Does the Statue of Liberty Weep, I Wonder?
Too Much of the Wrong Kind of Hate and Not Enough of the Right Kind
That one cop shouldn’t be charged, some whisper. Because he spoke up. Not once, but three times and I wonder what I’d do if I saw a mother choking her child in the street. Would I speak as I watch the child die or throw myself at her bodily, shrieking, to cheat death on that day?
Ah, but no. A child. That is too easy, is it not?
What if it was a man choking his wife? Or a woman choking a pleading man? What if it was reversed, a black man choking a police officer? Somehow, I suspect the bystanders would not have simply watched, cameras rolling. One hero, they say, is enough to break the bystander effect.
Where is the line of intervention, I wonder?
Odd creatures, we talk of preferences as though they define us. Writer, book lover, chocolate eater. Cats or dogs? Horror or action? Define ourselves by our work as though a doctor has more merit than a cashier. As if those things speak of the moral fiber woven through the flesh of our being.
No. Tell me what you hate.
What makes you burn with the pain of injustice? We don our masks and stand six feet apart while 400,000 children die of malaria every year, but we don’t blink an eye. Why? Because it’s there, not here? Because they’re not little white children dying, but only brown and black babies?
It’s not just out there. It’s here, too.
Make America great again, close the borders, no immigrants taking our jobs as if your own ancestors were not immigrants who took not just jobs and food, but life, land and liberty from those who came before. As if you wanted to pick vegetables or wipe tables in the food court for minimum wage.
No honor among thieves, they say.
We deride violence as though any injustice has ever been changed with please and thank you. Slavery did not end because a black man said please, sir, may I be free and the moral superiority of your nonviolence shouts of privilege louder than it speaks for justice. Nonviolence begins in equality.
The civil war was not civil, my friend.
Crazy fact. Once upon a time, skin color was an adaptive response. The closer one’s ancestors lived to the equator, the darker their skin. Flesh, it appears, is more adaptive than brains or hearts have been in the years since, hating people for color or religion instead of cruelty or greed.
Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25
Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me — that is what your bible says, you who believe, but to stand in your garage and call yourself an automobile will never make you one. We are defined not by our thoughts or beliefs, but our actions.
Doing nothing is a choice, too.
So easy to scream Chinese virus when you live in a suburb not a slum and buy meat in a grocery store not an open market pungent with rotting meat and stinking poverty. Compassion cowers in the face of a world filled with too much of the wrong kind of hate and not enough of the right kind.
What hill are you willing to die on?
None. None, you shout. It is not my fault. I didn’t make this system. Life is hard and I am too busy raising my family and trying to pay my bills. Not my fault, I am one person you justify, never-minding the vote you carry in your back pocket. The vote denied to the half million homeless in America.
The system is not broken. It was designed this way.
The average American cannot scratch together $500 for an emergency, one third live in food poverty and CEO’s have given themselves an 1109% wage increase in the last 42 years while giving workers 11% and what do we do? We read and write tips about the habits of rich people.
Does the statue of liberty weep, I wonder?
Thanks to Suzanne V. Tanner for inspiring this post with that sentence about bloated table geezers. And thanks to Dr Mehmet Yildiz for the incredible community at Illumination. If you’re not a writer there, please join us!
