Irrational Fears and the Status Quo
It seems like I have spent my entire life trying to fight off the irrational fears that people have tried to instill in me.
I was advised not to ride the bus in Ft. Lauderdale or I’d get robbed. I was told if I went to Liberty City, I would get beat up. Before I went to Mexico, Estadounidenses told me it was too dangerous. When I was in Playa Chacala, they told me I would be mugged in Guadalajara. When I was in Guadalajara, they told me I would get mugged in Mexico City. In Mexico City, they told me I’d never survive Guatemala.
If I let myself be afraid every time someone told me horrible things about a place or a people, I would never go anywhere or talk to anyone.
The people who were trying to make me afraid weren’t fearful from experience or reliable knowledge. It was all just rumor, sensationalist news reports, and general fear of the OTHER – especially if that other was poor and black or brown. People are so ready to believe negative things about poor people of color that you have to assume they want to believe those things, need to believe those things.
Why?
What if that fear went away tomorrow? What if we all assumed, just for a day, that everyone was doing the best they could to get by. What if we assumed, just for a day, that poor people aren’t poor because they are less worthy, less smart, less hard-working, or just plain less? Where would that leave us?
It would leave us with a lot of questions. It would leave us asking how things got to be this way and what forces are at work keeping them this way. It would leave us wondering about how those inequities relate to accidents of geography, skin color, and birth. It would leave us wondering if those inequities aren’t accidental at all. And it would leave us asking who benefits from us distrusting each other so much.
It’s easier not to think about those things. Thinking about those things, for many of us, leads to questioning our privileges, our world views, our lives. And we would rather not do that. So we just live in fear and try to avoid looking at the everyday tragedies.
But every once in a while, a tragedy unfolds that is so catastrophic that we cannot ignore it. So Katrina hits New Orleans or an earthquake hits Haiti and willful ignorance becomes impossible. That’s when our schizophrenia takes hold.
We watch the tragedy unfold on the television and our hearts break. We imagine the horror that those people are going through. We send millions of dollars to relief organizations and stay glued to the news reports. We ask ourselves, why? How could something so horrible happen? And we want to know if it could have been prevented. Most importantly, we want to know if it could happen to us.
Before long, the news reports turn from rescue to rioting. A little scuffle over some desperately needed food is played on a continuous loop. Report after report conflates appropriation of the means to survival with, not just theft, but violence.
And all these scary reports happen just in the nick of time. Some part of the back of our brains had begun to wonder if there was more to the story than just an “act of god.” Perhaps someone mentioned how poor Haiti was and we wondered for a moment why. But before we had to take any trouble looking into it, those “journalists” showed us what dangerous people we were dealing with, incapable of organization or development.
So you see, this couldn’t happen to us. We can rest assured that we deserve our privilege. No need to examine history or economic systems. No need to wonder why these “acts of god” are so much more destructive when they happen to poor people. Just pat ourselves on the back for our generosity and move on.
And when the United Nations and the U.S. government prioritize “security” over medical supplies, leaving doctors to find saws in hardware stores in order to perform amputations, there is no need to question that decision. These are dangerous people. You are sure of it. You’ve been told over and over your entire life.
There is no need to read about the history of Haiti. There is no need to seek out journalists who are actually talking to the people we are supposed to be so afraid of. There is no need to listen to people on the ground who tell us over and over and over and over and over again that the reports of violence are a lie.
Ignorance is bliss.
I’m not saying that there is no real danger in the world. I certainly wasn’t going to volunteer to drive a bus through Zona 18 in Guatemala. But isn’t it time we were a little more skeptical about the daily vilification of poor people of color? Why is it that so many people found my blog looking for information about which non-profits are trustworthy; yet so few people show anything like that kind of skepticism when it comes to news reports making survivors out to be criminals?
So long as we allow fear to substitute for fact, the status quo will go unchallenged. And that suits some people just fine.
There were rampant reports of price gouging and even a couple about looting in SANTA CRUZ, CA after the earthquake in 1989. There are people who respond to crisis and desperate situations by panicking or becoming predators everywhere and LOTS more people who help their neighbors and try to make things better. What makes better info-tainment? I wish it was a slate that reflected the truth (even both sides) instead of focusing on and becoming obsessed with only the worst.
1The news should be about information and public discourse. But all they do now is create heroes and villains; fears and false controversies. It is so incredibly destructive.
2Great post. The night of the earthquake, I heard this: Don't go downtown, it's too dangerous. But I walked down to see the destruction myself – everyone was sad, friendly. Before the earthquake, I heard all this time: Don't go into this or that area. It's too dangerous. But I went several times, without any problems. Before coming to Haiti, I heard it: Don't go there, it's so dangerous. Never felt in serious danger since arriving here.
If people had set aside those assumptions in the days after the quake, a lot of lives would have been saved.
3Thanks Ansel. I hate to say that I'm glad you are down there – cause I wish nobody had to suffer through something like that. But I am so relieved to have a sensible source of information.
Good luck in Mexico. Tell me all about it when you get back.
4Perhaps the intent was not to villify. I don't look at these rioting people as villians of a lesser world, but rather people desperate to survive in a desperate situation. And seeing that desperation motivates me to try to help more. If all we saw was happy people helped by aid workers, we might be inclined to think all is well now, and we can go about our business.
5I'm not saying the conscious intent of all the media people is to vilify. But as a former media person told me, they have a script and they are following it. So it is more that they provide provocative, sensationalist, and misleading headlines without thought to the results of what they are doing. And media people are just as indoctrinated with all the fear and vilification as the rest of us are.
Most importantly, there are people out there who are providing better news, like Ansel at http://www.mediahacker.org/
6The time will come soon when people will tire of hearing about Haiti, even though the recovery will take years. I think there are people in the media that know that they have to keep this desperation in front of our faces for as long as they can, or else the aid from the US will dry up.
Even individuals who aren't happy with "the system" do what they can within "the system" to accomplish what needs to be done. It's admirable to rail against the misdirection, the corruption, the simplistic selfish agenda, but the truth of the matter is, large scale change takes time, and these people are in trouble right this minute.
Feed them now. Give them the tools to make themselves more resilient now. And who knows? Perhaps the example we set will do more to make the right changes than any amount of anger.
7Nobody is saying that the story shouldn't be covered, at least not here. But how much coverage the mainstream media gives now is no indication of how much followup will be done later. They did the same thing for Katrina and how much followup is there of that? The situation is still bad.
And nobody is suggesting that we do not help. But all the people who are sending money down there are not examining their (and their governments) culpability in the situation down there and the general inequality everywhere.
8Simply decide not to be afraid.
9"Ignorance is bliss." I think that the perfect phrase for all this. Ignorance. The root of the word so happens to be "ignore" which is what we are all doing. be it intentionally or on accident. We ignore what we don't want to deal with.
10It sounds so much more active and pathological when you say "ignore" and not just "ignorance." People usually think of ignorance as an accidental state, free of blame. But so much ignorance is willful.
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