Progressive progress
Jul. 15th, 2005 10:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eyelessgameI grew up in a very racially-progressive household. The one time I can remember my father ever contorting his face in anger at me and threatening to throw me out of the house was when I used an innocent nursery rhyme (I was about eight and talking with my mouth full) that in his childhood had included the language's ugliest racial epithet (Eenie, meenie, minie, moe, catch a TIGER by the toe). He apologized profusely when it was explained to him what I'd really said (well, as profusely as a Midwestern Scandinavian can... that is, he apologized).
But I grew up without even a thought that people should ever be treated any differently because of their ancestry... and a severe intolerance for people who propagated (or ignored) the profound injustices of the past and their continued effect in the present. It's instinctive for me. Instinctive in a way that wasn't for my parents: my father had a Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus fervor about it that came from being the son of parents who had once given money to the Ku Klux Klan, but he'd learned his tolerance as a teen and adult, outside the home, from his own efforts and experiences.
I bring this up because things that are learned behavior in one generation can become instinctive in the next.
This morning Robert was asking me what can cause a plane to crash. I went through the list of things -- mechanical failure, very bad weather, pilot incapacitation, or pilot error e.g. "if something happens to the pilot that distracts him" -- and he commented on or repeated each item to make sure he understood, getting to "if something happens to the pilot that distracts him or her". He added "Pilots aren't all men. The only thing a man can't be is a mother and the only thing a woman can't be is a father."
What was learned behavior in my generation is automatic response in his. At least in my home.
But I grew up without even a thought that people should ever be treated any differently because of their ancestry... and a severe intolerance for people who propagated (or ignored) the profound injustices of the past and their continued effect in the present. It's instinctive for me. Instinctive in a way that wasn't for my parents: my father had a Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus fervor about it that came from being the son of parents who had once given money to the Ku Klux Klan, but he'd learned his tolerance as a teen and adult, outside the home, from his own efforts and experiences.
I bring this up because things that are learned behavior in one generation can become instinctive in the next.
This morning Robert was asking me what can cause a plane to crash. I went through the list of things -- mechanical failure, very bad weather, pilot incapacitation, or pilot error e.g. "if something happens to the pilot that distracts him" -- and he commented on or repeated each item to make sure he understood, getting to "if something happens to the pilot that distracts him or her". He added "Pilots aren't all men. The only thing a man can't be is a mother and the only thing a woman can't be is a father."
What was learned behavior in my generation is automatic response in his. At least in my home.
