I am not really a right wing talk radio sort of person. Much of how I see the world is shaped by my Dad’s experience, which was about coming from real starvation type poverty. That does not invalidate someone else’s experience. I am likely coming off as callous, when it is really about being a little frustrated about not really understanding. And that started in Junior High School sitting in a classroom with kids who literally laughed and cursed at the teachers when they asked for attention or participation.
Academically, I have been able to see things from several difficult perspectives. I interviewed Shoah perpetrators and collaborators until I could at least understand how they could have fallen for the disaster of the Third Reich. Not sympathy, but some measure of understanding. I have also been to a bunch of places in the world where people would literally do anything to be afforded half the opportunity that the most disadvantaged person in the US has available to them.
So it is frustrating to not be able to bridge the gap to understand what was happening with those kids years ago, and the kids that my daughter goes to school with who are on the same path. I don’t really think it has anything to do with race, because I work with too many African immigrants who do not seem to have encountered insurmountable barriers to success here.
I really don’t have any answers. I have questions. And I do not understand all the intricacies of the issue. But I am trying.
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