-Isms: Views on life in rural America

It’s either black or white. No gray area exists.

A former student - we’ll call him B - once told me the above-mentioned statement. From his perspective, things either happened a particular way or they didn’t. No mishmash of emotion was involved. Things simply were or weren’t.

B spent a lot of time in my classroom. He was enrolled in two courses I taught, and for one period a day, he worked as a student aide. And then there were the other hours of the day, the times when fellow educators sent him to my room because he pushed their thinking with his conclusions and neither would budge or consider the what ifs or another perspective.

The English classroom became his safe haven, a place where he could express his opinion and not be judged for the way he thought.

What I tried to explain to him was perspective. Every day, I would attempt to illustrate how gray area is comprised of a person’s experiences, giving context to a situation or subject. Like how he preferred red delicious apples. I preferred a tart Granny Smith. To me, skin on red apples has a bitter taste. He disagreed because he had never tasted a bitter red apple.

Perspective.

A few months after my husband died, I spent an entire class period in tears from frustration and anger and sadness, running the gamut of the stages of grief.

B pulled up a chair next to my desk and bluntly told me to “get over it.” I was alive and that’s what mattered.

Black and white. No gray area. No clouding of judgment based on emotions. No loss of a loved one.

I’ve been thinking a lot about B lately, especially as I listen to conversations about the state of this country. I hear a lot of this or that, a lot of black or white. The gray area is hidden from plain sight, yet it exists.

I hear and see people unwilling to listen to another’s story or opinion without argument and I’m not sure if it is because there is a lack of commonality or a lack of empathy or a basic lack of respect.

Author Harper Lee eloquently wrote one of life’s best lessons in chapter three of To Kill A Mockingbird: “If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”

We, as a society, need to start discussing the gray areas of life, learn more about others by considering their perspectives and the experiences that lead to what controls their thinking.

Until we stop classifying things as black or white, right or wrong, ugly or pretty - whatever comparison we’re making - and start looking at the whole situation, start climbing inside their skin, nothing will change. Instead, this cycle of thinking will only continue to divide and drive us apart.