| My wife recently found a job, as a manager. When she was discussing next month’s schedule for her employees with her manager, she was clobbered with a blunt statement/policy that is practiced at this company: “People are not important, coverage is!” The result is that salaried employees have to work 50-60 hours per week; which is not so uncommon this days, if it were not for one little detail: this is a minority-owned and controlled bank.
In every place I worked, I paid a particular attention to how employees were being treated. It was always a part of a corporate culture that I noticed instantly, and is critical for me to understand what I’m a part of. So I was especially excited to learn that my wife was offered a position at a minority-owned company. Knowing that no one else can feel for a little guy the way someone who’s been there, someone who knows the pain of abuse like no one else; such scars stay with you for generations. (As I thought)
But, as a Jew, I should have known better. Every time I see how Palestinians are being treated by Israelis and racism that is oozing from so many there – those, who should have known better - is an evidence enough to suggest that those who say “never again” mean “never again [to me].” Regrettably, this experience did not teach them how to treat others with respect and dignity - values that Israelis insist must be granted to them.
So, what is the moral of witnessing an African-American middle-manager explaining the policies of a minority-owned company as “people are not important”, and of a Jewish state that is utterly ignorant of the fate of their neighbors, treating them with nothing but acts of racism?
As individuals, and as a society, we learn and evolve through suffering – i.e., lessons, as they are called – that teach us not to inflict same misery onto others; after all, we did not enjoy it. I always felt pity for those who suffered no ethnic abuse themselves while happily dispense such hatred onto others; they know no better. But the worst kind of sentient creature is the one who carries the scars of abuse and learns nothing from them. If centuries of slavery and Holocaust during Nazi regime taught us so little, what must we go through to evolve?
If I was an optimist, I would have said that “we have a long way to go.” But I’m not an optimist.
P.S. I know many will say “How can you compare abuse of a nation with minor (or common) abuse at a workplace?” I’m not comparing one with another. But rather point to a fact that we are incredibly obstinate to drawing lessons from our past. Humanity and decency - evolution – is not about ability to notice (or even standing up to) a great evil, but of becoming intolerant to any abuse.
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