You are no longer friends with this person

Today I discovered that I had been defriended recently on Facebook.

I can't help but think what a loss it is for us both. I've known this person for about six years, and I've always considered them someone worth knowing better if the opportunity should arise. Unfortunately, it hasn't. Following that initial rush in 2011 when our paths first crossed, our social interaction generally has been limited to exchanging pleasantries after church and an uneventful Facebook friendship that apparently ended a few months shy of the six-year mark.

I know people can take it personally when someone defriends them. Some see it as a personal rejection, while others blame themselves for driving the other person away. The element of rejection is undeniable -- defriending someone on social media is an active choice, after all -- but my main reaction to this act is simple curiosity. Why this person, why now?

Was it simple housecleaning? Some people have hundreds, if not thousands, of friends on Facebook, including family, actual friends, neighbors, co-workers, teammates on Mafia Wars, and even former receptionists from the doctor's office. It'd be hard to fault anyone for wanting to cull the herd a little under those circumstances.

On the other hand, my former Facebook friend and I see each other almost every week and there are more than 400 other people who survived the great purge. A housecleaning doesn't seem too likely an explanation, all things considered.

Maybe it's politics. I'm usually content to live and let live, but I have been absolutely forthright in my denunciation of Donald Trump, and that's upset a few people. Maybe that was it. The election was a divisive affair, and while I wouldn't defriend someone myself, I wouldn't hold it against someone else who did.

Could it be religion? I've shared a few things over social media that disappoint me about the church, and from time to time I tweet commentary on the worship service as it unfolds. It's all in good fun, and the pastor takes it in good stride, but I can see how it could bother someone.

It's impossible to say what set the ball rolling without knowing the story, and no one has told me. That's what lends the whole affair an air of the surreal. When an actual friendship ends, there's something you can point to. There was a fight, or an act of betrayal, or there was a completely natural drift over the years as life and geography come into play.

With social media, there's none of that. There's a passive-aggressive decision to click a button, a sense of satisfaction that it's over. Except that its not. If you move in the same social circles, you're going to feel an odd sense of dislocation the next time you run into the person you defriended. Once they realize they've been defriended, that dislocation is going to get downright awkward.

Here's the cut and jib of it for me. I'm cautious about making friends, but when I consider someone a friend, it's solid. Friendship is a sacred bond, something we neither pretend to nor lightly cast aside. I'm a little looser about whom I'll identify as a friend on social media, but I don't add people just for the sake of it. They have to be decent people too, or it won't happen. And when I add someone, I don't remove them.

Why's that? It's simple. For one thing, the snub in defriending someone is undeniable. We may pretend it's not there, but it takes a conscious decision and deliberate act to defriend someone, and there's no way to undo that decision without drawing attention to its being made in the first place. Defriending someone on social media almost certainly is going to create ripples offline as well.

But just as importantly, defriending someone carries a cost for us as well. The differences in perspective and experience that different people bring to the table can cause a lot of friction and weary us, but they also enrich our lives.

Shutting people out of my life because I disagree with them will leave me – and possibly them – poorer for the experience. I'm a Christian, an identity that makes me treasure my Muslim, Jewish and atheist friends all the more.

In the same vein, I'm sorely disappointed in my friends who voted for Donald Trump, and I'm deeply critical of their decision; but that doesn't mean that I hate them or don't want to hear from them. We probably won't change each other's minds, but we can grow in understanding of and appreciation for each other.

There is a depth of perspective and a vitality of life that we get from interacting with people whose lives and viewpoints differ from our own. When we limit our time to people who only share our views, or when we silence voices that differ from our own, we rob ourselves of the chance to hear new ideas and to grow our roots deeper.

Did my former Facebook friend drop me from social media because I was too angry, too liberal or too disrespectful? I'll never know. All I do know is this: We'll see each other in church on Sundays, and we'll continue to be friendly to one another, but our ideas are less likely now to cross than in the past six years.

And we're both a little poorer for it.



Copyright © 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet


Psst! I totally stole this from Brucker.

blaming the victims of police violence

Have you heard about Steven Hildreth Jr.?

Hildreth, a resident of Tuscon, Ariz., was featured in an October 2015 news story in which he describes an encounter with the police that did not end with him being shot, tased, arrested or otherwise turned into the latest statistic of police violence aimed at black Americans. In fact, the story notes, after he was pulled over for a broken headlight, he told the police that he had a license for a concealed firearm, which he was carrying on his hip.

The encounter doesn't go badly; in fact, the police let him off with a reminder to fix the broken headlight and to get his up-to-date registration card, since the registration is valid but the card is old. “Because you were cool with us and didn’t give us grief, I’m just going to leave it at a verbal warning," the officer says.

Here's how Hildreth ends his comments, which he originally posted on Facebook:

I’m a black man wearing a hoodie and strapped. According to certain social movements, I shouldn’t be alive right now because the police are allegedly out to kill minorities.

Maybe…just maybe…that notion is bunk.

Maybe if you treat police officers with respect, they will do the same to you.

It's no surprise that every time there is another police shooting of a black man, particularly when it ends in the black man's death, Hildreth's comments go viral. Coming from me or Sean Hannity, these comments easily could be dismissed as whitesplaining, but here they are, from a black man. To some, this constitutes compelling evidence that Black Lives Matter is about disrespecting our police, who are doing a dangerous job and whose lives are imperiled whenever we express concerns about the potential for racism.

I'm glad that Hildreth had a pleasant encounter with the police who pulled him over, as I'm sure everyone else is. That doesn't make his experience normative, though. I twice have been pulled over by police who were so friendly and professional that I didn't mind getting a ticket from them, and left the encouner in as good a mood as when it started. That doesn't mean I expect police to be that friendly when they pull me over and when they aren't that it's because of something I said differently.

I've seen Hildreth's story in my Facebook feed many times, and here's the truth: I don't like it. It blames the victims of police violence for that violence, and it's also incredibly condescending. (Also, every Facebook friend who has shared it has been white, so maybe there is something to that charge of whitesplaining after all.)

Hildreth is correct that we should treat police officers with respect, but the implication of his comments is that if something goes wrong, then the fault lies with the civilian. In fact, that's pretty much exactly he point spells out. The problem is that too many black Americans have found this to be exactly not the case. Most recently Philando Castile, who reportedly was shot while doing exactly what the officer on hand said, who by all reports was a respectful person, and who even informed the cop that he was had a license for concealed carry.

In other words, he acted just like Hildreth did, but he was shot and killed anyway.

Admonitions to respect police are rather like calls to have faith that God will answer prayers. Having faith is a good thing, but if God does not answer your prayers, it doesn't you failed to have enough faith. It's important to respect police, but unfortuantely for far too many black Americans, that hasn't been enough to save their lives either.

Let's stop blaming victims of police violence, and let's stop pretending that black people don't know that they should respect police.

We need instead to address the problem from the side of the police. A number of the cops who have been involved in these incidents were let go from previous departments because of incidents that left their superiors concerned about their fitness to be cops. And others have shown overt signs of racist attitudes and behaviors, including racially offensive comments. Departments need to start vetting these people out, no matter how much experience they have on the force.

I knew a cop once on my journalism beat who felt free to talk trash about Arabs, Jews, black people and, well, just about anyone. He was the second highest-ranking officer on the force, and then two years later he was chief. I don't care how good a cop he may have been otherwise, this man didn't belong on the force. Even if he never went on patrol any more, his attitudes still infected the department.

Get rid of cops like him, make an effort to hire so that the police departments resemble their communities demographically, and give training like they were having success with in Dallas, and then we might start to see progress.



Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet