It’s easy, at first, to identify the good guys and the bad guys. Take tonight. My new friend Kori, who works at the Root Cellar, a Christian outreach facility for a primarily immigrant area in Munjoy Hill – good guy. She’s a young, white girl devoting her summer to doing mission work in a variety of communities in need. Then there’s the bad guy – a black guy in a black hoodie who ran up out of nowhere and stole her wallet as we were walking from dinner to the Mission Summer minivan.
But can we really classify people that easily? I don’t think so. We have no idea why that man stole Kori’s wallet. Maybe his mom is sick in the hospital and can’t afford surgery, and out of sheer desperation, he resorted to robbing a girl who appeared to be well-off. Should we blame the man, or the flawed system that drove him to take such an “evil” action?
I certainly encountered kids last summer who did bad things – breaking into homes, robbing people at gunpoint, beating people up in order to steal their possessions – but I don’t think they are bad people. They are simply people, caught in a screwed-up system, and I pray to God every night that they can make it out. But to simply label them as bad kids? That lets everybody off the hook. I don’t think any of us has the right to identify anyone as “good” or “bad.” If we are going to be honest with ourselves, we have to look further.
Does the fact that I am privileged enough to spend my summer doing an internship rooted in social justice make me a good person? Can I consider myself a good person because I was lucky enough to grow up in an upper-middle class, white background with loving, supportive parents who gave me a great education and the resources to pursue work based on ideals rather than necessity?
And does the fact that millions of young black men are growing up in a country that continues to proclaim the myth of equal opportunity for all her citizens while maintaining flawed social institutions that condemn a huge percentage of the population to institutionalized poverty make the man who robbed my friend a bad guy?
I don’t think so.
While every opportunity and every obstacle may be what you make of it, that assertion denies the fact that the opportunities and the obstacles are not evenly divided in this nation. Racism may be less blatant today than it was during the Jim Crowe years, and I am so proud to be able to say that I am growing up in the time of our first black President, but racism is still fully alive in this country. And it saddens me to see the stereotypes played out yet again tonight: black gangster robs white girl.
I see so many things wrong with the system in this nation. I have felt my brain turn to mush countless times over the past two and a half weeks with all of the in-depth discussions of our various social problems. I want to help. I want to make a difference in the world. But at the same time, I question that desire. I call myself out on my own paternalistic hope “to make the world a better place.”
I believe that I have come a long way since a year ago. I no longer look at the world with idealistic notions, believing that I know how to fix things. I don’t. But I do know that I will keep searching for my own way to make a difference. To quote a certain over-commercialized tween movie (that I happen to love) – we’re all in this together. That is what I remind myself every day: I am striving for a common good. As Lilla Watson said, “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
We must recognize our interconnectedness in order to effect social change. The plight of the impoverished hurts everyone. And in ways deeper than stolen wallets. It hurts us insidiously, in our notions of good and bad, black and white. We must begin to open our minds and hearts to see all people, even thieves, as brothers and sisters, and then perhaps we can begin the process of transforming our society.
