Why Can't We Just Be Better To Each Other?

November 17, 2006

I look around myself at my life, and I see so much luck - how is it that my combination of DNA was born, was brought into the world with such privilege and promise? I have a lot. An education, a home, and several pairs of jeans with pricetags equivalent to half a month's rent. I admit it. Sometimes I don't put my money where my mouth is.

Not only that, but I have a family who would die for me, and friends all over the world who believe in me. I have seen the best of life. For that, I am grateful.

Many of you know that I am working on a project aimed at bringing services to women who have not been so lucky. They are criminalized and stigmatized, and mostly their 'crimes' have stemmed from not being born lucky. Raped by uncles and pimped by their fathers and brothers, these women live in desolate, hungry, tired conditions. They get called crackheads and whores.

Isn't it so often that we disrespect that which we don't understand?

Their homes (if they have them) should be condemned. Their slumlords do not fix things, even if they pay their rent, and their children often go to bed in the winter to wake up with ice on their blankets. Welcome to Section 8.

This isn't the third world people. This is Minneapolis - we just hide our poverty better.

No heating, no telephone, no hope. The women I work for trade the only commodities at their disposal, and then get fined for it. When this becomes too much, they hit the crack pipe to forget. Their problems worsen. And then we call them irresponsible. This is very hard for me to watch. Our country is ridden by systemic apartheid. My very suburban, very white home, is located only a few miles away from the 'projects.'

How is it then, that most of my friends have never even been to North Minneapolis? Really - it's as if highway 94 were an ocean and West Broadway was a desert. It takes me ten minutes to get to work. In rush hour traffic.

Wait? You've lived here all your life? You don't even know where it is?? Are you kidding me??

The contrast is jarring. I cannot go from one place to the other without anger welling up inside of me, without feeling shame, like my life's work will never be enough to pay these people back. I know without a doubt that a great deal of my privilege was wrought on the backs of others. And I try to steady myself, knowing that I will never be able to live in a way that will make things right. And I try to breathe, knowing that I cannot go off the deep end. I can't even help. All I can do is listen.

The arrogant and ignorant are the ones who have the power these days. They are the ones who don't bother to listen.

The point of my writing, though, happened today.

I was talking to a well-educated, seemingly conscious male friend of mine about a documentary that I watched recently, The Lost Boys of Sudan. He didn't know much about Darfur, or South Sudan, so I thought of it as a chance to get him to open his eyes, if only just a little. I told him about how refugees often witness horific acts, are victims of violence, torture, rape and hunger. I started tearing up when I was talking about it - about how unfair it was the way we (the USA) bring refugee youth to America with promises of education, only for them to end up with nothing over here - not even a community that understands them. We put youth to work in factories and menial jobs, hide them in tenement housing, invite more violence, poverty and hunger upon them, and expect them to succeed. We remove them from what family they have and provide no real support to show that we are "doing something."

The worst atrocities occur on the shoulders of individuals so that our country can keep up appearances.

I wasn't proselytizing. He asked.

I know I can get a bit passionate. I know that what I believe in isn't what you might believe in. I know the way you live might be just fine for you, and you might be doing the best you can with what you have.

But this guy's response was, "That sucks." No emphasis, no feeling. Ok buddy. Don't engage with world issues. Don't even bother to disagree with me. After all, it's perfectly acceptable to stand on the sidelines when people are dying.

That sucks?!?! Fuck you!

So many privileged people have never learned compassion.

Maybe if we actually looked around, we'd realize that it doesn't take all that much to be better to each other. All we have to do is really listen.