Jonathan Ross has expressed that he felt his life was in imminent danger when he fired three shots through a windshield that took the life of Renee Nicole Good. Millions of people, from the President on down, have agreed with Ross’ split-second decision to eliminate the danger. What is tragically ironic about the incident is that the deployment of Ross and 2000 of his fellow ICE agents to Minneapolis, which has been undertaken with the President’s blessing, if not at his behest, has been intended to ensure the safety of the community.
That isn’t happening. What is happening is that the Administration’s definition of safety is being radically redefined. Safety is being limited to the “elect”: those who align themselves with the President’s orientation and offer him undying allegiance. They are the chosen.They will be protected. Everyone else will be exposed to various levels of danger, from being removed from home, school, job and deported, to being investigated (if not indicted) for expressing a position or policy that runs against Trump’s agenda, to the existential danger of realizing that democracy is being dismantled and fascism is taking its place, to being shot while driving away from a traffic stop.
The response to Renee Good’s death has had an earthquake-like effect across the country. The ground of our common life is shaking. It feels dangerous. I’m not alone in the desire to stay out of harm’s way and take refuge in safety. Which is something I can do. I live in rural New Hampshire, far from the tension that has riven communities where people live on top of each other. Given my family’s history and genealogy, I don’t have to worry about ICE showing up at my door. And I have enough financial and relational resources to help me feel safe. I can wait out this danger storm.
That is a delusion that I can easily fall into and need to fight against. The danger storm is metastasizing in size and ferocity, which generates an even more urgent desire for safety. But the radically redefined notion of safety as defined by the Trump Administration, which provides protection for a select few and vilification, intimidation, if not violence for others, is not safety. It is oppression. And needs to be confronted.
A glaring omission from the Trumpian version of safety is the absence of hospitality. Hospitality is expansive. It recognizes the giftedness of everyone, and seeks to offer everyone a place and protection. Hospitality affirms the reality of imago Dei, that we are made in the image of God, and hospitality demonstrates a commitment to welcome.
While there is an ongoing debate regarding the details of the shooting of Renee Good, a debate which continues to fuel the polarization that has paralyzed the country, in my mind there is no debate about its aftermath. The officials who support the shooting are completely devoid of any expressions of hospitality. Quite the contrary. Renee Good has been accused of being a terrorist. This accusation follows a growing list of inhospitable and morally reprehensible designations: Afghanis are terrorists, Haitians eat cats and dogs, transgender people are mass shooters, Democrats are evil, Somalis are garbage.
As awful as those slurs are, and as discouraging the absence of hospitality is, what would make it all worse is to respond in kind. To rid the landscape of hospitality entirely. Hospitality doesn’t necessarily mean open borders, but it does mean that we recognize the humanity of everyone. Everyone. When we refuse to the temptation to stereotype and scapegoat each other we begin to heal our ailing democracy.
This is hard work. It is necessary work. To engage in a mindset of hospitality involves looking at people with openness and curiosity rather than prejudgment. There are days when many of us don’t want to embrace this notion of hospitality. And for people who have a target on their back, hospitality may be nearly impossible, at least for a time. There seems to be a growing swath of people – on all sides of various debates – who refuse to offer any sort of hospitality to those who are outside their political or ideological cohort.
Fascism needs to be resisted. Totalitarianism needs to be fought. At the same, the hospitality of embracing the humanity of one another needs to be honored and offered. Our personal and national health requires it.
