Closed Mindedness Among the Open Minded

I am seriously torn. I sit here in my New England home, having just spent the afternoon with friends who attended the same college I did. These are friends I love, even when politically I disagree with them, and so I am torn as to whether to post this essay or not.

On the one hand, I feel some of my friends are absolutely blind to some realities of the world, and I fear that if my friends (whom I consider a fairly enlightened bunch) don't get it, then others don't as well, and I need to see if I can make the points I think are missing.

On the other hand, these friends are aware that I blog. There is a very real possibility that they may read this and be upset, either at my characterization of their statements or at the extent to which I disagree with them.

To my friends who were at today's Labor Day Weekend picnic in Andover, NH, let me just say that I know you disagree with me, and it's OK. I still love you, we're still friends, but I need to get these things said.

That said...

* * *

I think we in much of America, and certainly here in the Northeast, simply don't understand poverty. I certainly don't; I will say right up front that I have enjoyed a life of plenty and opportunity. I have done some hard work and made some hard choices to get where I am, but I absolutely also had the benefit of an upper middle class family and a white upper middle class upbringing.

I think we simply don't understand the extent to which poor black people in areas such as New Orleans are not merely poor in wealth, but also in opportunity. They are poor in education, they live in a society that looks down on them and tells them they can never be any better, and so it galls me when one of my friends says “Well, they shouldn't just sit there! If their situation is that bad, there are ways to improve yourself.”

This came from an educated white woman. She came from a less privileged white family in New Jersey. I spent many of my formative years in New Jersey. I know that a white person in New Jersey does not face the same hurdles a black person does. I know that there isn't a prevailing attitude that the poor can't improve their situation, in fact it's almost too far in the other direction: We often wondered why they hadn't done it ALREADY. There was the tendency to assume that those who hadn't bettered their situation simply weren't trying. The Protestant work ethic in all its glory. I had poor friends. It might not have been easy for them, but they didn't suffer the life-long soul destroying belief that this was all they were or would ever be, and that there simply was no chance for them to change their lot.

That, from the people I've spoken to who grew up in LA, was the life of a poor black family in New Orleans. A life of privation and poverty and an all pervasive attitude that this was it. You were born poor and black, you were destined to live poor and black and eventually die poor and black. You didn't have the benefit of even enough education to know of the programs and opportunities which might help you better your situation.

I know enough people who believe incorrect things about themselves because it's what they have heard all of their lives. Beautiful women who will never see anything but hideousness staring out of the mirror, because of an abusive parent who called them ugly. Life long failures who are such because when their parents stopped calling them worthless and good for nothing, their own internal dialog took up the relentless chant. As the CEO at my company is fond of saying, perception is reality, so if you spend your life believing that you are nothing and will never be anything BUT nothing, and are not aware that there are even programs available to help you try to BE something, what are your chances?

And so as we look at the lives lost in New Orleans this past week and in the days ahead, those of us in white America or wealthy America really have no idea of the situation of the people who hadn't the resources to get out of the city. We've all heard the stories of the people, like Fats Domino, who simply refused to leave their homes, and yes it's easy not to have sympathy for them.

But this was not pool from which the majority of death came. The majority was from families who did not have cars, did not even have enough surplus cash to fund a departing bus trip for the whole family. Some perhaps “opted” not to leave, trusting in the storm to miss as so many others had because they just couldn't afford to spend their only savings getting out of town. Others didn't even have that meager level of cash. Without a city wide bus system of evacuation, they simply hadn't the resources to get out.

“Why did they live there, if there was such yearly danger?” is a question only those from whom all vestiges of hope have NOT been squeezed could possibly ask. They continued to live there because that's where they were born. It was all they knew, and all they'd been led to believe they ever would or COULD know.

The tragedy in New Orleans is not the loss of Trent Lott's house, nor the houses and belongings of the thousands of other now-homeless people (although certainly that is a horrible burden for anyone to bear). The tragedy in New Orleans is the people who died because in their lives they were never presented with the belief that there was any alternative.

Liam.