A good friend of mine does genealogical research and recently came across the story of Armless Charley, a resident of southern Illinois, who was maimed in a mill accident when he was a child. He went on to become known for his determination and ability to work long, hard hours, and he became active in local politics. However, in later life, he became depressed and his life was summed up in a headline, Three Maniacs Burned to Death in Asylum Fire.
The story got me thinking about the labels we insist on giving people. Those labels come in and out of fashion just like dress styles. But they always leave a mark. Words always go together to change things - sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, sometimes we think it's for the better but turns out to be for the worse.
We say so and so is a genius. What does that mean? Rarely does it mean that so and so has an IQ of 140 or higher. It's supposed to mean that so and so is exceptionally good at something. McCartney and Lennon were geniuses at writing music and lyrics. Mozart was a genius at writing music. Who was the most genius? Could Einstein play saxophone like McGrew or paint like Van Gogh?
Speaking of Van Gogh, was he a maniac, crazy, nuts, AND a genius? It gets really confusing.
Another friend of mine wrote Beneath the Whiskey Sky*, a novel in which a man with Downs Syndrome is a main character. The story is set in cowboy days and the man is often referred to as an Idiot or Mongolian Idiot. Such terms are offensive today, not only to people with Downs but people from Mongolia.
Lately, there is a lot of talk about children who are "on the spectrum," meaning they may have Aspergers' Syndrome or may have Autism. I reckon we are all on the spectrum. We are all colors of the rainbow.
And speaking of colors, we have strange labels for people depending on the color of brown their skin is. All living, breathing humans are naturally some shade of brown on the spectrum from ecru to dark chocolate. We are indeed not red and yellow, black and white. That's misleading at best. And when we classify people as Black or White, we are insisting people are one or the other of these polar opposites. It amuses me that President Obama is considered our first Black president. I have nieces who are darker brown than he after one week in the sun! The labels are not specific. They are not correct.
Why is it so important that we correctly label someone anyway? I understand the evolution of Us and Them as a way of surviving. Maybe all the cave men and women in my clan had red hair. We could easily identify someone who was "Them" if they had black hair. Ooooh, scary. And it served the species well. But it stopped serving us well quite a while back.
Americans are the newest mutts, but of course, if we dig back far enough, we'll find that we're all descendants of the same Adam and Eve, or the same aliens who planted us here, or the same Shiva and Shakti or the same apes.
We no longer need to identify people based on color of skin, curliness of hair or eye shape, in fact, it's not beneficial to try to do so. Hell, that's why we invented uniforms, so we could tell the bad buys from the good guys. Long ago I began refusing to answer the question of "race" on official (and less official) forms. When pressed, I say that I'll identify as a race when the questioners adequately define the term.
And guess what. Idiots, geniuses, maniacs, accountants and politicians, come in all shades of brown.
Our ongoing politics reminded some of us, ever so briefly, that there may be people who or neither Republicans or Democrats. Some of us may be way out on that spectrum as well. When we narrow our choices to elephant or donkey, to black or white, to idiot or savant, we narrow our world.
We call people bitch and bastard who are not a female dog or a person born out of wedlock. We THINK we know what we mean by those words, but do we really?
I'm a huge fan of words. I think they are the coolest. In the beginning was the Word. And words have continued to make changes in everything, They are the most powerful things of all. They can heal, unite, break, harm, divide us. They are bigger than we. We must respect them if we are to continue to evolve.
* Tracy Knight wrote Beneath a Whiskey Sky, The Astonished Eye, and my favorite, Trace Elements. More importantly, I had a mad crush on him in junior high.
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