No Sense of Urgency

Late last night, lying in bed and thinking about all the Halloween debauchery I had witnessed in Fells Point, my blackberry buzzes from my bedside table.  I’ve become accustomed to this nightly buzz, as the early morning’s onslaught of the day’s coupons and sales and news stories begin to fill my inbox, and I generally ignore it, waiting for the next morning to purge most of it over my morning coffee.  I happen to still be awake, and pick up the phone to see what Williams Sonoma has put on sale or what Bluefly.com is demanding I must have before the week is out.  I see it’s a message from a dear friend in Benin, and I quickly sit up and read it.  It’s titled “flood”.  He started his email, “As I’m sure you know by now, the rains this year have caused so much havoc to us all.  My roof has been touched and water is entering the rooms; the sewage system and the compound have been flooded.”  He goes on to talk more about what’s happening, and more importantly about what’s not happening.  There is a sense of urgency in his tone, desperately trying to figure out how he can try and fix this for himself and his family.  Wondering, very innocently and almost embarrassed by it, what role I play in that, as his good American friend.  

I pick up my laptop, and swing it open as my heart sinks.  I quickly open the browser and Google: “floods in Benin”.   Three or four articles pop up at the top, with headlines like “Floods ravage Benin” and “Floods generate humanitarian crisis”.  I cringe and wait for my heart to stop pounding.  I didn’t know.  I had no idea.

Benin has become a place I love; a place I consider a second-home.  To think of this place under water, and people dying, I’m suddenly feeling like throwing up.  Amidst feeling sick, I start to feel guilty, too.  I, like most of my well-educated and politically engaged friends, like to stay abreast on what is happening around the world.  I actively read the newspaper and watch the BBC.  I check the NYTimes updates all day long.  I read political blogs and international headlines and I like to think I can carry an intelligent conversation with most people on domestic and international issues.  I’m finding myself angry that this news story, now days old, hadn’t trickled into a single one of my feeds.  Hadn’t made it to a front page of anything that I read every morning.  That I didn’t hear about it and more importantly, that most people wouldn’t even begin to notice.  I forced myself to lie back down, ignoring the gnawing agitation in my gut, and prepared myself for another restless night of sleep, knowing my loved ones, 5000 miles away, were fighting a natural disaster.  And more importantly, that this country’s lack of infrastructure was ultimately it’s largest enemy.  And that just a few months ago, I sat on those shores, drinking beer and eating local nuts, journaling about the rustic beauty and the traditional charm of these dusty, rural villages.

Upon waking, I read many of the articles I’d thumbed through at 2 am and really let this news settle in.   I respond to Alex, wondering what the state of his health is and if his family is okay; I ask, “How bad are the cities?”  My colleague also writes to him, almost simultaneously, as if we’re in each other’s heads, asking many of the same questions.  And now I wait.  And check the web obsessively for updates.  Waiting for a time-delay to catch up, so that I can correspond more. 

In the mean time, it seemed an appropriate time to begin lesson-planning for the upcoming class in a few weeks on slavery and racism in West Africa.  In January, my colleague and I will take 18 undergraduates to West Africa, Benin included.  In this time, we do our best to teach an intensive course in History and Culture and, naturally, slavery and the slave trade are a necessary element of that.  It’s probably the most difficult portion of the program, for a wide variety of reasons.

For starters, race is something everyone talks about and thinks about on different levels; the conversation is often based in an individual’s own personal story and experience and encounters with race.  Secondly, the history of slavery in America is grossly distorted, and most North American children learn the history of slavery as only a companion to the Civil War and largely in association with the Deep South, the cotton industry, and plantation life.  Rarely is the true story of slavery told; the story that includes most wealthy families that dotted the entire East coast, the critical role of the North, and the trade of slaves that spurred American commerce well past the abolition of slavery.  Lastly, this conversation is hard because it involves blame.  And emotions that have yet to be quelled.  Conversations that have never happened and a desperate need for a paradigm shift.   

Today I decided to preview a documentary I’d like to show in class.  I’ve read the accompanying book, and the story outlines a family in Rhode Island coming to terms with it’s own past as the descendants of one of the largest slave-trading families in North America.  The documentary is quite good, albeit largely based on some serious white privileged guilt, but I find it relevant.  The story outlines a journey of a family to Ghana and then to Cuba and then back to Rhode Island, and documents much of their experience.  I couldn’t help but relate as I watch them stand awkwardly in the slave dungeons; knowing the feeling I’m seeing on their faces as they try to discern what their role is and why it hurts so bad.  Watching young Ghanaians challenge their presence:  Why are you here?  Don’t you feel bad?  Hearing stories of the way they’re treated by African-Americans on those shores; the way they’re rejected and battered as if they’re continuing to commit a crime just by being present in such a sacred place.  I’ve done that journey five times now.  I’ve sat on those white-washed walls and felt the aching in my center over something that I inherently feel responsible for and simultaneously searching my heart for resolution.  For reconciliation.  And felt the same sense of embarrassment, and of guilt, as I attend events intended for descendants of the African Diaspora.  The same sense of displacement, which has taught me more than anyone could ever understand, but perhaps is still inherently selfish of me.

I couldn’t help but start tearing up as an intense dialogue spurred between these desperately overwhelmed white Americans and a frustrated black American woman.  She argued, “If white people were paying more attention, they’d be just as pissed as we are.  The fact that they aren’t reads that they aren’t paying attention.  That there is no sense of urgency.”  The conversation is heartfelt, and not hostile, but strong.  The racial intensity in the film is tangible; I can feel it in my own heart.  In my own memories.  In my own experience.

I can’t count how many times I’ve thought the same thoughts.  How many times I’ve desperately questioned, “Why aren’t people more outraged?”  As I’ve counted quarters out of my own wallet for city school kids who don’t have enough money for the bus or as I’ve listened to parents who work three jobs and can barely make rent.  As I’ve watched the way a system ignores an entire class of people; and how easy it is to forget what privilege affords you.  As I’ve watched young women and men of color struggle in a world that still caters to the white.  And to the elite. 

Lately, this has been about the rest of the world, as I’ve tried to make sense of how easily we can shut off the bad news.  How American media has been designed to sing and dance until we forget that we’re at war in two countries.  That Americans, and our insatiable hunger for cheap products, fuels some of the most incredible worldwide hunger and poverty and yet we continue to buy it, because we don’t see it.  It’s 5000 miles away in a small, hot building that’s currently under water. 

They symbolism of my entertainment choice this afternoon is biting.

There is no sense of urgency.  I didn’t know about Benin.  It took a frightened, sad email from 5,000 miles away for me to understand what was happening there.

In just a few days, America votes in the primary election.  This election has been nasty, and the nation’s wickedness seems to have ratcheted up to near-toxic levels.  In an election that has been increasingly fueled by polarized parties, racially-charged commentary, and large quantities of mud and feces slinging , I find it ironic that we’re still not talking about things that really matter.  We’re still not focusing on what it takes to get bread on a table, how to go to college when you’re a homeless teenager, and how to bail water out of your flooded compound.  How to prevent Cholera from killing your children.  We’ve watched the whole world experience tragedy over the last few years.  From Chile to Haiti to Pakistan, we’ve seen quick clips of tragedy in between America dancing with the stars, and occasionally, we host a telethon and pat ourselves on the back for our American humanitarian efforts.  For the overwhelming generosity of our country. 

And then we attend the funerals of the young men and women who are so bitterly bullied about their sexuality and their gender that they take their own lives, and we question:  Where is our sense of urgency?  Where is that overwhelming American generosity?

A part of me doesn’t even want to participate anymore.  Doesn’t want to go to the polls.  To vote for a governor and a senator, who regardless of their party, will still not answer my questions.  Will still not drive through the boarded-up blocks of my city without judgment, attempting to seek solutions to what slavery REALLY did to this country.  To most urban cities. 

There is no sense of urgency.

And I admit it's crushing, even for myself, to have these feelings.  This is coming from me, a girl who so ardently talks about civic engagement and building community.  A girl who fundamentally believes in justice and in effective systems.  Who can watch 200,000 people from all races rally in Washington, D.C. to "restore the sanity" and feel inspired and then turn around and feel so uninspired.  So cheated by my own home.  And I can't do anything but write about it.

And wake up tomorrow and continue to fight for justice in a place that feels bigger and more enormous and more complicated, everyday.