If You’re Told Your Position is Harmful
Someone’s mad at your car. Did you almost run them over?
A couple days ago, as I was walking on the city sidewalk, I saw a car backing slowly out of its space, across the sidewalk, into the street. It looked as though it might hit another pedestrian ahead of me. The driver seemed oblivious to this, and the other pedestrian noticed only at the last moment before the car touched him. It missed him by an inch. In anger, and desiring to rebuke the driver, the pedestrian smacked the car near the taillight with the flat of his hand. There was no way this could have damaged the car, but it made a loud sound.
That got the driver’s attention. He stopped and got out to verify that his car had not been damaged. He noticed the pedestrian for the first time. The two men exchanged words. “You almost ran me over,” the pedestrian yelled. “Getting run over is one thing,” the driver said, offended, “but why do you have to take it out on my car?”
I recalled this when, today, I read an opinion by a priest in the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) in her newsletter for the New York Times. In her 1200-word article, she claimed that our use of terms like “homophobic,” “transphobic,” “ableists,” “misogynists,” as well as “hate, racism and white supremacy” contributes to “political polarization” and…
