NOTE: The Moderate Voice from time to time runs Guest Voice posts by readers who don’t have their own website or who do but want to present their viewpoint (or just another perspective) to TMV’s highly diverse readership.Guest Voice columns do not necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV or its writers. This is by Jill Miller Zimon who has a great blog Writes Like She Talks. She is also one of four bloggers who blogs for The Cleveland Plain Dealer. This Guest Voice post also ran on her site.
“Feeling like†versus “being a member of†a religious minority
By Jill Miller Zimon
During a series of posts at Wide Open, a few comments centered around how people in the religious majority (Christians) feel as though they are, instead, in the religious minority in our religiously pluralistic country.
How, exactly, does that feel?
Well, if you read the comments and posts, not very good at all. In fact, writers there have only identified negative feelings with being in a religious minority in the United States.
Why would that be – how could that be? Especially if the one describing how it feels to be a religious minority here has never been the minority in this country?
One response to that question is that only identifying negative feelings with being in a religious minority in the United States would seem to imply that the people doing so only imagine that being in the minority is a pretty negative experience.
And guess what? In part, they are right. I would not necessarily choose the word “negative†myself – but my life as the member of a religious minority certainly has had and continues to have challenges that people who are in the religious majority most likely have never and will never experience. And until they do, I feel very strongly that the argument about feeling like a minority needs to be kept at exactly that level: it is a feeling – a legitimate feeling, but it is in no way reality.
I made a very strong statement – and wrote it more than once in the Wide Open annals: to act as though you are an “embattled minority†when in fact it is statistically impossible for you to ever be in the minority – no matter how convinced you are by your feelings that you are embattled, as though you must be a minority – is to be delusional (specifically, persecutory).
Anyone – minority or majority – may in fact be “embattled†on a case by case basis.
But, as a sustained, persistent state of existence, not even as an American Jew, with at most 3% of the American population identifying with my religion, would I say that I belong to an “embattled minority.†(Though I am certain that many other Jews have in fact experienced being embattled, and there have been instances when I have been through that as well but, as a general proposition, I don’t carry on as though I am embattled – this, of course, sets me apart in particular from more politically conservative Jews.) Thus, logic indicates that Christians, as 80% or more of the American population, are not now nor have they ever been nor are they likely to become, in the U.S., a minority.
Of course, one quick answer to all this could be supplied if Christians want to poll the Jewish Israeli population in Israel about how they feel when it comes to the likelihood of no longer being in the majority if they were to change the rules of the land and truly be a democracy.
Or, if you really want to know what experiencing anxiety as you anticipate and then actually lose majority status? Check with white South Africans too. What did it feel like not only to know you were going to lose your majority status but to then lose it?
So, there are examples of how anxiety over losing majority status is based on real possibilities and subsequent eventualities. But Christians in the United States do not face a real possibility of losing their majority. And that’s what makes their feelings just that: feelings only. Any action based on those feelings (as opposed to acting on incidents of real bias – such as is pointed out as a possible issue at the UColorado and at Colorado Christian University, between Christians – the story below the main CU story) would be based in delusion.
Tom Blumer helped this line of logic in this post by promoting the idea that even if people feel as though they are in a recession, his read on reality, via economic measures, is that they are not. As he writes, “Y’know, 46% of people could say the sun rises in the west and sets in the east, and that won’t change the fact that it rises in the east and sets in the west.â€
Likewise, I’ve been saying, it is statistically impossible for Christians who live in the U.S. to be a member of an embattled minority because it’s a statistical impossibility and when people act on those feelings as though they are reality, they are being, clinically speaking, delusional.
Let me give some concrete examples of how life is as a member of an actual religious minority.
******Enormous disclaimer:
Before anyone goes off and starts writing about how miserable Jill says her life is, you can stop right there – or risk having me astroturf your blog with how superficial you are.
I love my life as an American Jew. Period. No qualifications. These instances or examples I cite? 80-90% of the time, mere inconvenience and a teaching moment.
But I live this life I love as a member of an actual religious minority and I’m sharing in this post what that means. My experiences and feelings are not based on an anxiety that I am a minority when in reality I am not.
One day last week, I picked up the phone and it was Scholastic Books. They wanted to send me “an ornament.â€
Now, suppose you are Christian and Christians were in fact less than 3% of the American population. Imagine how you would feel if Scholastic called to tell you that they want to send you a box of yahrzeit candles.
Of course, that is never going to happen now, is it?
I could have done a lot of things, but this call isn’t atypical of what appeals we get when you’re in the minority. And so I simply said, no thank you, I don’t celebrate Christmas and she ended the call.
So – Christians get a free ornament for being a good customer of Scholastic. Jews? Well, we could take the ornament too I suppose, but really – thanks but no thanks. Just doesn’t feel right. Now – if they had offered me my choice of ornament or dreidl, or if they had offered me a free anything else that was secular, that would have been cool and preferable too. But my only choice was an ornament? Thanks. But, no thanks.
I felt that the call was and it actually turned out to be a completely minor intrusion – I probably should not have picked up the phone at all, as I often do screen my calls. But for whatever reason, I picked up. So be it. No big whoop as Linda Richman used to say.
And that’s one example of how it is and how it feels, actually, to be a member of a religious minority in the U.S.
Here are some more examples of how you might actually feel when you actually are a member of an actual religious minority:
1. You get used to it.
2. You ignore it.
3. You thank people who wish you Merry Christmas, Easter etc. Depending on the circumstances, you may or may not add that you celebrate something else and/or don’t celebrate that holiday.
4. You wish people to enjoy their occasions.
5. You are happy if they’re happy (weddings, baptisms) and join them to console (wakes, funeral mass) and celebrate (confirmation, first communion).
6. You might tell people what you do that is analogous to or different from what they do (bar mitzvah versus confirmation).
Those actions, based in my reality of being a Jew in the U.S., are all easy, easy, easy and, for the most part, rewarding.
What I’ve done with the following examples – which are not as easy, easy, easy – is to state how it is in reality (in green font representing the majority religion of Christianity), and then what the equivalent situation would be if, just for debate’s sake, Jews were the majority (hence the blue font) and Christians were the minority.
7. All the books in your child’s classroom highlight Christmas. All the books in your child’s classroom highlight Chanuka.
8. When you go food shopping, all the holiday cookies are green and red Christmas trees. When you go food shopping, all the holiday cookies are blue and white dreidls.
9. The holiday concerts put on by your town, your school district and the orchestra play only Christmas music. The holiday concerts put on by your town, your school district and the orchestra play only Chanuka music.
10. You need to have a garage sale but your town’s ordinances don’t allow them on Sunday because Christian residents are concerned about having too much traffic on their day of rest. You need to have a garage sale but your town’s ordinances don’t allow them on Saturday because Jewish residents are concerned about having too much traffic on their day of rest.
11. Throughout December, when everyone is saying Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you, not once does anyone wish you “Happy Chanuka.†Througout December, when everyone is saying Happy Chanuka to you, not once does anyone wish you “Merry Christmas†or “Happy Holidays.â€
12. Sporting events – spectator and those for your kids – and neighborhood or work parties are scheduled when you need to be in Shabbat services. Sporting events – spectator and those for your kids – and neighborhood or work parties are scheduled when you need to be in worship services or mass.
13. When radio stations start to play winter holiday music, the only song they choose to play for Chanuka is a joke song by Adam Sandler. When radio stations start to play winter holiday music, the only song they choose to play for Christmas is Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.
14. When you go to buy a calendar, only the Christian holidays are marked. When you go to buy a calendar, only the Jewish holidays are marked.
The eight examples in green font are the realities of being a minority. The eight examples in blue font are the imagined scenarios that, if you want to really try to feel what it feels like to feel and be a member of a religious minority, I would encourage you to envision: close your eyes and spend as much time as it takes to see how it makes you feel as you imagine encountering each of those situations in blue.
So – how did that feel?
Here’s the range of how I feel when I live the reality of those green font examples. These feelings aren’t mutually exclusive but of course I don’t feel each of them with every scenario:
1. Happy to share
2. Like I am teaching
3. The more people I tell, the more people who can no longer say, “I’ve never met a Jew before.â€
4. Excluded.
5. Invisible.
6. Insulated.
7. Indignant.
8. Tired.
9. Annoyed.
10. Angry.
11. Wishing it was otherwise.
So – if I’m a member of an actual religious minority, and less than 20% of the time would I say I feel anything more than inconvenienced – despite all the feelings I may feel – well, there really isn’t anyway that people who live in the religious majority can ever argue with any success that they are, in fact, an “embattled minority.â€
Still unable to imagine?
Let me put it yet another way: If you were the wallflower in high school, did you ever wonder what it might be like to be the head cheerleader dating the football quarterback? Or maybe you were the woodshop guy who secretly wished he could have the lead in the school play? And you played a game with yourself, wondering – what would it BE like to actually BE that cheerleader or QB or lead in the play?
Well – how ’bout folks in the religious majority tell me: what do you imagine being in the majority should feel like? Because I am never going to know. And you are saying that you don’t feel like you are in the majority, despite the numbers.
So, then – what are you imagining being in the majority is supposed to feel like and be?
‘Cause I gotta tell ya – the only thing I can come up with, if the Happy Holidays in city hall and the no Bibles in the public school make you feel like an embattled minority, is that your vision of what a majority really would be able to do is to control everything, everyone and leave no room for ever being even the slightest bit inconvenienced.
But of course, that wouldn’t be a democracy that respects minority rights, now would it, but rather a tyranny of the majority, yes?
So – I ask: How much inconvenience are Christians willing to tolerate before the feeling of being an embattled minority kicks in? Because compared to my life as a member of an actual minority who experiences all the examples I gave above, I just cannot get a handle on what inconveniences you are willing to tolerate in this pluralistic country without saying, “We feel like an embattled minority.†Look what I put up with. And I didn’t even go into the being called a Kike and so on. Seriously.
Well – I’ve gone on long enough so I’ll end with this:
Someone who knows me pretty well told me last week that she was realizing that I really didn’t give a rat’s behind about winning. But persuasion – I want to persuade when I’m trying to make a point and I don’t give up easily, if I give up at all.
I’d say that’s a pretty accurate observation.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.