What not to say
I sometimes say the wrong thing for the wrong reason at the wrong time in the wrong way. It could be on a date, in a relationship with a friend, with a relative, or with a community partner. No matter how many times I have gone through this, I always find that if I slip up and say the wrong thing, for the wrong reason, at the wrong time and say it in the wrong way, the outcome is always bad. So I’ve been wondering and thinking about this in terms of how to engage publicly with people who don’t know me but with whom I must work in order to achieve some meaningful community improvement.
I may be justified in my anger over an issue. I may be justified in my anger over a bad decision made by a public leader. I may feel justified in my anger over what one group of people have done, or have said or believe, or intend to do. Heck, I may feel justified to just simply express my frustration over the apparent lack of attention to my concerns. All of these, and many more, are immensely valid reasons for expressing ourselves publicly. I’ll be the first to admit that I am victim to my own emotions more often than I would like to be, but no matter how many times I fall to this it never provides a solution to whatever it is that I am upset about in the first place.
I think of the many times I have experienced, witnessed, read about, or heard about the angry tirades of people who are concerned about something. I think of the series of angry meetings that Obama met with during his campaign to overhaul health care, and I think of the many displays of anger across our region when politicians fail to make a progressive change, or fail to listen to the community, or support some blatantly problematic new bill that will hurt more than harm us all, and I wonder about how much energy has gone to the way side that could have been used to continue plowing forward.
In my own experience, expressing my anger when someone is not interested in how angry I am has resulted in absolutely nothing. Nada. No change. No difference. In coming across and confronting ignorance, bad intentions, or even downright mean-spirited prejudice, I have personally found that pushing for a solution, arriving at some form of shared understanding, inviting the source of my anger to the table of conversation has yielded much better results. So as I move forward in this world of public meetings, public relationships, public decisions and public perception, I am ever more mindful of checking whatever it is that I am angry at the door about and taking that energy and converting it into a more solution-oriented direction. This isn’t easy to do, and I am not all that good at it, but I am trying.
What I have found is that when we come to an impasse with someone on a certain hot topic that boils our bloods, it is a better option to work out some resolution rather than sit in a corner and sulk in our anger. I recently experienced this in a variety of groups and have been disappointed at finding others taking the angry corner route. When many of us just can’t seem to get past whatever it is that is keeping us from having faith in finding a tenable solution that we can live with, we end up saying the wrong things in the wrong way and at the most inopportune times.
I cannot say with any clarity what it is that we must say to enable us to get past the red-hot, blinding frustration, anger and pain we suffer at moments, but I can say that more often than not, little to no solutions come from this. Or worse, the solutions that do come out are often hurtful, spiteful, full of dehumanizing ideas, actions, and meaning.
I think of the rhetoric coming from anti-immigrant folks across this country and it hurts me not just as an immigrant, but as a fellow citizen of this community that I have adopted. I believe this country is better than the divisive language that Fox News commentators spew out. I believe that this country is better than the hate rhetoric that legislators use to dehumanize groups of people for political gain. I believe that there are far more people in this nation that truly understand that to become a better national community we must deal with our neighbors, even if they speak a different language, with better consideration than what we have shown. For this reason, I choose not to say the negative things that I could say and to offer a space where we can dialogue. We have much to accomplish as we move our community ever more into a stronger society that truly protects its most vulnerable, but it will not do us any good if we sit tightly balled up in our corners spewing out diatribe because we are angry.
Tags: anti-immigrant, community, immigrants, latino immigrant, lucas diaz, prejudice, puentes director