Four Weeks (Part Five)

September 4, 2008, 12:00 pm; posted by
Filed under Articles, Featured, Steve  | 1 Comment

Read the series in parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

I’ve never really cared much about symbolism. I’ve never found it very important. I hated “awareness days” in high school, enough to hang ironic posters in the halls to draw attention to deadlier, but less trendy, diseases. I remember complaining, as a child, about a news story honoring teenagers who went without food for a day to better identify with the hungry. They seemed so proud of themselves, but what good did it do anyone? Why didn’t they spend that day EATING WITH the hungry, rather than joining them in their lack?

But I have grown to understand that there are genuine benefits to symbolic gestures — like identification. This is something I never grasped as a child, growing up with leaders, teachers, coaches, and classmates who all looked like me, in a world run by my cultural and religious forebears. When everybody already resembles you, you don’t always grasp the desire to see yourself in symbols or politicians.

I am perfectly happy being different now, not only because of my personality or my loving home, but because in many ways I never chose, I already fit into my particular world. There are plenty of things I need to understand about those who don’t.

All this ran through my mind as Josh and I stepped onto a basketball court in Stapleton, N.Y., inner-city Staten Island. We were the only white people on the court. We were the only white people on the street. And we were, from the reaction of many around us, the only white people in the world. I looked to the side of the lane, and couldn’t help but laugh when I saw what lay there: two stomped crackers, smeared and crushed into the ground. Some metaphors are just too obvious to invent.

We weren’t in sufficient shape to play on the other court, so after we chased away the hordes of curious preadolescents, we took to running full-court with the JV squad: the slightly less athletic, slightly younger, slightly less motivated players from the neighborhood. We won the games, mostly because we really hate to lose, but the attention we drew focused more on what we represented than our status as teammates or opponents. When Josh stole the ball, when I blocked it, the crowd, including the recent losers from the main court, would erupt in hooting derision toward whatever player had been so unfortunate.

We were the Other, all the more so because this wasn’t even Josh’s usual court; no one knew us. In a very small way, I better understood, I grasped more powerfully, what it must be like outside my skin and culture. This might be the single most important benefit to diversity as a value: real empathy requires more than just knowledge. It takes feeling. Identification.

A few days before my trip, I played beach volleyball with an Indian friend. All the other players were Indian, some even speaking Hindi, and almost all of them were significantly better than I was. I felt, on a small scale, the discomfort of exclusion, the pressure to measure up, and the burden of being, in some odd but tangible way, alone.

And I can’t help thinking it was just the type of awareness I needed.


Comments

1 Comment to “Four Weeks (Part Five)”

  1. Rose on September 5th, 2008 11:44 am

    I look forward to these articles perhaps more than any other on the site.

    Although, those jokes are a close second…that crazy lemon!

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