Recently, I wrote a bit about “othering” and how, even in the late 20th Century, so many of us, even those who skewed progressive, who adamantly rejected all forms of prejudice and bigotry on principle and could, in our way, articulate why this was wrong, could not help having blind spots, could not escape the ways we were enculturated. It is, obviously, a combination of lived experience, education, and the desire to learn, to stay curious, to be vigilant, to insist on being better, that remedies these blinkered perspectives. Dare I say, it’s the ability to become—and remain—woke that encourages harmony, ensures progress?
On a good day, I can consider my own development through the more positive lens of Progress-with-a-capital-P and the eternal powers of narrative and empathy (with a big assist, as ever, from the Humanities in particular and higher education in general) and the truth of Mark Twain’s epic observation, worth quoting in full: Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime. (Here I think we can consider travel, literally, but also the very real traveling that occurs when one is in the process of learning, being curious, extending empathy, refusing to be fully satisfied with the status quo; embracing the notion that we are, as thinking mammals, forever in motion, getting from one place to the next, hopefully always somewhere better or at least more tolerant and equitable.)
When I’m feeling less charitable (about the world, toward myself), I look back on what a callow, ignorant, spoiled, insufferable adolescent I once was. Perhaps I’m being a bit harsh, especially considering my age, the time(s), and the typical trajectory of a typical American youth, certainly circa 1987. This is fodder for a much longer reflection, but there are a handful of things I typically invoke when I hope to explain to younger generations the cultural lay of the land when I was a teenager. In the course I taught last spring, we explored the impact of creativity on American history, looking decade by decade at the most significant pieces of music, media, and literature. It scarcely required more than a single class to elucidate what a less kind and gentle world we occupied:
One, it was an appalling matter of policy that MTV (for young folks, this all music network was a sort of multi-purpose combination of TikTok, social media, CNN, and YouTube) barely featured black musicians, even those who had songs/albums consistently in the Billboard Top Ten (David Bowie, who warrants all the love & praise, was typically ahead of the curve and did heroic work, going directly into the lions den to expose this state of affairs in this 1983 interview).
Two, obviously we’ve made tremendous (albeit necessary and extremely overdue) strides in terms of tolerance across the board, but it’s downright revelatory that, through all the ‘80s, gay bashing was a considerable part of our most famous comedians’ repertoire. Just to take two, who were among the most popular and wealthy, Eddie Murphy and the embarrassing Andrew Dice Clay (his own 15 minutes proof that every decade America decides to grant a completely moronic hack a platform, making them fabulously rich for all the wrong reasons), had zero shame in their game.
All of this is to say: if we, as Americans, were this hostile to our own brothers and sisters, imagine how unbecoming our attitudes and perspectives were regarding entire countries who looked different and spoke the wrong languages. I don’t need to imagine, because I lived through it. It didn’t hurt that by the time the Gulf War broke out in 1991, I’d already taken the requisite classes (and drugs) to ensure my frame of reference had evolved. But I remember how easy it was to outright demonize all Iraqis, justifying our pursuit of the degenerate Saddam Hussein (if an entire country needed to broken to make our fin de siecle omelet of America empire building, so be it).
I was sad to learn that my High School Physics teacher, Dr. Faruk El-Yussif, recently passed. He was beloved by all, mostly because he was a ceaselessly kind, caring teacher; he was genuinely invested in the students, and his obvious love of science coupled with a demonstrable desire for us to learn (much less appreciate!) Physics made him a favorite. He was patient and tolerant to a fault; we were the mirror images of his humility: skipping class with impunity, assuming he’d always grade on a generous curve, and seldom get upset when we made a mockery of his classroom. Again, we adored him and still acted like assholes. If this is what it means to be a teenager, in America, we were acing that exam.
It’s funny. I feel like I’m at once protesting too much about my own culpability in being a typical (?) privileged teenager (especially a late 20th Century vintage), while wanting to own it, interrogate it, better understand it in context, but also not go overboard. I mean who expects privileged teens (especially late 20th Century vintages) to have had a proper or even reasonable handle on international affairs, “othering,” politics, and the basic appreciation of the role adults (in general) and high school teachers (in particular) play?
All a longwinded way to introduce a poem I wrote a few years ago, which does, more succinctly and, I hope, convincingly, what I scarcely scratch the surface of, above. (It’s always a fresh thrill to see one’s work find the right publisher, and I’ve been fortunate to have my work published by Exterminating Angel Press many times. With gratitude, happy to share this poem about how so many of us fail to recognize, at the time, how fortunate we are in those who teach us, and how many of never understand how fortunate we are, due to matters of geography and good luck.)
On This Day in History, 4877 B.C.: Universe is created, according to Kepler.*
When it came to physics—to name only one subject, there was no saving me, long on imagination, lacking in discipline and so much else— it’s with some humility that I recall dispirited high school teachers serving up pearls before my swinish eyes, me preoccupied with anything other than savoring the ways knowledge traverses time and space, allowing civilization to define and sustain itself. Mr. El-Yussif had emigrated from Iraq where, in a previous existence, he had been an esteemed scientist, a man of considerable respect—the kind poets and professors are accorded on other continents. But his English was awkward, and he’d been humbled by the unfathomable ways of our world (although he was also an innately modest man, as one who studies those who made sense of space must be; he didn’t even ask us to call him Dr.). Naturally, we mocked him, our ignorance as profound and practiced as his knowledge, yet he relished speaking to the starry-eyed seniors in his class about the Copernican Revolution and blasphemous brilliance of Heliocentrism, or how to properly pronounce Ptolemy and appreciate all he wrought and, of course, the great Galileo—almost burned alive for daring to suggest the devil’s in the details of everything we see. So, while his quiet wisdom was wasted on me, it was only a few years later that the sticky resonance of Psychology and recreational drugs changed my velocity, and I began thinking about the relativity of time, a more urgent sensibility taking shape like some amoeba crawling out from murky depths. Then, in 1991 I watched an entire country caricatured, some sociopolitical reprise of smirking teens mocking a gentle man who wore the weight of history like a donated suit. I saw History recycled as entire cities were bombed and displaced, men with power still condemning others to death, this time for refusing to believe the sun didn’t circle the United States. As I better grasped the cosmology of things, I found myself contemplating the quantum mechanics of second chances, and I prayed for all the professors unable to bend space and time to enlighten privileged kids, whose patriotic parents stick yellow ribbons on the bumpers of their sports cars.
(*On April 27, 4977 B.C., the universe is created, according to German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler, considered a founder of modern science. Kepler is best known for his theories explaining the motion of planets.)
RIP, Dr. El-Yussif (image courtesy of his Guestbook)