Didn’t Get The Memo

If I tell you to look for Toyota Camrys as you drive to work or school tomorrow morning, you know what’s going to happen? Every other car is going to be a Toyota Camry. Psychologists call that the frequency illusion. The suggestion that Toyota Camrys are everywhere is all it takes for the road to suddenly seem jam packed with Toyota Camrys. (If I write the words “Toyota Camry” one more time, you’re going to think I’m getting a handsome product placement bonus from the company that makes Camrys – Toyota.)

In the realm of ideas, this phenomenon is called confirmation bias. We filter out opinions that differ from the ones we hold and focus only on those that confirm what we already think. Maybe that’s why Jesus frequently ended his teaching with the invitation, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.” Or why Paul prayed that “the eyes of your heart may be enlightened.” We tend to hear only what we want to hear, to see only what we want to see. I’m confessing my susceptibility to that up front, because what follows is not a research-based set of observations. It might just be my own wishful thinking, my own confirmation bias, a frequency illusion.

But I don’t think so. Every time I watch the news, I get the same story. Doesn’t matter if it’s a local or national program, cable or broadcast, liberal or conservative, hard-copy newspaper or digital, it’s the same – relationships between blacks and whites are worse now than they have been in decades, maybe ever. We don’t get along. We are killing each other – sometimes literally. It’s like the same memo went out to everyone in the country:

MEMO: You must be suspicious of anyone who is not like you. You must not associate. You do not, you cannot get along with people who are different. Self-segregate. It is your only hope. Especially if you are black. Or white. 

Based on what I’m told to expect, you’d expect the frequency illusion to confirm the bias that race relations are a dry forest one spark away from total conflagration. But I gotta tell you – that’s not what I’m seeing.

In Sam’s Club a few months ago, I had some business at the customer service desk. As I was waiting in line, I witnessed a chance meeting between two families who obviously knew each other. The wives embraced, the husbands nodded, and the kids began romping on a patio furniture display under a canvas tent. The women talked the way women talk – simultaneously-at-the-same-time-to-each-other-without-taking-a-breath-or-pausing-to-permit-the-other-to-finish-a-sentence-yet-seemingly-capable-of-sustaining-deep-meaningful-listening-while-contemporaneously-formulating- coherent-verbal-and-non-verbal-responses-to-what-the-other-was-saying.

The men just stood there, watching the kids demonstrate the durability of Sam’s Club patio furniture. Not saying anything. Not even a mono-syllable grunt. Not a sound. Nothing. And they seemed entirely comfortable in the silence. Because that’s how we are.

You couldn’t find a more average pair of American families if you tried. But if they both did one of those genetic ancestry tests, one of them would discover roots in Europe and the other in Africa.

Just then, my wife, Lisa walked up, saw what I had been watching and said, “Guess they didn’t get the memo.”

A little over a week ago, we took our younger son and his wife to lunch at a local meat-and-three called The Blue Plate Café. Just by reading the name, you have already painted a picture in your mind. Southern cooking with a side of Southern hospitality – the kind of place that offers grits, gossip and greens. The tea is sweet, the food is fried and the servers call you Sugar.

As we waited for our order, I noticed an older couple at the table next to ours. They were in their mid-70’s, and dressed the way people from that generation dress when they go downtown on Saturday afternoons. She wore a knee-length skirt with a floral blouse, and a smart, matching scarf. He wore a dress shirt buttoned to the top. The creases in his wool slacks were so sharp you could shave with them, and his black wing-tips were spit-shined. Their yellow gold wedding rings wobbled loosely on weathered fingers.

I was positioned so that I could observe them without being obtrusive. They ate in a silence born not of having nothing to say, but of not needing to say anything. He offered her a taste of his chicken-fried steak. She dabbed his chin with her napkin. After a while, they paid their bill, and shuffled to the door. Which he held open for her.

He was black. She was white. They didn’t get the memo.

My word count prevents me from describing the gaggle of teen-aged girls we saw laughing, texting and talking their way through a local mall. Three were white, two were black. Or the quartet of high-spirited high-school boys who ambled into Five Guys and ordered enough to feed an army. Two were black. Two were white. Every time we’re out, we see people who didn’t get the memo.

Look, I’m not pretending that we live in some kind of post-racial nirvana. We’re not. I have black friends who still get pulled over for DWB (driving while black) or followed through department stores by suspicious security officers. And as one of the whitest guys you’ll ever meet, I carry the burden of having to prove a negative virtually every time I encounter a black person – that I’m not a racist. There is an enormous amount of work yet to be done.

So what’s the point? The point is that, in the words of Paul in Ephesians 2, the dividing wall of hostility has been destroyed. God is creating one new humanity out of the two. The Kingdom of God is breaking in all around us if we will only open our eyes and see it. So how do we get in on what God is already doing?

A good place to start would be to tear up that damnable memo. It’s a devil’s lie.

Oh – by the way – the reason you see so many Toyota Camrys? It’s been the best-selling car for the last 14 years. Frequency isn’t always an illusion.