Interfaith Insight - 2022
Permanent link for "Do we criticize or do we build to make things better?" by Doug Kindschi on May 17, 2022
In a guest essay published in The New York Times this past weekend,
Eboo Patel, founder of the Interfaith Youth Core, now known
as Interfaith America, relates a lesson he learned nearly 30 years ago
as a university student. It is a powerful lesson for us all today.
Patel first heard the term “white supremacy” in an introductory
sociology course while an undergraduate student at the University of
Illinois. He had the image of men wearing white hoods and burning
crosses. But the professor continued describing the “assumption that
from clothes to language to aesthetic preferences to family structure
— for white people are normal, and the patterns associated with people
of color are inferior.” But then Patel realized that she was
describing his entire life, from his embarrassment about his
grandmother from India and how she cooked, dressed, to even the fact
that she lived with his family. While such structures were much more
challenging for Black, Native Americans, and Latinos, they could also
impact persons like himself from South Asia.
He recalled a presentation his father gave at a conference of
Asian businesspeople where he was asked why he purchased a Subway
store rather than an independent shop. His response was, “Which white
people do you know are going to buy sandwiches from a brown guy born
in India named Sadruddin? A recognizable franchise covers your dark
skin and ethnic name. It helps you hide.”
As Patel continued his studies he learned about how racism
permeated everything, and he became committed to doing all he could to
fight against such patterns in the structures of our society. In his
final semester at the university he did an independent study with an
African-American female professor of theater and education. The
professor and some of her graduate students had written a play dealing
with children’s experience of oppression. In a talk-back session
following the play, Patel was eager demonstrate what he had learned in
his independent study and was the first person to respond.
He recounts how his professor smiled in anticipation of his
comment. Remembering his response, he writes, “I used a tone dripping
with scorn. I targeted a scene in the play where a child retreats to
his own room after a fight with a parent. In front of the entire
audience, I declared my professor and her graduate students guilty of
racism and classism for writing a character who had his own room.
‘What about all the families where kids don’t have their own rooms? Or
the Black and brown families that don’t have houses? Don’t you realize
that your play is only further oppressing them?’”
He had hoped the professor would be proud of him, but was shocked
by her email response, “Her students, she wrote, had worked so hard on
the play and were deeply hurt by my comments. She was hurt, too. Why
hadn’t I offered constructive suggestions, she wondered. She closed
with this: Since you were disappointed with the play that these
students wrote, you should try your hand at creating something better.
It is always harder to create than it is to criticize.”
Patel reflected on his experience and realized the important
lesson he had been taught, writing, “My professor was teaching me that
devoting yourself to seeing the bad in everything means that you
ignore the good and you absolve yourself of responsibility for
building things that are better.” He realized that he didn’t want to
be the critic, he wanted to build to make things better; he “wanted to
be the person putting something on the stage.”
This is a lesson for us all, especially in these days of mass
shootings, racial violence, and toxic polarization in our politics as
well as permeating social media. As the political campaigns ramp up,
it is so much easier to go negative and disparage the opposition
rather than offer solutions. In social media, hate talk gets
transmitted and gets more followers than constructive ideas.
Promoting fear is easier that building to make things better. Can
we find leaders who don’t build on fear but present a vision? Can
each of us resist the impulse to simply complain and criticize? Can
we build to make things better?
[email protected]