Faith in strangers

The National Humanities Conference in San Francisco early this month had as its theme “faith in strangers,” an audacious suggestion on the other side of Sept. 11.

Eminent civil rights historian Taylor Branch once remarked that democracy requires “faith in strangers.” Americans, he said, “have more faith in strangers embedded in our tradition and in our fundamental philosophy than most of us care to contemplate.”

Historically, the Judeo-Christian-Islamic faiths are deeply hospitable to the stranger. The handshake as a form of greeting developed to allay fears that one might be holding a dagger on one’s hand to cause someone harm. The deep bow exposing the nape, the most vulnerable part of the human physique, could easily allow the head to be disjointed from the body with a flick of a scimitar, yet, the gesture is the most honoring act one can bestow upon someone. From the Fertile Crescent to the Nile, the full bodied abrazo would later become the Mediterranean gesture of welcome and safety.

MLK, Jr. would observe about the physical separation of blacks and whites in American, that “Men hate each other because they fear each other. They fear each other because they don’t know each other. They don’t know each other because they can’t communicate with each other. They can’t communicate with each other because they are separated from each other.”

Sixth grade social studies on the World Today points to the fact that the world’s population has been in motion for the last fifteen hundred years. In our modern era, a rapid urbanization has occurred in which people from remote and varied areas congregate in metropolitan neighborhoods bringing with them practices and pride of their culture and religion. Wars and famine has accelerated this migration of populations from one continent to another.

The dance of accommodation, adaptation and integration had been America’s jig and jitterbug, ball and ballet. The land of open spaces and unlimited opportunities has, however, seen a narrowing and tightening of channels. Post-September 11 America is discovering that we are less familiar with each other, and the perceived threat of terrorism has made people less trustful of each other. As our comfort zones get shaken, we take refuge in cultural, political, and intellectual enclaves, where the line between friends and strangers is clearly drawn and maintained.

The recent flare-up of ethnic rioting in France, which ironically is one of the world’s more culturally tolerant countries, points to the reality of marginalized societies along with well-off, affluent ones. People at the edges of the mainstream often erupt into uncontrollable spasms of desperation and despair, and the volatile settlement of ignored, tolerated but separated strangers ignites into searing conflagration.

Our Commonwealth is clearly a microcosm of the diversity that has come to characterize our age. While we have not seen any unmanageable protrusion of racial divides, we are witnessing a retreat into ethnic identities. One expression of note is the push to register people of native descent with accompanying talks to further extend the prohibition of the alienation of land from the natives to the “strangers.” Residents who are active in the Dekada movement that seeks to clarify legal provisions within the American family for those who have obviously maintained longevity and loyalty in their adopted land, are vilified for trying. They are despised for having the audacity to suggest that their separation from the body politic need not be temporary.

Danielle Allen, a street smart intellectual, has a book titled “Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education.” She takes on what we have taken for granted every Halloween when we send our kids in fear and trepidation to knock on other people’s doors. We do not trust strangers. We tell our children not to talk to strangers. They are to go only to homes familiar to them.

A sampling of my students’ fears have the Bangledeshis at the bottom of their barrel of distrust. They do not know them enough and thereby, they are feared. Add the universally shared cultural prejudice on the dark skinned, plus the fact that most of these strangers are reputed to be of the Moslem faith, which 95 percent of island Christians still find the term “infidel” appropriate, and you have the ready recipe for a cauldron of hate. It does not matter that this month, at the end of the Ramadhan, Muslims celebrated Eid-ul-Fitr, a time of peace, forgiveness, brotherhood. They are strangers. They are not people one wants to talk to, let alone trust.

Same is true of the South Asian Indian. The high-profile ones are the merchants and traders in our midst. The Hindus among them, and their Buddhist counterparts in South East Asia just celebrated the five-day Diwali early this month. This period is to the Hindu what Christmas is to the Christian. Diwali means “rows of lighted lamps” and we generally know of this through the Thai community with the floating of lights, and the Japanese whose version from the northern Buddhist strain, also float lights in the name of peace. Diwali falls on the first day of the Lunar

New Year of the Indo-Aryan tradition so it is a celebration of hope and seeing the goodness in everyone; of fresh starts including seeing the value of one’s enemies.

But beyond the commercialization of these practices, we do not really care to know what they mean and how it affects the behavior of those who practice them. And why should we? Just witness the after-election behavior of some of our politicians and commentators. Hardly has the announcement of the result of the counted absentee ballots made and already, politicians are jockeying for position for the next election.

Also, as a dear friend quipped, the promise for nourishment for my mind from analysts and commentators has long ago deteriorated to poison for my thoughts. How do we expect to talk to strangers when among ourselves, who are socially civil, greet each other in the same stores and restaurants that we commonly patronize, cannot find civility in our voices when we try to edge ourselves to a position of advantage in the political arena?

November is also American Indian Heritage month. These are the strangers who have long been in our midst. Within the American family, the newly embraced Chamolinian-American is grouped within this shunted and neglected people. Alas, to paraphrase Pogo: We have met the stranger, and it is us!

To talk to strangers, we must. To have faith in strangers, we only have to have faith in ourselves.