Say what you mean and mean what you say! These days we seem to encourage people to perfect a lack of personal integrity and ability to use double-talk in their dealings, medicine whether private or public. The idiom “speaks with forked tongue” means to say one thing and mean another; to be hypocritical and/or act in a duplicitous manner. It’s historically been attributed to the native proverb that the “white man spoke with forked tongue”, which originated from the French negotiating tactics in the 1690s when they invited the Iroquois Nation to attend a Peace Conference and subsequently slaughtered, captured or enslaved them instead. The truth is they lied in order to conquer and bring under submission the great and mighty Iroquois Nation and accomplish their conquest of lands and treasure. Other Europeans followed the established model throughout the centuries fighting one another to claim and establish what we now know as the United States of America.
Leap forward over millennia, centuries and decades of wars, battles and skirmishes, the modus operandi in our nation claims as its cornerstone to do and say whatever you must in order to get what you want. There is a long history of double-speak throughout our nation’s development not only in politics but also within business, civic, social and religious institutions to this day. No wonder our young people are confused! Personal ethics and unquestioned integrity are rarely celebrated attributes. Instead ethics become “situational” and integrity takes a back seat to the glitz and glamour of fame and the influence of money and power.
It is cliché’ to say “action speaks louder than words” but it is also true. If you say one thing and do another, then you have invalidated your words and effectively disqualified yourself as someone to be believed or trusted. This is a daily occurrence in the society in which we live, work, and raise our families. The examples of speaking the truth to power or to the powerful become less and less attractive due to the consequences of truth telling. People have become so comfortable with “mixed messages” and double-speak that the actual integrity of the TRUTH has become disruptive to their comfort zones. The strategy then becomes to say and do whatever you need to in order to accomplish your goal, but season it with just enough of the truth (but not too much) to make it palatable to the average person. This ideology permeates our educational institutions, political systems, social organizations, economics, government, and even religious institutions.
Two-faced people cannot be trusted. If someone calls their self a “friend” of yours and is in the presence of others who are running you down while saying nothing, that person is not your friend. It is not that folks are talking about you that’s bothersome. Some folks have nothing better to do with their time. It’s not even important what they’re saying. No. What’s important is what your “so-called friend” says in your absence. Can they stand in the face of false or dubious statements and speak the un-comfortable truth? There are consequences to standing for something. If one’s personal integrity and that of the friendship are in doubt, there is no question but to STAND UP for the friend and the friendship. The cost when asserting one’s personal integrity is worth the sacrifice. We all need to make what we say be the example of what we DO.
Dr.T
Tawnya Pettiford-Wates, Ph.D.
Founder and Artistic Director
The Conciliation Project and
Associate Professor
Virginia Commonwealth University
DrT@Margins2theCenter.com
www.theconciliationproject.org
Up Next Week: The Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner Legacy
