is a bourgeois version of charity inhibiting social change?

Last updated on: May 25, 2016 at 10:45 am by Rebecca Bratten Weiss

is a bourgeois version of charity inhibiting social change? 2016-05-25T10:45:54-04:00 Rebecca Bratten Weiss

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In the July 2012 issue of Yes! magazine, Peter Dreier writes about “The Radical Dissent of Helen Keller“: “In her investigations into the causes of blindness, she discovered that poor people were more likely than the rich to be blind, and soon connected the mistreatment of the blind to the oppression of workers, women, and other groups, leading her to embrace socialism, feminism, and pacifism.”

We all know the story of the deaf and blind girl who was “miraculously” transformed from an unmanageable savage to an erudite celebrity. But what we don’t know was that the FBI kept her under surveillance for most of her life, due to her involvement in radical groups and her opposition to war, industry, and capitalism. An advocate for the disabled, she was able, ironically, to see the connection between disability and economic disadvantage to which many remained – and remain – conveniently blind.

Dreier quotes Keller’s 1924 letter to Senator Robert La Follette:

“So long as I confine my activities to social service and the blind, they compliment me extravagantly, calling me ‘arch priestess of the sightless,’ ‘wonder woman,’ and a ‘modern miracle.’ But when it comes to a discussion of poverty, and I maintain that it is the result of wrong economics—that the industrial system under which we live is at the root of much of the physical deafness and blindness in the world—that is a different matter! It is laudable to give aid to the handicapped. Superficial charities make smooth the way of the prosperous; but to advocate that all human beings should have leisure and comfort, the decencies and refinements of life, is a Utopian dream, and one who seriously contemplates its realization indeed must be deaf, dumb, and blind.”

I was reminded, reading this, of the curious fact that radical activist priest and poet, Fr. Daniel Berrigan, recently deceased, was lauded after his death with commemorations that conveniently left out, for the most part, the extent to which he was loathed by the system, in his day. This happened with St. Francis, too, and so many of the holy radicals who were not respectable in their time – who were opposed by the earthly powers – but afterwards prettied up, made decorous, so we can claim their glory without sharing their pain. History rewrites itself so rapidly, leaving out those bits of which we are ashamed, or do not fit the convenient interpretation. We want our heroes on our side. If we didn’t stand with them in the day, we can wait until they have passed on, and say nice things about them, as though we were on their team. I am reminded also of this odd statement in Ronald Reagan’s remarks on making the birthday of Martin Luther King a national holiday:

“As a democratic people, we can take pride in the knowledge that we Americans recognized a grave injustice and took action to correct it. And we should remember that in far too many countries, people like Dr. King never have the opportunity to speak out at all.” (November 2, 1983)

Wait.

We did?

And what about all those times in the US, when people like Dr. King couldn’t speak out? What about when Dr. King was brutally punished for speaking out? How easy it is to look back longingly at Reagan, a republican who honored black activists, while failing to note the gross inaccuracy of his statement. Honoring black activists should not mean taking credit for their work. This is the “great white savior” archetype with which white communities become so comfortable, because it’s a way to make stories be about ourselves, or perhaps for us to absolve ourselves of the shameful elements of our own history, as though collective repentance were not a Christian deed. If against the whole town of racists we can set one Atticus Finch (not himself free from the taint of racism, anyway), then we have a heroic tale, not an embarrassing one. Go Set A Watchman may not be a very good book, but it is a necessary accompaniment to Harper Lee’s masterful achievement in To Kill a Mockingbird, lest we miss her point.

But the lesson of Helen Keller must not be forgotten. Maybe we need to distrust the stories we are told, a little more, when the stories are approved and hallowed and handed down. Perhaps it is necessary for us to leave the main boulevard of the imagination and travel off into the remote territories where the stories that were not told lie buried – even the stories that weren’t of great literary merit.

But especially, those that are.

Peter S. Beagle, on the importance of The Lord of the Rings, wrote memorably: “We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers – thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.”

Revisiting Tolkien’s universe, I am reminded of how radical his own vision was, in his opposition to industry and the centrality of ecology to culture in civilizations that flourish. When Saruman is running amok in one’s neighborhood (and he is, he is) – Tolkien provides us with a heroic alternative, a story of a defense of the good that means a defense of all living growing things. And yet Tolkien, too, we rewrite, making it all about orc-killing and extravagant battle scenes, without remembering the significance of the gardeners who plant trees. Trees, not weapons, are at the true heart of the story.

In any awards ceremony, you can expect to see honored those who reside at the respectable center of the community, the wealthy, those who have made large endowments, those who uphold the existing system. Charitable work, as we call it, is praised, but work of reform will get you into trouble. As long as one benefits from the system, it is better to give a bit, in dribbles, to charitable organizations that pass muster, than to work for change, because a dribble of charity here and there won’t really alter one’s comfort. But the message of the Gospel, of the Beatitudes, is more radical and subversive: blessed, says Jesus, are the peacemakers – not General X. Blessed are the meek – not the CEOs. Blessed are the poor in spirit – not those who made large endowments before heading off on another yachting trip.

I’d like to go to an awards ceremony, at a Christian organization, and see honored the homeless man, the woman on food stamps, the mentally ill – or, at least, those who care for others not out of their excess, but out of their poverty, the widow with her last penny.

We need to recall the experience of Helen Keller, who was praised for charity and condemned for reform, and ask ourselves whether what passes for charity in our society isn’t true charity at all, but something far tamer.

Image credit: Hubert von Herkomer 1870 – Gipsy Woman with Child (Herkomer’s first work for ‘The Graphic’). Public Domain.

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