2/20/55

Do You Have a Blind Spot?

[Title changed to “Clear Vision and Blind Spots” in 1967]

Scripture: (Read Matthew 23: 1-12)[and Mark 12: 28-34a in 1967]

Henry Smith Leiper has repeated the story, probably oft-told elsewhere, of a young lad who went one day into a grocery store and asked if he might use the telephone. The grocer knew him and said, “Yes, certainly you may, James.”

Then he heard the boy’s end of this conversation: “Hello, is that you, Mrs. Jones? ---- I understand that you would like to have a boy working for you around your place, cutting grass, feeding the chickens and tending the garden ----- Oh, you have a boy working for you now? ---- Well, is he perfectly satisfactory? ---- Oh, he is satisfactory. I see. Thank you, Mrs. Jones. Goodbye.” The boy started out of the store, but the grocer spoke up before he reached the door. “James,” he said, “If you’re looking for a job, perhaps I can give you something to do around here.” “O no, thank you sir,” said the lad, “I got a job. You see, I’m the fellow who works for Mrs. Jones, and I’m just checking up on myself.” Probably a bit of objective self-checking is good for most of us. And, for most of us, it is probably not so simple as it proved to be for James.

One of the places for a careful, and frequent, self check is this matter of brotherhood toward people of races and creeds other than our own, to which our attention is called this week. Brotherhood week and Brotherhood Sunday follow hard upon the heels of Race Relations Sunday. The season of the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington seems to be a likely time to do a little self examining in the area of personal relationships within the freedom they struggled to win and preserve. We have no hesitancy in lauding and loving the freedom for ourselves. Are we fully as ready to promote freedom for others? Even for others of our own land, our own state, our own community and church? Sometimes a very careful answer to such a self-inquiry reveals some blind spots we had not known existed. Worse than that, some of us continue to be continuingly unaware of our own blind spots.

If one has never been told that he has what is called a blind spot in his eyes, he may not know of it until in some class or as a parlor game he does this simple experiment. He puts a good clear dot on a page of white paper, and holds it up about 8 inches from one eye, while closing the other. Looking ahead with the one open eye and fixing the gaze so that the eye does not rove around, he moves the paper and the dot slowly around to the side. Suddenly the dot disappears. Moved farther around, or back whence it came, the dot reappears. Why does it disappear at a particular point? Because there is a spot on the back of each eyeball which does not register vision but only assists in transmitting vision.

Each of us has such a blind spot in each of our two eyes. They are not easy to detect, and we may not really know that they are there. But we deceive ourselves if we assert that we have “no blind spots.”

Some of us may be color blind. And not a few of us are socially blind when it comes to the color, or the race, or the religious preference of some neighbor, or of a considerable group of people.

When anyone asks you, “Are you prejudiced as to race?” what do you say? Perhaps you say, “Yes,” because you know you are. If asked, “Are you prejudiced against or for a person whose religious background differs from yours -- Jewish or Christian, Protestant of Roman Catholic, Mormon or Gentile, Buddhist or Hindu”-- what do you say?

If you say, “Why no; I have no prejudice” are you quite sure that you have no blind spot at that point? The very fact that so much prejudice concerning race is unconscious makes it doubtful that any of us may assert too boldly that we have none. I, for one, have had to deal with it in my own viewpoint, since childhood.

My first view of people with black skins came to me when a group of entertainers came to our village one evening. Their skin color made them seem to me so different from the ordinary run of neighbors whom I knew well, that I’ve spent a lifetime trying to keep myself reminded that a person is a person on his own merits, good at heart or bad at heart, capable or incapable, ignorant or brilliant, without regard to color of skin-pigment, bone structure, or tongue accent.

One thing that makes it difficult to iron out our prejudices as to race is the fact that we live so much of the time in the presence of race prejudice -- some of it so common-place that we do not notice it for what it is. We were accustomed, for years, to newspaper accounts in which, if crime or mis-behavior is recounted, the word “colored” or “Negro” appeared after the name of the suspect or culprit, unless he be Caucasian.

If news reporting is to give the race of one, why not the race of all? If there was any point in reporting that Harry Jones, Negro, was the driver of the pick-up truck that collided with a street car, why not note that it was Peter Johnson, Swede, who was booked for traffic violation; or Jack Wells, Caucasian, appeared in domestic court to answer charges of desertion; or J. Q. Benson, Nordic, had violated the building code. Does not the reporting of the fact that a culprit is “Negro” or “colored” constitute evidence of our social prejudice just on the basis of race in much of this nation?

Is it necessary, or right, even to refer to one who has rendered distinguished service, as Roger Brown, Negro diplomat. Why not just let Roger Brown stand on his own abilities as a public servant? I have often wondered why it must be that we get accustomed to people of a certain race in some circumstances and find it difficult to accept their presence in others. It is easy to pass the time of day with the good-natured fellow who wears a porter’s cap on the train. If the same fellow wore the conductor’s cap and asked for your ticket would he be equally acceptable?

It has intrigued me that one may eat hot biscuits as I did in a gracious home in Missouri, biscuits prepared by black or chocolate-brown hands, and served by similar hands, and relish the biscuits as desirable and delectable food. Yet it is not expected in that state that one whose hands are white would shake those dark hands in the parlor, nor would one seat the possessor of white hands and the possessor of dark hands side by side on the sofa or across from each other at the bridge table. Why? I know that social custom has the deciding voice, but why? Are one pair of hands dirty? They prepared those delicious biscuits, didn’t they? Do dark hands go with inferior intelligence? Do all white hands go with superior intelligence? (I’ve known some that did not!)

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Leiper tells of an incident in Portsmouth, NH some years ago that reveals common blind spots. A young post-graduate student from South India was studying at Columbia University in New York. He had graduated from a mission school called American College in Madurai, South India, with an excellent record. He later became head of a great government school in India. His name is James Anukoolam. While in New York, arrangements were made for him to speak at Star Island a few miles off the coast near Portsmouth. He arrived by train in the evening only to find that the last boat for the day had left. He asked a taxi driver to take him to a hotel in Portsmouth. Every hotel in town decided that it was “full” when his dark skin caught the eye of the room clerk. He tried the YMCA with similar results.

Then he asked to be taken to the jail and allowed to have a cell for the night. The jailer put him in a cell with a drunken bum. He found this so disgusting that he asked to be released and said that he would walk the streets for the rest of the night. The taxi driver had, however, become interested in him and returned to the jail just as he came out upon the street. “It’s a shame that you can’t find a room in this town,” he said. Then the driver made a surprising offer. “Come and sleep in my room for the rest of the night. I have to be on the job all night anyway.”

The next morning, on the way to the wharf, the taxi driver looked puzzled when Jimmy Anukoolam said, “You have certainly been a Good Samaritan to me.” “What do you mean - a Good Samaritan?” asked his American benefactor. Then Jimmy told him the story of the Good Samaritan and asked, “Would you like the book in which this story appears?” The taxi man said he would, and he received the first New Testament he had ever possessed, from the hand of this man from India.

On the following Sunday, the pastor of one of the largest churches in Portsmouth told the story to the congregation. Then he introduced Mr. Anukoolam with the dry remark: “This happened in our city to our honored guest preacher of this morning!” It made quite a sensation at the time, and the story was widely published. A good many people, both near and far were red-faced about it. To some, it was a most embarrassing mistake. It is hard to see how any Christian could be happy over it.

Prejudice is hard to define -- perhaps harder to discover and define in one’s self than when we see it in others. For instance, in a case of mistaken identity, why should it seem a relief to discover that someone is a native of India and not an African from Angola or Louisiana? Why should people find that it is easier in their own minds to accept the fact that one is Hawaiian, than that she is Negro or perhaps Mongolian?

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Is it not fair to say, with Leiper, that a person who has race prejudice (either prejudice for one race, or against another race) would be one who judged individuals or groups of a race not on the basis of experience but in advance of any direct experience. An experience of Native Hawaiians a century and a half ago is revealing. Because some of their ancient religious legends led them to expect that their gods might one day appear in human form and with fair skin, (why “fair” I don’t know!) they regarded the first white discoverers of their islands as deities. Their first prejudice was highly favorable. Later, when the white strangers proved to be not gods but some of them cruel and heartless villains, the natives became prejudiced against all white men. This second prejudice against white folk was later changed, not by chance, but by more experiences of a different kind, with friendly white people who came as missionaries. Prejudice, either for or against, passed into understanding and a more discriminating judgment. Some white men were bad; some white people were good. And Hawaiians wanted to know who were which.

If our prejudice is strictly prejudice -- that is, judgment before experience -- the cure for it is to be found, if anywhere, in experience. If our prejudice is really antipathy -- that is, a feeling of dislike based on unpleasant experience -- then the only cure is not from “kidding” ourselves but from seeking more experience. It was a fuller experience that changed two kinds of prejudice among those native Hawaiians into discriminating understanding.

I knew a man of Caucasian ancestry who never got over his stubborn British assumption of the superiority of the Caucasian race. If he knew that a Japanese merchant in Hawaii carried an article he wanted to buy, he would still look for it in a store which was at least managed by a white person. Even in a business deal with his money, he would say quite frankly, “No, I’d rather give my money to a white man.” He could “boss” Orientals through a foreman. But he could not feel that he wanted to deal otherwise with any of them. He never gave himself a chance to learn the difference between a Japanese or Chinese whom he might like and one whom he might not like for good reason.

We have found it too hard to learn that a man is a man -- good or bad or not-so-bad -- without reference to his race, his creed or his nationality, but on the record of his actual performance. It is a mistake for a Christian or Gentile to assume that every Jew is a sharp dealer or that all Jews have a nose shape peculiar to their group. With experience, you learn that many Jewish folk can’t be distinguished in appearance from Nordic gentiles, and that there are Jewish people who are very unaggressive in business matters. At least I have met some. It is a mistake for a Jew to assume that all Christians have been ready to shout “Christ killer.” There are hosts of Christians who do not believe that and have been heavy hearted over that injustice.

It is a mistake to type people instantly upon learning that they are “Roman Catholic” or “Protestant” or of some other group label. It is never a mistake to assume that there is a possible bond of brotherhood in kindred spirits, and that this bond may be expanded to include more and more folk who, on the basis of experience, are found to be human folk like one’s self.

In his summary of the commandments which he himself had learned from the Old Testament, Jesus laid it down as one of the two great principles of right living that one must be concerned for both self and neighbor. [Luke 10: 27-28]. He said some disconcerting things about who is a neighbor (the Good Samaritan -- a “foreigner”). [Luke 10: 30-37]. But the general principle is this: that a man’s love for his neighbor shall be as strong and reliable as his love for himself. To love a person is to have a warm, active desire to see him develop into all that nature indicates he ought to become.

The Kingdom of God will be a lot nearer when we people have learned to regard each other as persons with individual worth, to be accepted on merit and loved as neighbors.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, February 20, 1955.

Also in Wisconsin Rapids, February 12, 1967.