Many years ago, my friend, who is Jewish, got engaged to an Indian woman and decided to go to India to meet her parents. Upon arriving at her parent’s house, he was utterly shocked and distraught to see Swastikas engraved on either side of the doorway. Little did he know that the Swastika has existed in the Hindu religion for thousands of years. It implies ‘goodness’ and has nothing to do with the Nazi symbol (the Nazi symbol is a slight variation of the Hindu Swastika). On the other hand, my friend’s future father-in-law did not realize how offensive the symbol was outside the Hindu context, especially to the Jews. Both had to get educated on each other’s history and culture.
The father-in-law decided to cover the signs when my friend or his family was visiting, while my friend, after several visits to India, was not impacted the same way he was the first time around.
The ‘blue line’ issue appears analogous but is more complicated as there is no clear demarcation of the ‘context’. While one point of view is that it expresses solidarity with our police and honors our fallen heroes, the other vehemently states that it has a significant racial connotation.
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An African American visitor to our town said that as she drove into our town for the first time, the thing that caught her eye was the blue line, which made her question the mindset of the town. Meanwhile, I have driven down Crawfords Corner Road thousands of times and never even noticed its existence, let alone become affected by it.
Clearly, we live in two different dimensions. And dimensional planes only overlap where one point of view is expressly zeroed out!
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The question is, can we rise above our tribal instincts and be the father-in-law or the son-in-law in my example, and not make this a zero-sum game?
Can we, in our town, regardless of race, religion, color or point of view, truly learn to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’?
Can we honor and show solidarity with our police and our fallen heroes of 9/11, while simultaneously being a model town for diversity and inclusion?
