I just finished reading a book, “The First Ladies” an historical fiction by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray which I highly recommend. Although the book is about the friendship of Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune, it reminded me of an us and them incident with my goats.
Stay Away!
I was still relatively new with goats at the time. In starting a 4-H goat project, I met two families with goat dairies. And all my does went dry one winter. So I borrowed a Saanen doe from one of the dairies.
My Nubians are brown and black. They have long, pendulous ears. There was one black Alpine doe with upright ears.
Saanens are white. They have upright ears. The breed is known for being easy going.
Usually, when a new goat is introduced into a herd, everyone gangs up on the poor thing. She is impressed with the news she is at the bottom of the pecking order. Unless she is very aggressive, she stays there for a long time.
That poor Saanen was ignored. If she walked over to my Nubians, they walked away. Not a single one would have anything to do with her.
My Nubians would lie down basking in the sun, an activity Nubians adore doing. When the Saanen laid down at the edge of the group, they got up and moved.
This us and them attitude held for the several months the Saanen was with us. It had to be such an attitude as the Saanen was a dairy goat like them, ate the same food, was treated the same.
Human Us and Them
In “The First Ladies” the same kind of attitude was most apparent. Government officials, military personnel, the public all saw only that Mrs. Bethune was black. Even when she had a personal invitation from Mrs. Roosevelt, she would be turned away or threatened only on the basis of her color.
Such attitudes were the norm at that time. Sometimes it seems some people think they are the norm now. Us and them. They are different.
Another aspect of the book was most interesting. That was the interplay of perceptions. These women forged a deep friendship and working relationship. Yet, they first had to bridge a culture gap. This is where the different chapters from the viewpoints of the two brought out the us and them attitudes, the assumptions we hold about each other.
This is true not just in the case of race, but also for gender, economic class, about everything we absorb as we grow up. It’s easy to drift along holding on to these attitudes. We are better people, more true to the beliefs we claim to hold, if we challenge these and recognize how easy and sometimes harmful an us and them attitude can be.
