Is there really such a thing as 'The Truth'?

Some years ago, I noted in my book, Managing the Diversity Maze, that: "’Truth’ is governed by privilege. It always looks so right when one has the power to support it". Thus ‘the truth’ of “Black people, women and others who suffer under such inequalities will seldom share anything with the ‘truth’ of the exploiters because they are both coming at that singular ‘truth’ from two different positions of privilege: one group has it and the other has not. That is what keeps equality from ever becoming a reality and cements its unequal foundations, regardless of the superficial flurry of activity and proliferation of fine words to prove otherwise.”

One man gave a stark demonstration of that comment at the time: Rudy Giuliani, the one time Mayor of New York and recent presidential hopeful. Rudy went from sinner to virtual saint with the 9/11 tragedy. In 2002, Rudy was riding high. He was dubbed the Mayor of the World by the New York Times magazine which made him its Person of the Year. And, in my opinion, if anyone truly deserved such an accolade, it was the Mayor of New York. He could not have been more of a father to his citizens when they needed him most, nor could he have been more caring and compassionate to shocked New Yorkers blasted by the carnage. Yet Rudy is living proof of the power of perception regarding the transient and questionable nature of 'truth'.

As I watched him tirelessly leading the city throughout September and beyond, I was extremely inspired by his unselfishness, humility, obvious compassion and quiet approachability. The cold-hearted mayor I had heard about up to a few months before seemed many miles away, bearing little relation to the man who now commanded so much respect and genuine authority, representing two completely different versions of ‘the truth’ according to one’s perception, expectation and frame of reference.

In fact, many other Black people in New York would have had some trouble adjusting their lens to double check that this new saintly figure was the same mayor who presided over three particularly brutal incidents and even backed his policemen in doing two of them too.


Zero Tolerance of Crime
According to the Times magazine, in 1997 Abner Louima, a Haitian man, was sodomised with a mop handle by policemen in a Brooklyn-precinct bathroom. Two years later, an unarmed street pedlar named Amadou Diallo was killed when police in the Bronx fired 41 shots at him in a dark lobby. In 2000, barely 18 months before 9/11, “an unarmed security guard named Patrick Dorismond, who had been trying to hail a cab outside a midtown bar, was shot to death after a scuffle with undercover cops”. “Giuliani denounced the policemen who brutalised Louima but defiantly backed the ones who killed Diallo and Dorismond.” In their cases the juries actually cleared the policemen of wrong doing. Giuliani had declared zero tolerance on crime and would not let a little matter of skin colour block his objective, which gave a licence to others to rob African Americans of their rights and even their lives.

Because of his obstinate and his seemingly cold-hearted stance against the unarmed victims, the man who was to “save New York city” saw his popularity ratings plummet to new lows. But therein lies the capacity of power to change perception of what constitutes ‘the truth’.

With the support of the majority White community behind the law enforcers, crime assumed a particular colour. Giuliani had to show how a tough mayor should act towards those who were perceived to be the most troublesome, especially if they were easily identifiable. According to the magazine, “New York City was getting better, but the mayor seemed to be getting worse”. It was easy for him to feel unassailable. Inflated by his own idea of ‘the truth’, he seemed uncaring as to the consequences of it.

In mitigation, he told the reporter, “People didn’t elect me to be a conciliator. If they just wanted a nice guy they would have stayed with Dinkins” (the former mayor). “They wanted someone who was going to change this place. How do you expect me to change if I don’t fight with somebody?” he asked. “You don’t change ingrained human behaviour without confrontation, turmoil and anger.”

And this statement of his truth is absolutely right. Except, if it came from a Black male, it would have been regarded as somewhat dangerous; disturbing enough to merit the attentions of the security forces who would have questioned his intent and been wary of his actions. But he is White, which carries its own might, and that’s all right. He has both the colour and the power to give credibility and life to his version of ‘the truth’. A Black male talking about ‘confrontation and anger’ had better watch his back! There would be no ’truth’ in that.





Confrontation and challenge
But, I am one of those who agreed with that simple statement because it really was ‘the truth’. From the day I took on this thankless task of changing hearts and minds, I have felt that unmoving attitudes cannot be changed with just fine words and flowers. One has to be armed with something stronger: like 'confrontation, turmoil and anger'.

Change always starts with confrontation and challenge: confronting the self to change personal perceptions; confronting others as well as the issues no one wishes to acknowledge, or which everyone pretends do not matter. To confront and challenge basic injustice and discrimination in order to get at this elusive 'truth'.

Once there is confrontation there is turmoil. Any form of negative challenge disturbs the status quo and unleashes the worst anxieties within us. Anger swiftly follows, both from resentment at being challenged and from frustration on the part of the challenger at the lack of change or the slowness of it. However, once confrontation begins, it is like a pandora’s box which either generates argument and debate or unleashes a riot of indignant emotions and actions.

In the light of my book, Managing the Diversity Maze, Rudy Giuliani’s simple statement answered a lot of questions about my own ‘truths’ and objectives. This book certainly confronts the issues head on, starting from the Establishment to the individual, and a good deal of turmoil has followed in the ensuing reality check. But then, I have never shirked from the task! People who benefit from the status quo will seldom ever change unless it continues to reward them in some significant way.

I admire Rudy Giuliani a great deal now because some time in 2000 he had the humility to question his version of 'the truth’ regarding one section of the community and also the courage to face up to the negativity of the fact. With the two brutal murders fresh in his mind, he pledged his remaining time in office to “breaking down some of the barriers” he felt he had placed between himself and visible minority communities. “I don’t know exactly how you do that,” he said, “but I am going to try very hard.” He did succeed in some measure and reached his zenith with 9/11 because he began to confront his version of ‘the truth’, not a comfortable thing to do, but a necessary one in dealing with difference. In these awful tragic moments, the meaning of life assumes a clarity over questionable 'truths' which is almost blinding.

Next time one is hell bent on seeking 'the truth' as one sees it, one needs to remind one's self that personal perceptions and personal power dictate individual truths. That the nearest thing to a universal 'truth' happens only when majority perceptions merge in agreement on the same versions of 'the truth'. But even then, one has to be careful to ensure that this 'truth' is not being ruled by vested interest, is not being stifled by unbending traditions, is not holding commonsense to ransom, is not being used to bolster injustice and is not being held hostage to the latest fad for some select group.

In other words, in our search for the truth, we will always meet some road blocks or false versions of it. The test is to tease out which truth we are prepared to hang on to and defend, in the face of the consequences for ourselves and others.

Is it Time to Ditch the Old Ageist Mindset?

In an interview regarding getting older in the New York Times Magazine, Nora Ephron says, with obvious feeling, "Old age can be pitiful. That's why Americans tend to ignore it. First it was ignored. Then it was boosterized by all those people who wrote these stupid books about it. This insistence on the joy of aging, the joy of menopause, the joy of late-life sex — this is all garbage."

That was a real pity because there was no obvious counter interview for ageing put by the NYTM, so this one negative view appeared to speak for all women. Bearing in mind that many women fear ageing too, they would have been left even more depressed and downhearted by those comments. The real tragedy here is that many people look to Nora, a well established writer, for guidance and enlightenment. If there is no 'joy' of being older, what would she advise those who fear the process to do? End their life in midstream to avoid ageing?

I am not sure if the way we age is a cultural/race thing, but most of the Black people I know look fabulous at any age. I remember watching a programme on the BBC not long ago about the history of soul music. They were interviewing some of the soul stars of the 60s and I had to keep reminding myself that these amazing looking people, without a single wrinkle, would have been in their late 60s or 70s. They looked no older than mid-40s. Many of them would have disagreed with Nora that ageing had no joy attached to it, perhaps because ageing comes naturally to them. They don't fret about it!

I also spoke at a conference recently and most of the people there were over 50 and it was difficult to tell their ages. But there was one noticeable thing about all the delegates in the room. They had come to learn career, business and confidence tips for self-improvement and not one person cared about their age in a negative way. Most were boastful about how they looked for their age. These people could show Nora a thing or two about the real joys of ageing. It got me thinking about how we need to change our perception to really appreciate getting older.




Low Mortality Rate
Two hundred years ago, one was likely to die in mid-40s or early 50s. It meant that, from about 35 years old, you were considered as 'old' and expected to do 'old' things with your life, like being seen and not heard, especially if you were a woman. During the 20th century it was quietly assumed that one is young until 40, middle aged until 60 and 'old' after that. Since then we have had a revolution in technology, changing the direction and quality of our lives dramatically, but we are still stuck with the same old ageist mindset on getting older. The result is that employers, programme makers and media producers still fear ageing and treat it in outmoded terms, so much that 18 million people over 50 in the UK, the flower-power baby boomers who liberated their age in the 60s, are still waiting to be treated like their younger counterparts. We have shiny new technological tools working with old decrepit mindsets that should have been educated, along with technology, to expect the unexpected and to think outside the box. People are changing rapidly in their behaviour while many of the power brokers are still stuck back there judging others through their own fears.

I am 59 and I don't have even one wrinkle. I have a beautiful face, beautiful smooth skin and great legs – and I won't even mention my fantastic boobs, which many younger women would die for. I have never used anti-ageing anything. Everything about me is natural, no help from anywhere apart from plain moisturisers. I have never been to a hairdresser in my life as I don't like anyone else's hands doing my hair. I feel and look no less sexy than when I was in my 40s or 30s, with a trail of men, from all ages, trying to attract my attention . Yet I have no wish to be young again. I love the age I am and shout it from the rooftops. I believe that there is nothing more wonderful than having wisdom, experience and intellect along with all those other physical assets. An awesome combination. I boast daily that when I reach 60, 70 and beyond, I will still be as fabulous. There's a 77 year old woman on my MySpace page who does not look a day over 45! You can see the self confidence, sense of pride and wellbeing in her face - the key to getting older. She is clearly enjoying who she is. Nora Ephron, she certainly is not!

Ageing has been a joy for me throughout my life because I have NEVER thought of ageing in negative terms. I have always looked forward to my birthdays and enjoyed every one. I never look for wrinkles, I never worry about how 'old' I am getting. Instead, every day I remind myself that dead people don't age. So, if I am ageing, I am alive.....and hallelujah for that fantastic fact! What is the point of being alive only to tell yourself every day how horrible you look. Might as well end the torture by flagging down the next bus and getting under it!

The Power of Thoughts
For the uninformed, we age first in our heads and our bodies gladly oblige. So if we sit and stare at ourselves every day, bemoaning how OLD we look, that's precisely what we will have more of, because we cannot have positive things while thinking negatively. If we see age as 'garbage' and a joyless existence, that's precisely what we will enjoy. However, when we begin to appreciate our life, ourselves, and the people accompanying us on our journey, the world becomes a magical place and life is a true joy. In line with the effects of new technology on our lives, it is time we lose the old senile, fearful views on ageing.

Currently we have people living until 120+, with many thousands reaching 100 without too much fuss. It needs a new perception of the whole process. It means accepting that, with each new decade of good health and good living, people are going to live longer. As long as we keep using our brains and bodies they will serve us magnificently too. Time to acknowledge that a YOUNG person now is at least up to 45 years, a middle-ager is up to 70 and an older person anything after that, with the markers shifting constantly. Ten years from now, a really old person might be perceived as one who is 85 years and above because many people would be living to 115! Time to do away with limiting age numbers and let people prove themselves, at whatever age they are.

I have a theory I would love to prove because I believe that, from birth, we are brainwashed by society, the media and loved ones into negative expectations around ageing, which then become self-fulfilling prophecies. I would love to experiment with some people on an island where every newborn was told, daily, that they will live forever, and then see what happens. My guess is that, because they would have been told nothing else, they would have nothing to fear and their perception of ageing would be entirely different from ours. Positive ageing would become part of their belief system and they would live like ageless people, regardless of their actual mortality. They won't live forever, but they are likely to live a darn sight longer than the average person does now.

We never completely fulfil our potential till the day we die. It is time to stop using age as the sum of the individual; to stop writing a person off at any point in their life; to let them show us, through the quality of their existence, exactly what age they are. Then we will have freed ourselves from the tyranny of oppressive ageist numbers and really 'live' that precious life we're granted in every sense of the word.

No Such Thing As 'The Truth'

With Rudy Giuliani having thrown his hat into the presidential ring, his time as mayor of New York suddenly loomed large, particularly with three disturbing incidents and his reaction to them. In 2002, after 9/11, Rudy was riding high. He was dubbed the Mayor of the World by the New York Times magazine which made him its Person of the Year. And, in my opinion, if anyone truly deserved such an accolade, it was the mayor of New York. He could not have been more of a father to his citizens when they needed him most, nor could he have been more caring and compassionate to shocked New Yorkers blasted by the carnage. Yet Rudy is living proof of the power of perception, including his own, to either vilify or sanctify, according to the moment.

As I watched him tirelessly leading the city throughout September and beyond, I was extremely inspired by his unselfishness, humility, obvious compassion and quiet approachability. The cold-hearted mayor I had heard about up to a few months before seemed many miles away, bearing little relation to the man who now commanded so much respect and genuine authority, representing two completely different versions of ‘the truth’ according to one’s perception, expectation and frame of reference.

In fact, many other Black people in New York would have had some trouble adjusting their lens to double check that this new saintly figure was the same mayor who presided over three particularly brutal incidents and even backed his policemen in doing two of them too.


Zero Tolerance of Crime
According to the Times magazine, in 1997 Abner Louima, a Haitian man, was sodomised with a mop handle by policemen in a Brooklyn-precinct bathroom. Two years later, an unarmed street pedlar named Amadou Diallo was killed when police in the Bronx fired 41 shots at him in a dark lobby. In 2000, barely 18 months before 9/11, “an unarmed security guard named Patrick Dorismond, who had been trying to hail a cab outside a midtown bar, was shot to death after a scuffle with undercover cops”. “Giuliani denounced the policemen who brutalised Louima but defiantly backed the ones who killed Diallo and Dorismond.” In their cases the juries actually cleared the policemen of wrong doing. Giuliani had declared zero tolerance on crime and would not let a little matter of skin colour block his objective, which gave a licence to others to rob African Americans of their rights and even their life.


“After Dorismond was killed, Giuliani’s instinct to defend the police” led him to attack the unarmed Black victim and “he authorised the release of Dorismond’s juvenile record” to “prove” his propensity for violence. “The dead,” Giuliani argued, “waived their right to privacy. Even close friends and supporters were appalled.” The man who had “saved New York city” saw his popularity ratings plummet to new lows. But therein lies the capacity of power to change perception of what constitutes ‘the truth’. As I said in my book, managing the diversity maze, ’Truth’ is governed by privilege. It always looks so right when one has the power to support it. Thus ‘the truth’ of “Black people, women and others who suffer under such inequalities will seldom share anything with the ‘truth’ of the exploiters because they are both coming at that singular ‘truth’ from two different positions of privilege: one group has it and the other has not. That is what keeps equality from ever becoming a reality and cements its unequal foundations, regardless of the superficial flurry of activity and proliferation of fine words to prove otherwise.”

With the support of the majority White community behind the law enforcers, crime assumed a particular colour. Giuliani had to show how a tough mayor should act towards those who were perceived to be the most troublesome, especially if they were easily identifiable. According to the magazine, “New York City was getting better, but the mayor seemed to be getting worse”. It was easy for him to feel unassailable. Inflated by his own idea of ‘the truth’, he seemed uncaring as to the consequences of it.

In mitigation, he told the reporter, “People didn’t elect me to be a conciliator. If they just wanted a nice guy they would have stayed with Dinkins” (the former mayor). “They wanted someone who was going to change this place. How do you expect me to change if I don’t fight with somebody?” he asked. “You don’t change ingrained human behaviour without confrontation, turmoil and anger.”

And this statement of his truth is absolutely right. Except, if it came from a Black male, it would have been regarded as somewhat dangerous; disturbing enough to merit the attentions of the security forces who would have questioned his intent and been wary of his actions. But he is White, which carries its own might, and that’s all right. He has both the colour and the power to give credibility and life to his version of ‘the truth’. A Black male talking about ‘confrontation and anger’ had better watch his back! There would be no ’truth’ in that.


Sense of Frustration

But, I am one of those who agreed with that simple statement because it was ‘the truth’. From the day I took on this thankless task of changing hearts and minds, I have felt that unmoving attitudes cannot be changed with just fine words and flowers. One has to be armed with something stronger: like 'confrontation, turmoil and anger'.

Change always starts with confrontation and challenge: confronting the self to change personal perceptions; confronting others as well as the issues no one wishes to acknowledge or which everyone pretends do not matter. To challenge basic injustice and discrimination in order to get at this elusive 'truth'.

Once there is confrontation there is turmoil. Any form of negative challenge disturbs the status quo and unleashes the worst anxieties within us. Anger swiftly follows, both from resentment at being challenged and from frustration on the part of the challenger at the lack of change or the slowness of it. However, once confrontation begins, it is like a pandora’s box which either generates argument and debate or unleashes a riot of indignant emotions and actions.

In the light of my book, managing the diversity maze, Rudy Giuliani’s simple statement answered a lot of questions about my own ‘truths’ and objectives. This book certainly confronts the issues head on, starting from the Establishment to the individual, and I expect a good deal of turmoil to follow in the ensuing reality check. But then, I have never shirked from the task! People who benefit from the status quo will seldom ever change unless it continues to reward them in some significant way.

I admire Rudy Giuliani a great deal now because some time in 2000 he had the humility to question his version of ‘truth’ regarding one section of the community and also the courage to face up to the negativity of the fact. With the two brutal murders fresh in his mind, he pledged his remaining time in office to “breaking down some of the barriers” he felt he had placed between himself and visible minority communities. “I don’t know exactly how you do that,” he said, “but I am going to try very hard.”

He did succeed in some measure and reached his zenith with 9/11 because he began to confront his version of ‘the truth’, not a comfortable thing to do, but a necessary one in dealing with difference. Rudy will be fine as a president because he has seen so much death and destruction, everything else would have paled into insignificance. In these awful tragic moments, the meaning of life assumes a clarity over questionable 'truths' which is almost blinding.

Next time you are hell bent on seeking 'the truth' as you see it, just remind yourself that personal perceptions dictate our individual truths. That the nearest thing to a universal 'truth' happens only when majority perceptions merge in agreement on the same versions of 'the truth'. But even then, one has to be careful to ensure that this 'truth' is not being ruled by vested interest, is not being stifled by unbending traditions, is not holding commonsense to ransom, is not being used to bolster injustice and is not being held hostage to the latest fad for some select group. In other words, in our search for the truth, we will always meet some road blocks or false versions of it. The test is to tease out which truth we are prepared to hang on to, in the face of the consequences for ourself and others.

NOTE: Managing the Diversity Maze is available from Amazon or can be ordered from any good British bookshop.