No city, no country, no continent is a s---hole
The standup comedian had seen a sign, “Aurora, gateway to the Rockies,” and wondered why “they’d put the toilet in front of the house.” We laughed knowingly; we Littletonites thought Aurora was a s---hole. To us it was a place of outdated fashions, blue eyeshadow and rusted muscle cars, shabby houses, dilapidated Americana hotels, and beige strip malls. Had someone told us that Aurora students were transferring to Columbine High School, we would have balked; why couldn’t we get more students from Cherry Creek? One cannot revile a place without also disparaging its people.
I am ashamed of the views I held decades ago. No place or people should be reduced to an execrable stereotype. Such assessments are but reflections of the insecurities and prejudices of the seer, not the qualities of the seen. We humans have a tendency to build ourselves up by denigrating others. This us versus them tribalism is hard to shake even in a post-tribal nation state. For all our “e pluribus unum” and “all men are created equal” principles, we regularly make egoboosting comparisons between our crowd and other Americans. There’s always a convenient basket of deplorables.
Our tribal human nature not only produces identity politics, it also taints our view of foreigners. Although we’re a nation of immigrants and descendants of immigrants, Americans greet new immigrants with smugness and suspicion. The desirable Scandinavian immigrants of today were once the target of dumb Swede jokes. Derogatory words for Italian, Polish, Chinese, Irish, Japanese and Jewish immigrants now in the dustbin of slang history were once common slurs.
President Donald Trump’s profane commentary about Haiti and African nations is just the same old xenophobia that more polite Americans don’t voice aloud. Some Trump supporters quibble over his word choice, but many agree with the sentiment behind them: those countries are awful and their (awful) people shouldn’t come here.
Such reasoning reveals unfortunate prejudices. Most Americans have not visited Africa’s 54 nations or Haiti. From less than flattering television coverage of these places during a crisis, the fact-gathering equivalent of a drive through Aurora on the way to my cousin’s house, Americans have formed impressions of Africa, Haiti and other countries. These impressions are not merely deficient; they’re wrong.
What would the conclusion be if we were judged solely by our worst moments caught on film — hurricanes, wildfires, mass shootings, heroin addicts shooting up in the alley in some Rust Belt town? Hellhole, perhaps? Maybe something worse?
No place is merely the sum of its challenges. I’ve visited enough developing countries, including several in Africa, to know that life can be tough because of political corruption or authoritarianism, air and water pollution, discrimination against religious and ethnic minorities, and crime. Life is even tougher in countries in the midst of war or famine, just as it was in our country during our Civil War or in the Midwest during the Dust Bowl.
Yet those same countries are also home to good people, vibrant cultures, and places of beauty and wonder you can’t imagine, unless you go there.
Going there was the antidote to my childhood prejudices. By spending time in Aurora, I’ve seen how the city’s churches and community organizations embrace refugees, immigrants, the poor and the needy. I’ve heard how the chief of police is building bridges of trust between law enforcement and minority communities. I’ve tasted the exquisite food from the city’s great ethic restaurants and grocery stores. Aurora is a diverse, entrepreneurial, resilient and vivacious city worth discovering for the place it really is.
And it’s not the only one. No city, no country, no continent, no people should be casually maligned and dismissed by a president or any of us.