A number of recent posts occasion this muse-meditation-whatever.  The first was a spirited discussion on extending health care to undocumented workers as I call them, or illegal aliens as the post called them.  The post was by an author I enjoy, and agree with, more often or not, but here we parted company, and I thought to myself "I wonder if he knows any undocumented workers personally?".  

The second occasion was a thoughtful post on, among other things, anger in the country.  

    To humor the clueless, strutting, butt-naked emperors our dogmas Right and Left have become, we've plunged deeper and deeper into fable. Doing so, our political philosophies have frozen rigid, and have cursed themselves - and us  - with distorted and compromised history. What can't mutate into incomprehensible propaganda is simply left out, and huge chunks of the real world simply end up on a shelf of circumscribed subjects, to be shunned or denied.

Wow, there's a paragraph I wish I wrote.  But I didn't, San Fernando Curt did, and lots of other paragraphs of equal force and passion. 

The third was a post I glanced at which urged me to get off the Kumbaya way and on to the Chicago Way... If They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. "That's the Chicago" way!
This got me thinking that Jane Addams' Chicago Way was more my Chicago Way than Al Capone's.  Happy Birthday Jane, in case I miss it on October 13.

So just a few words on friendship.  How Kumbaya can you get?  I'm going to put this in the form of a few theses, with the hope some people might enter the discussion with their own ideas, experiences, and observations.

It seems

Thesis One: We make unconscious exceptions for our friends, and are unaware of the internal  contradictions we make when we apply a different, more rigorous standard to those we don't know-even if they are very much the same as our friends.  We respond to our friends a bit like this:

If you're ever in a jam, here I am.
If you ever need a pal, I'm your gal.
If you ever feel so happy you land in jail,
I'm your bail.

It's friendship, friendship,
Just a perfect blendship,
When other friendships have been forgot
Ours will still be hot!
Lahdle-ahdle-ahdle-dig-dig-dig.


If you're ever down a well, ring my bell.
If you ever catch on fire, send a wire.
If you ever lose your teeth
When you're out to dine,
Borrow mine.

It's friendship, friendship,
Just a perfect blendship,
When other friendships have ceased to jell
Ours will still be swell!
Lahdle-ahdle-ahdle-hep-hep-hep.

You get the point...the rest of the lyric is behind the link above, as is a pretty cute video.

Thesis two: Segregation by class as much as by race limits our friendships mostly to people like us, and this is only growing worse.  As our circle of friends, our circle of "us" grows smaller and less diverse the circle of "them" grows larger and more frightening.  We defend our insularity by saying "Some of my best friends are black, gay, Latino, Asian, etc., etc., followed by a statement "but. . ." which makes them the exception and allows us to maintain our stereotypes.  When I have a chance to explore this in my class, Class and Culture in America I ask a few questions.  Have you visited their house?  Have they visited yours?  Have you sat at their table? Have they sat at yours?  Have you stayed overnight?  Have they?  

I'm quick to let my students know that I have to answer those questions no, more often than not, and more often than I'm comfortable with.  I can't cast the first stone: my guilt won't let me.  I have friends across class lines, and I could answer yes to a number of the questions above.  I've had blacks as house guests and sat them at my table for a meal.  There's always a gay person present when I sit down to eat.

Thesis Three: The greatest victim of my own isolation is me.  The greatest victim of the lack of diversity in my friends is me.  Ralph Waldo Emerson pegged the importance of Friendship for all time.  

    Our intellectual and active powers increase with our affection. The scholar sits down to write, and all his years of meditation do not furnish him with one good thought or happy expression; but it is necessary to write a letter to a friend, -- and, forthwith, troops of gentle thoughts invest themselves, on every hand, with chosen words. See, in any house where virtue and self-respect abide, the palpitation which the approach of a stranger causes. A commended stranger is expected and announced, and an uneasiness betwixt pleasure and pain invades all the hearts of a household. His arrival almost brings fear to the good hearts that would welcome him. The house is dusted, all things fly into their places, the old coat is exchanged for the new, and they must get up a dinner if they can. Of a commended stranger, only the good report is told by others, only the good and new is heard by us. He stands to us for humanity.

In the next century Emerson may need to be translated into what will pass for English then.  Read the essay.  It's good for you.  But I can't leave him without another wonderful bit of writing.

    Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and unlikeness, that piques each with the presence of power and of consent in the other party. Let me be alone to the end of the world, rather than that my friend should overstep, by a word or a look, his real sympathy. I am equally balked by antagonism and by compliance. Let him not cease an instant to be himself. The only joy I have in his being mine, is that the not mine is mine. I hate, where I looked for a manly furtherance, or at least a manly resistance, to find a mush of concession. Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo. The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it. That high office requires great and sublime parts. There must be very two, before there can be very one. Let it be an alliance of two large, formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they recognize the deep identity which beneath these disparities unites them.

Overcoming insularity takes work.  It takes stopping seeing the other as the alien, documented or not.  I try, and I fail as often as not.  But even the trying is good for me.  It leads me to hope that when and if the time comes I can answer the questions in Ysaye M. Barnwell's lyric in the affirmative.

Would You Harbor Me

Would you harbor me? Would I harbor you?
Would you harbor me? Would I harbor you?

Would you harbor a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew,
A heretic, convict, or spy?
Would you harbor a runaway woman or child,
A poet, a prophet, a king?
Would you harbor an exile or a refugee,
A person living with AIDS?
Would you harbor a Tubman, a Garret, a Truth,
A fugitive or a slave?
Would you harbor a Haitian, Korean, or Czech,
A lesbian or a gay?



Would you harbor me? Would I harbor you?

Don't just read.  Hear, and then Sing.

I tried to post this using the extended tab and some fancy formatting besides.  Foiled by movable type.  Sorry about that.