. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” [i]
Perhaps the difference in the treatment of the Ukrainian refugees is due to race; the Ukrainians, of course, are white and of Slavic backgrounds, very similar to the Eastern European countries that are accepting them. The Syrians, like the Latinx from Mexico and Latin America, are dark-skinned.
Immigrant populations have long been subject to discrimination of the worst sort, particularly in our own country. Think of the arriving immigrants from Ireland, Italy and Poland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And, of course, our own African-American diaspora.
In comparison, also in 2015, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said as thousands of Syrians, Iraqis and Afghanistans sought refuge in Germany, “we’ll manage this.” Her generous reaction to the immigrants brought an avalanche of hateful and negative retorts.
Now, what does all this have to do with today’s topic: Respect, the forgotten virtue?
I remember from my Catholic upbringing and the teaching of my convent-reared mother about the importance of the seven virtues: Prudence, Justice, Temperance, Courage, Faith, Hope and Charity.
To those I would add “Respect.” Before you can respect yourself, you must respect others. Note that I said we must respect “others,” that means people and groups of people who are not like us.
There’s a tendency among most people – even those of us who believe we are caring, generous and open-minded – to think we are superior to other groups of people. That type of thinking comes naturally. Reflect upon these words by Erik Erikson, a famed psychoanalyst, who in 1973 noted how easy it was for a group of people to feel they are the “chosen species,” and how this belief clouds their ability to think and make reasonable and intelligence decisions. This belief is dangerous since it creates, according to Erikson, a “kill and survive” mentality, a form of unthinking machoism in which a person may turn to aggression and even violence to fight those they deem to be wrong or who might challenge them.[ii]
You’ve likely heard the phrase, “they’re not our kind of people.” While it sometimes refers to a difference in skin color, it can also mean people who live in another, possibly less affluent, part of town; it can also mean a professional person who might look down his or her nose at a plumber, street laborer or sanitation worker, i.e. the garbage man or woman.
I’ve always been offended by the term “red neck” to signify a person of lesser intelligence, that is, a lesser human being. But when you think of it, shouldn’t “red neck” be a badge of honor, since in its purest form it refers to the person who has labored in the sun day-in and day-out, most likely doing the necessary work of growing our foods or building our highways.
The late George Meany, longtime head of the AFL-CIO, has said this to folks who might question the high hourly cost of hiring a tradesperson. Noting the even higher hourly rate charged by attorneys, he suggested that most residents of New York City would agree that a plumber was more important for their daily existence than an attorney.
Basically, respect becomes a virtue when you can respect all human beings, regardless of what station in life they inhabit, what the color of their skin, whether they be wealthy or poor or whether they may be homeless or panhandling on the street. Now, let’s not be Pollyannaish about this. In my mind, you may also dislike a person’s point of view, their actions or even their manner of dress.
Recently, I finished the book, “Four Winds,” by Kristin Hannah, and I must say it affected me more than any book I’ve read in recent years. This book could be a modern-day “Grapes of Wrath,” in the way it describes the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and how a family in Texas was smothered in the despair of the period. It describes among other things how a single mother with two children migrated to California and found the people there – with a few notable exceptions – to be cruel and unwelcoming. This desperate mom repeatedly was shunned or mistreated because she was dirty, unwashed and smelled. Yet, she tried to maintain her dignity while trying to raise her children.
After being told to get out of town by a shopkeeper, the mom’s 13-year-old daughter was both infuriated and embarrassed and sounded off:
“Who does he think he is? Just ‘cause he hasn’t hit hard times, the crumb thinks he has the right to look down upon us.”
In truth, don’t we all need to be treated with respect? We need that to feel we have a purpose on this earth. It gives us dignity.
In my more than 35 years as a labor union activist, we found that the issues that truly motivated workers to seek a union, or to risk going on strike, were the issues of being treated with dignity.
You may recall that Martin Luther King made his famous “mountain top” speech on the eve of his death at a strike rally for garbage workers in Memphis. He said:
“The issue is injustice. The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers. . .” [iii]
The strikers in Memphis carried signs proclaiming, “I Am a Man.” That says it all, doesn’t it?
Think back, too, to the fight to end slavery and to the quest for women’s rights. Those motivations, too, were based on the need for dignity and respect.
Sojourner Truth’s famous speech in 1851 to a women’s convention in Akron, Ohio, says it all:
“That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?”
There’s a common thread to all of these examples. Everyone of us needs to feel we are somebody. I think a lot of those folks who support Donald Trump and his foolishness are frustrated just because they’re may feel they’re not respected. That feeling has been fueled by rightwing politicians who claim the “elites” of society, as represented by the “mainstream media,” do not respect them and their position in life. When a person is feeling disrespected, that person is prone to follow a demagog.
Yes, respect certainly could become the eighth virtue. Perhaps, too, we can paraphrase the golden rule to read “Respect others as you would have them respect you.”
[i] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apjNfkysjbM&t=208s
[ii] . . . Different tribes and nations, creeds and classes (and, perchance, political parties) consider themselves to be the one chosen species and will, especially in times of crisis, sacrifice to this claim much of the knowledge, the logic and the ethics that are theirs.”
- Erik H. Erikson, The 1973 Jefferson Lectures in Humanities.
[iii] View speech here: https://www.afscme.org/about/history/mlk/mountaintop
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