When I wrote last week about the dust up over the Washington Redskins’ name, I really thought it was a “one and done” kind of deal. I wrote about why I hope the name is changed – it’s at least potentially hurtful, and may be genuinely ugly. I also wrote about why legally compelling the team to do so, might be a sub-optimal solution because of free speech issues. I really thought that was it, at least until I read “The U.S. military’s ongoing slur of Native Americans” in the Washington Post.
The piece actually equates calling a team the “Redskins” – a term, as I previously pointed out, most of us would never direct at an individual Native American Indian – with the US military calling a helicopter an “Apache” – a designation most of us would happily use, at least assuming that the individual was a member of that community. The argument misses that distinction entirely and settles instead for a long historical diatribe – one which will almost certainly more deeply alienate many of the very people most opposed to changing the team’s name!
I appreciate the cultural sensitivity which I am sure motivates the author, but this is precisely the kind of extremist, reductio ad absurdum thinking which increasingly poisons our conversations about almost every cultural and political issue in contemporary life. And that is only the smaller issue here!
The larger issue – the one directly relevant to all of us, regardless of our views on this issue, and one which shapes even our personal lives, is how, even with the best of intentions, we often empower the very forces we oppose. How? By ignoring their animating concerns and anxieties and simply piling on increasingly burdensome demands.
I mean, what’s the point of the article after all – to open people’s minds and contribute to what the author would view as making a positive difference, or simply to sling sanctimonious arrows at his opposition? Does he want to be effective or simply trumpet his own sense of cultural and historical correctness?
And of course, this really isn’t about someone else’s article, it’s about us. When a conflict arises, we typically have a choice about what we want to privilege – the correctness of our position, or being heard by our opposition. There are definitely times for each path, but in my experience, short of physical struggle, the latter is almost always the wiser way to go.
Listed for many years in Newsweek as one of America’s “50 Most Influential Rabbis” and recognized as one of our nation’s leading “Preachers and Teachers,” by Beliefnet.com, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield serves as the President of Clal–The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a training institute, think tank, and resource center nurturing religious and intellectual pluralism within the Jewish community, and the wider world, preparing people to meet the biggest challenges we face in our increasingly polarized world.
An ordained Orthodox rabbi who studied for his PhD and taught at The Jewish Theological Seminary, he has also taught the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs an ongoing seminar, and American Jewish University. Rabbi Brad regularly teaches and consults for the US Army and United States Department of Defense, religious organizations — Jewish and Christian — including United Seminary (Methodist), Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (Modern Orthodox) Luther Seminary (Lutheran), and The Jewish Theological Seminary (Conservative) — civic organizations including No Labels, Odyssey Impact, and The Aspen Institute, numerous Jewish Federations, and a variety of communal and family foundations.
Hirschfield is the author and editor of numerous books, including You Don’t Have To Be Wrong For Me To Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism, writes a column for Religion News Service, and appears regularly on TV and radio in outlets ranging from The Washington Post to Fox News Channel. He is also the founder of the Stand and See Fellowship, which brings hundreds of Christian religious leaders to Israel, preparing them to address the increasing polarization around Middle East issues — and really all currently polarizing issues at home and abroad — with six words, “It’s more complicated than we know.”