Calling All Goats, We Need You Back in the Pen
Today, I opened my podcast app and listened to “The Briefing” by Albert Mohler. He was speaking about the fall of Afghanistan. He shared his thoughts about the Biden administration and how the media has reacted to the lack of action within the Biden administration.
While I am listening, I can’t help but to think about how Americans have succeeded in making America look like a joke. We have become a divided and critical people. We have settled on finding a scapegoat for everything that is deemed wrong in society.
Quite frankly, I am tired of the news. I am tired of the division. Most of all, I am tired of becoming someone’s scapegoat. While you continue to point your fingers at me, remember there are three fingers pointing at you.
It’s time to get the goats in the pen and stop chasing who we think is at fault for our problems.
Scapegoating is an opportunity to blame someone else for one’s own failures or misdeeds. It is a way to retain your positive self-image, all while recusing yourself of any blame. Oftentimes, scapegoating is used to point out societal oppressive issues. There is a glaring problem with this thought process!
When we scapegoat a people group or person because we feel oppressed, we are repaying evil with evil. We are oppressing another group of people because we feel oppressed or offended. How is that helpful in solving any problem?!
I am well aware of the history of scapegoating in our world. Hitler blamed Jews for all his problems. The Hutu people of Rwanda blamed the Tutsi people for their problems. In America, we blame immigrants for taking our jobs and bringing disease to our lands. A Japanese crew bombed Pearl Harbor, so that meant all Asians were bad, so we locked them up.
There is no situation in history where scapegoating has ended well. What it does is divide people. It doesn’t solve problems, it creates more problems. People will continue to feel oppressed and anger will grow within our society. Stigmas are handed out like Halloween candy and people are stripped of their humanity.
What Americans are expressing today is a prime example of Kelley’s Covariation Theory. According to this theory, there are three pieces of evidence to consider. The first piece is consensus and, it measures the extent of other’s behavior being the same in similar situations. Distinctiveness evidence tells us how distinct the behavior of a person is when in a similar situation. Lastly, we have consistency. Consistency measures how often a person specifically behaves in a similar situation.
In layman’s terms, just because I walk into a Southern Baptist church on Sunday mornings doesn’t mean I am a white supremacist. It does not mean I embrace white privilege. What it means is that I am a woman who worships a loving God. I attend church to learn more about my awesome God. At the end of my life, what matters is my personal relationship with Jesus, not what other pew warmers were doing.
These labels throw me into a group of people who are stigmatized as racist or patriarchal. It strips me of my individual humanity. Those labels decrease my ability to share my thoughts with others. I don’t have the opportunity to express my core values without the stigma. Take away the stigma, and you may find my beliefs and values are similar to yours.
Americans are defined by a self-serving bias. We thrive on making ourselves look good by blaming others for the perceived failures in our lives and government. None of us want to admit that there are times our incompetent ways have caused more trouble than good. When we succeed, we give ourselves a pat on the back. When we fail, it’s someone else’s fault. In an essay by Charlotte Ruhl, she states the following.
“ Because we know ourselves better than anyone else, we are able to judge when our actions are the result of something external to who we are, but our minds default to assuming another person’s actions are a result of who they are.”
The way we think can cause detrimental errors in our judgement of others and the decisions we make. We cannot group every white evangelical into the group of white supremacists, the same way we cannot say all low-income African Americans are thugs. We are individuals!!!! We are Americans!
You didn’t lose the game because the referees made the wrong calls.
It’s not the short-sighted manager’s fault you didn’t get the job, and it may well be your fault you were fired.
I am not innocent of committing acts that could cause harm to my neighbor or my nation. Americans need to understand that this is our country and no amount of scapegoating, self-serving bias, or competent leadership is going to cure our ailments. We can no longer distract the population from real issues by blaming evangelicals, whites, African-Americans, upper class, southerners, Trump supporters, immigrants, LGBTQ+, or any other group we can think of.
Unity and equality will never be achieved by scapegoating. We must take responsibility for our actions. You and I need to reflect on how we live our lives. We have to ask ourselves the hard questions. There is no one, including myself, that can truly say they have not contributed to the societal problems we are facing. Unity will only come when we stop the blaming and look at ourselves. You cannot help anyone else until you help yourself.
Rant Over….
