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In late 2013, a wicked contagion resurfaced in the coastal nations of West Africa. An eighteen-month-old boy died in a village in Guinea. His mother, grandmother, and sister soon died after suffering the same hemorrhagic symptoms of Ebola, among the most dreaded diseases known to man.
Mourners who flocked to the grandmother’s funeral carried the virus back to their own villages, and from there, Ebola began decimating families and hamlets in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, and killing the doctors who were treating the sick. Anyone with the least exposure had to follow an elaborate hazmat protocol virtually out of science fiction and still fear that the exposed tip of a finger cut might condemn them to a virus that assured an agonizing death and for which there was then no widely proven vaccine.
It raged through West Africa as the Western world looked on mostly with pity and detachment. What a continent of sorrow, through the Western lens. These were countries siphoned of their populations during the transatlantic slave trade, then conquered and colonized and now still recovering from the destabilization and wars that these upheavals had wrought.
To those at a distance, the sad circumstances of these countries, from primeval health systems to ancient burial rites, had brought this plague upon them. The virus spread through contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person who was showing symptoms, and people infected were to be quarantined in isolation wards. But some villagers despaired of being apart from their loved ones in their last days and chose to stay with them or, unable to get them to a hospital from the villages, had tried to care for sick loved ones themselves. There was an admirable closeness in their family ties that transcended disease. For this, they were blamed as well.
Far from the villages, dehumanizing photos of dying patients, images that at times deprived them of dignity in their final hours, stretched across the pages of Western newspapers. It was a distant sadness for many Westerners if any emotion registered at all from the safe comfort and buffer of sea and ocean. Thousands of people were dying, and courageous Westerners like Doctors Without Borders flew in to help. But the full artillery of Western science had not stirred to action. This was a problem for Africa, seen as a place of misfortune filled with people of the lowest caste, not the primary concern of the Western powers.
But the virus did not recognize race or geography, and in the late summer of 2014, several American aid workers contracted the virus while in the afflicted region. Alerted to the existential threat, the United States sent millions in aid and three thousand troops to help with infrastructure and security.
Then in September 2014, a man boarded a flight from Liberia to Brussels en route to Dallas, to reunite with his partner and son. Unbeknownst to him, he was carrying the virus. He became the first case of Ebola in the United States.
A Dallas hospital, unprepared for a virus identified with another hemisphere, sent the man home with antibiotics when he showed up complaining of symptoms. He later returned in worsened condition, and he died within ten days of his eventual diagnosis. Soon afterward, two of the nurses who had cared for him contracted the virus. Panic set in as news reports retraced the whereabouts of one of the nurses in the days preceding her diagnosis, after it was discovered that she had been on a commercial plane and had traveled to and from Cleveland. Days later, cable news channels interrupted regular programming to show her being transported on live television to a flight from Dallas to Atlanta for specialized treatment. The scourge that had seemed a problem of another planet was now in the United States.
That October, shortly after the first diagnosis on American soil and nearly a year after West Africans had been left to manage largely on their own with the help of volunteer health workers, the Food and Drug Administration arranged for an American pharmaceutical company to begin emergency research into an antivirus for Ebola. Eight more people would be diagnosed within months in the United States, their care and condition closely monitored in the news.
The 2014 epidemic struck 28,000 people and killed more than 11,000 in the largest outbreak of Ebola the world had ever seen. The virus brought the interconnectedness of the planet into vivid, terrifying relief. Distance and geography could contain Ebola for a time, but Ebola did not recognize race or color or caste or national origin. A human being was a human being and a prospective new host to a frighteningly efficient virus. The contagion had initially not been seen as the global human crisis it was. Those suffering were West Africans with ill-equipped health systems, a hemisphere away. But Ebola, and potentially planet-wide catastrophes like it, as the world would discover beyond imagining six years later, have a way of reminding human beings that we are all indeed one species, all interwoven, more alike than different, more interdependent on one another than we might otherwise want to believe. Ebola had been merely a whispered forewarning of what was to come.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Insecure Alpha and the Purpose of an Underdog
The West Highland terrier had been acting up since the divorce. He was just over a year old and had begun nipping and snarling once the presumed pack leader, the first husband, was no longer around. The Westie had not taken the upset to the social order in the household very well, feared his world had collapsed, his survival in danger, and had communicated his displeasure to the old alpha, the first husband, by nipping his nose once during a brief visit. I had to figure out what to do if I were to keep the Westie, which, to me, was the only option.
I decided I had nothing to lose by consulting a canine behaviorist and found a Westie specialist who lived in California. I was expecting a list of instructions from her on how to better manage my terrier. What I got was a brief lesson in canine hierarchy and in how canines interact with one another, exert dominance or submission, for the survival and wellness of the pack.
The social hierarchy and vocabulary of wolves and canines runs throughout our culture: alpha male, underdog, lone wolf, pack mentality—in part due to our observations of the dogs we may have owned and to the seeming parallels between ourselves and this companion species of social animals. Current-day canine specialists have sought to correct the distortions of the term alpha male—the king-of-the-world chest-beater of popular imagining—that have worked their way into our psyches.
True alphas, the behaviorist told me, are fearless protectors against outside incursions, but they rarely have to assert themselves within the pack, rarely have to act with aggression, bark orders, or use physical means of control. While I would never strike a dog or yank a choke chain as I have seen other would-be alpha humans treat their dogs, my forbearance alone was not working and neither were the shrieks of “No! No! No!” when I found Chi-Chi chewing on another pair of slingbacks.
“See, that’s what humans do,” the behaviorist said. “We treat them like children, but as pack animals, they respond to the cues of an alpha in a pack structure. A human alpha should never have to raise her voice. Dogs don’t understand that.
“If you are having to raise your voice to get their attention,” she said, “a dog will not see you as the leader. You have already lost. A true alpha does not behave like that and doesn’t have to. If a so-called alpha resorts to that, they are signaling that they are not in control at all.”
True alphas command authority through their calm oversight of those who depend upon them. They establish their rank early in life and communicate through ancient signals their inner strength and stewardship, asserting their power only when necessary. An alpha generally eats first, decides when and who will eat afterward, inspires trust through firm shepherding for the safety and well-being of the pack. An alpha is not necessarily the biggest or fastest but usually the innately self-assured one who can chastise a pack member with a mere look or a low voice. A true alpha wields quiet power judiciously apportioned.
You know that you are not seeing a true alpha, or, put another way, you have encountered an insecure alp
ha, if he or she must yell, scream, bully, or attack those beneath them into submission. That individual does not have the loyalty and trust of the pack and endangers the entire group through his or her insecurities, through his or her show of fear and lack of courage.
The behaviorist gave me a set of assignments to establish my role, and assured me that once my Westie saw me as the alpha, the relationship would be reset, very likely for good. The main goal was to bring order and consistency, firmness to my compassion.
The first exercise was to let him know who controlled the means of his survival—the food. At the next feeding, I was to set the food bowl down, holding on to it, and then remove the bowl to let him know my role before setting it down again for him to eat. He was at first unsettled by this new move but adjusted to it. For the next exercise, I was to keep my hand on the food bowl the entire time he was eating. This he settled into as well. The last exercise was for me to set the food bowl down, hold the bowl, and then put my hands in the food as he ate, to let him know that I was not afraid of him or of what he might do. This, I was not looking forward to.
“You have seen the size of a Westie’s teeth, haven’t you?” I asked when she gave me this instruction.
“I know,” she said. “He will not bite the hand that feeds him.”
When the time came for that last exercise, I set the bowl down and kept my hands in the bowl as he ate, and I discovered that there’s a reason why dog behavior is built into our language. Dogs, for sure, and people, if they are wise, do not bite the hand that feeds.
The behaviorist also recommended that I consider getting another dog. Westies are a particularly social breed, and he would fare better with a companion. As much as I love Westies, I felt one spirited terrier was enough and looked for a gentle, easygoing breed. Enter Sophie, the Havanese. She was a three-pound mop of fur that, as a puppy, could fit inside my purse.
I took Chi-Chi with me when I went to get Sophie, and he was fine with her at first. Until we got her home. Uncertain as to what this intruder meant for the household structure, he began asserting himself as the alpha. If ever I looked away, he hunted her down under dressers and cabinets. At feeding time, he pushed her from her food bowl.
One day, he went to shove her from her food bowl, and she stiffened, on alert, and glared at him looming above her, and she let out a tinny, barely audible growl, the first sounds ever to escape from her. Chi-Chi jumped, startled by this turnabout. His ears and ego flattened, he slinked back to his own food bowl with his tail between his legs. From that day forward, Sophie was in charge.
From then on, it was she who would eat first, walk through doors first, remain a pace ahead of him at all times on walks. Though she was only half his size once full grown, she could pin him to the wall to keep him in line if she chose to, and whenever she corrected or corralled him, he stepped back and submitted and then nudged her to play. The Westie had been an unconvincing and ill-suited alpha but made for a relaxed and contented beta, tail bouncing, lighthearted and free. He came to adore Sophie and was watchful of her. Now that the hierarchy between them was settled and everyone was in positions that suited their strengths, there was order and peace in the household.
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We owe our misperceptions about alpha behavior to studies of large groupings of wolves placed into captivity and forced to fight for dominance or to cower into submission. In nature, wolf packs are more likely to consist of extended family systems, packs of between five and fifteen wolves, led by an alpha male and an alpha female, whom the pack trusts and has reason to trust for the survival of them all.
“The main characteristic of an alpha male wolf is a quiet confidence, quiet self-assurance,” Richard McIntyre, a researcher of wolf behavior at Yellowstone National Park, told the ecologist Carl Safina. “You know what’s best for your pack. You lead by example. You’re very comfortable with that. You have a calming effect.”
The other members of the pack, the various beta and gamma wolves, can thus go about their tasks with greater reassurance in the wisdom of the alpha. At the bottom of the hierarchy is the omega, the underdog, the lowest-ranking wolf, arising from natural personality traits in relation to others in the pack. The omega generally eats last and serves as a kind of court jester who acts as an escape valve, often picked on by the other wolves. He bears the brunt of the tensions they face in the wild, where they are subject to attack from predators or from rival packs and during lean times in the hunt for prey.
The omega acts as “a kind of social glue, allowing frustration to be vented without actual acts of war,” wrote a wolf conservationist. The omega is so critical to the pack structure that when a pack loses its omega, it enters “into a long period of mourning,” the conservationist observed, “where the entire pack stops hunting and just lays around looking miserable,” as if there were no longer a reason to go on.
The loss of the omega can threaten social cohesion and put the entire pack at risk. Depending on the composition of the pack, an omega might not be easily replaced. The new omega would mean a demotion for one of the lower to mid-level pack members. Either way, the pack is destabilized. After all, these roles are not artificially assigned based upon what an individual wolf looks like, as with a certain other species, but emerge as a consequence of internal personality traits that surface naturally in the forming of a pack.
Humans could learn a lot from canines. The great tragedy among humans is that people have often been assigned to or seen as qualified for alpha positions—as CEOs, quarterbacks, coaches, directors of film, presidents of colleges or countries—not necessarily on the basis of innate leadership traits but, historically, on the basis of having been born to the dominant caste or the dominant gender or to the right family within the dominant caste, the assumption being that only those from a certain caste or gender or religion or national origin have the innate capacity or deservedness to be leaders.
This is a tragedy not just for the many overlooked alphas from marginalized groups whose talents have gone untapped or unrecognized, who have had to watch organizations founder under insecure or ill-suited alphas. It is a tragedy not only for the misplaced alphas who may be in over their heads and who struggle to lead disgruntled staffs that may not respect them. It is a tragedy for humankind, which is deprived of the benefit of natural alphas who might lead the world with the compassion and courage that are the hallmarks of a born leader, male or female, of whatever religion or background or caste, the actual intended alphas of the species.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Intrusion of Caste in Everyday Life
A father and his young son were out at a restaurant in Oakland on one of their precious days together, now that the mother and father had separated. The little boy ordered what he thought he wanted, but when the food came, he said he just wanted to drink his juice. The father had been worried about the effect the disruption in the family might be having on his son and wanted to keep the same stability and order in his little boy’s life.
He wanted to hold to the same standards they had always had, of showing gratitude for the blessing of food, and eating what the universe had seen fit to put before you, of keeping to the manners they had established when they were all together. Mainly he wanted his son to get his nourishment, didn’t want to return him to his mother hungry, as he surely would be if he filled his little stomach with sweet juice and snacks. He remembered the times he’d filled up on sweets and had no space left for mealtime.
What he couldn’t tell his son at the moment, but would have to tell him later, when he was big enough to understand, was that he would have to grow up respecting authority. One day, he would no longer be an adorable little toddler but would be a black teenager or grown man, and respecting authority, following the rules, could mean his very life.
This was his only child, the most precious human in the world to him. The boy was so sweet-faced, innoc
ent, and free. How could he tell him that the world, his country, saw him as a threat? When exactly is the best time to break a child’s heart?
Should a parent clip them a little at a time, spread it out to spare them the pain of a single blow? Should a parent sit them down and get it over with? You could argue that the sooner a child knows, the safer, more prepared he will be. Maybe a parent should hold off as long as he can, give his child the longest possible chance to be…a child. He’ll have the rest of his life, decades, to live with reality, adjust himself to the truth.
Maybe the most loving thing to do is to wait, wait until something happens, somebody drops the n-word on him at the playground or a teacher checks him for running down the hall but not his white schoolmates, and he knows it’s wrong and wants to know why.
Back in 2014, Tamir Rice was twelve when officers shot him within seconds of their arrival as he stood in a Cleveland park playing with a pellet gun, despite the fact that Ohio was an open carry state, and it is a common occurrence for boys to have toy guns, an all-American thing to do. Tamir Rice happened to be the same age as the fictional Jem when the beloved fictional father Atticus Finch gave him an air rifle in To Kill a Mockingbird, the very scene from which the title comes. Lots of American boys play with guns, are given guns, and aren’t killed for it. Tamir Rice died before he could ask why.
This father in Oakland didn’t believe in guns, and that wasn’t the issue anyway. The issue was his son’s life and what the father could do to protect it. The challenge for a parent in the subordinate caste is to calculate the precise and optimal moment to break the truth to a child before the caste system does it for him, to figure out how to stretch their innocence until the last possible moment before it is too late.
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