How many Americas are there? In a news program about food insecurity, the expert noted that there are two Americas, one which is food secure and one which is not. He then went on to contradict himself by noting that food insecure individuals are in every community and could be your friend, neighbor or someone that works with you. It was interesting that he did not add that 'you' could be food insecure. He went on to note that 1 in 7 is food insecure, stating that if you are on a bus 1 in 7 of the people around you might not know where that next meal is coming from. He makes it clear which America he is talking to, and if you happen to be in the other America, it was clear that you were not part of the conversation, the conversation was about you.
It was fascinating because in the same conversation he spoke about need to stop seeing the problem as about 'us' and 'them', especially when it comes to school meals. He noted that one of the problems with those meals is that they are viewed as charity as 'us' being generous to 'them', with the mentality that because it is charity the kids should be content with just being fed and that it is viewed as something that can be 'cut' as it is in essence a hand out. He argued that we should see this as feeding 'our' kids, even though those kids are poor, often brown they are still American. Yet in this conversation he is talking to 'us' about them and not to 'US' about 'US'. Would it not be more productive to think about one America with different levels of food security? Where everyone is responsible for the problem and everyone is responsible for the solution?
I found something similar in a recent blog by someone who lives in Sandy Hook, CT where a tragic school shooting took place recently. I have to admit I had two completely conflicting thoughts going through my mind when I read the blog. One which empathized completely with her desire for privacy, and the other that was bothered by her use of 'our' school, 'our' tragedy and others wanting to share in 'our' pain.
I live about 30 min from Sandy Hook. After the shooting I wanted to go there pay my respects and to stand for a few mins outside the school contemplating what happened there. I do this whenever possible if I am close to a memorial or site of a major tragedy. I waited a week and then made my way down there, I got off at the exit and stopped just outside the town, there was still lots of traffic in and out of the town. I sat for a moment trying to decide what to do. I did not want to add to the loss of privacy and the congestion in Sandy Hook, and I also was not sure that I would be welcome there. While it might be hard to know for sure if some of the other people visiting were outsiders, being black and having lived 4 years in Ct, I knew that they would know instantly that I was from out of town.
After a few mins, I started my car and drove back home. I will visit the school (or what is left of it if they demolish it) one day to pay my respects and to contemplate the horror that happened there, and that happens all to often in 'other' areas of America (you know, that other, 'other' America, the one filled with poor and brown people). I have to wonder if this had happened in a poor black, Hispanic, Arab or Asian community, if people from the outside would have felt the same compulsion to visit. Is it better or worse for the communities when these things happen for people to care, or for them not to care?
I have never really looked at it going to these places as sharing in 'their' pain, I don't think I really have the right to that. I can never know what it is like to lose that particular person, or what those people went through. What I contemplate is that had I made different choices in my life, had I been born in a different country, or to different people, it could have been me, or my family that was involved in this horror (and not just on the victim side).
I don't have to have kids to try and wonder about the bittersweet feeling of being thankful that your kid survived, while her best friend, a six year old, died from multiple gunshots, or the pain of hearing that your beautiful little boy, was killed, or of being relieved that your 9 year old made it home, just to find out that your 6 year old did not. So I found the statements of many parents in the media that "as a parent I can understand what they are going through.." another way of dividing Americans into different groups, in that case it was a group I did not feel part of, almost as though as a non parent I did not have the right or the ability to grieve for those who had lost the little ones they loved. Were not the grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends of those kids feeling pain and loss?
Why is it that those same 'parents' did not seem to feel the same empathy when the children lost were in the inner cities? Was it because they were not part of the same America? It is true that how you experience life in America can be very different depending on where you were born, who you were born to and what gender, race, ethnicity and religion you belong to. It will be different if you have lots of money, it will be different if you are homeless, if you live in the suburbs, the intercity, major metropolitan areas (not inner-city), or rural areas.
How you experience life in America will be different depending on age, if you have a job, if you are religious, married, what your sexual orientation if, what your gender is, if you are extroverted, if you have kids, if you work and so on. But that does not mean that each of those things is a different America. It is one America with many different types of people. It is one America where things like the economy, crime, health care, education and civil rights affect all of us. I fear that until we see this country as one America again, that these divisions that are stalling our economic welfare, will continue as the efforts to separate America into imaginary groupings will only make us weaker as much as we would like to deny it, if some of us fail, we all fail as a country.
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