The American Paradox

2018 Getty Image

"Perhaps it is accurate to describe Americans as a kind-hearted people who have a darkness in our soul that causes us to do horrific things when we believe we are threatened. "
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The separation of children from their parents at our southern border feels like an assault on our American values because it is raw and in our face.  We can hear the sobs of the children in the heart rendering recording by the news group ProPublica.  We can hear the taunts of the guards calling the cry of children a symphony just waiting for a conductor.  We can empathize with the parents on what it would feel like to have our children literally ripped from our arms with no way to see them or communicate with them after.

But why do we seem so surprised?  We devalue children and families all the time here in America; especially children and families of color.  We have not only tolerated but have seen large segments of our population support atrocious actions.  Consider:
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•  During the 200 years of slavery in America, families were ripped apart and adults and children sold separately to the highest bidder
• We codified a portion of our American Constitution allowing slaves to be counted as only three-fifths of a person.
• We tolerated the genocide of Native Americans – including the slaughter of women and children – in order to gain land, gold and timber for the expansion of the country.
  
• We passed Jim Crow laws and treated lynching – a means of racial terrorism - as a community picnic.
• We accept that 22% of all children in the USA are living in poverty, but an unbelievable 75% of Black children will experience poverty in their pre-adult years in America.  And this is in the face of growing research that shows how living in long-term poverty exposes children to life-long learning and health disabilities.
• Or consider the disparity of how we treat opioid addiction now, compared to crack cocaine addiction in the 1980s.  Crack was an “urban problem” and addressed through aggressive law enforcement and long mandatory prison sentences.  Opioid addiction is a rural (and white) problem and is deemed a public health crisis.
• The overcrowding of our prisons in America is directly attributed to the “war on drugs”,  and as one result, Wisconsin now has the highest rate of Black incarceration in the country.

It is appropriate to be outraged at our treatment of refugee families on the borders.  But, let’s not kid ourselves that this is an anomaly. 

There appears to be a darkness in the American soul; one that comes out when cynical politicians and others motivated by greed fan the flames of xenophobia and pit us against that “other” who we are told threatens our existence and way of life.

But there also seems to be a better side of us; one that will take to the streets and mount protests at the sight of children being used as pawns in a geo-political game of immigration.  This is the American paradox.

Perhaps it is accurate to describe Americans as a kind-hearted people who have a darkness in our soul that causes us to do horrific things when we believe we are threatened. 

As long as we treat those who are not familiar to us as outsiders – we reinforce the belief that some are not worthy of our attention, of our dollars, of living next to us, of being treated humanely, of being loved.

If we allow our neighbors, our friends, our relatives, our politicians, our TV and radio personalities to whip up a frenzy about who is worthy and who is not, then we are tacit supporters of actions such as those we see today on our border.

The Quakers believe there is that of God in everyone and as such, every person is to be treated tenderly and with love.  That sense of the divine within is not unique to Quakerism.  Practically every major religion teaches that each human is a child of God and should be treated with love and respect. 

The word Namaste comes from eastern religions and is one most often heard in western cultures in Yoga classes.  The deeper meaning of the word is one that can provide us an example of how to treat others – even those who seem to threaten us. 

Namaste means “The Divine light in me acknowledges the Divine light in you.”

For many, it is easy to recognize the divine light within a six year old Guatemalan child partially wrapped in an aluminum blanket, sobbing for her mother while sitting on the floor of an American detention center.  It may be a bit more difficult to recognize the divine light of a black family with a couple of teenage boys who want to move into the house next to you in suburban Wisconsin.  But we must. 
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Namaste