What's Happened to Respect?
When the American Health Care Act passed the House, Republicans clapped and cheered, while Democrats sang "Na, Na, Hey, Hey, Kiss Him Goodbye." The former felt justified given the difficult time they had getting the votes; the latter felt justified because Republicans sang the same song when President Clinton's tax bill passed in 1993. We could have hoped for more respectful responses. Republicans might have remained subdued, in deference to the many Americans with passionate concerns about and disagreements with what they just did. Democrats might have done the same, understanding that taunting their colleagues would do little for the image of Congress and civil debate.
Such Congressional displays are not new, of course. But what's common can still be crude and damages mutual respect, a norm essential to civil discourse.
In New Orleans, Mayor Mitch Landrieu is removing four statues commemorating the Confederacy and its aftermath. The majority black population of the city demanded this. Some whites just as vehemently opposed it. Each side sees the issue from its vantage point: respect us and our values. Each side demands satisfaction, unconcerned and/or even unaware that total victory frays the social fabric that they depend upon as much as their opponents. Was a compromise utterly impossible? Could there not have been a solution that honors the need to address the damage that slavery did and at the same time respects the history of those who defended the South? Disrespect makes finding that solution harder.
Recent student protests at the University of California, Berkeley confirm that disrespect is an equal opportunity employer. Liberals threatened public safety if right-wing firebrand Ann Coulter was allowed to speak, and Conservatives insisted she had a right to say whatever she wanted, irrespective of who that would offend. Could they not have found an approach built on respect for both free speech and human dignity?
The Internet has emerged as the perfect platform for displays of disrespect. It facilitates communication that insults and demeans, all from the confines of one's own, safe-at-a-distance technology, with the added feature of anonymity if desired.
As humans we need respect. When we don't get it, the results are damaging to ourselves and others. Disrespect is degrading, as Martin Luther King, Jr. so eloquently described in Letter from Birmingham Jail. Its impact on his young daughter was to "see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky." Without respect, we can come to question our selfhood, our efficacy on the personal and public stage. Disrespect also breeds antagonism and anger, boulders on the path to personal and civic well-being.
Disrespect is easy; respect can be hard work. It is more than just tolerating others. Drawn from the Latin respectus, which means to look back, respect requires truly seeing, a process of active listening and engagement. To respect others, we must try to inhabit the world through their eyes. We must accept that we know less than we think and that some of what we know may be wrong. We must admit that there is not just one side and, almost always, not even just two sides to an issue. This requires a posture of humility that has the positive side effects of lowering the emotional tone and showing others we value their chance to speak. To respect others, we must accept them in what the Greeks called agape, one of three forms of love. Neither erotic nor filial, agape means we love others simply because they are fellow human beings. We don't have to like what they say or do, but we still acknowledge their humanity.
Respect does not mean agreement. Disagreement is an engine of social progress, revealing as it does alternative viewpoints and solutions. Without disagreement, we live in stifling conformity. Yet disagreement, to be productive, depends on mutual respect.
When disrespect flourishes on the national stage it trickles down into daily life. Our leaders in politics, the media, business, associations, and religion should be exemplars of the behavior we need to foster in civic life. But that is not enough. Parents are the most important role models for the young. When they yell at adults in youth sports, when they vent their anger through caustic venom at everything from politicians to drivers in other cars, and when they disrespect their spouses and children, they fertilize the soil of hatred. We all would do well to recall the 1949 musical, South Pacific. The play centers on the struggle of people to put prejudice aside and find comfort and joy in their common humanity. In it, Lieutenant Cable sings: "You've got to be taught before it's too late . . . To hate all the people your relatives hate, You've got to be carefully taught!" Disrespect teaches, and its lessons are hard to unlearn. Respect is the only antidote.
Photo Credit: Roger Noort
