A term the other day really caught my eye: "The soft bigotry of low expectations." It immediately clicked with observations I had made but couldn't define properly until now.
Overt, aggressive hatred is obviously wrong. But there is a politically correct bigotry that I've heard from both sides of the aisle. Sometimes it sounds like, "Those people over there (the Arabs) don't want freedom. They wouldn't know what to do with democracy. We should let them stay oppressed; it's what they want." Other times it sounds like, "The illegals are happy to get those jobs; they'll do jobs we would never want. Besides it makes things cheaper for the rest of us."
Now you can't apply these low expectations to women or black people. Our ears have been trained to ferret that out and pounce on it:
Person #1 (probably a man): "Go figure, it's a woman driver."
Person #2 (usually a woman): "WHAT?! Are saying that WOMEN are not equal to MEN?! THAT'S OUTRAGEOUS!!!
Yet it's still acceptable for our culture to pass subtle judgment on Muslims, the poor, illegal aliens, the homeless, American Indians and many other groups where we snobbishly excuse their faults and shortcomings because we never expected much out of them in the first place.
Some folks are actually bigots. But others, I believe, lower their expectations in a genuine attempt to be gracious. But I believe we can show Christian love to someone, extend grace to them, and still have high expectations of them.
It's especially important to have high expectations because it's human nature to live up to (or down to) what's expected of you. Therefore it is a loving act to set the bar as high as is reasonable and encourage them to achieve. Grace can still be applied.
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