Who We Could Be

In my last several posts I have discussed the thorny issue of racism, and these posts have all been leading up to the following question:  What would happen if we could somehow overcome the prejudices of our past and see all the cultures of the world as equally valid?

This is an idea I had fun exploring in The Spirit Keeper.  Consider, for example, the various cultural views of clothing.  At first, Katie O’Toole is repelled by the nakedness of the Indians, but before long she discovers the impracticality of her own European style of dress.  Hector, at first, is repelled by the stench of Katie’s multi-layered garments, but in the course of the story he learns how vulnerable her European complexion is to sun and cold.  Both Katie and Hector grow as individuals only because they are capable of overcoming their original prejudices and accepting the validity of a completely different point of view.

Back in 1747, most people believed they dressed “the right way” and the way people from other cultures dressed was just plain wrong.  But look at what’s happened in the last 250 years.  Today we own far more clothing than the average Native American ever did, but we keep our clothes far cleaner than the average European did.  While our outfits can still be pretty impractical, we’ve lost most of those stinky layers and are sometimes quite scantily clad, but we also now wear sunscreen, much as the Indians used to do.

Seems to me the modern style of dress has been deeply influenced by both European and Native cultures.  Huh!  Turns out that when we set aside our prejudices, we are able to learn and grow and eventually have the best of both worlds!

The Spirit Keeper is filled with subtle cultural comparisons like this, and in the coming weeks I will point out some of the other ways the characters in the story benefit by letting go of their prejudices and accepting the possibility of radically different points of view.

But before I leave the subject of clothing, let me make just one more little observation:  if their ingrained racism caused Katie and Hector to sneer at each other’s garments at first, can you imagine how either one of them would have reacted to a zipper?