Complacency Kills

"despite everything, I believe people are really good at heart"  --Anne Frank

Anne Frank, the 13 year girl old who put a human face and a voice to six million anonymous victims of the Holocaust through the diary she kept while in hiding from the Nazis, has become the most recent poster child for today’s  insidious  brand of racism.  Genocide, religious persecution, and the precious life of a child,  have apparently now been reduced to a sick joke about corn chips… all for our amusement.

Most of us have read The Diary of Anne Frank.  In fact, it’s been on the recommended reading list in schools here and in Europe for about six decades. The majority of us, (with our clever little daily face book postings, which in themselves read kind of like adolescent diary entries complete with select color photos of our free-wheeling lives), were probably required to read Anne Frank’s pathetic and powerful diary back in grade school. Somewhere between 6th and 8th grade- right around the same age  she was when she wrote her famous diary, is when most of us were introduced to the thin faced, smart little Jewish girl, who so aptly described the details of a harrowing life of  persecution.  A life most of us can only imagine, thank God. When we read her story  way back then, we very likely identified with her adolescent mind, and probably felt at least some of the anxiety she and her family must have felt, as they lived, cramped in silence, so as to go undetected, so as to …live…   I'm sure, most of us mourned the silencing of her  teenaged voice as the pages of her diary abruptly came to an end... and surely, we learned a lesson from her tragedy. That was the point, wasn't it?

   And now,  60 plus years later, the image of her sweet, iconic face has been cut and pasted onto a tasteless meme that reads, " I love Doritos but they are so loud”...

This disturbing “joke” has quickly made the rounds on the Internet, infecting, one way or another, all who see it. Whether people find it funny in a sophomoric and ignorant kind of way, or in some sick anti-Semitic validating way, ( it's on  Neo-Nazi sites now) or whether, like me, they are truly upset by it, the meme is out there doing its insidious damage, tearing another hole in the decency of man. 


Yesterday I saw it posted on a high school friend's face book page.  My heart sank when I saw it.  And it sank again, and…again, when I read the threads of commentaries by other friends. Not ONE person objected to the posting, and in fact, many went along with it, by clicking the  "like" response.  Yeah, it’s a real  Siskel and Ebert thumbs up… for sure...


 At first my own response was weak. I simply wrote the word "oh,"  because…. I felt truly "speechless."  A day later however, I found my "voice" and wrote the following words:  "Okay, I’m going to say it, what the fuck is wrong with people?"  And really, what the fuck IS wrong with people?

 The same day that I saw the Anne Frank meme for the first time, Dateline aired a show about racial discrimination and teen peer pressure.  Dateline set out to demonstrate how teens, all of who had previously been schooled by their parents on the wrongful nature of racial discrimination, still fall victim to peer pressure and their desire to fit in.  Watching the teens on a closed circuit TV, the parents looked on in a mixture of fear, concern, disappointment and surprise, as all but two out of more than a dozen, caved in to group pressure and made racially biased decisions—decisions that were based on unfair stereotypes and decisions, I might add, that in real life, and real time, would drastically alter the quality of an individual's life all because of how they "look."- 

I cried when the two lone teens found the courage to go with their gut and voice  objection to the unfair racial discrimination, despite heavy peer pressure.  The courage and compassion they so clearly demonstrated filled me with a sense of pride and moved me as if they were my own children. I thought to myself, this is how we cultivate great future leaders of the world. These are the kinds of people who should lead the world…

Have you ever been in the presence of, and heard a first hand account of a Holocaust survivor’s experiences?  I have.  I once sat in a college classroom, a week after my younger brother’s funeral, when I was in the deepest part of my grief, and listened to the incredible stories of two old men who had managed to avoid the angel of death, Dr. Mengele and his human torture, and who somehow managed to live to tell, even though their mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers were sent to the gas chambers.  I remember thinking that if these two old men could survive the horrors they just described, I could surely survive the grief I felt over my brother’s untimely death.  Those two old men reminded all of us in the room that day, that bearing witness to their stories of the Holocaust came with a huge responsibility- that we were all now charged with the task of sharing their stories with future generations so as to ensure that history could not repeat itself.  

Anne Frank and six million people died in the Holocaust because too few people had the courage to speak out against racial discrimination, religious persecution and genocide. The "harmless" Anne Frank meme, spreading around the Internet without obvious objection, is reminiscent of the kind of complacency that served as the seeds of the Holocaust- yes, it's true, Anne Frank died because many well-meaning people were simply complacent and, silently went along with an ugly ugly status quo, even though they were "decent" people.   And though she knew what kind of fate awaited her in the hands of the Nazi’s, this brave young girl actually managed to put into writing a belief she held onto- ...that “people are basically good at heart.”  If for nothing else but this sentiment alone, she should not be the fodder for a tasteless joke, she believed in your goodness… so show some respect for human life, and please, please don’t prove her wrong.

Why are you calling my sister sweet as ice cream and dumb as an afternoon parade road block, when you've never even met her?

I first read the following blog entry:http://phoebeholmes.com/2011/12/23/being-retarded/ a week ago when a friend posted it on her facebook page, a post which resulted in my friend being "jokingly" accused by her adult niece on facebook of simply being "overly politically correct." However, when I saw the blog post entry, I quickly cut and paste it to a disability forum page that I subscribe to, and also thanked my friend for the posting.  A few days later, I noticed that on the forum page, the blog entry had started a bit of a running commentary, and the author of the blog entry was mildly under attack....for using too narrow a narrative of disability, and for using too many "nevers" to describe her disabled daughter's life. While I understand the reaction of those who want to change negative perceptions about persons with disabilities, I also understand what it is like to live with some of the "nevers, " that the blog mom describes. I'm starting to understand more and more the degree by which our perceptions of disabilities are insidiously affected by the world around us. And while the perceptions often have much less to do with the real possibilities for persons with disabilities than we think, as we know better  today, we, like the disabled person, can be prisoners of society's narrow view. That is why we need to understand the power of a single word to either block or effect change...

I once spoke out in my work place asking people to stop using the word retarded as their description for just about everything you can think of from deliciously sweet ice cream someone was enjoying at lunch, to the inconvenience of an afternoon street closing for a high school parade. I announced one day, after being fed up with hearing it over and over, that the word was really offensive- One person actually responded by saying "It's just a joke," and then, rather defiantly, she asked me who is was it offending, anyway?  As it wasn't, in her worldly opinion, offending anybody present. ( Apparently many people think if a "retarded" person is not in the room, then it's okay to use the word)... Stunned by her ignorance, I answered: "Well, me for starters." ....And that should have been enough right there and then, in my opinion, to make them all stop, but... - I guess people don't realize that beyond feeding into a narrative of disability that perpetuates devastatingly limited stereotypes with real consequences for persons with disabilities, by bandying around the word "retarded", there are also family members and friends of people with disabilities who really feel the pain and narrowness of that word. And friends and family are often the ones who are on the front lines in the battle to effect change....


I have a twin sister who has a cognitive disability- and there really are some "nevers" that apply to her cognitive skill level. She will for example, never drive a car, never live on her own, never get married, ... and although some of her "nevers" are the result of her cognitive skill level, part of what has limited her has been the way the world views her as a "retarded" person- Sweet as delicious ice cream and awkward and inconvenient as an afternoon parade road block-how dismissive! Yet if they knew my sister, they'd see she has a sense of humor and a temper like the rest of us, that she has feelings and needs, and wants and desires like every human being. Or if they took the time to hear about even a fraction of the battles my mother and father had to fight with the State to get the proper care for her over the course of 40 some years, or felt the pain we felt as children for being teased about her by other kids, the discomfort of  rude stares, or perhaps if they experienced the worry for every time she was injured in State care but wasnt able to tell us who and how, or had been given the wrong medication with adverse affects, or if they realized how many ways her status as a " retarded" person forever changed our family dynamic, in both positive and negative ways, or if they ever sat with her for an afternoon, they'd realize she's more than an ice cream flavor and a silly parade.... she's our Mary Mac, who we love and who loves us back. She's my twin, the person I came into this world with...

It is not her disability that had dictated the quality of her life, it's the world's reaction to her disabiltiy that has created some of the limitations that are now "nevers" like the blog mom talks about. For sure, if the world Mary was born into 50 some years ago had a more  open view of disabilities, there would be fewer "nevers" on her life list. It is with both gratitude and sadness, envy and delight that I welcome the positive changes that are now available for persons with disabilities- and these changes have come about because of friends and family members who advocate for change...the ones who speak out..the ones who take offense to indifference...   and this is why a word, so seemingly insignificant to others, needs to be retired from the slang pool.  It hurts us, and has such insidious and destructive power when it comes to the lives of persons with disabilities, and that my friends, should be more than enough to make us stop using it.... 

2012 ... the New Year....

This year is going to be the year.  I feel  and believe many wonderful things are  going to happen this year.... for all of us...if we make a conscious effort to choose the positive over the negative




 2008 was the year  I walked away from a business that I had been with for 7 years, a business that I  became an owner and  partner in, a popular local business that I had given no less than 120 percent of  my time, energy, creativity, and hard hard work to. I  had built that business into a ridiculously successful business, and the more successful it got, the more my former business partner wanted me to do while she did what she wanted with the profits (in the most non transparent way she could, and did).   Over time in my life with that business, I became somebody I didn't like very much. I worked sixty to eighty hours a week, developed nagging health issues,  snapped at the people around me, and eventually... spent every day seething in resentments knowing deep down I'd been duped by my partner, who was a most masterful manipulator hiding behind a sweet and grandmotherly voice.  Gradually the sincere love I once felt towards her was replaced by a feeling of utter contempt.   I also, sadly,  lost a few friends in that time, by putting the business first. Looking back, I realize  I even came dangerously close to destroying my marriage,  because business always came first.  My many sleepless nights in that period were spent quietly obsessing over the business,  and when the business partnership finally  soured, I began obsessing over how I could get out of it all.  Then... one day, after seeing a draft of the profits and loss for the year, it all became painfully clear, so.... I calmly, and rather resolutely walked away, literally.  I called my former business partner to inform her that I was done, and I meant it. I never spoke to her again.  Leaving my business behind was one of the hardest  things I ever did. To put my coat on, and walk away from a business I built, a business that a few months after I left, was sold for profit, and one that upon leaving, never again yielded me, the creative heart and sole behind it,  one. red. cent.... though I was owed thousands...As painful and scary as it was,  walking away was necessary and  a matter of survival. 


 The hang over, anger, shame, and the emotional pain from that experience was fierce, and it lasted for a few years. Initially, I  started litigation, but had neither the emotional strength  or funds to get very far,  and decided that the lawyers involved were jerks anyway.  Besides, my contract was weak, which in itself was a hard and shameful lesson.  So, I simply had to keep moving forward,  despite having left a part of my identity behind.  I felt very lost for a time.   In early 2009 I took a job as a waitress in a really grueling and abusive environment, went back to school for a graduate degree in English,  worked as a graduate assistant, and all the while, I  secretly blamed myself  for  the past, and worried that I was "too old"  "too out of place" and that  I had pretty much failed at life... and that life had failed me... 
By 2011, after I finished my courses in grad school,  I  spent four months looking for work and sank into a deep depression. It was actually a deeper depression, because looking back, I now realize I was depressed all through grad school, and before grad school. Nothing was clicking.  Then, out of the blue, in July,  when a former employee's husband asked me to help him open his new business, I was only too grateful to be working again... and it was in the role of  a business manager in the craziest of  environments that I finally bottomed out on my own stinkin thinkin. Something in what turned out to be a highly dysfunctional  environment  forced me to turn the corner, and when I finally found the strength to let go of the dysfunction around me, I let go of a lot of my anger and the resentment, and my own dysfunction. It was time to let go of the past.  The  experience of helping someone open their business made me remember what I am capable of, both the positive and  the negative.  So, I consciously chose to go with the positive because simply put, I'd had more than enough of the negative.
By the end of October I  left the job, threw out the Wellbutrin,  reconnected with my community of healthy minded friends, and even gained  a few new smart and loving ones.  In  November I shed a few toxic people.  In December, just before the holidays, I braved a much needed sugar detox and began a new healthy diet regime with lots of leafy green vegetables,  and shed 8 pounds of my 20 lb weight loss goal by the first half of  January. 


My most important goal for the new year however,  is to do one kind act per day towards another person, to stay in a positive mindset so as to allow new things to come into my life, and most of all, to be grateful for all that I have. I have a lot. I have a  higher power, a  husband,  family, and friends who care about me and who I care deeply about,  two dogs who rule my life, and really, all that I need for today....To  keep what I have,  I need to give it away,  hence, the thoughtful act for another person per day...


In a few days I will be starting my new full time job as an editor/curator.  Time heals all wounds. Beautiful things are coming our wayhttp://inoyan.narod.ru/kaleidoskop.swf