The other day, I asked my friend what he thought was America’s biggest problem. My friend is a story teller. Instead of giving forward answers, he believes in telling stories because, in his words, “it creates a fuller picture.”
When I asked him of America’s greatest problem he answered me by giving me a short description of his life.
This is his story:
My friend is an African American male majoring in a stem field attending a predominantly white institution. He comes from a low-income family and was raised by his father and mother until his parents decided to separate. Afterward, he was raised by just his father. My friend attended elementary school and middle school in low-income areas. In the schools he attended, fights were abundant and teaching was hard when the ratio of kids to teachers was 40 to 1. My friend attended a high school that was very diverse and in a higher income area. This proved to be a tremendous help to him as it provided him plentiful opportunities to prepare for his future. My friend has only had two encounters with the police on the road. Both times he was given a warning. My friend has had no problem finding jobs. He was employed as an intern his freshman year of college and has moved up the ranks since then, all while managing to maintain good grades and graduate on time. My friend has not taken out any loans to pay for college and will graduate college debt-free. If my friend decides to get a Master’s Degree, he will not have to pay for it as his company will cover the cost.
When my friend finished speaking I was left confused. I asked him what does any of that have to do with America’s greatest problem. I was agitated because it seemed as if he had failed to answer my question. His response to me was the following:
“I have described to you my experiences. I know what is like to be an African-American male in America, however, I do not know the experience of being profiled by policemen. I know how it feels to come from low-income areas and to attend poverty stricken schools, but I do not know the experience of leaving college with debt. I know the fear of needing a job and I know the fear of losing one. My experiences that I have encountered in life have shaped me into who I am today. My encounters are real to me because they have happened to me. I could easily say that racial profiling does not exist because it has not happened to me. I could easily say that graduating without debt is completely possible and not altogether hard because I have been blessed so that it was to me. I could tell you that poverty does not impact where you will land because it has not impacted me. I could easily classify all things that I have not experienced personally as unreal and non-existent, because to me that would be accurate. America’s biggest problem is the blind eye we turn to other’s suffering [and] experiences because we have not personally felt it ourselves.”
A man named Kalief Browder committed suicide on June 6, 2015. He was arrested in the spring of 2010, at age 16, for a robbery he insisted he did not commit. He then spent more than 1000 days in Rikers, a prison in New York, waiting for a trial that never happened. During his confinement, he received abuse from other inmates and unnecessary brutality from the guards of the prison. His experience was unjust and mentally disturbing. I have never personally felt injustice by America’s justice system, but others have. I have never felt the pressure of raising a child alone, but others have. I have never been made to feel inferior to others based on nationality, religion, race, or sexual orientation but others have. America’s biggest problem is its ability to belittle or completely ignore others' experiences just because it is not always an experienced shared with others. It is time to work on seeing beyond what only we have experienced.
