In article ,
Wendy Marsden wrote:

dragonlady wrote:

I'm with a group that will be printing up buttons for an upcoming
conference with "BMP" -- standing for "Best Motives Possible". We are
encouraged to assume that, whatever we see or hear, the person speaking
has the "best motives possible", and if we detect a racial, sexual,
ageist, or whatever slur, we should assume it was inadvertant or
unintended or the result of a need for education, rather than
symptomatic of a genuine desire to oppress. I'm TRYING to live my life
that way: assume the BEST motives, and only move to recognizing an
individual racist when there can be no other possible explanation.

My husband would just adore it if I could do something like that. He
hates my cynicism. I'm just not sure that your outlook is something I
could adopt based on my personality makeup. That isn't to say I couldn't
work towards it.

OTOH, it feels a tad bit like burying your head in the sand. Sometimes
nastiness is there for a purpose, just crying out to be dealt with. I'm
not talking about the bumper sticker, but about a kid who is making
taunting remarks or something like that. Bullying is just as bad for the
bullier as it is for the bullied. Assuming the best motives will lead you
to the wrong response an awful lot of the time. Better to determine the
actual motives than to assume at all, but barring that, it's better to
assume the likely motive.

Wendy

Actually, the folks who are working on this are some of the ones who are
MOST aggressively involved in anti-oppression work: no head burying
going on among them at all!

Their contention -- and it is one I rather like -- is that if you DO
hear or see something offensive (racist, homophobic, ableist, ageist,
sexist, etc.) you are better off assuming that the person's intentions
were good and the offense was unintended. At that point, you can
approach it as an opportunity for education rather than being PO'd.
Doing nothing, however, is never an option.

I can give you an example. About 15 years ago, I had my twins in a
parent/child swim class. The teacher was doing some stuff to get the
kids willing to splash water in their faces. So, with their faces close
to the water she taught them to do the hand-to-mouth "wo-wo-wo" thing
you see in older movies, encouraging them to "whoop like wild Indians".
This teacher was a teenager. Now, as a Native American, I COULD have
gotten really ****ed and made a scene, or made some sort of formal
complaint. However, I assumed she just never really thought about it,
so I waited until I could talk to her after class (when no one else was
around) and calmly told her how offensive most NA folks found that sort
of statement. She was horrified to realize just HOW offensive what she
had done was, apologized profusely, promised to NEVER do it again, and
promised to bring it up in their next staff meeting as something that
needed to be eliminated from their repertoire. (The next week, the head
of the department apologized to me, too, which really wasn't necessary,
but it was nice to know that the girl had followed up on her promise. I
hadn't really needed an apology, just a change.)

Assuming BMP doesn't mean burying your head in the sand: it allows you
to approach people in a way that is less hostile.

Honesty compels me to add that the conference at which these buttons
will be used will be a conference of religious education professionals,
so assuming "best motives possible" should be less of a stretch!

meh
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care