A Point of View © 1996
By Paul V. Montesino, Ph.D.
We have two ears and one mouth because at some point in our evolution as specie, listening was meant to be twice as valuable as talking. It is a biological message some of us have decided to ignore at our cost as individuals and our peril as a society. Historically, when countries talk aggressively to each other and stop listening to each other, conflict ensues.
Of course, the physical act of listening is useless if the message we get is lost between the ears and the brain where the words are supposed to be accepted and evaluated honestly. In other words, if I don’t trust the speaker, no words will be enough to convince me.
It seems that words misspoken or misheard have been plentiful in our country since the unfortunate death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. But this conversation, or lack thereof, has been going on for a long time.
The year was 1962, the month April. I had been in the United States only several days and was on a bus ride to downtown Miami trying to find work. As the bus found its way to the city, I noticed many people of color getting on the bus and going straight to the rear seats and ignoring the empty seats in between.
I wasn’t thinking much of it, until I realized what was going on. Historically, blacks were only allowed to seat at the rear of the buses and these passengers were following those rules to a t. This happened several years after Rosa Parks, a black woman, shook the discriminatory practices in the state of Alabama by refusing to give her seat to a white passenger as she was supposed to do. Miami had eliminated those discriminatory practices but most, if not all, of the discriminated were still behaving as though those rules were still the law. It was clear that the spoken and the listened words were confused. But not listening to each other is not the problem. What makes it worse is that both the speakers and the listeners not only stop talking to each other, but also expect their expressed words to mean something different.
Let’s set the calendar two years later: July 2, 1964, the day the United States Congress approved the Civil Rights Act. Two days later, my wife and I were at Washington D.C. on a bus ride to Florida.
Most citizens of color were flooding the Washington Mall to watch the fireworks and celebrate the enactment of a law that they thought was going to change their lives. That’s what the law “said” and those were the words those folks “heard.” Joy was in the air, and little black children held their parents hands as they were led to cry and laugh.
The next day my wife and I left the capital and took another bus to complete our trip to the Sunshine State. On our way, the bus made a break stop at the bus terminal in Richmond Virginia. We went out to stretch our tired legs and decided to stop by the cafeteria. As we entered the place, we noticed that all the patrons were black and turned their eyes towards us as we walked in. They were curious, surprised, perhaps even scared or offended eyes. It was evident that the message of equality had not been articulated equally by speakers and listeners. After only a couple of days of freedom, neither blacks nor whites had become accustomed to the law of the land. We simply moved out and went to the adjacent cafeteria populated by whites. It had not taken long for us to fall into the same white-black dichotomy that had run American for decades. It wasn’t right, but it felt comfortable for us.
That happened in 1964. The racial incidents and riots in one way or other continue. The players are different, the games similar. People are born minorities in a land where somebody else is a majority, but neither chooses to be one or the other before being born. Government or corporate officials, on the other hand, are not born. They have to apply to become one, and have to offer evidence that they are intellectually and morally able to assume that role. To fail role is not only criminal, it isn’t right. We must stop and open our mouths and ears to make sure they are in sync. Failure to do so will keep on hurting not only the country, but also its members. And the wounded have names, mothers, fathers, siblings and children. They are not simply mute and deaf.
And that’s my Point of View today.
