On Intracommunity Harm and Harmful Beliefs

 

I think, in life and in general, there is something of an overarching expectation that you do not come for members of your own group, especially if that group has been historically marginalized. Indeed, I’ve found my own choices to be in alignment with this type of thinking. I’ve granted excessive mercy and patience to fellow Jewish people, and experienced a reluctance to sever ties even when harm was perpetrated. I’ve noticed a discomfort at potentially echoing the ”other guys’” political talking points when having a conversation about a lot of types of politics or belief systems. I’ve noticed an extreme reluctance to name harm within one’s own ideological community, whether that be political, religious or spiritual.

And I’m trying to understand where this thinking and framework comes from. Is it particularly North American? Is it Eurocolonially derived, coming from an idea that we can’t be wrong and if we are, that’s a “sin” that only serves to challenge our rightness of presence, existence and validity somewhere? It’s hard to say, also being someone who doesn’t come from the same default Christian framework as many others, and I’m no scientist, but it’s a trend that I’ve anecdotally tracked throughout my life.  I’ve often been ostracized for naming the particular intracommunity harm, and I’ve lived through a decent bit of intracommunity harm. With humans, there seems to be a constant sense that “our guys could never do something like that.” There’s always immediate disavowal when something violent or harmfully boundary-breaking happens. And I think that’s holding us back. Are we ever going to realize that harm is a part of us and the group we chose, or that we belong to by default? That humans aren’t automatons to command to fall in line, but that we will always have a diversity of approaches, thinking, and even deeply contradictory facets to what each of our belief systems is? Oh, probably not. Because if we did that would admit that we ourselves are capable of harm, that our actions are in a constant web of affecting everything around us all the time all at once, or creating ripples outward. That would force us to have to “come get our people” and hold ourselves as ongoingly and gently accountable as we might a community member with a lot of deeply shared similarities. It would mean releasing shame and instead being in constant conversation and right relationship with the historically marginalized. It would mean Paying Attention.