The Stories Our Parents Tell Us

Following my train of thought from last week, this week’s blog is about the stories that our parents tell us when we were younger and how that affects our lives today. In particular I wanted to talk about homeless people.

 Seemingly random and unrelated, homeless people bring up a distinct memory from my booster seat days. I would sit in the car and my mother would tell me, “Do you see all those people living on the street? They have no homes and do you know how they got there?” I’d look out the window and see all the homeless people and then shake my head, because as a six year old the thought of people living without homes was inconceivable.  Then my mother would go on, “Well, they were all too lazy and didn’t get good grades in school, so they couldn’t go to college or get a good job. And because they didn’t have a good job they couldn’t make money to buy a house, so they have to sleep in boxes in the street.”

I was absolutely stunned, and tremendously frightened. I did NOT want to sleep in a box on the street, so I needed to work hard and get good grades, or else. And I believed this story for an extremely long time, and while there is some validity to the story I realized there was also an enormous amount of prejudice. Dubbing people lazy or stupid is not only incredibly hurtful but also ignorant.

Homeless people are often perceived as the people who didn’t try hard enough or were too stupid. However none of the images produced are made with consideration to each of the individual circumstances. Sure there may be some that were “too lazy” or stupid but of these Americans are living there own dream just like you and me. They may be where they are now  as a temporary solution to a cruel trick of fate. The American dream is all about hard work and a little bit of luck, so maybe these Americans missed their luck this time around.

So why do Americans judge one another? We judge one another and to try and separate ourselves. In this case my mother was trying to remind me of the separation between me and the homeless man. She wanted me to know that I could not be like them that I didn’t belong there and I had to do everything I could to keep myself from ever being there. Americans love division. This is evident in our classes, neighborhoods, and professions. We judge in order to divide.