Telling the Tale: Challenge Biases and Teach How to Think
On All Hallows’ Eve, I’m reminded of several children’s tales told during these dark grey evenings of harvest past and before bright celebratory holidays future. Tales about witches, goblins, ghosts, wicked and headless horsemen who prey on hapless victims such as children seeking to satisfy their cupidity for sweets and attention or poor folks seeking shelter or clumsy, lonely teachers seeking honor and companionship. Which of the characters in famous tales of horror are remembered most? Are we attracted most to the victims or the monsters? Why is that? Perhaps the answers are in the way we tell the tale. Although parents and teachers read frightening stories to children as lessons about the evils that surround us, how well do we teach the lessons of victim versus assailant and prey versus predator and naiveite versus empathyless determined brute? If we teach only the lesson that Evil is ugly and strong; Victims are faceless and weak, then is it any wonder that Evil wins far too many of our present-day battles?
Absolutism is the first lesson in a Halloween story. Absolutist thinking is dangerous; it is limiting. Those who come close to falling prey to predation can choose other paths, other rooms, guidance, avoidance or assertiveness. Walking alone or remaining a silent bystander has risks. Believing in the safety of our surroundings and in the goodness of others has risks. However, there is also risk in challenging one’s first impulses, of sharing one’s fears and asking for help. How many worshippers within the safety of prayer rooms or students within the safety of learning environments must die before we accept that no situation is free of unthinkable harms? The six Goebbel children were not safe with their parents in the concrete bunker of the Berlin Reich Chancellery. Over 260 spectators and participants in the 2013 Boston Marathon were hurt or killed even though tens of thousands of cheering supporters were present. Potential prey can prepare; predators are selfishly-motivated opportunists.
An absolutist believes she has no more than two choices and that only one of them promises safety and security. An absolutist believes that his brilliant mind will fix all problems, that anyone who questions his mind is an evil opponent. An absolutist easily and willfully falls prey to harm and subjugation and evil manipulation. Justice Barrett’s problem will never be that she is distracted by motherhood or religious faith; it will be that as an absolutist she will succumb to the machinations of authoritarian thinkers, many of whom are vile. She will. Justice Barrett’s fanatical mindset consigns her to too few options. A child is an absolutist...until she learns, by story tellers and experiences, that facts and opinions are not the same, appearances are deceptive, beliefs are changeable, growth comes through struggle, authority must be questioned, and inquiry is rewarded.
The child must be taught freedom, self-determination, inquiry, the power to make choices and the will to learn from those choices. The mythical forest children will not live in a safe cocoon of fir and pine; their curiosity will not lead every time to happy places. But they will learn that venturing forth and meeting new people might put them into the hands of an ogre, just as these same situations might result in wonderful growth experiences. The ogre is an unlikely chance. The wonderful moments are highly likely and should never be missed out on.
The other lesson to be learned from children’s Halloween stories is that victim-blaming is lazy thinking and that it deflects from understanding how cruel or wrong is the predator. Andrew Copson reminds us of this in his essay We Must Never Blame the Victim. When a parent reads about Snow White’s plight and then constructs the message that she is too simple and pretty, too virginal and sweet, too this or that to avoid the Queen’s jealousy, the parent puts blame for the tragedy onto the victim. The Queen’s retaliation and cruelty were merely her natural impulse but, Snow White should have sensed her own vulnerability even as she provoked the Queen with her innocence and forest friends? Is this it? Is the Queen’s retaliation justified and are Snow White’s adventures a provocation that should have been eschewed?
The Queen’s jealousies and absolutist mindset are a dangerous combination. She has no empathy for Snow White, the forest creatures, the workers that befriend the younger woman. However, she does believe in her own authority and demands subservience to it. The Queen’s cruelty is an extension of her inability to understand others, her willful disbelief in the kindness and importance of others. Without her insecurities and continual worries about holding onto undeserved power, the Queen might merely have banished Snow White to another country. But a fusion of hubris and envy is explosive. Snow White didn’t deserve being a target of the Queen’s rage. And, although Snow White is not the product of the Queen; nor can she have avoided the powerful Queen; she was nonetheless treated badly by the Queen. The Queen Monster was wrong in every way a human can be wrong.
Recently in the news, Republican leaders say that Black people are not the victims of systemic racism or near-impossible-to-break cycles of poverty or even of novel coronavirus; Black Americans provoke their antagonists. How they provoke a virus is not understandable. But the rhetoric is as old as victim-blaming by slave owners. We are supposed to believe, according to Republican leaders who defend their white nationalist leanings, that Black Americans suffer only because they provoke. If only they’d be quieter and milder and demand less. Those who take lives and livelihoods and potential from young Black men and women and their communities must be held accountable for it. Taking life is the crime. The victim is not blamable for the crime.
Finally, let us all keep reading these frightful stories to our children. They are fun because fright in the safety of a story teller’s arms is fun. But, let us also use stories to teach lessons. Our children will never be free from reasonable expectations of those who have wicked intentions. However, as long as we nurture growth mindset, our children will have the mental tools and weapons for standing their ground. First, they must be capable of recognizing the predators.