Relationship Lessons from a Skinhead Pt. 1

I know it sounds strange, but all relationships can give us clues about what all human beings need, whether it is our spouse, partner, friend, co-worker, or even a skinhead.

I heard a fascinating interview on NPR radio with Frank Meeink who wrote a book, From Hatred to Harmony: Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead. I haven’t read the book yet, but the radio interview was fascinating. I was curious about what leads to such hatred and how could someone who hates so much, turn that around?

Part 1 will look at factors in the formation into a skinhead and ways we do them in less intense ways in our own lives.

In Part 2 we will look at the needs that were met both in the skinheads and people in our lives that can lead to transformation and renunciation of hatred.

How Hatred is Born:
1. Humiliation, powerlessness
Meeink grew up with his mother and her boyfriend who was abusive. He describes being beaten and how he grew up being afraid of men. He also had an experience at school of being one of about 2- white kids who had to run together from the bus to the school so they would not be bullied. No one at home was interested in him or what he experienced, thought, felt.. He hung out on a street where kids from similar backgrounds spent the day, including skinheads. Some of you may have violence in your neighborhood or home, or you had it as a child.

Most of us think we are above that behavior and think we are nothing like Meeink’s stepfather or skinheads.

But there are many ways people, and perhaps we, humiliate and disempower people without ever touching them.
Have you ever:

• Criticized someone?
• Used sarcasm?
• Told someone they were stupid or didn’t know what they were talking about?
• Discounted or ridiculed what they believe in?
• Ridiculed them in front of others?
• Used put-downs or contradicted them repeatedly in front of others?
• Berated them for what kind of student, child, parent, spouse, person they are?
• Made fun of their weight, nose, or some other physical attribute?
• Have you ever gone behind a family member, spouse, partner, refolding laundry, re-wiping the counter, etc. because the person didn’t do it exactly the way you do it?
• Expressed lack of belief in their ability to do something or to change?
• Demeaned what they do or how they do it?
• Done everything for someone because you have to have control or do it in the ‘right’ way?
• Always find something wrong with someone or what they do?
• Failed to notice and express appreciation, what they do right, good things about them?

2. Lack of interest, care or attention by parents:
He said that no one had ever asked him what his life or his experience was like and when the skinheads asked him, it felt like they cared.

Even in relatively healthy families we have to be on guard for disconnection.

• Coming home after school or work and spending the rest of the evening in front of the TV, computer, video game, book, or work.
• Never asking about your partner or child’s day, experience at school or work – or ask, but then turn your attention to something else before they can even respond.
• Being so busy with ‘to do’s’ that you never have time to sit and listen.
• Not listening.
• Telling your partner or someone else you don’t care about what they are saying or don’t want to hear it – or you already know what they are going to say.
• Trying to talk or listen while multi-tasking.
• Interrogating.
• Jumping in to advise or admonish instead of trying to understand what the experience was like for the other person.
• Discounting the other person's experience as unimportant or just their problem.
  

3. Low self-esteem:
Meeink talks about feeling inadequate, a failure and how with the skinheads he felt like someone. Being very smart and creative, he signed up for a cable access station and started his own TV program in his teens. He also said how his swastika tattoos and crazy look appealed to TV viewers and he became known and looked up to.

I heard an interview several years ago about a man who was a Muslim religious extremist and he described many of the same factors. He was bullied, felt helpless and describes the feeling of finally being someone, finally having a sense of power by becoming very fundamentalist. He was ‘right’ and everyone else was ‘wrong’. He knew ‘the truth’. He was part of something more ‘pure’ than his family and friends. Fortunately, he also turned his life around to promote respect and tolerance of difference.

4. Fear of others
Meeink was afraid of his stepfather and of men because of the violence. He was also afraid of people who were different from him or who he did not know and that was fed by the skinheads.

• In what ways to you promote fear of people who look, think, believe, act different from the way you do, whether through race, political views, religion, culture, or lifestyle?
• Have you ever forwarded e-mails that communicate how we have to fear another group of people or a political figure?
• Portrayed others who think or believe differently as 'evil' or 'bad'?
• Used stereotypes of groups or religions to tell others to instill or fuel fear?
  

5. Experience of power in a destructive way:
He describes an incident when he was about 14 where a large skinhead put him on his shoulders, walked into a bar and beat up some guy. Meeink describes the feeling of being on the other side of a beating for the first time in his life.

• Have you ever praised someone in life or movies for ‘beating the crap out of that guy’.
• Made comments about physically hurting or destroying someone or a particular group of people?
• Laughed about violence in a movie?

There are ways we create similar climates of shame, powerlessness, humiliation, and fear with people in our lives – probably not to the extreme as Meeink experienced -- but destructive to people around us nevertheless.

Next in Part 2: What Turns Hatred Around – What Human Beings Need in Relationships