People who are different interest me.  If someone moves in down the street, and their skin is a different color than mine, different smells come drifting out of their kitchen, and they have an accent that is hard to understand, I immediately go over and introduce myself.

“Hey, what are you guys cooking?  This smells fantastic.”

“So what made you guys move all the way over here?  It must have been something pretty big.”

“If you guys need anything, please do not hesitate to come over and ask.  I know that living in a place so far from home must be very disorienting, and I would love to help you find something you need or help you in any way.”

The whole political correctness movement in the 90’s bothered me as well.  I was very dutiful.  I tried to write everything in gender neutral language.  I tried to find the least offensive term for everything.  All that I wrote and everything I said was euphemized and sterilized to the point of obfuscation.  But that didn’t work either.  Those people who just moved in down the street, they are different.  There is just no getting around that.  Their skin is brown, they play music on instruments I have never seen before, and the food is simply fantastic, so they are most definitely not from here.  But what is wrong with that?  I always thought that different was cool.  Different was interesting.  Different was nice.

But that’s the problem.  Most people do not think the way I do.  Different is not cool.  Different is not wonderful.  Different is not interesting.

To most people in Kentucky, different is simply wrong.  Different is to be mistrusted.

And so you probably know where I am going with this.  EMS workers are the worst at this.  There are varying levels of it.  On one side of the spectrum you have people who are afraid to eat in a Mexican or Chinese restaurant because, “I heard they serve dog meat in there.”  Seriously.  I guess the ‘A+’ rating from the health department inspection that is proudly displayed in the window must be evidence of that.  The other side of the spectrum is something darker and creepier.  I have heard conversations taking place in EMS quarters, firehouses, and police stations across the country where people are talking about the “niggers that moved in next door” or the “fags that moved in down the street.”  I also hear childish discussions about how these people will go on their porch and start cleaning their weapons and rifles in plain view of the family in hopes to scare them into moving.

Yep.  I’m not kidding folks.  These are your public servants.  These people are paid with your tax dollars.

The worst example of this happened when I was working for a fire based EMS service here in Kentucky.  I was using the printer in the captain’s office to print a handout for a class I was teaching later that evening when the shift captain came into the room and shut the door.

“Hey, Buck.  I’ve always wanted to ask you something.  How come you are always being so nice to niggers and spics?  I mean, you really go out of your way sometimes to be nice to them, and I can’t see as it gets you anywhere.”

I didn’t really respond to him.  I was too shocked.  I just stared at him for a minute.

“I really want to know.  I mean, why you gotta be so nice to all these niggers and spics?”  Now his tone had changed a bit.  His voice had come down an octave.  He wasn’t anywhere near menacing.  But he wanted me to know he was serious.

“Cause they’re human beings, and I’m not a racist redneck asshole.”  It was comments like this that made me popular there.  The reader should also take note that I no longer work there.

So this is the kind of thing that has always creeped me out about my EMS coworkers.  These are things that you won’t find happening in a business office where reputable people work.  Not to say that these people can’t be racist too, I’m sure there are some that are out there.  But I have many friends with regular day jobs who are just shocked and appalled by my stories.  And now that I work in an office environment for a top notch non-profit agency, the thought of anything like that happening is completely unspeakable.

But it happens with EMS, fire and police.  Yes it does.

As an educator I have tried to use my soapbox a time or two to set a standard for what is acceptable in the profession.  I have been criticized for this on several occasions by students, peers and superiors alike.  It has always been my contention that tolerance and professional demeanor are critical to the profession.  So I have tried to use the affective domain to promote these things in my teaching.  On more than one occasion I have been told that I should “stick to the curriculum and not try and pass off any crazy liberal ideas on people who paid good money to learn how to be a paramedic”.

However, I have time and time again seen good people leave this profession quickly in disgust because of issues like this.  I once had a straight A student with a good college background come back from the kitchen in the firehouse.  Just a few seconds ago he was looking for some koolaid.  Now he was picking up his books and leaving before the end of class.  I asked him what was the matter and he told me of a conversation he had heard in the kitchen.  “Look, he said.  I already have a job where people know how to act, and they aren’t a bunch of racist jackholes.  I always wanted to do this for a living, but I guess I was unaware of what kind of people I would be doing it with.”  I was later able to get him to come back to class.  But it wasn’t long before he re-enrolled in college and went back, abandoning his paramedic career.  Good for him, to be honest.  Sometimes I think I should have done that long ago.

It has always confused me how so many people who are so hateful wind up in a career that is geared toward public service and helping your fellow man.  As I have said in previous posts, I believe it is because an EMT certificate is the shortest way to feeling important for a set of small minded people.  Not everyone in the profession is like this, but there are enough to make you feel uncomfortable.  There are enough for your captain to go out of his way to ask you why you “like niggers and spics so much”.

Over the years I have found a few ways to make an impression on a small minded student and broaden his or her horizons.  There will be several posts on this.  But today, I will limit discussion to one specific device.  But before we delve into this, we have a prerequisite.  We must first understand how the small minded insular person views ‘evidence based’ science.

The very term ‘evidence based science’ should be redundant, but unfortunately there are so many small minded people working and living in amongst us that ‘junk science’ has become just as widely accepted.  All science should be evidence based in that it should have a clear hypothesis that was tested appropriately with a sound method and a large enough sample.  Science pervades every part of our lives now.  It seems like nearly everyone has a computer in their pocket.  The miniaturization of technology that started with the experiments of Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments have led us to this point.  We can cure diseases that were once a mystery.  Lifepak monitors get better and better.  And humans are living longer.  All of this is due to evidence based science.

The problem is that just because someone reaps the rewards of evidence based science, does not mean they are going believe in evidence based science, or follow its mandates.  Spiritually, people believe what they want to believe.  They are aware of science.  And some politicians, consultants, and think tank folks have discovered that small minded people are easily persuaded and will join your ranks if you A. play to their deepest fears and B. back up their deepest fears with junk science that reaffirms their world view and validates their non-logical belief system.  By doing this for a small minded person you have gained a friend and more importantly a vote and/or a campaign contribution.

The people I am targeting with my attempts at persuasion have often been inundated with this junk science and are now completely comfortable with their belief system.  One of my colleagues became extremely excited one day and tried to tell me all about a series of studies that had come out explaining how black people had inferior brains, and a bunch of other useless drivel.  A quick search for these studies exposed them as being funded by a super conservative think tank and had no basis in fact whatsoever.  (A small aside, please don’t think I am leaning to the left with this.  The ‘tree hugger’ crowd is just as sensitive to this phenomenon as anyone else.  Crazy vitamin supplements that have not been approved by the FDA, misinterpreted data about carbon emissions and other environmental issues, holistic therapies that waste time when real therapies are available…yep the extreme left pisses me off too.  To be honest, I find it impossible to find anyone to vote for.  If I can be accused of leaning left for any reason it would probably be the motivation of the far left person.  Although misguided, the far left person who has bought into junk science has usually done so because they want to help their fellow man.  You won’t find many tree huggers cleaning their gun on their porch to scare off the ‘niggers who just moved in down the street.’  Both political parties pad their ranks with small minded people.  I will admit though that I feel a little more comfortable with the padding and the fluff to be found on the left.  At least I won’t get shot.  Just FYI.)

For my entire career I have tried to deal with hateful people like this.  Be advised, you are not going to change anyone’s opinions over the course of one paramedic class, or over the course of a shift.  If someone was raised to be hateful and suspicious of everything that is not white, change is not going to happen overnight.  It is always my goal with these people to simply coax them into being less insular, less fearful, and more tolerant.  Guiding this person back to evidence based science, and picking one palatable thing for them to learn every now and then seems to do the trick.

My one winnable argument that I have for you today has to do with the idea of Mutual Exclusivity.  Many people who are being hateful towards one ethnic group or another religion are doing so because they are so deeply entrenched in their own religion that they cannot possibly imagine why anyone else would ever want to do something different.  Also note that this person is engaging in a fair amount of denial.  The Bible is dripping with teachings that would lead a person towards tolerance and turning the other cheek.  For some reason, much of America collectively chooses to ignore those passages.  So bringing them up usually gets you nowhere.

The concept of mutual exclusivity is based around irrational faith being clung to in the midst of an evidence based world that keeps producing stuff that works like smart phones and vaccines.  (I specifically mention vaccines because they are based on the well documented science of natural selection that is quite provable.  But that is something for another blog post.)  Any religious person who has had their faith challenged has usually heard versions of the numerous refutations of the ontological and teleological arguments.  When confronted with clear and logical arguments against their faith, they usually retreat into what I like to call the ‘faith mantra.’  The person will go into something that sounds quite logical and well structured, but it is just another statement that what they believe is based on faith and not science, and all of religion is based on this faith for which they will be rewarded in the end…so on and so forth.  It is circular and it goes nowhere.

So if I perceive that faith in a certain religion is fueling the intolerance of another group, faith is what I attack.  It goes something like this:

“So, why do you believe in Jesus and God and all that?”

“What do you mean?”

“I am being quite serious.  I mean, if you were marooned on a desert island at a very young age, you would obviously not arrive at being a Baptist specifically.  (Or a Presbyterian, Catholic, Methodist, or whatever they are.  I pick on Baptists here just at random.)  How did you specifically become a Baptist?”

Here is where they usually tell you of their childhood.  “Well, I was raised Baptist by my parents.”

“And why do you think they became Baptists?”

It’s amazing how many religious people have never had this conversation before.  They will look at you funny and smile, and be confused at the line of questioning.  “Well, their parents taught them that of course.”

“Okay, so do you think that if we went back far enough, we would find out that someone was given this information through an outside source.  You know, like an experiment.  Someone long ago thought, ‘You know what, I think there is this thing called God.  And not just God either, but a Baptist God.  He must be unseeable like germs, or the atom, but I know that he is there, so I will perform a bunch of experiments to test my hypothesis.  Do you think this ever happened?’”

Sometimes they will latch on to this ‘unseeable’ thing and run with it.  It is easily swatted down though.  “Well, the problem with that is that after a set of experiments the existence of atoms and germs has been confirmed.  No one has ever seen a Baptist God in a super collider.  All attempts so far have missed.  But that was not the point of the question.  What I am asking is, ‘Is everything you know about your religion just blind faith that was passed on to you by another individual and your interpretations about what the Bible means?’”

It may take a while but the answer to this is always, “Yes.”  Sometimes I get an “Of course,” accompanied by a roll of the eyes like this is a stupid line of questioning.

“Alright, so how do you think a Muslim man arrived at his faith?”

“What do you mean?”  For some reason they always ask you to explain this bit.

“Alright, I can assure you that no one has ever done an experiment and proven the existence of Ala.  The way it works is these things are taught to Muslim children by their parents.  They grow up thinking this is the right way to think, and they run with it.  There are different denominations of Muslims too.  Their holy book is the Koran, and different people interpret the teachings in different ways, just like Christians.  So they grow up believing the faith based teachings of their parents and interpreting the Koran how they want to until they feel comfortable with their beliefs.  Sound familiar?  Jews are the same way.  Their book is the Torah, which is a lot like your Old Testament.  Again, no scientific experiment has proven the existence of their God.  There are different denominations of Jews just like with anything else.  Some orthodox, some not.  There is a whole spectrum.  And their parents taught them their faith.”

“So where is all this going,” they inevitably ask.

“Well, do you think that there are thousands of different versions of heaven for all the thousands of different versions of religions that exist?”

At this point, some of them get freaked out.  Some just recede further into the mantra.  Every once in a while you will get a truly creepy response like, “Well everyone knows that there is only one true savior and everyone else who worships false idols is going to burn in hell forever.”  Yes, I sometimes get answers like that.

“Okay, the problem is that you have no more evidence that God exists than that person does.  You have nothing, and I mean nothing on the Jews or the Muslims.  You grew up with your parents telling you that this improvable, unseeable thing is true.  A Muslim child grew up being taught that his improvable, unseeable God is the true God.  Jews are taught the very same thing.  So my question for you is this:  What if you are the one that is wrong?  You can’t all be right.  All of these beliefs are mutually exclusive.”

Believe it or not, this never does it.  You have to keep explaining it a bit.  This concept is so foreign that it does not register.  Over the years I find that the next bit brings it home.

“Okay, look at it this way.  Are you telling me that your religion, your chance to go to Heaven or hell, simply hinges on who your parents are and what they told you?  You know, oddly enough, there is a Muslim man somewhere in the world thinking the same thing about you right now.  If you were born in another country you would be a Muslim or a Jew right now.  If you had a twin brother separated at birth, he would be a Muslim or a Jew if he grew up in a certain household.  Is that all it is?  Just a crap shoot?  The various denominations of the Christian religion can’t even agree on who is right.  I have known many Baptists who said under no uncertain terms that everyone else, including Catholics, Presbyterians, and Methodists are all going to hell.  She said that in all seriousness with a straight face.  Are you going to tell me the same thing?  That out of the thousands and thousands of religions that are in existence, and out of the billions and billions of people that have been born on this earth, that you, and the relatively small number of people who think like you have lucked out?  You know the answer?  You were born into the right household, and you know the true secret to the universe and believe in the one God amongst thousands that is the true and only one God?  Just because you were born to the right parents in Kentucky?  Really?”

Now as I said, you will not win this argument.  But you will not lose it either.  And that has an effect on people.  What you are trying to do here is promote tolerance.  Unfortunately in EMS this might mean trying to get a hateful partner to stop using the n-word, or stop talking about Muslims as sub-human.  Trying to tell them that Muslims, Jews, Gays, Blacks, and Hispanics are people too just doesn’t work.  If they really thought that, they wouldn’t be acting like they are in the first place.  No, the fastest way to change this behavior and clean up our profession is to show them that their own views that are the basis of their hatred don’t make any sense.  It is still a long shot, but I have seen it work a few times.  No one has ever said, “You know what Buckman?  I am renouncing my religion, becoming an atheist, and am going to love all minorities and ethnicities now.”  That’s just not going to happen.  But if you can turn the tables just once and show someone how ridiculous their beliefs are, and that they cannot be defended, you may get to eat lunch with this person without having to endure an embarrassing string of racial slurs in public.

Oh, by the way.  If after you have done this a few times, your captain closes the door behind you and asks why you love niggers and spics so much, look for another job.  I did.  Look for another job and don’t look back.  Some places are just poisoned too deeply.  Walk away and let the 21^st century catch up to them.  It will eventually.