Barbara Ehrenreich is a journalist who wrote about the lives of working class poor in Nickel and Dimed. More recently, she published a collection of satire exposing divisions and inequalities that Americans, particularly the working class poor, experience in the workplace, home ownership, healthcare and religion. Sharply critical of both red and blue, right and left, Republican and Democrat, her essays are biting assessments of modern American culture and society.
Sometimes, her assessments read more like rants and I wonder if she doesn’t stray into hyperbole some of the time. What kept me reading were the poignant stories she provided from everyday life:
• an unemployed man, three years too young to collect Social Security but vulnerable to age discrimination in hiring practices, who chose to commit a non-violent robbery so that he could find a bed and food in prison
• enlisted personnel in the Unites States Armed Services who were enrolled into food stamp programs at enlistment because their entry-level pay grade does not provide a living wage
• the uninsured patient whose routine procedure was billed at a cost nearly five times that of an insured patient, driving that uninsured person even further out of reach of financial stability, let alone security
While I appreciate satire’s role is to hold up human behavior for exposure, ridicule or scorn, I think it acts as a megaphone and, by itself, is an inadequate way to motivate anyone to take action and actually pursue or implement changes that will help us better meet the needs around us. How do we work with people who are experiencing poverty here in our neighborhoods and communities? How do we create opportunities or provide services that help span the gaps that exist, so people don’t have a reason to find incarceration more livable than freedom and others don’t die of treatable illnesses because going to a doctor costs too much? How do we make the plight of “invisible” people more visible, without sacrificing integrity?
Friday, July 16, 2010
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
This Land is My Land, This Land is Your Land
While I resisted the allure of the local AAUW’s book sale last week, I succumbed when I received the list of books required for my daughters’ summer reading and my own fall coursework.
One of the books my oldest daughter is reading in Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Ms. Angelou grew up in Arkansas in the 1930s and tells the story of growing up there amid blatant racism, discrimination and abuse. I am reading her book alongside my daughter.
Living in the south, with memories of being bused across Norfolk when schools were being desegregated in the 1970s, I am not naïve about our region’s history and I know it would be foolish to say that racism and segregation have been obliterated. Racial bias has become more subtle, but our communities are still segregated. What I admit I don’t yet understand is how that changes us.
This fall, I will be taking a seminary class titled “Dismantling Racism”. In our faith communities, it commonly is recognized that Sunday morning remains the most segregated day of the week in many parts of our country. Tied into the question of how we worship with one another, or don’t, is how we live and work with one another, or don’t, and the related issues of race, segregation, discrimination and immigration. While I don’t hear or see people mistreated the way the blacks were in Arkansas eighty years ago, I know people are hurting anew now, and I hope to understand how we can care more deeply about each other as God’s children.
The first assigned book I am reading is Searching for Whitopia – An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America. The author, scholar and commentator Rich Benjamin recounts his experiences as he lived and worked in three “whitopias” - thriving communities “that have posted at least six percent population growth since 2000 [and] the majority of the growth …is from white migrants.” (Benjamin, 5) Sharing his experiences, Benjamin is careful to describe the people he encounters as three-dimensional characters. He presents stories that reflect people’s fear, hurt and anger and as the reader, you may agree or disagree, but there is no doubt that the people he meets are real living, breathing human beings, not three-eyed monsters that media headlines and soundbites create.
Benjamin’s observations echo my own: “The majority of whites in predominantly white communities across our heartland are endearing and kind….Direct interpersonal racism is no longer acceptable.” However, he tackles what goes unsaid in too many of our communities: “Discrimination and segregation do not require animus. They thrive even in the absence of prejudice or ill will. It’s common to have racism without “racists.” (emphasis mine, Benjamin 184-185)
And recognizing that actions can also contribute to deeper division, Benjamin is candid about the consequences of some of immigration policies and stances taken in the U.S. He acknowledges how numbers about population shifts have stoked fears. He writes about the vicious cycle that was set into motion when we stigmatized all Latino immigrants, both legal and illegal, though, reflecting that the indiscriminate writing off Latino youth led to indignation which in turn produced greater scorn by whites. Benjamin writes, “Whether or not our country treats these youth like its bastard stepchildren, someday they will become its full-blooded heirs.” (Benjamin, 83)
Dr. Benjamin’s statements ring in my ears, and I reflect on how his and Ms. Angelou’s words speak to our lives today. I wonder what it means for how we live together in creation, when we acknowledge that we are all God’s beloved children, and, celebrating the 4th of July and the freedom Americans have, what we mean when we sing, “This land is my land, this land is your land”.
One of the books my oldest daughter is reading in Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Ms. Angelou grew up in Arkansas in the 1930s and tells the story of growing up there amid blatant racism, discrimination and abuse. I am reading her book alongside my daughter.
Living in the south, with memories of being bused across Norfolk when schools were being desegregated in the 1970s, I am not naïve about our region’s history and I know it would be foolish to say that racism and segregation have been obliterated. Racial bias has become more subtle, but our communities are still segregated. What I admit I don’t yet understand is how that changes us.
This fall, I will be taking a seminary class titled “Dismantling Racism”. In our faith communities, it commonly is recognized that Sunday morning remains the most segregated day of the week in many parts of our country. Tied into the question of how we worship with one another, or don’t, is how we live and work with one another, or don’t, and the related issues of race, segregation, discrimination and immigration. While I don’t hear or see people mistreated the way the blacks were in Arkansas eighty years ago, I know people are hurting anew now, and I hope to understand how we can care more deeply about each other as God’s children.
The first assigned book I am reading is Searching for Whitopia – An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America. The author, scholar and commentator Rich Benjamin recounts his experiences as he lived and worked in three “whitopias” - thriving communities “that have posted at least six percent population growth since 2000 [and] the majority of the growth …is from white migrants.” (Benjamin, 5) Sharing his experiences, Benjamin is careful to describe the people he encounters as three-dimensional characters. He presents stories that reflect people’s fear, hurt and anger and as the reader, you may agree or disagree, but there is no doubt that the people he meets are real living, breathing human beings, not three-eyed monsters that media headlines and soundbites create.
Benjamin’s observations echo my own: “The majority of whites in predominantly white communities across our heartland are endearing and kind….Direct interpersonal racism is no longer acceptable.” However, he tackles what goes unsaid in too many of our communities: “Discrimination and segregation do not require animus. They thrive even in the absence of prejudice or ill will. It’s common to have racism without “racists.” (emphasis mine, Benjamin 184-185)
And recognizing that actions can also contribute to deeper division, Benjamin is candid about the consequences of some of immigration policies and stances taken in the U.S. He acknowledges how numbers about population shifts have stoked fears. He writes about the vicious cycle that was set into motion when we stigmatized all Latino immigrants, both legal and illegal, though, reflecting that the indiscriminate writing off Latino youth led to indignation which in turn produced greater scorn by whites. Benjamin writes, “Whether or not our country treats these youth like its bastard stepchildren, someday they will become its full-blooded heirs.” (Benjamin, 83)
Dr. Benjamin’s statements ring in my ears, and I reflect on how his and Ms. Angelou’s words speak to our lives today. I wonder what it means for how we live together in creation, when we acknowledge that we are all God’s beloved children, and, celebrating the 4th of July and the freedom Americans have, what we mean when we sing, “This land is my land, this land is your land”.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)