Sunday, July 26, 2015

Our Right to Be Offended?
This letter to the editor appeared in the Akron Beacon Journal today.
“I thank Summa for standing up and being heard about a dress code. I think it is a wonderful idea.It is not a new one; when I went to school, a store or church, we were told by our parents what to wear and how to act with respect for our elders, parents, mentors and teachers. 
Summa is doing that, and I am proud to be in the SummaCare program.I am a senior citizen and read Bob Dyer’s column in Sunday’s paper. I usually agree with him, but not on this one (“Dress code at Summa has people questioning adequacy”). Pink hair, tattoos and piercings might make others happy, but I am within my rights to be offended seeing all this. 
Those with pink hair, tattoos and piercings do want people to look at what they have done to their bodies, or they would not have done it. They will cause people to look at them. Frankly, this scares the pants off their elders, but maybe they don’t care about parents, grandparents and greatgrandparents. 
We are another generation, but we also have earned respect and have worked hard and paid our bills and taxes.So many I see who have defiled their bodies don’t have money to pay rent, buy groceries or take care of their children, but can dye hair, get tattoos and smoke or do drugs. (I know, I have been a landlord.) I thank Summa and hope other businesses will follow its high standards. 
We do not have a legal right to be offended, but clearly many choose to frame their own tendency to be offended by others unlike themselves in terms of a ‘right,’ and that is disturbing.  It offends me.  But rather than focus on my hurt feelings, let’s consider this.


When we see conflicts as competing perspectives, we are less likely to leap to being offended, much less to a right to be offended and to have our offendedness reflected in policy.

Let’s assume the letter writer is a much-beloved grandmother who harbors zero ill-will toward anyone she actually meets in her life.  When I do this, I am able to sympathize with her fear of the unfamiliar and the very high value she places on respect for authority and civility. I even understand her nostalgic approach to civility, hitching it to codes of conduct she associates with her childhood in the 1940s or 50s.

Understanding this makes me reconsider being offended.  Instead, I like her and applaud her letter, her choice to make her voice heard, and would love a chance to chat with her on a porch somewhere. 

Instead of describing how offensive I found her letter initially, I would want to talk with her about her cousin Fred (the one with the tattoos he got after the war, who worked for years as an honest cop) or Mary from her parish who was the first person she ever knew to have two earrings in each ear, quite the scandal at the time, but really stepped up to help her out when her husband was sick that time.

When we can separate potential friends from the abstract fear mongering pedaled by Fox News, too many pastors and politicians (think Trump at the moment), it is more likely we can have a conversation about difference where it is not conflated with threat.

Neither this letter writer nor I have a right to be offended.  In fact, the tendency to frame our disagreements this way amplifies the social space between us, making us appear more different and more scary. 

If we instead start with ‘that seems like a good or bad idea’ and then discuss the many ways that idea might impact real people we know, we are more likely to see, and make salient, our shared humanity and build bridges, even if we continue to disagree on the quality of any particular policy decision, like a dress code in this case.

On the other hand, she usually agrees with Bob Dyer and that really offends me....

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