What About ‘Those People’? Why Don’t They Fix Their Own Lives?

“Why don’t ‘those people’ fix their own lives and culture instead of rioting all the time?”

I hear this question a lot.

Do you want to know the answer?

1. First of all, ‘those people’ are exactly like you. People, humans, Americans, who lives lives, like you, largely unrecognized. They are doing what they’re doing without you seeing them.
   
2. ‘Those people’ are already doing those things, and have been doing those things, for as many years as everyone else. Living their lives, falling in love, getting married, having kids, getting jobs, caring for their own, healing their sick, burying their dead. Just like anyone else.
   
3. ‘Those people’ doing ordinary things, healing things, life-affirming things, doesn’t make the news. The news is about two things:
   1. What bleeds – news reports center around the spectacular and the frightening and the violent. Ordinary people doing ordinary things isn’t news.
      
   2. What affirms – we watch stories that affirm our viewpoint. If we believe ‘those people’ are cheats and liars, lazy and indolent, takers and grabbers and destroyers, then we will gravitate to news which affirms that viewpoint.

Did you know there is a #PeaceWalk going on, right now, in Houston, as citizens there are vocally and publicly protesting the violence in their community? This is on top of the everyday efforts to raise their families in peace, to send their kids to school, to continue at their jobs?

Did you know that right now #HandsUpUnited in Ferguson is sponsoring (and has been sponsoring) a “Books and Breakfast” on Saturday, where families come for breakfast and get books for their kids? They’re providing nourishment for the body, the mind, and the soul.

Did you know that right now people in Ferguson are trying to build a training center, a food distribution center, a “safe for kids” zone in response to the violence by police against their community — and that their efforts have been repeatedly vandalized and destroyed by residents who don’t want them to succeed?

None of this makes the news because none of this is “interesting” or “newsworthy” and it does not affirm our viewpoint of ‘those people’. We want to believe ‘those people’ are inherently shiftless and violent and not worthy of the blessings of America until they hitch their pants up and get a job.

But your ignorance is what’s wrong here, not what ‘those people’ do. ‘Those people’ are doing just fine without your support or even your acknowledgement.