My students read A Raisin in the Sun at the end of last semester, in the midst of the upheaval in Ferguson, MO. I nearly changed the reading selection, knowing my class of outspoken and clashing world views would have strong opinions about the play and its themes of prejudice, misunderstanding, and dignity, but I decided if I am going to promote civil discourse, the best place to practice is in the midst of a mess.
A Raisin in the Sun is set in Chicago in 1959, and as the play opens, a matriarch named Mama, her two adult children (Walter and Beneatha), and her son’s wife and child (Ruth and Travis) live together in a run down two bedroom apartment, dreaming of a better life that will begin with $10,000 insurance money from the father’s recent death. When we began talking about the difficulties the adult son Walter faces, I realized that my students had no empathy for Walter. They see him as weak–unable to be redeemed. One student dismissed Walter’s problem and life with a prescription of “hard work” saying: “Anyone can achieve their dreams with hard work.”
Most students nod in agreement, but I countered: “Can they?”
Then I use an old teacher trick on them. I told them that everyone would have an equal chance to get a free pass on the final.
“What do we have to do?”
“Make a basket. Wad up a piece of notebook paper and shoot it into this wastebasket next to my desk. The only rule is you have to shoot from where you sit.”
The front row grins and tears out paper before the back row can even respond with “She’s joking, right?”
There is grumbling and nervous chuckling. I sit in the tension for a minute, as the front row begins warming up their arms.
Someone in the middle mumbles, “But that has nothing to do with our class– it’s random.” I nod in agreement.
“Who has a better chance?” I ask.
“Obviously the front row,” a voice calls from the back.
“Who is feeling this is unfair?”
The back three rows raise their hands and protests in unison, while the front two rows are trying to figure out their chances. No one looks behind them—not even the back row—they think there is no one behind them.
One person in the back row goes so far to say that he could make it from his seat, he just might need time to practice. He wants to believe hard work alone is enough.
Here’s the thing: Should we tell the construction worker in Bangladesh who works sixteen hours for $2 a day to work harder? How will he make a better life without help? Without someone advocating? Without education and infrastructure to support him? Without laws that keep him from being exploited? In third-world and developing countries (and too often within our own first-world country) people at the bottom are one illness, one fire, one flood season, one job loss away from despair and starvation.
I remind my students who stretch out in five neat rows in front of me, in mostly clean clothes, well-fed, and with time to learn, we ARE the privileged ones. We just can’t see it. We’re just like Walter. (Oh they hate it when I say that. I hate remembering it too.) There is not enough money to fill the hole in Walter—he wrongly defines success because he is entirely focused on himself. At the end of the play, Walter realizes his error, and he chooses to stand up to prejudice by asserting his dignity and stepping into a better future for his son, even though he knows the future will have challenges.
We are fond of remonstrating people on television for their prejudice. But here’s the truth. Prejudice lives in me, but it’s notoriously hard to spot in myself. Here is where I’ve started looking though: it lives close to the people who I can’t or won’t empathize with because of history or poor choices or ignorance. It lives close to the people I label “unsafe.” It lives near the people I refuse to even SEE. I am prejudice, but I don’t want to be. One small act of “seeing” someone else’s life through his eyes, walking in his shoes for a mile, and asking what would help him and maintain his dignity—these are my first steps away from prejudice and into understanding. It’s not about whether or not others deserve our understanding. It’s about adopting a worldview that chooses not to lose hope in the darkest places, a world view that chooses not to ignore parts of our population or history, a world view that knows telling the truth requires compassion to be heard. Prejudice is blindness; compassion is sight. Here’s to seeing more this week.