Owning It

I have zero interest in running for public office. I am aware that one of the best ways to help people is to get involved in making the decisions that affect them. Yet I don’t think I could survive the scrutiny that running for public office brings. It’s not that I’m a bad person or have done horrible things; it’s that I refuse to pretend that I have not evolved as a person over the last 20+ years of my life. Allow me to explain:

Despite growing up in one of the most diverse cities in the world, I was raised in a considerably closed community. Though my family was a member of a more modern strain of Orthodox Jewry, the institutions governing my daily life, such as private schooling and a community that was both physically and socially close-knit, nevertheless worked diligently to ensure that much of the outside world stayed out. Indeed, the snippets of apprehensive and bigoted conversation I might hear from older adults in the community implied that I should not only dismiss but fear secular culture and avoid non-Jews. [Please note: none of this is to suggest that observant Jews as a whole are racist and bigots: just like every other group, there are good and bad people. But as the generation that came before me were children of Holocaust survivors, they were infused with a healthy dose of fear and suspicion of anyone outside the community, and they, understandably, taught those feelings to their children]. As a result, my only real exposure to those different from me came from the media I consumed, but, growing up in the 80s and 90s, this meant a heavy exposure to mediated stereotypes, many of them rather unpleasant. So I guess it is fair to say that I entered adulthood with a rather skewed, fearful, and ultimately biased vision of people who were not just like me.

Thinking about my rather sheltered upbringing, it sometimes still amazes me that a receptive engagement with difference has come to feature so centrally in my professional life. I attribute the development of my open-minded attitude to my mother, a librarian, who taught me, quite to the contrary of most other influences present in my young life, to ask questions and pursue answers, and that just because someone thinks, looks or behaves differently from you doesn’t mean they are inherently wrong or bad. Of course, she was referring mainly to the different types of Jews who, in the New York community, often attack and think less of those who are not exactly like them in every way. But as I went through college, and later graduate school, I gradually began to apply this attitude to others, as I was meeting people who weren’t Orthodox, Jewish, or white.

At the same time, it was the beginning of the mainstreaming of the internet (people still capitalized the “i” in those days), and I, like so many others at the time, was experimenting with expressing myself in a personal blog (fun fact: blogs were originally known as “web logs”). I wrote about my personal life and my thoughts and whatever came to mind at the time. As I started graduate school, I became more interested in politics, having been influenced by The Daily Show and then by talking with friends as well as random strangers on the internet, first in the comments sections of news articles and later on Facebook. As a result, many of my posts began to focus on specific issues of the day.

Unfortunately, the reality is that I had been incorporating all this new information into an existing framework which had been heavily influenced by messaging that was extremely problematic and certainly not politically correct. In other words, many of my opinions and comments back then (and yes, even as recently as 2012), would simply not be considered acceptable today.

Reading back over my past posts, sometimes I find myself cringing inwardly at how insensitive or even flat out ignorant I was at the time (like the time I argued that gay people should be content with civil unions, or when I callously described my black neighbor being arrested like I was on some kind of sick Hollywood tour). I’m certain that some would advise I delete those posts, since I am looking for a job, and these pieces could disqualify me from obtaining one. I suppose, in that sense, those people would be right. Yet I am still reluctant to do so. Not because I somehow stand by those positions or comments; I definitely don’t. I agree that they are terrible in every way a person today might think they are bad. But personally, I think it’s important that I acknowledge what I used to think, even if it was wrong, even if it was offensive, even if I don’t think that way anymore. My opinions have continued to evolve the more I learn, and will continue to develop as I go forward. But I don’t want to pretend that I’ve always thought “the right way” about something, because that would be disingenuous. The best that I’m willing to do is go back to those posts and write an addendum at the end, updating my position or apologizing for the insensitive tone.

I don’t believe that the phrase “people can change” is a platitude or a fallacy. When it comes to opinions, I think people absolutely CAN change, given the right information, support and opportunity. I know people might condemn me for my past opinions or comments. But the truth is that I see those upsetting words and thoughts as necessary, if ugly, stepping-stones for my evolution into a better person. I won’t pretend that I was born perfect, and deleting my past mistakes would be nothing but an attempt to do just that. I would rather own my past, admit that I was wrong, and prove myself as someone who is thoughtful and teachable. A teachable person is always learning and always listening, and we really need more people like that in this world, especially today.