We see the world through the lense of our biases. These ideas about what is that we don’t even know we have.
I used to think that cops were the good guys. Way back in time. Before I saw them drag my neighbor out of his grandmothers house. He lived with her and took care of her. He did the yard work and did the grocery shopping. He was a good grandson.
He also dealt weed. He was a drug dealer. To my parents that was it. The sum total of his character.
They came for him in force. The whole neighborhood cordoned off. They had us move to the back of the house. Just in case bullets started flying.
He wasn’t home. But they sure terrified his grandmother.
They lay in wait for him and scooped him up before he got in his front door.
His grandmother had to sell the house. Collateral damage in the war on ‘drugs’.
Before, I never gave the cops a second thought. After, I never felt safe. Sure in the knowledge that they could snap me out of my life and ruin my family without a care for what’s real.
I used to see America as a promise and an experiment in equality. A grand idea which seamed to be bearing fruit. Leaders in freedom and truth.
But I grew up. And I see the rot built into every 3/5’s compromise. Broken and rotten from the beginning.
A foundation built on blood.
If something doesn’t directly effect you, you get to live in a world that doesn’t exist. You get to live a fantasy. Your bias is built-in. You can’t see what you don’t know.
The first time I dated someone from a different socioeconomic class…my eyes were opened up. I couldn’t not see their struggles. Things I took as simple became hard.
Everyone’s life is living in this bubble reality.
We can be empathetic and see what is happening and determine a course forward that includes us all.
Or we can double down on this false narrative and refuse to see anyone else’s experience. There’s a whole political party that’s into that.
Pelgris 