Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 14, 1993 TAG: 9306150381
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
This is a shocking question.
My answer is, "Yes." That's probably a shocking answer, too.
Over and over in my life, I've come back to this question. Over and over I find myself answering the same. It's not an answer that gives me pride, but it is the answer I must give if I'm honest.
Most folks, I think, don't answer honestly. Take, for instance, this radio interview I heard the other day.
The interviewer, a 40-something white woman, very bright, very politically correct, very (ostensibly) liberal, was talking with two 21-year-old black men who've recently received considerable acclaim for a movie they've made. Their movie depicts a casually violent and vicious urban neighborhood. In it, the directors acknowledged, they've based many characters on their own friends and acquaintances.
"You know murderers?," the interviewer asked.
Yes. They know murderers.
"You know murderers!," she practically shrieked. "And this doesn't horrify you?"
It's life, they said. Nasty, but life. The kind of life they and their characters live and know.
Over and over, the stunned interviewer came back to her point: "Why aren't you horrified to know that you've sat next to, talked with, implied tolerance, for God's sake, of murderers?" Ms. Politically Correct simply could not fathom a life with parameters other than her own. Over and over, the men tried to explain: Life is different there.
Of course, I do not condone murder. It's a heinous crime. It happens far too often in this country, it's accepted far too casually.
But I understand it. I could commit it.
Late last week as I walked through my woods I was stopped dead in my tracks by a thrumming that sounded like growls. As I stood shocked and frightened, a hissing ruffed grouse flew at me in huge, protective fury. Just at the edge of my vision, I saw her chicks race for deeper brush. Mother Grouse rushed me, thrummed, fluttered and taunted for 50 yards, until I'd left her woods altogether. She would have murdered me, too, had that become necesary. At least, she would have tried.
If called upon to do so, I would kill to protect my nieces and nephews. How much stronger must their parents feel? Does Ms. Politically Correct not know this?
There's precious little territory to cross between an adult's protective instincts toward children and humans' other, less laudable protective feelings. Feelings that you're losing your neighborhood to "those people." Feelings that "those people" have more wealth, more possessions, more privilege than you. Feelings that everything you've known and loved is disappearing thanks, somehow, to "those people."
Such feelings may be unjustified, wrong-headed, sinful, self-destructive or criminal. But they are overwhelmingly, palpably real. They will come out. They will demand attention.
However, if the only attention they attract is similar to Ms. Politically Correct's reaction - How dare you feel that way! It's wrong! - then they will never be appropriately addressed.
Murder is not an appropriate reaction. But given the right set of circumstances, given enough repressed anger or enough fatalistic fear or enough greed, it will seem so. And it will not stop seeming so until the causative circumstances and the anger are acknowledged, until they are addressed.
How dare you feel that way! doesn't help a thing.
Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
by CNB