My Word's Worth: a weekly column by Marylaine Block

vol. 5, #26, January 31, 2000

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Aretha had it right. What we want, what we need, is a little respect.

And we get precious little of it. Instead we have things that masquerade as respect: Pollsters go through the motions of asking our opinions. Our political parties send us surveys about current political issues. Corporations ask our opinions about their products, monitor our buying habits, study our traffic patterns as we shop. Employers periodically give us pep talks telling us how important our contributions are.

What they don't do, mostly, is pay attention to what we say and think. The real goal of most customer service representatives is not to serve us but to convince us to keep the product and buy more; the real goal of most opinion surveys is not to find out what we think but to force us to think within the limited range of options they provide; the real goal of most employers is to increase output, not morale.

There is a basic lack of fit between our goals and theirs. We want to be seen whole, not in parts, and respected not just for what we can spend or earn, but for the the lives we enrich. What we want in all our transactions is a human connection. We want to feel that the people on the other end are listening to us, and trying to meet our needs, and that they are real people, too, not automatons following a script. We want our daily lives to give us a sense that we're part of a caring, mutually respectful community.

But the goals of employers, politicians, advertisers, are better served by separating us, dividing us into our component parts so that we can be manipulated more efficiently. For our employers' purposes, we are muscle, brains, and talent, not fathers and mothers, not volunteers, not dreamers and inventors and wouldbe artists. For the purposes of advertisers, we are Mac people or PC people, hot-dogs-at-a-ballgame people or Grey Poupon in a limousine people. For purposes of campaign directors, we are likely voters to be courted or unlikely voters who can be safely ignored. For purposes of corporations, we are folks who are waiting for a sales rep (who will get immediate service) or folks who are waiting for technical assistance (who will memorize the recorded hold-music as it endlessly repeats).

None of their goals are served by really listening to us, because we don't matter as individuals but as aggregate numbers. Customer service reps are judged by how many calls they process and how many saves or sales they make, not by whether they do their work honestly and leave the customer feeling good about the transaction. HMO managements judges doctors by how many patients they can process, not how well they can answer our questions and soothe our fears. We are respected more for our economic value and the size of our salaries than for our ordinary kindness and caretaking that nourish the spirit.

They want to know just enough about us to fit us into pigeonholes. Politicians don't want to READ the letters we send them, for God's sake; they just want to find out which way the wind is blowing by adding our raw numbers to their issue tallies -- 37% pro-gun, 63% pro-gun control, 40% pro-life, 55% pro-choice.

They want to know only enough about us to guess what products or ideas they can sell us, so they divide us by our shopping habits and magazine subscriptions, by the cars we drive and the zip code we live in, by our race and religion, by our voting records and attitudes. They call us soccer moms and Joe Sixpack.

It's a form of contempt, really, a way of looking at us that ignores our complexity, and assumes all our parts add up to a consistent pattern. Which, of course, they don't. Fox readers think I'm a typical bleeding-heart liberal, and if it's "liberal" to think government has an obligation to make sure all children have adequate food, shelter and education no matter who their parents are, then I guess I'm liberal. But I'm also a libertarian who believes that when our founding fathers said Congress shall pass no laws limiting freedom of speech and press, they meant NO laws, and a conservative who believes people should vote, obey the laws, and take responsibility for their actions.

It can't be an accident that looking at us as aggregate numbers, or as our component parts, strips us of power. It's hard to complain to a voice mail switchboard that has no menu option for the problem we actually have, and no backup human being. It's hard to broaden the public discussion with our brainstorms and unique solutions when we are expected to pick from a preselected set of options, and when journalists only speak to the extremes on either side of an issue. It's hard to complain about enforced overtime and lousy working conditions when we know we are just numbers to our bosses, and that there are other aggregate numbers in Thailand who will work cheaper.

It's hard to take control of our communities, or even see ourselves as people with a shared stake in our communities, when we are physically separated by real estate, and mentally separated by the group identities forced on us.

The value of Iowa and New Hampshire in the political process is that they're the only places where candidates MUST listen to real people. They have to stand up in public forums and answer our questions. It's amazing how often they find out that what concerns us is not what their parties are pitching. Republicans find out that ordinary people don't hate government, don't even hate taxes -- they just want to get a more responsive government for their money. Democrats find out that ordinary people want government to give people a hand up, but not a lifelong handout. They all find out that ordinary people have ideas and solutions that hadn't occurred to them, like for instance, not allowing Congress to give itself a pay raise unless it simultaneously raises the minimum wage.

How can we get the respect we deserve? We could start by extending it. We could make a point of treating the people we work with, and the people who serve us, as individuals, not job functions. We could take the time to genuinely listen to what our colleagues, friends and family say to us, and listen harder to the things they don't quite say. We could offer praise for work well done, and politeness along with our criticism. We could try to see people we don't know not as [obnoxious] teenagers, [cranky] old ladies, [potentially violent] young black men, but as people, and try to see them whole -- as we would want them to do with us.

We can refuse to accept the way our power is stripped from us. We can tell pollsters that our opinions are not among the options listed, and insist that they record what we actually think. We can refuse to buy from any company that offers wretched customer service; when we're treated especially badly, or even especially well, we can take names and tell managers what we thought about the way we were served. We can let newspapers and television know they're not addressing our real concerns, and not conveying the full range of opinions and possible solutions for the issues that confront us.

We can voice our opinions with the interest groups that claim to represent us but do not. Many Cuban-Americans want Elian Gonzalez to return to his father; many NRA members don't think cop-killer bullets and automatic weapons should be available to all.

We can refuse to succumb to voter apathy caused by our powerlessness and anger, because our apathy is wonderfully convenient for the people who disenfranchised us. We can show up at city council and school board meetings, work with likeminded folks to make our towns more livable, run for office ourselves and change our governments. We can show each other a vision of how a community that respected us would look.

In a Sylvester Stallone/Arnold Schwarzenegger world, we can't expect them to treat us with respect just because it's the right thing to do. But we can show them what respect looks like. We can remind them that they may have have muscle and arrogance, but WE do the work, the spending, and the voting. The marbles our ours. If we don't get the respect all human beings deserve, we can take the marbles and go home.

And we can blast Aretha Franklin at them non-stop til they give in.

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Couple of Notes: Some books I've been reading that got me started on this particular column are Why Is Everyone So Cranky?, by C. Leslie Charles, and Respect, by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot. I recommend both.

NOTE: My thinking is always a work in progress. You could mentally insert all my columns in between these two sentences: "This is something I've been thinking about," and "Does this make any sense to you?" I welcome your thoughts. Please send your comments about these columns to: marylaine at netexpress.net. Since I've written a lot of these, some of them many years ago, help me out by telling me which column you're referring to.

I'll write columns here whenever I really want to share an idea with you and can find time to write them . If you want to be notified when a new one is up, send me an e-mail and include "My Word's Worth" in the subject line.