Detangling Tension

from To The Well: Tension, Fall 2020

Margin Notes

Written by Kayla Williamson

The status quo is often harmful, especially for those who have been excluded from the process of establishing social norms.

I experienced this first-hand in my high school drama department. One of the long-standing rules of my high school drama department was the “hair team rule.” To ensure that everyone was ready for the stage, every member of the show had to have their hair done by a member of the hair team, a few stage moms trained in simple styles.

My first year in high school, the musical was Hairspray. It completely upended the patterns of the drama department. Though the musicals at my predominately white school had previously included one or two black students, in Hairspray I was one of a handful of black students. Unlike the actresses the hair team was accustomed to serving, my hair cannot be subjected to, ironically, hairspray. With the knowledge that my tightly coiled hair needs to be worked through with a wide-tooth comb, spray bottle, and a tub of leave- in conditioner, it would have been unwise for me to let a single one of the well-intentioned members of the hair team, teasing comb in tow, near my head. Following this rule would have been harmful because it wasn’t created with me in mind.

Hairspray may seem like a trivial example, but our society is full of “hair team” rules—social norms built for a society that caters to the white, wealthy, and male. Therefore, in order for those who have been historically marginalized to engage in our society without being harmed, it is necessary to transform our institutions. Too often, this transformation is inhibited by a positive moral judgment on the status quo and a negative judgment on deviance. Yet, if a rule is good only if applied to the people for whom it was created to benefit and harmful to those for whom it was crafted to exclude, then our concept of right and wrong cannot be so cleanly determined on the basis of deviance from the status quo.

In the midst of chaos, I often hear calls for peace. While the longing to see peace come from chaos reveals a beautiful desire to see people be in good standing with one another, an indiscriminate call for peace is a dangerous way to engage with chaos. We must be mindful that in our longing for peace, we do not reach for a negative peace. In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. makes a distinction between a negative peace, which is the absence of tension, and a positive peace, which is the presence of justice. If our cries for peace can be satisfied through the absence of tension, then we demonstrate a trust in the status quo that the status quo has not earned. In order to act as ambassadors of justice and righteousness, it is necessary to acknowledge the complexity of adherence to, and deviance from, the status quo.

One of the ways I hear calls for negative peace is through comments about ending “all this tension.” These statements categorize all tension, including resistance to a harmful status quo, into the same unfavorable box. I saw this concept in action in 2014, as Black Lives Matter demonstrations and rioting both took place in Ferguson, Missouri. One of the opinions I heard from several white friends lived in tension with police. It was that past injustices from decades in which openly racially-motivated violence was perfectly acceptable, had never been acknowledged. It was incidents of excessive force going unpunished. It was the inability was that everyone needed to “calm down.” A teacher even commented from the front of the classroom that the demonstrations were “a few minorities getting riled up about nothing” and had no relevance to her life. This unspecific criticism of tension puts a negative judgment not only on rioting, but on social deviance in general. It does not criticize only the opportunists who broke windows, but the activists who exercised the right to peacefully protest. It was is not a criticism over harmful behavior, but a criticism over challenging the status quo.

The status quo in Ferguson, Missouri, was that poor, minority communities were heavily policed and disproportionately targeted. It was that generations of families had to afford fair legal representation. It was the reality of seeing those in power kill your children with no accountability. It was the sense of displacement, powerlessness, and disregard for one’s own personhood that came with each of these injustices. A move towards a positive peace requires the specificity to criticize looting, not simply demonstrating. More importantly, it requires the consistency to criticize the harmful social norms that preceded demonstrations. The longing for peace I previously mentioned should be celebrated, as a desire for peace points to God’s will for us to be in a right relationship with him and with each other. In the book of Daniel in the Bible, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah all follow God’s desire for their lives, even when it conflicts with the desires of those in authority. After they were taken from their home into Babylonian exile, they were commanded to eat the food of the King of Babylon, which contradicted the commands God had given them regarding food. In response, Daniel asked an official to allow them to eat their own food. The official, afraid of death if the king found out, agreed to a test in which the four men would eat vegetables instead of the king’s food. After the test, “They looked healthier and better than all the men eating the king’s food” (Daniel 1:15). After God had allowed these men to gain favor with the king, the king built a statue and ordered everyone to worship it. This time, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, who had been re-named Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, faced a contradiction again. They had been commanded by God to not worship anyone but him. They disobeyed the king in order to obey God. As punishment for this disobedience, they were bound up and thrown into a fire hot enough to kill the guards who carried them there (Daniel 3:22-23). God appeared with the three men, and they walked out of the fire unharmed. As they did, the amazed king went from asking “What god will save you?” (Daniel 3:15) to calling the three men “servants of the Most High God” (Daniel 3:26).

Though these men disobeyed the law of the land, they were within God’s will, as evidenced by inexplicable protection under what should have been fatal conditions. Further, through their obedience to God over people, God revealed his power. Even the king who had once asked what god would save them, witnessed God’s work when they survived. Through their obedience, God revealed himself. The fact that following God’s will and adherence to the status quo are not synonymous should call into question the idea that whole-hearted rejection of social deviance is a morally upright position.

Just as institutions are built by imperfect people, they are challenged by fallible people and in flawed ways. For example, the tension in Ferguson did include burning, looting, and calls to violence. Generally, when challenging institutions, we will face several temptations to engage with people harshly. As I look to challenge unacceptable social norms, I struggle with the desires to indulge bitterness, to seek retribution, and to be selfrighteous. This thinking is another form of destructive behavior.

Destructive actions and thought patterns shouldn’t be our goal as we work toward positive peace. Our goal should be the tedious work of discerning the difference between productive tension and destructive behavior. To demonize tension and social deviance is to short-circuit discernment. A negative moral judgment on tension, carried out to its logical conclusion, dictates that change never takes place, since change requires tension. Yet, taking a moral stance against tension is the privilege of being able to accept the status quo. It’s reasonable to implement the “hair team” rule if your hair would not lose its natural pattern under the tyranny of a teasing comb.

In order to embrace a positive peace, we must reframe our understanding of deviance into a nuanced understanding. If we are to be serious about peace, we must contend with the fact that we cannot achieve positive peace through ending tension. We must seek peace by calling out violence, disrespect, and bitterness in our social movements and our established institutions alike.