Screaming Racial Epithets or When Under Duress, You Show Your True Self
Tonight I read about Michael Richards recent performance at a Los Angeles comedy club. I watched him scream a profanity-laced racial tirade at some unsuspecting hecklers in the crowd. It was a sad spectacle of anger to an extreme degree. Today, he has apologized with something like, “I’m not a racist…I’m sorry.” While I do think that we must forgive his gaffe, I don’t actually believe those words just came out. People don’t say those things on a whim; they always need practice.
A few months ago we saw the mug shots of Mel Gibson after he was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol. His bloodshot eyes and disheveled appearance only touched on the severity of Mel’s foolish behavior. Later we learned that Mel had likewise released a torrent of anti-Semitic speech directed at a police officer. Like Richards, Gibson quickly apologized and said, “I’m not an anti-Semite.” Yet I wonder where this inflammatory speech came from.
Today at work, we were reviewing a small site I had created for some upcoming. I had spent a good part of Friday working on it, and although I wasn’t necessarily pleased with the result, I wasn’t interested in creating a new version. I assumed the short deadline would free me from redoing it. But after discussing how poor the site was, I just sat there and started to stew. I got mad; I got mad at the concept of having to start something again. And so I sat there and stared at the other folks in the room and didn’t say much. Later on, we discussed the situation and assuaged the tense and unnecessary behavior. But I still wonder, where did that anger and laziness come from?
In all of the cases above, the behaviors were neither random nor accidental. They are accidental in the sense that no one would reasonably choose to say or do those things. They are accidental only because we made a poor judgment for a moment and showed our true colors.
Michael Richards didn’t drop racial epithets accidentally. He obviously has included them in his vocabulary, because people don’t simply spew that sort of stuff that easily without practice. He said what he said because he has thought the same things before.
Mel Gibson spoke so badly of the Jews because he has done so before. Maybe he was ranting with his dad, but over the course of his life, that dialog has become part of his life. The things he said don’t just slip when inebriated.
Today, I got angry and defensive because I have those tendencies in my life. I don’t get angry too often, but my actions show that roots of those sins exist in my life. Because the duress showed me who I am when my guard is down, I now know what habits I need to deal with.
When we blow up, get mad or do something stupid, the wrong response is to bury our actions. It would be foolish to say, “That’s just a one-time thing.” The reality is that life’s stressful situations show us more of who we really are than anything else. And since I know who I want to be, I can say, “My actions of today do not correspond with who I want to be. Therefore, I’m going to do X or Y to change my life so that when I’m put in a similar situation, my actions will correspond to my beliefs.”
If only that were an easy thing to do.