The Other Guy

It was dubbed "the Mass Poor People's & Low-Wage Workers' Assembly and Moral March." (And may I say the name is too long ... and so is the acronym.) Poor people around the country gathered in Washington D.C. to protest being poor. No, that's not accurate. They were protesting not being looked after sufficiently. They have demands. Lots of them. You can read them here. It is true that there are poor people in this country (this world) and that people in general and in power don't seem very concerned about them. But if you read through their demands, you might find a common theme. The enemy ... is the people with money. And we want it now.

They want to take from the general population to "permanently expand welfare benefits, provide cash assistance programs, and guarantee adequate incomes" and "enacting a universal single payer national health care program." They want to harm the economy -- employers and customers -- by " raising the minimum wage to a living wage." They want the right to form unions because they don't trust the government or the employers to give them what they want. They want to damage landlords by "ending all evictions, cancelling past due rent and mortgage payments." And more. The running theme here is "Someone else has resources and we want the government to redirect them to us." Why? Because those other guys -- in this case the "rich ones" -- are the enemy and we want what we deem to be our rightful share.

I'm not writing this about poor vs rich. It's about "us" vs "them." It pops up in poor people. It pops up in rich people, where, to them, the poor people are the enemy. It pops up in race questions when "whites" are the problems and "people of color" want what's coming to them at the cost of the "whites." It shows in neighborhoods when "that different family" moves in and it shows in churches when "that different family" starts attending. Why is it so hard to "break into a church" -- to actually get connected? Because they are "us" and those who are not "us" are "them." Everyone has something that someone else wants and everyone is in some position or another in which they are the enemy. Often without even trying. Sometimes without even knowing it. People with different incomes, different countries, different skin tones, different sexes, different accents, and so on. I met a white girl who hated white folks because she grew up in a black community and was taught that white folks were the enemy. In her experience, "us" was the black community and those outside that community was "them," not even recognizing that she was white.

We have a term for it. It's "xenophobia" -- the fear of anything alien. It has been coerced by the science fiction aficionados, so it is mostly "fear of aliens from outer space," but the word references anyone or anything "different." We humans will slide in a host of other reasons for our hostility to "them" -- poverty, nationality, crime, racism, sexism, religion, whatever -- but the origin is this fundamental human need for community and its counterpart, the fear of that which is not my "community." Why are some white people racist? Because they're scared. Why are some black people racist? Same reason. (Look it up. "Racist" has a meaning, and it is NOT "white".) Why do poor people hate the rich? Why do rich white Americans hate those impoverished illegal aliens? Same reason. There is more, sure, but that's at the core. And until we -- humanity -- recognizes and deals with that problem, legislation to take from the rich and give to the poor will not only not solve poor peoples' problems; it will only make things worse ... for everyone.