I saw a post on Facebook this week that gave me pause. The post said:
“All houses matter.
But it’s my house that’s on fire.”
That one simple post helped me to re-frame an ongoing debate in a different way.
For many of the early adult years of my life, I felt the stigma of being born in the hills of northeastern Tennessee. As long as I was surrounded by people from my region, everything was fine. I was at home and felt at home. But when I ventured out into the larger world, I discovered that I was not necessarily like everyone else and that some of those people treated me with disdain.
It was probably in the Marine Corps that I first met people from other regions who would make fun of my twangy, hill-folk accent that sounded a lot like Festus Haggen, a deputy on “Gunsmoke.” If you don’t know who that is, think of Forrest Gump.
I pronounced “yellow” as “yallow,” and “egg” as “aig” and had a whole list of regional pronunciations that sounded alien to those outside those hills. After hearing myself on tape for the first time, I realized that these people outside my regional domain thought of me as a rube, a hick, a ridge-runner, a backwoods hillbilly.
But there was more. Not only did some of my new acquaintances from northern and western regions think I talked strangely, many of them related to me as if I were uneducated, uncultured, slow, incapable, and incompetent. I felt that they felt that I was stupid. There were jokes about being in-bred and meeting your girlfriend at a family reunion. People asked me if I wore shoes back in the hills where I came from. It was uncomfortable and caused me considerable distress. No one likes to be treated like an outsider.
There are generally three ways to deal with those feelings that one doesn’t belong: (1) retreat exclusively into one’s “own kind,” (2) become aggressive and fight, if necessary, and (3) try to change and become like the people who are distaining you. Sometimes, one tries all three.
Everyone wants to fit in, to be respected, to live a life that matters. For people in the majority, whatever that majority might be, those things come easier. They come easier because we tend to support those who are like us and give little regard to those who are not. It’s called “ethnocentrism” and we see it all the time.
If a terrorist attack happens in Paris, most of us immediately wonder, “Were any Americans killed or wounded?” as if those are the only victims that counted. It’s a common reaction but it lets us know that we often regard those who are like us as more significant than those who are not like us.
When someone says, “Black lives matter,” or “Blue lives (the police) matter,” there is the knee-jerk reaction to shout, “All lives matter!” which I have done.
But I forget that, when I felt marginalized because of where I came from and because I was different from those in the majority, I, too, wanted to stand up and say, “Hey! My life matters!” And, if the insults became too great to bear, I was more than willing to fight to retain or reclaim my tarnished and besmirched honor. Anyone from the Tennessee mountains who has been surrounded by people from another region with a totally different culture knows what it is like to be disdained, marginalized, or even invisible.
Truthfully, I can only try to imagine what it is like to be Hispanic, or Asian, or Native American, or African American in a culture that is dominated by people who don’t “get it.” Who don’t understand the unique pressures, or prejudices, or disadvantages faced on a regular basis.
But I do understand this: All houses matter. But if it is not my house that is on fire, I can easily be unconcerned about those whose house is being burned down.
I have changed over the years. Now, I am proud of where I came from and am grateful that I grew up where I did. I no longer take offense when someone jokes or even insults me about being a person from the hills. Now, when someone asks me what languages I speak, I can say, “I speak fluent hillbilly and some English.”
But there are yet entire segments of our population that feel diminished, marginalized, disdained, and invisible. There are still houses that are on fire and are in danger of destruction in this land. And those houses matter. We must not, we dare not, ignore their cries.
[David Epps is the pastor of Christ the King Church (www.ctkcec.org.). He is the bishop of the Diocese of the Mid-South (www.midsouthdiocese.org), which consists of Georgia and Tennessee and is the associate endorser for his denomination’s military chaplains. He may be contacted at frepps@ctkcec.org.]
