Under duress, adults often regress to black and white thinking and become incapable of conceptualizing shades of grey. “Always” and “never,” polar opposite words, tend to characterize the vocabulary of black and white thinkers. This all or nothing thinking means seeing the world only in terms of extremes. If things aren’t “perfect,” then they must be “horrible.” If your child isn’t “brilliant” then he must be “stupid.” If you’re not “fascinating” then you must be “boring.” Yikes! What a tough way to live! In real-life, situations are almost always shades of gray, not black or white. Falling victim to black and white thinking tends to exacerbate depression, marital conflict, anxiety, and a host of other everyday problems. Give yourself and the ones you love a break and discover the beauty of shades of gray.
Following the above advice would have been helpful in resolving the very public feud in which Spike Lee and Clint Eastwood engaged in a name calling battle over Lee’s criticism that Eastwood ignored black soldiers in his World War II film Flags of Our Fathers. Eastwood eloquently and maturely responded to Lee’s criticism, stating that the director should “shut his face,” to which Lee reminded Eastwood that “we are not on a plantation.”
Dirty Harry feels narcissistically wounded by Lee’s observation and attacks back in a way that is reminiscent of two young boys on a playground. Lee then counters that Eastwood is racist and both miss the opportunity to open a dialogue that addresses the history of race in America. The reality, according to Eastwood, is that the U.S. Army had been segregated through the Korean War and a black man could not have been part of a white battalion. True, counters Lee, but there was a black battalion stationed on Iwo Jima that should have been depicted in the movie.
In an article in the Huffington Post, Oakland Pastor Bryan Williams says that this kind of black and white thinking neatly divides the world into good versus evil and right versus wrong. When an adult feels threatened, a rapid regression to child-like thinking and behavior prevents any kind of effective or self-reflective dialogue. If Eastwood isn’t racist, Lee is wrong and if Lee is right, Eastwood is racist. There’s no room for a middle ground when black and white all or nothing thinking prevails.
This is the kind of thinking that a therapist sees daily, especially between married couples and dysfunctional families: “He is never warm or affectionate, she always criticizes me, he thinks he’s always right, she acts like she is never wrong. Your stance on the subject has absolutely no merit. You twist and turn anything and everything into a case for your point of view. As happened with Eastwood and Lee, the all or nothing attitude precluded any positive resolution.
If I had Eastwood and Lee in my office together, I would have suggested a wide possibility of alternate responses to them and they both would have resisted because it would mean to them, in their state of upset and regression, that the other was right. I’d then explain to them that if Lee had framed his observation as a question, he might have gotten a response that was not an attack. “Why didn’t you include blacks in your film, Clint?” “I was trying to portray the long history of racism in this country, Spike. Most people don’t know that the U.S. army was segregated until the 1950s. But maybe you’re right. There might have been a way to include black soldiers in the movie.” Lee, continuing this mood of self-reflection might have conceded that Eastwood had a point and a legitimate reason for his casting choices.
Lee ended the feud, albeit sarcastically by stating "Even though he's trying to have a Dirty Harry flashback, I'm going to take the Obama high road and end it right here. Peace and love." I’d say to them, “You guys missed a great opportunity to piggy-back on the spirit of the healing the racial divide in America and contribute to the current mood as reflected by Obama’s resounding referendum in the Democratic primary.
