POPULAR (?) WISDOM

Sometimes the notions and attitudes we absorb are decidedly odd. There are certain ingrained assumptions involved in being a part of any society, most of them being pretty sound and practical or at least innocuous, doing no harm or good one way or another. They're just sort of there, and few of us pay much heed to them, things like expecting the pronunciation of the word car to be very different in Boston than say, Memphis. No biggie. Other assumptions? Well, there is that other kind, the puzzling and downright perverse assumptions that sort of make a mockery of the term "Popular Wisdom." Sometimes they are downright harmful and take a long time to change, such as assumptions about people of certain ethnic heritage.

He many centuries did black Americans suffer under the popular assumption that they were dim-witted, shiftless and happy-go-lucky adult children suited only to be a permanent underclass serving their "betters?" Even many people who championed the abolition of slavery and the subsequent battles to enforce the United Sates Constitution to grant them equal civil rights held onto antiquated paternalistic notions of Africa Americans, simply because it was so deeply ingrained into the national consciousness. This misguided benevolence didn't do anybody any favors, black, white or anywhere in between, and probably helped prolong our national agony over race.

To this day many of us see other human beings as black men or white women rather than just men and women. Our sizable Latino and Asian American populations still suffer under a slew of preconceived notions about temperament, abilities and character. How would you like to be an Asian American kid who stunk at math? The odds are miniscule that it would go unmentioned. Or maybe a Puerto Rican who excels at classical cello? There would be more stories about his or her race than the moving and beautiful music that person produced. Ask Yo Yo Ma how many years it was before it was all about the music and not how or why he is who he is?

And America is the most advanced nation on earth when it come to racial tolerance, being that we are made up of every sort of human being from every corner of the earth. Which is to say that mankind as a whole is sort of dragging it's feet on that "content of their character" dream shared with us by Martin Luther King, who was an avid student of Gandhi, another genius killed for his tolerance. And it's not even a matter of skin color, as a quick peek at the recent genocidal campaigns of Africa, Europe and Asia tell us. The most miniscule differences seem to be an excuse to slay other human beings on a grand scale, especially differences of opinion.

We're pretty butch when it comes to people thinking for themselves and coming up with a different solution to common problems than our own ideas. Look at American politics, where left and right brand one another as traitors even though both sides love their country equally and want to contribute to its progress. Our new president found that out quick when offering the olive branch of bipartisan cooperation to Republicans. They bit his hand repeatedly, branding him a foreign born traitor, a rabid socialist and power mad fool. And that was before he took office. After that it went downhill, if that's possible, a puzzling reaction since Republicans were coming off 8 years in power with an unprecedented record of abject failure, almost incomprehensible incompetence and widespread corruption.

One would think the Republicans would have been grateful not to be living in a nation that rewarded their failure and fall from power with the hangman's noose. Maybe chip in and try to solve the nation's problems, considering each new idea on its merits rather than its source, but that's not happening. For which we should be grateful that politicians are not scientists. Imagine if science operated that way? Say Jonas Salk was an unpopular, contentious pain-in-the-ass, his colleagues would have made sure his cure for Polio never saw the light of day and millions more would have been crippled or dead at a young age from that disease. But whether a scientist is a nice guy or a beast, it is only the workability of his ideas that is relevant to science, and no sound idea is rejected for reasons of personal bias.

Which just shows that people are certainly capable of rising above popular wisdom. When the world was proved to be a globe, it was only the morons that refused to accept the truth. When Salk's polio vaccine was manufactured, not a single nation on earth refused to save their children because the cure was invented in a nation they didn't like all that much. Skin color, ethnicity, religious or political persuasion have zero bearing on the merits of a scientific idea. It it works, we all glom onto it in a flash and make our lives better. Has any parent ever questioned exactly who pioneered the laser surgery that saved their child's life? Do any of us wonder about the personal or political opinions of the inventors of our cell phones, automobile airbags or life-sustaining medicines? Who cares?

Sports is another area of human endeavor that's broken a lot of comfortable but backward notions. Even back as far as the 1930s, when Jim Crow still ruled the American roost, two of our biggest sports heroes were the very black men Jesse Owns and Joe Louis. They represented America, or at least an America that might have been, that should be, and their exploits helped us get to that place, and within a decade of their prime years racial barriers fell in professional sports and the armed services, and within a generation The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the National Voting Rights Act of 1965 were enacted. Which is not to say that many Americans were not dragged kicking and screaming into the sanity and propriety of new realities, with no shortage of violence and killing to maintain the status quo. But that status quo is gone forever and today very few Americans question the concept of universal equality.

And none of them who are sports fans complain when a black or Latino or Italian or Oriental player is the star or the difference maker on a championship team. They might gripe that sports stars are overpaid, which is another fallacy. No one goes to Yankee Stadium to see George Steinbrenner, the owner of the team who make more money than any of his well paid stars. People go to see Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Alex Rodriguez and company, highly skilled performers who pack the house every night and make their employers and television networks wealthy. That's why U2 makes more money than a wedding band, why Elvis made more than Pat Boone. And the fact that many wealthy sports stars are minorities doesn't seem to bother a soul anymore.

Same deal with our scientists, no one cares what sort of person handed us the lollipop, it's delicious and we want more. And President Barack Obama has people like George Washington Carver, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Lena Horne, Althea Gibson, Sidney Poitier, Jack Johnson, Joe Louis and Jesse Owens to thank for his job, just as much as Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, John F. Kennedy, Ralph Abernathy, Malcom X. and Medgar Evers. Things are better now than ever, but not nearly as good as they should be. In a nation that was founded on the concept that all men are created equal, as blatant attack on popular wisdom in 1776 as was humanly imaginable, we are the standard bearers of love and tolerance in a hate filled world. Always as much an idea as a nation, America is on a journey towards an ideal. All the guns and rockets in the world won't change the popular wisdom of ethnic and religious hatred half as much as a shining example. Sometimes popular wisdom is neither popular nor wise. Just ask Galileo or Columbus.