Brad!

Well, this thread has gone places I would not have guessed, but I can't regret that. Think of what it may have done for the stagnant keyboard industry.

As has happened before, I have either started or contributed to a thread and then not been able to keep up in real time. That is usually a combination of: trying to figure out how to respond; being a crummy typist who has to dedicate serious blocks of time to translate thoughts into text; and that whole gainful employment thing. It seems that teh only time I get to respond is when there's a presidential debate on the telly.

I sifted back through a number of posts in the thread since the point that I was called a bigot, IIRC, and will try to contribute back to the thread some motley collection of my thoughts. From that sifting, I pasted a bunch of things that you and others have said and will try to use them as a fulcrum for my response. If anyone feels that I have cherry-picked or used their comments out of context, please send me an e-mail with the subject "Jim, you are a really bad person"....


Brad:

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No, it's saying "I'm proud of my faith." That's it.

I'll take your word for that. I don't think that is what *everyone* is saying with their fish.

Tangent: I could have sworn I got into a discussion on this BBS about the lyrics to this song and about how I got into *another* BBS discussion (on another BBS/list) with some Christian country music fans. They all either reassured or pressured me ("you are being *Way* too politically correct!") to think that "It is just a song! Relax! Get over it!"

This may seem completely unrelated to this thread, but the stake I am trying to put in the ground is the notion of how people perceive what they do in the context of their own social norms versus how their actions can be perceived by others who don't share the same beliefs of the same sense of "the norms". Is Montgomery's "Little Girl" just a song? *I* certainly don't think so. What do you think?

Brad:

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No one with a Christian symbol on their car is saying "trust me or whatever because I'm Christian" so you're comparison to an Italian salesperson doesn't quite fit the other quite bigotted examples you pointed out.

I unfairly asked a negative rhetorical question here without explaining it. What I meant to imply is that I actually *have* have a car salesman (at a big local VW dealer) confide to me that I could trust the dealership because the owners were good Christians. I could almost see his Tony Robbins teeth shatter when I told him that that particular aspect of his sales pitch could be deal breaker for me (I could see a bit of the "sh*t, that's what the sales manager told me to day!" in his eyes. Oh, I don't know. Maybe he had "gone rogue", but it didn't seem like it). Anyhow, it was interesting to talk with some folks 2 years later about how shabbily they felt thay had been treated *after* they bought their car there.

Brad:

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No. It's just a symbol on a card. You are inferring all of these things because of a symbol on a card. If the first question the contractor asked you before even giving you the card was if you were Christian or not, then it'd be different

With the previous "No one with a Christian symbol on their car" and "It's just a symbol on a card." you, as a Christian (I think you have said you are such) would seem to be generalizing about Christians thoughts and deeds in a way that would cause me to be labeled as a bigot if I did the same as a non-Christian. Oh, I don't know. Maybe these two absolutes were published in the August Secret Christian Newsletter and I just didn't get my copy (I signed up under an assumed name and I think they got my address wrong!).

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Bigot still seams to stick.

It is funny. I think my skin is probably thicker than dbrashear's -- at least on my butt and other critical areas. I am too old to be thin-skinned. OK, there are some things I will get torqued about. Say something like "your buddy Bill Clinton" and I will respond testily within a nansecond to correct you. But if you want to think I am a bigot or prejudiced? Cool. Whatever. Everybody is prejudiced. I guess the question is what we do with it.

With respect to my perceptions of the Christian ( I think they shorted it to xTian on some BBS) fish planted next to the "Proud to be an American" bumper sticker on the back of a (foreign?) car, I probably also did not elaborate enough...

Part of what prompted my "pissed off" comment was the experience I have had with some of those folks (who IMHO wanted me to trust them because they were Christians). The canvas guy? Quoted me ~$600 for a $300 job in 1991 I *think* because he assumed that I was a rich boat owner (instead of a near-broke public employee) and thought he could shoot the moon and get away with it. The painting guy? Kept dancing around the price tag for an easily estimatable job (sleazebag!) with some "Don't you worry. I'll treat you right." bulls*t based (I *think*) on his assumption that I was probably part of the club. This the painter I was referred to by the (Christian, as I discovered later) self-storage manager who also put me in contact with some independent (read:unlicensed, uninsured) movers who "I could trust" (read: Christians). Anyhow, the movers turned out to be reasonally OK.

I don't mean to read too much into this particular series of experiences, but just to use them as an example. If, in Michigan, the fish is "just a symbol on a card" then I would say that is *way* different from what I see here. The remodeler's cube van with the big-ass fish on it? Sorry Brad, that isn't just pride. It is advertising. I won't presume to speak for Christians, but I won't deny my experience.

In the politically-correct vein, the notion of "You can trust me, I'm Italian" probably hasn't faded too far into our past. When I think of an insular neighborhood like Boston's North End or Southie, there is and was a certain neighborhood loyalty that hewed close to ethnic and religious lines that you can't say is all bad. Support your neighbor's/neighborhood businesses -- and you maybe *can* trust them because you know them. It probably isn't useful or relevant in this context to think too much about the negatives in those neighborhoods....

What I see in "the Fish" sometimes, though, is not sense of community but of "hanging out a shingle". The notion that "It is just a symbol on a card" just does not hold. At least the gents at the Rotary Club will admit they are there in great part to advance their business interests. What is so hard about that?

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In the example I posted earlier, my father-in-law puts the Italian flag on his business card for one reason and one reason only - he is proud of it. It isn't a business move, it's just something he is proud of. Out of all of the work we've done in the 3 past years (that I've been actively involved), I'd say only 5-10% of our work has been for other Italians.

Actually, with the shifting demographics in some cities, trying to use an Italian flag as an advertising prop could be a losing proposition. I don't know your father-in-law, but if you say he puts the flag on his business card for reasons of pride alone, I can believe it. Maybe I have met him.

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Sure, this is just one example, but you'd need a lot of proven examples to come to the conclusion that most Chrisitans who put symbols on business material are in some way being prejudiced against non-Christians.

Are Christians who put symbols on their business materials being "prejudiced against non-Christaian". I don't want to generalize too much about the intent of a large group of people, but I am willing to bet thet a lot of them don't see it that way. And I am not saying that any of these people are starting with a conscious desire to piss me off. However, I think it come down to a common disconnect between what people believe they are doing and how that is perceived by folks outside of their "norm club". I would also couple this with with the common phenomenon of what I think can be characterized as cognitive dissonance: "I put the fish on my business card because I'm proud, not because I am an aspiring enterpreneur.....my isn't it nice -- the side benefit that I can also send the secret handshake to customers, develop business contacts and make a lot of money?....but I really put the fish on just because I am proud." Reverend Ike marches on in more subtle ways.

Prejudiced or not, I definitely have developed some suspicious opinions on this, but it is not all from simple prejudice and a lot of it is from direct dealings. I also think (wow, no huge surprise) that in this country there is a pretty direct connection between religion and politics in this realm that fortifies my suspicious opinions. Any of the folks that I know that have gone the way of Amway have adopted a certain evangelical zeal and have fallen into more evangelical religious beliefs at the same time -- and political views to fit. Correlations between plastic fish and an array of conservative bumper stickers are not absolute/100% but are definitely there. I would say that there is also a correlation with enterpreneurial, individualist (government should be smaller) politics that I hope you won't be offended if I guess that your views may represent.

McComb:

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When an average white guy can print "proud to be a white, heterosexual, atheist male" on his business card and not get harassed by every person he gives is to then you can argue that a religious symbol is "just a symbol on a card" until then you should expect people to take it in the same vein most here would the above phrase.

At Lucent, our group had a friendly manager who was "born-again" and who routinely fired up his laptop for presentations (hooked up to a LCD projector) with a screensaver that would scroll Psalms and Bible verses during breaks in the presentation. No one blinked. Nobody -- no higher manager in the room -- pulled James aside and said "Hey, do you think that is really appropriate?" I just ignored it. He was actually a pretty nice guy with this little blind spot. I had to chuckle, though, as I thought about what the reaction would be -- and how long my employment would last-- if I plugged in my laptop with a Church of The Big Invisible Guy screensaver or if one of engineers from further afield fired up a Koran screensaver. But James? He was in the norm.


Brad:

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General observation: The discussion has changed a bit now.. Earlier, it was suggested that putting a symbol on a card was a way of offending anyone who didn't fit that particular group and it was a way to claim superiority.

I don't know that it was argued that it was a (conscious) "way to offend anyone" even as I did say that *I* found some of it offensive. A way to claim superiority? I think canuckinLA touched on a confession that *sure* some of those obvious and not-so-obvious signs of pride are definitely about feeling superior on some level. It would be hell being at all opinionated if you didn't have some sense of being right whiel thinking others are wrong. With religious convictions, though, expressed through what feels like both high and low-grade proselytization to me -- the "Have a blessed day!" at the checkout counter or airport security checkpoint or the Amway-esque, out-of-place named-dropping of "well after church on Sunday" 30 times ina 3 minute business converstaion -- I defintely do get the sense of lot of people who just can't help let you know how lucky they are and how good they are. I often feel that these folks are trying to bolster or reassure themsleves. In the cases of "dry drunks" like our Mister Bush, I often think that they have dropped on addictive bahavior in favor of another. Oh well. Salvation is at least not known to cause liver failure.

CanuckinLA:

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Ultimately, what JeffS said about not decking himself out in religious symbols resonates with me. It's like that old adage that if you're good, and you know it, that you don't have to tell everyone, and can just go about being good at whatever it is. Everyone who matters knows you're good.

ka-ching.


wfaulk:

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Even then, I only complained about the practice, not the people, although I'll admit to a prejudice against the people who use that tactic. In my experience, they are the people I'd rather avoid. My wife tends to agree, even if she's somewhat less dogmatic about it than I am.

Perhaps to my detriment, I sometimes object to the pratice in principal, but then can't separate the people.

tfabris:

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If a fish on a business card gets them more customers, then more power to 'em. That's capitalism. If they're doing it for pride only, okay fine. Seeing the fish makes me, a potential customer, think consciously about their motives for putting it there, so I don't know if that's what they want or not. Maybe it is.

Of course, if they also exclude all non-Christians from their employed staff, then that becomes a completely different question. But a fish on a business card? Go for it. You'll piss a few people off, but probably make buddies with others. The people who get pissed off, you probably didn't want as a customer anyway.

... wait, or did you? Hm.

Intent versus percieved intent. It is tough. I expect our politicians to think about things like that. As you say , though, if somebody want to put *whatever* on their business card -- a flag burning, say! -- they should go for it....but they shouldn't get all bent out of shape at people's reactions.

Discrimination? I have hired 4-5 people over the past decade whose beliefs/views were 300 times closer to my estimates of Brad's or Jeff's beliefs than my own. Hired for what they could do. Thankfully, none of them blurted out "You should hire me because I am a Christian!" during the interview or I would have been in a big pot of moral-quandary hot water!

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Now we're into the question of... What reaction does it cause, regardless of the motive? And what if the result is a different reaction than they expected?

We live in complex societies. I don't think that there is any way to avoid thinking about how our actions are perceived to some extent. And, yes, I think it wouldn't hurt if some folks worked on a little more insight into their own motives.... The old saying "somebody who asks you about your religion? Well, they are usually interested in telling you about theirs!" comes to mind.


mccomb:

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If I find out in a casual way that my plumber is a religious man it in no way changes my opinion of him, but if I find out from his add or his business card it becomes an unnecessary and irrelevant part of his sales pitch. It's no different than my slimy car salesman trying to mimic my lifestyle and beliefs to ingratiate himself to me in the hopes that I'll buy a car from him now that he is my "friend".

Agreed.

Brad:

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This is really getting out of control here. Is your ideal world some sort of grey colored mix where nobody can identify themselves as anything or take pride in anything without being perceived as trying to offend of exclude a group that does not match that desciption?

I don't think I heard anybody say that but you.

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I think I'm done with Off Topic for a few months.

Well, that would be too bad.