Hijacking Group Membership: Does Jesus Want You to Kill the Fuzz?

It’s a simple exercise of basic logical principles – in this case, syllogisms; you know the IQ tests that ask you questions like: If all A’s are B’s, and all C’s are A’s, then are all C’s B’s?

Just as not all Middle Easterners are Muslims, and not all Muslims are extremists who want to blow themselves up for Allah, so too not all Christians are arming themselves against the government, not all Christians hate homosexuals, etc.  Too often outlier members of a group taint the name of the entire group, and people jump to unwarranted assumptions about other members of that group.

Recent headlines about the arrests made of members of Hutaree, a Christian militia group, which may have been plotting to murder police officers, came as a shock to those who can’t quite picture Mother Teresa strapped with Uzis and hurling grenades at law enforcement officers.  Yet to others this is just another example of a religious Right that has grown dangerously edgy ever since the Left took power under Obama’s rule.

Hutaree brings to mind other instances where the appellation of ‘Christian’ is often attached to shady and distasteful (to put it mildly) subjects, such as the infamously hateful Westboro Baptist Church or even the self-entitled Christian missionaries who were accused of trying to traffic Haitian orphans out of the country without proper documentation in the wake of the deadly Haiti earthquake.  Such spectacles would make many avoid acknowledging their Christian faith in order to avoid the stigma being associated with the beliefs and actions of these outliers.

The problem lies in the linkage between the ‘particular’ (Hutaree) and the ‘universal’ (all Christians everywhere); group membership is often identified by use of a name (Christian), which is used both for the particular as well as the universal, and so the name connects the identity of the particular to the identity of the universal along with any reputation held by the particular.

This problem is not limited to Christians (think of the increased profiling of people of Middle Eastern decent by airport security after 9/11) or even to religious groups, but extends into every type of identity grouping known to mankind – political parties, ethnic groups, racial groups, people from the poorer side of town, Hollywood stars, and on and on.  Too often people make crack assumptions about members of these groups based upon no other evidence than their group membership.  This is unfair bias, and is a way of thinking not too far off from racism – making unchecked assumptions about a person’s worth, ability, or intentions, even their very humanity based upon the group that they identify themselves with.  Such cases are unproductive and inaccurate, as these people latch onto stereotypes and refuse to consider any sort of revision to what they initially think.  Far more productive is to hold things in abeyance until more information is gleaned.  In the case of identifying threats to national security, although an eye for identifying potential terrorists is vital, caution must also be taken to make sure that there is no assumption that appearances are always correct.

While you can use known idiosyncrasies and tendencies of a group as a way to guess at what kind of person one member of that group might be, it should never stand as the be-all, end-all of who they are; further investigation is necessary, including most importantly communication with that individual to discover if indeed they do fit the stereotype.  More often than not, stereotypes are merely hand-picked generalizations influenced by uneducated bias towards outlier members of a group, giving them distorted accuracy and crippling their efficacy in giving knowledge about a group member.

With deeply divided and antagonistic political lines in America right now this is an important issue to keep in mind, and people must maintain propriety and fairness in dealing with those who belong to the ‘other’ group.  While there may indeed be Democrats with Communist leanings, does that mean all Democrats are Communists?  And while there may be racist people who vote for the Republican party, does that mean all Republicans are racist?  The answer to both is no!  Demonizing of the ‘other’ is always an easy way to try to gain an edge over your opponent, but it is not an honest tactic and it only perpetuates hatred and misunderstanding between groups.  If judgments are to be made fairly then the same rules ought to apply to all parties in a conversation.  Individual identity, beliefs and actions should take precedence over group membership when making assumptions about someone.

Hutaree may claim the title of ‘Christian,’ but such a small sampling of those who claim that label is hardly representative of approximately one quarter of the world’s population who also claim the label 'Christian.'  Indeed here is just one example of a Christian (with uncommonly Left leanings in fact) who were quick to speak out about the issue, arguing for Christ’s teachings of non-violence rather than Hutaree’s violent call to arms.  If progress towards mutual understanding and cooperation is to be made between Democrats and Republicans, between Muslims and Christians, indeed between all groups of people, assumptions must be set aside and communication between groups made a priority in order to combat the kinds of misunderstandings that escalates distrust and violence between people.

America's Over-Eager Humanitarians in Haiti

Here and here are two news articles about 10 American missionaries who were arrested last week for trying to take 33 Haitian children across the border to the Dominican Republic.  This situation is an interesting example of miscommunication between people from different cultures as well as some clashing between religious and political ideas.  These 10 Americans are being held in a Haitian jail while they are being charged by the Haitian government for child abduction and criminal conspiracy for trying to take these children out of the country without official documents.

Now, while these Americans keep claiming that they had good intentions, what amazes me is the fact that they even attempted to take children across the border without proper papers and without official custody of those children - how can they not think it's illegal?  One of the above articles says that the leader of the missionary group, Ms. Silsby said that:

...she acknowledged that she had no documentation to show that the children were orphans, or permission to remove them from the country, she said they had planned to return to the capital to complete the paperwork. She also said that in the midst of Haiti’s crisis, they thought they did not need the documents.

Why in the world did she think the law would not apply to her situation?  Just because there's a national emergency doesn't give them license to do as they please.  Now of course Ms. Silsby may have been genuine and would have done as she said she would and return to Haiti to complete the paperwork, but no amount of confidence in her own integrity gives her a right to exempt herself from Haiti's national laws on border-crossing.

Another crazy thing is that it was discovered that some of these children still had living parents, they weren't orphans at all!  The parents were told that their children would be educated and cared for for awhile, not put up for adoption.  The articles mention that even one of the children themselves was unaware of the intentions of these Americans; she just thought she was going on a short vacation then would return home.  Clearly, there was some kind of communication gap here, and that's the problem at hand: a lack of understanding on both sides.  I've even heard (see video below) that the organization that these missionaries were from wasn't even officially registered as a non-profit - the 'orphanage' they were planning on taking these children to wasn't even ready and equipped to receive these kids.



Now there's nothing wrong with someone wanting to help out, and I'm all for American humanitarianism, there should be more of it, but you have to be informed about the consequences of your proposed actions and have a thorough understanding of the laws and culture of the country that you're going to.  It becomes a problem when aspiring humanitarians get caught up in a fantasy of personal sacrifice when they *turn on the sarcasm* privileged to be so rich, leave their comfortable lives in their home country to go to the dark places of the world and help those poor unfortunate souls.  Then when someone slaps their benevolent hand, they jump in shock, not comprehending - after all, they were only trying to do a good thing *sarcasm off.*  Some of these humanitarians from rich Western countries never take the time and effort to research and understand the local culture of the people they are trying to reach out to; they think their intentions give them all the authority they need and that their first assumptions (read 'bias') are always correct.  These people are sadly mistaken.

Also important in this case is the idea of law in a time of national emergency or disaster.  Just because this group had money to give didn't entitle them to do what they wanted with these Haitian children; the earthquake did not invalidate the laws governing border crossing. Sure, there may be times when a law may be broken in an emergency, but trafficking children across national borders without legal papers is something completely different from breaking into a grocery store so you don't starve.  Now granted in such a big disaster as the quake in Haiti, things are going to be a mess, official documents may be lost, or these children may never have had them in the first place.  Yet these are things that should have been thought of before this group arrived in Haiti.  Did they pursue all the official outlets to get the children papers?  Did they know for sure that these children were orphans, or had official consent from the parents, and communicated with local orphanages that they were going to take care of the children?  These few news articles don't give all the details, and there could be many misunderstandings at hand in this situation.  Nevertheless, it brings up the important point that when you travel to a foreign country you need to have taken careful consideration of that country's laws and regulations; you can't assume all the same rules will apply as in your home country.

As one article quotes:  “If people want to help children of Haiti,” said Marie-Laurence Jocelin Lassègue, a government spokeswoman, “this is not the way to do it."

Attached to this issue is the recurring and oft-overlooked problem of insensitive and incomprehensive humanitarian aid from the first world to the third, which I will talk about in a future post.