The Homeless and the Privileged: A Personal Story
ou go through life not noticing what or who's around you. You are raised in a bubble, one that shields you from society's bleak truths, ultimately protecting you from the big bad world: racism, xenophobia, poverty etc. You don’t quite realize how ideas like race, gender, and ethnicity affect the playing field. Hold up. Let’s stop assuming things about each other. Let’s stop saying you. Let’s start only speaking for ourselves.
I was the one blinded by our nation’s ugly realities. I wasn’t always aware of things like the wage gap, institutionalized racism, and modern day segregation. I still am not fully aware.
I was raised in a sheltered community, one that nurtured me, that averted my eyes. Growing up, I focused a lot more on religion and my religious identity. I didn’t realize how important my race, ethnicity, and gender were to my identity and to all identities, how much they impacted my day-to-day life, my opportunities, and opportunities for others. I didn't know what it meant for people of color, as Kiese Laymon put it, to be born on parole. I didn't understand how women, the mothers of our world, could be born ten steps behind their male children.
Before jumping into the we, it feels appropriate to begin with the I.
I’m no better than anyone else. I’m writing about homelessness, a topic in which I'm supposed to be passionate about, but have hardly interacted with homeless individuals. I see the world through my own eyes, often focusing on the self and worrying about the mundane. The difference between an A and an A- on a test, dramatic arguments with my housemates, complaining about the weather when I have all of the appropriate attire to endure it.
Growing up, I never worried where my next meal would come from. Today, at the grocery store, I glance at prices, always trying to save money and usually picking the cheaper option. But I’ve never felt like I didn’t have enough money for groceries. After all, in college, I typically buy groceries with my parents' credit card.
During my junior year of high school, I went on a class trip to Washington D.C. It was a trip that had an agenda, one that tried to accomplish a number of goals. One of which was exposure to homelessness.
As a 16-year-old teenage boy on this trip, I distributed gloves and hats to homeless people, had conversations with them, asked them their name, and told them mine.
During one conversation with a homeless man, I gave him a pair of gloves and he said thank you. He looked around and saw that there
were lots of us doing this. He decided to tell me something, to generously share with me a small piece of his experience. He taught me the value of asking and calling anyone by their name.
"So many people walk past me every day. Maybe they give me some money, maybe they don't. They usually say that they don’t have time. That’s fine. They don't have to give me money. But to have the dignity to look me in the eye, exchange names, and shake my hand, that’s a bigger deal to me.”
His name was Michael. He had two kids and used to work in a warehouse distributing food to local grocery stores. He spent his whole life in D.C. and wanted to give his kids a better future than he had.
I wish I could say that was true. I wish I could say that I remember his name or anything about him. I don’t. I have no idea if his name was Michael, Chris, or Muhammad.
I cling to his advice, preaching it now myself, but don’t remember anything about him. Actually, the only characteristic I could tell you about him is that he was homeless.
Why is it that the only thing I remember about this man was that he was homeless? Why do we cluster all homeless people into a group, labeling them, perhaps degrading them? Why don’t we do the same for
the rest of society, categorizing the people that aren't homeless?
Being in Washington D.C. on that five-day trip was a brief introduction to homelessness and poverty. I began to learn how to talk to homeless people, how to sometimes see beneath their thick stigma.
That trip put homelessness on the map, on my map. It woke me up, at least a little bit.
We, as human beings, sometimes look at fellow human beings as gross, inferior, diseased, and rotten.
"So many people walk past me everyday. Maybe they give me some money, maybe they don't. They usually say that they don’t have time. That’s fine. They don't have to give me money. But to have the dignity to look me in the eye, exchange names, and shake my hand, that’s a bigger deal to me.”
I am certainly guilty of that. Often, they sadly are—in reality—gross, inferior, diseased, and physically decaying, but what could be a greater call to action?
What could be a greater wakeup call?
How could someone possibly need our help—our time, our respect, our love—any more than someone
without a home or food or, sometimes, anything to their name? Yes, after my trip to D.C., I knew a few more facts about homelessness. I had a few real conversations under my belt. I had a few days of structured, organized, safe contact with homelessness.
What I didn’t quite know at the time was that the trip lit a flame that still, to this day, desperately burns me.
In college, in Ann Arbor, I ’ve perhaps escaped homelessness' horrifying truths. However, factors like interacting with a diverse student body (well, diverse for me) at the University of Michigan, witnessing the aftermath of Donald Trump’s presidential election, and volunteering on the streets of New Delhi this past summer caused me to become more aware of how I see the world and perhaps how the world sees me: at the intersection of race, ethnicity, and gender.
These identity markers—my whiteness, my maleness, my Americanness—have deeply influenced how I think about my own (dare I say) privilege, how I think about the issues behind homelessness and the staggering discourse around the topic.
In this project, you’ll find an exploration of why people are, on the one hand, so quick to condemn the atrocities of homelessness but, on the other, are reluctant to help correct that exact injustice.
Why does this discrepancy between personal attitude and behavior exist? Why does one cringe at the sight of a homeless person, at the thought of their fellow man dying in the street, but does not step up to help?
Why don’t we fight for equality if we believe society should be equal?
Together, we will explore the definitional, psychological, moral, and religious context behind these central questions and we will hopefully become a little more aware, a little more sensitive, and a little more knowledgeable about these dense layers of homelessness.
"What I didn’t quite know at the time was that the trip lit a flame that still, to this day, desperately burns me."
BY JOSHUA FLINK