"You should know that"

As aways, work again provides an excellent event for reflection and good old fashioned thinking.  While stepping outside to take out some trash and enjoy a moment of sea-breeze (which one appreciates infinitely more after hours in a hot and sweaty kitchen), I came across two gentleman making their way back in towards the bar.  Both were white, probably in their early to mid-fifties, sporting white beards and smartly but casually dressed for waterfront dining.

As I was about to re-enter the back door to the kitchen, one of them says, somewhat indignantly, more so mockingly, "Hey, you, don't ya know you're not supposed to wear socks with those kinda shoes?"  Now, I am wearing a pair of of blue Timberland trail running shoes, not ideal for work in the kitchen, but they were given to me for free and are a little tight on me, so I figured if my shoes are going to be destroyed anyway, why not the ones I won't miss much.  As far as I know, everyone I know who wears trail running shoes wears them with socks.

"Yeah, you don't wear socks with those kinda shoes, look at us, we don't got any, see what we're wearing here, we ain't got socks with em, this is the right way to wear em."  I don't mind the banter, I get this a lot from various customers who will bust my chops and give me a hard time about what I'm wearing or how dirty I look, or whether I am stealing a quick break - usually it is in good fun and I don't mind.  This guy also appeared to be a little intoxicated, so him choosing something like my socks to focus on, when he was in the wrong to begin with didn't surprise, or bother me so much.  Now here is the line that got me thinking.

"Yeah jeez, everybody knows you can't wear em like that.  You must be some kind of foreigner or something, you can't be an American, if you were, you'd know how to wear your damn shoes."

WOAH.  Ok then, we went there!  This post isn't really even meant to try and address any racist undertones that may have been implied (whether it be the assumption that foreigners work in the kitchen and would be wearing a dirty apron, whether it be that being really American means looking like he did, etc.)  What I stared to think on was assumptions, and how those assumptions affect how we divide up the world, especially people, and how we group people as "one of us" or not.

It is a human tendency to divide.  It is part of human rationality to try and split things up, to differentiate.  Part of that probably came with us as we evolved from other life forms, for helping to distinguishing friend from foe is surely on of the earliest distinctions that had to be made.  As we have evolved, however, and as our mental capacities have increased, we have also developed the tendency to split things apart for reasons other than safety (although we may use that as the reason for why we do so).

We group people based on their looks, skin tones, sexual preference, political views, country of origin, city of origin, upon the college they matriculated from, the amount of money they make, their views on war, the types of clothes they wear.  We apply labels meant to represent an entire group - "alcoholics," "gays," "blacks," "the mentally ill," "Republicans," "Americans."  Often times, these labels are vague, not really describing terribly much about a person at all.

Take, for example, my friend with the socks.  His definition of what it means to be American certainly differs from mine.  While mine might be limited to something close to living in this country, being a citizen with all of it's rights, privileges and responsibilities, his might also include know-how on when to wear, or not wear, socks with certain types of shoes.

Now, this is a little facetious, I admit.  But, think through this with me.  What does your belief about what it means to be American entail?  Does it mean drinking PBR and supporting all the wars our country engages in?  Does it mean supporting capitalistic principles and philosophy?  Does it mean attending college and making a 6 figure salary?  Does it also mean one must be Christian and support those values (which many religious groups in this country would claim)?

Let's expand this question to other topics.  What does it really mean to be Christian?  Just looking at how many denominations there are, how many differing opinions theologians have, it would seem that this is a complicated label.  What, or who, exactly is God anyway?  That is another word that clarifies fairly little.

I guess what I am trying to get at here is that the more we simply break things down into "us/them," we need to ask questions and break our complacent habit of generalizing for convenience.  Who is the "we" being spoken of, and would everyone I place in that category agree that they are in that category? Would they even want to be?  Who is the "them," and are the claims I am making substantiated?

As I have said before, I think the world is complicated, and complications require nuance.  Sure, it is annoying - even draining, to seek to give each individual their voice, allow them to speak who they are and tell you who they are.  It is much easier to come up with a general label and lump people under that.

But hell, the world would be one boring-ass place if it was only the colors I painted it.

Besides, then you might end up like my sock-friend, realizing his potential error and asking a few sentences too late - "Wait a minute... you're not cooking our food, are you?"