Update to my previous post

**As an update...** In our staff meeting yesterday we debriefed the situation with the man and the old lady who were arguing, and the general conclusion was that the best approach to such a situation would be to stay physically out of the way (so that you don't get hurt), but to still verbally engage the situation and try to de-escalate it, double-teaming it with another staff member so that each person focused on one of the clients. I'm glad that by God's grace, it worked out ok the way that it actually happened and that none of us got hurt, but that us as staff therefore had the chance to talk about what it would be best to do in a similar situation. It still goes against my instinct to stay physically out of the situation, even when the 91 year old woman is the one provoking the disagreement, but I can also kinda see the point that you won't be able to keep the situation under control if you yourself are hurt and out of commission. sigh. Ah well, at least the important thing for now is that everyone is ok.

Arg...Conflict!!

I think that my job at the homeless access center is a crash course in how to deal with conflict--most of it unfortunately conflict with people that I have no previously established relationship/trust with. At the end of last week I had a homeless woman just go off on me about how she felt like we were wasting her time and treating her disrespectfully and nobody cared and that I was giving her attitude. Well, I hadn't been giving her attitude, but when she spoke to me like that I confess that I did respond with some then! In thinking over the situation for the next couple days, I concluded that I want to learn how to respond to people's frustration and anger in a way that lets their emotions roll over me so that I can stay calm and not-angry myself, and to figure out how to respond constructively to the situation. I've decided to work on a new approach. As one of my mentors helped me realize, it seems like one of the very frustrating things about being homeless is that everyone else is always telling you what to do and your own voice and will get lost in the shuffle. So when people express frustration to me this week, I've been trying to start off with simply letting them know that I hear them, and that yes, I see how that must be frustrating, instead of starting off with a "but" argument. We'll see if this helps, or at least if it helps me to stay compassionate and collected instead of angry!

Then today I had a whole different kind of conflict to deal with! Usually I sit at a desk behind a very high counter (about chest high), which is between the lobby and me. This is for safety purposes. A new individual had come in to apply for our services and I'd been working with him on getting the paperwork filled out. Then my supervisor, who happens to be African American, walked by on the way to her office. At this point, the client made some racist comments basically to the effect that he could not be in the same place with African Americans. My coworker informed him that in that case, our shelter was probably not a good fit for him, since a lot of the folks we serve are black (we serve more white homeless folks than any other ethnic group, but African Americans are second). It was definitely an awkward and offensive exchange (we had other clients waiting right there in the lobby who are black!!) and he left.

About fifteen minutes later I happened to be out in the lobby helping a client when he walked back in again to get a phone number for another shelter from us. A tiny white 92 year old homeless woman took one look at him and said, "You again!" Well, he responded with, "You have a problem with that?" and then she walked right up to him and got in his face. I had horrible visions flashing through my mind of what if he pushed her or something and the frail thing fell over and broke something--I just didn't know what was going to happen! I didn't even think about it--I just knew I had to get between them--so I slipped right between the two of them, at the same time asking her to please be quiet and not say anything to him. For a second, standing there right in front of him, I really wished that I was behind that counter! But I was able to deflect his attention off of her and on to me, and to get him to focus on what he was looking for from our agency instead of on his conflict with her. I wanted to get him out of the door as quickly as I could and I was not willing to go out of my way to personally get him into a non-walk-in shelter (since it's bad for us and for the chances of future clients if we give bad referrals) so I did not give him any new phone numbers, just told him to try the walk-in shelter that I'd previously told him about. Solely by the grace of God he chose to leave without doing anything or creating more of a scene. I was the tiniest bit shaken up by it all, but mostly glad that it had turned out ok and that physical conflict had been avoided all around. Sigh. I am NOT a conflict loving person, so this job is definitely stretching me!

Some Things Cost More Than You Realize

Just found out about a documentary being shown this week on modern day slavery. As I was browsing their website at www.Call+Response.com, I came across this short music video set to a Radiohead song, juxtaposing two little boys in very different situations--and the connection between them. Definitely worth watching. The cool thing about the call+response website is that it's not only informative, but it offers some different ways to get involved in the fight to end slavery and human trafficking. I'm hoping to go see the documentary this week if I'm able.

New website!

Servant Partners has an awesome new website, complete with lots of cool pictures. Drop by and check it out! :)

"Otherizing" and American Politics

When I was a freshman in college, we all had to take a class called "War and its Alternatives." I remember reading about how one of the consistantly used propaganda tools in warfare is to "otherize" the purported enemy. Cartoons and verbal descriptions picturing the enemy as animals are one example of how this is often accomplished (think World War II ads depicting the Nazis as apes, or even more recently cartoons that show President Bush as a mouse with large ears). Such propaganda decreases the ability of the public to emphathize and relate to the "enemy" and increases the public's keenness to see the enemy destroyed.

New York Times columnist Nicolas Kristof recently wrote a column piece on "The Push to 'Otherize' Obama." It's an excellent piece to read in its entirety, but here's one quote from the article:

"What is happening, I think, is this: religious prejudice is becoming a proxy for racial prejudice. In public at least, it’s not acceptable to express reservations about a candidate’s skin color, so discomfort about race is sublimated into concerns about whether Mr. Obama is sufficiently Christian. The result is this campaign to “otherize” Mr. Obama. Nobody needs to point out that he is black, but there’s a persistent effort to exaggerate other differences, to de-Americanize him. Raising doubts about a candidate based on the religion of his grandfather is toxic and profoundly un-American, cracking the melting pot we emerged from. "

And as Eugene Cho points out in his blog, we can see "otherizing" efforts directed at the Republican party as well, notably with the attacks on Sarah Palin, although here race is not the key factor. Honestly, I'm not a big fan of her, but why drag into the fray the fact that she likes mooseburgers, if not to paint her as some crazy hick from the far off reaches of Alaska??

Your thoughts on "otherizing" and this presidential election or on the possibility of racism cloaked in religious prejudice/preference?