Personal 31 Aug 2008 07:58 pm
My tribe(s)
I have lived most of my adult life in comfortable, progressive enclaves (Cleveland Heights, OH, Western MA, Bay Area, CA - the one exception was Fort Collins, CO,) I have gotten really used to having people around me who feel like, for want of a better phrase, part of my tribe.
Of course, my tribe is really more than one tribe. There is the GLBT tribe. The progressive religious tribe. There is the geek tribe. The crunchy-granola tribe. The academic tribe. Some days I feel more like a member of one or another - in some situations (say, a Science Fiction Convention) one tribe predominates.
As I’m driving across country, driving through areas that don’t have many of my tribe members (of any kind) I’ve had some interesting tribal experiences - ones that make me think more about what this tribal thing means.
In a Whole Foods in Cleveland, where I stopped to stock up on food I knew I wasn’t going to be able to find in the nation’s midsection, I was waiting to ask the person in the health section about whether they had something. She was talking with an African American woman with a heavy southern accent, straightened hair, who was asking very beginner questions about healthy diets. I was certainly happy to hear that she was interested, but it was an interesting situation (I gave her some advice about food. Of course, I’m much better at knowing about healthy diets than actually following through, but that’s a different blog post.)
As I got my Elderberry lozenges (I feel like I might be fighting a cold), I was going down a different aisle, and I saw ahead of me a straight, but clearly “groovy” African American couple - the woman had a short afro, they were wearing the “right” kind of sandals, and their food basket was filled with the right kind of healthy/foodie food, and I thought, they are part of my tribe.
As I drive in my car down the Interstate, I see occasional cars with rainbow stickers of one type or another, or, say, Obama stickers, and I think “my tribe.” I see guys driving Harleys and I think “not my tribe.” Or the “Jesus is Lord” stickers. Not my tribe, even though we both spend Sundays in church.
Why is it that we humans are so tribal - that it is so easy for us to think of people as “not part of our tribe” - thus, well, less worthy of our attention, or makes us less willing to engage? I remember hearing an interview with the author of the book The Big Sort, who basically suggested that people in the US have physically sorted themselves into like-minded communities, which actually makes it harder for people with different ideas and values to talk to one another, since we don’t live together much anymore.
On one hand, I do see this as problematic. It is a problem that I might not feel as willing or able to talk with someone who isn’t in my tribe. On the other hand, my own (and many people’s) choices about where to live are not just a matter of preference (which the author suggests) but actually a matter of safety. One of the hallmarks of my time in Fort Collins (which, admittedly, was 20 years ago - I know it has changed since) was that I didn’t always feel physically safe as an African American, or a lesbian. (The gay bar had been burned to the ground by arson the year before I moved there.) Hate crimes still happen, and it’s pretty natural to leave a place you don’t feel safe. And it’s also natural to leave a place you don’t feel comfortable, or find a place you’ll find more comfortable, even if you don’t feel physically threatened.
And, at the end of this long trip, I’ll arrive back in the Bay Area, a very comfortable, very progressive place, with lots of people of my tribe(s). And that will feel good. But I’ll still be pondering this.