The Perceptions of the Professor, the Policeman, and the President

One of my least favorite popular phrases is, "Perception is reality." Nothing is farther from truth, as is definitively shown through the recent tempest surrounding the arrest of noted Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (pictured).

As you may remember, Gates -- who is black -- was arrested by a white police officer in front of his Cambridge, Massachusetts residence for disorderly conduct. Gates, it seems, was upset with the police officer for alleged "racial profiling" in his investigation of a 911 call from one of Gates' neighbors that two men were forcing the front door of Gates' house. Gates perceived that he was being investigated because of his race. He is a black man in a predominantly white neighborhood.

The officer, a police sergeant with an exemplary service record, says that he was just doing his job in ensuring that Gates was the rightful occupant of the house as the indignant professor vociferously questioned the sergeant's motives. The sergeant says that he told Gates that he was risking arrest because of his conduct, and when the professor persisted, he was arrested.

The President, who during his election campaign noted that he had sometimes found it difficult to hail a cab in some cities because of cab drivers' perception that they are at a greater risk of being robbed by a black passenger than one who is not black, weighed in by saying that the Cambridge police had "acted stupidly" in arresting Gates, and fanned the embers back into flames.

So, today, the President will host the professor and the policeman at a picnic table at the White House and, over beers, try to redeem the situation. Which brings me back to my least favorite popular phrase.

Yes, our perceptions do frame our own peculiar realities, but that is not Reality, as in the truth.
The professor, understandably perhaps, based on his research and experience, thought that what was happening was a textbook case of discrimination based on race. It was not. Gates' neighbor saw two strange men entering a house by force and did what any good neighbor should do: Call the police.

The policeman perceived Gates as an angry, abusive citizen, perhaps not unlike many other citizens he's encountered in his law enforcement career, and he had his own textbook response for the professor's behavior: Arrest. In retrospect, perhaps the sergeant would have rather talked-down the professor in Cambridge and saved the trip to Washington, D. C. for another time.

The President perceived that the policeman had not used his best judgment by arresting Gates. Not having been there, perhaps the President's perception was the worst of the three. But that did not stop him from offering an opinion framed by his own experiences and, perhaps his personal acquaintance with Professor Gates. He apologized for his public remarks, and hopes to do a little fence-mending of his own today at the picnic table.

Is perception reality? Clearly not. Perception is perception. Reality is reality. We all use what we have and what we know to make sense of our world and the situations in which we find ourselves. But we should resist the temptation to measure others with our limited -- and often inaccurate -- yardstick.

The antidote to erroneous judgments based on limited vision (remember: to "perceive" means to "see") is humility and an even-handed approach to all situations and all people -- particularly those whom we suspect are not our champions. If we acted in such a manner, we would be amazed at how pitifully limited our perceptions are, and how magnificently broad is Reality.

"On Love," and Newspapers

"On Love"

My Sunday newspaper contains a weekly article in its "Style" section that features a couple's "love story."

I normally don't read these articles, because the articles that I have read seem to be about the same kinds of love: Man meets woman; man and woman "fall in love"; man and woman are challenged in some way in their love for each other; through the challenge, man and woman come to realize that they are made for each other; man and woman get married; man and woman live happily ever after.

Yesterday's article was true to that formula -- click here to read the article -- and reading it gave me another reason not to read such articles in the future: These stories are only about the first chapter of that couple's life together (although in the case of yesterday's couple, they had known each other for more than ten years and had two children between them before they arrived at the altar -- but that is another story for another time).

My wife and I have been married for more than 27 years, and I have been in pastoral ministry for more than 30 years. Based on those experiences, I wish that my Sunday paper -- and all others newspapers with similar story ideas for "love stories" -- would write the love stories of couples who have been married for more than 40 years. Or the love story of a couple that has stayed together through the death of a child, a life-threatening illness, a disabling injury, or a shattered career.

Many marriages do not survive such stresses. The marriages that do are full of lessons about humility, transformation, self-sacrifice, faith, hope, and love. Precisely the lessons that couples completing the first chapter of their life together will need for each successive chapter; precisely the lessons that all couples need to make the transition from wedding day to married life.

Newspapers

Now, while I am on the subject of Sunday newspaper reading, I also noted an article on the recent purchases of small, local, newspapers by former Washington Redskins president John Kent Cooke, which is contrary to the current trend, where most folks with money are shunning old media, such as newspapers. (Click here to see article.)

Newspapers are dear to me. I studied journalism in college and, for a time, was a working journalist for three daily newspapers. The decline in newspaper readership saddens me.

Cooke is not buying newspapers out of sentiment. He sees small daily and weekly newspapers in locations that are outside the shadow of large, national, dailies -- such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times -- as strong for newsprint.

It seems that in this case, small is better -- and more profitable. As a former newspaper guy, I hope Cooke is right!

The Redeeming Power of Poverty

"I've been rich, and I've been poor. Rich is better," said Beatrice Kaufman more than 70 years ago.

In the decades since Kaufman -- and in the centuries before -- few have disagreed. Poverty is as limiting as it is humiliating. Most people, I think, would prefer to encounter poverty by a rare and fleeting accident, than by even the most carefully crafted design.

The "rich is better" axiom is challenged in today's selection from the devotional guide, "My Utmost for His Highest," which is a year's worth of daily readings excerpted from talks and sermons given by early 20th Century missionary Oswald Chambers (pictured).

"The underlying foundation of Jesus Christ's kingdom is poverty; not possessions; not making decisions for Jesus," Chambers says, "but having such a sense of absolute futility that we finally admit, 'Lord, I cannot even begin to do it.' Then Jesus says, 'Blessed are you. . .'" (Click here for the full reading.)

Regarding the power of poverty, the media are on a pendulum: Publishing the story of a man who finds purpose through poverty on one day; and the next day publishing another man's struggle to regain his lost prerogatives and financial status. From such even-handedness, it would seem that either state is equally preferable, equally sustainable, and equally moral. They are not.

It is said that of all subjects, Jesus talked most of the subject of money. (The same could be said, of course, about The Wall Street Journal newspaper.) However, Jesus' approach to the subject was different from what many of us might take, which is to regard money as a "necessary evil." Jesus did not say that money was necessary (something The Wall Street Journal might say); and He did not say that money was evil.

To quote St. Paul, money is not the root of all evil; rather, it is the love of money that is the root of all evil, and the source of much human misery. (Click here for Paul's quote.)

The doorway to the rule of God in one's life is poverty. It is there -- and there alone -- where one finds freedom from the tyranny of fear, competitiveness and selfishness.

NIMBY at Work in Proposed National Health Insurance Plan

The phrase, "Not in my back yard" (a. k. a. NIMBY), is commonly used to identify an attitude of individual benefit at the expense of someone else.

One need not wait long to see this attitude displayed. For example, while many folks are eager to close detention camps, such as the one in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, few are willing to have Guantanamo detainees imprisoned in their home state. NIMBY.

The financing of universal health care coverage for Americans is the latest example of NIMBY. According to recent news reports, a couple earning more than $350,000 a year would suffer a surcharge amounting to between 1 percent and 5.4 percent of their income to raise funds for the health care plan. It is estimated that this plan would affect approximately 1.2 percent of all households, and would raise one-half of what would be needed to fund the scheme, with the other half coming from savings in Medicare and other health care programs.

I don't think much of this idea, and it is not because my wife and I earn more than $350,000 a year. We don't. I resist this idea because it requires only 1.2 percent of the population to contribute to a benefit received by the remaining 98.8 percent of the nation.

One definition of fairness is whether -- all things being equal -- you would continue to like a particular idea if the roles were reversed. In this case, government proposes to take more from one, small, segment of the population for no apparent reason other than it has the political and legislative muscle to do so without a fight from its victim. On the street, that is called "strong-arm robbery," and it is as illegal as it is morally wrong.

I do not mind paying taxes, whether of the general variety, such as income taxes, which support a variety of programs for our corporate benefit; or the specific variety, such as gasoline taxes, which go toward road maintenance and are more or less tied to how much one uses the streets and highways. "Render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. . ."

What I see in the proposed plan is an attempt to pass a greater share of the cost of of a general benefit -- in this case, universal health care -- on to a sliver of the citizenry presumed to be more able to carry the load. For the higher tariff, I don't think that those who pay more will receive a greater benefit or more generous amenities, such as a priority line for medical appointments or expedited prescription drug refills. Nope. They will receive the same level of service that 98.8 percent of their fellow-citizens receive, except they will pay more for it.

In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talked about fairness in a maxim we today call "the Golden Rule": "Do unto others as you would have others do to you." (Matthew 7: 12a)

Selecting a burden for others that we ourselves would not willingly bear may, by act of the Congress, be legal, but it can never be right.

Naval Academy Minority Admissions: Fair Without Being Equal?

This is one of those times when it pays to let the dust settle.

A month ago, U. S. Naval Academy English professor Bruce Fleming caused a fuss when he wrote an article for the opinion page of the local Annapolis newspaper, The Capital,
that claimed recent increases in the number of blacks and Hispanics admitted to the academy is occurring at the expense of better qualified white applicants.

Of course, Professor Fleming's allegations roiled the blog sphere and talk radio; and were noted in follow-on articles in The Washington Post and USA Today. I agree that there is something patently un-American about selecting someone ahead of someone else with relatively superior grades.

But what if -- as is the case at the Naval Academy, and many major colleges and universities -- grades were only one measure of an applicant's suitability? Would it then be fair to choose a "B" student over an "A" student, if the "B" student exhibited greater potential to fulfill the stated purposes of the institution?

By his own admission, it has been nearly a decade since Professor Fleming served on the Naval Academy's admission board. In the intervening years, the Academy began emphasizing a "whole person" concept in its selection of Midshipmen, which means that not every applicant with good grades will trump an applicant with poorer grades but high potential to serve our nation as a naval officer.

Such is the change that seems to offend the professor. Were it as simple as "racking and stacking" according to grade point averages (GPA) -- assuming for a moment that everyone agreed on how to regard the less than uniform way the nation's 37,000 high schools arrive at grades -- admissions boards, such as the one on which Professor Fleming served, would be unnecessary. Such is the problem with "objective" evaluations: While they may be equal, they can be far from fair.

In the three years that I served on the staff of the Naval Academy (2001 - 2004), I noticed that the professors (most of whom were civilians with scant military experience) cared most about academics while the military folks, who were responsible for Midshipmen professional development, cared most about such practical subjects as leadership, moral and character development, and physical training.

So, it is no surprise that Professor Fleming thinks poorly of an admissions process that seems to favor the general needs of the Naval service over an individual applicant's GPA.

Yet, the Naval Academy's purpose, according to its vision statement, is to be "the nation’s premier source of leaders for the Navy and the Marine Corps who embody the highest standards of character and professionalism, and who aspire to lead and serve their country in peace and war. "

Such aspirations for an institution need not mean that persons with good grades need not apply, but perhaps that academic achievement is only one element needed by a publicly-funded institution with a mandate to provide a diverse graduating class for service in an increasingly diverse Navy or Marine Corps.