On Strangers & Stereotypes

The other day, one of my favorite aunts (an unapologetically sarcastic woman who once told me to “shake my titties” while dancing to Shakira at my sister’s wedding) took me on a pleasant drive to Denver, where she dropped me off at the light rail station before I headed off to my internship.

During our 20-minute-long journey, we managed to cover an array of subjects not uncommon for a dialogue between two members of the Zivalich clan: Grandma Z. and her grumpy yet charming demeanor, the weather of Colorado and its predictable inability to follow any kind of meteorological patterns, and more.

Perhaps the most intriguing topic on which we elaborated, however, was my aunt’s younger nephew who is developmentally disabled and lives on his own in subsidized housing, working for a “go-green” recycling company that pursues sustainable waste initiatives.

My aunt discussed extensively the kind of struggles her nephew went through, including his parents who abandoned most of the challenging responsibilities that came with raising a child with mental disabilities. By the time our short conversation ended, my aunt concluded with deep sympathy for her nephew and his current living situation.

“It’s not his fault,” she admitted. “He didn’t have enough support.” While her nephew is doing well now, my aunt knew that the obstacles he had to face would have been alleviated or eradicated completely in some cases if he had a stronger network of helping hands.

I nodded in agreement and we both acknowledged that at least with the support her nephew has now, he has a future brighter than many other developmentally disabled individuals in this country. My aunt even expressed her discontent with the fact that many people with mental challenges end up homeless in incessant poverty, which interestingly enough signaled the end of our poignant discussion.

Less than ten minutes later, as she prepared to drop me off at the RTD station, we both noticed a homeless man with a sign by the intersection, asking for money to buy food. The sign noted that he was “recently homeless.”

“Yeah right, buddy,” my aunt sneered, “from the looks of it, you’ve been homeless a looong time.”

Although my aunt did not explicitly reference any displeasure with this particular man, her tone came off as condescending and disdainful; she seemed to express an opinion, albeit perhaps subtle, that ignored this man’s unknown personal history. She laughed off his sign as if it were so obviously outrageous.  

True, she did not engage in a tireless rant about “personal responsibility” or anything of the sort, but she seemed to disregard the homeless person as a human with legitimate concerns and in need of assistance. This happened despite the fact that we had recently wrapped up a conversation on her nephew and how many individuals with needs akin to his end up poor and often homeless when they are left without a fortified support system.

This incident made me question the way we treat others with respect to outside perspectives. In our personal world of tight relationships and collections of memories, it is easy to disown the stereotypes, disassemble the glaring judgment society may cast down upon the people in our lives, because we know the people with whom we interact well enough to reject such trivializations. When someone touches our lives, they remain with us forever (as cheesy as that sounds), and so, as in the case with my aunt’s nephew, she was able reconcile her previous understandings of how people may end up in poverty-stricken cycles. She knew people like her nephew were out there, and how difficult it was for him to make it to where he was–with the unwavering support of my aunt and uncle.

Yet all of her gradually completed steps to personal enlightenment seemed to fly out the window when it came to this homeless man on a street – a man about whom we knew nothing. Again, she mocked his sign, his physical appearance. He was nothing but another bum.

But how could my aunt criticize this homeless man? She immediately discredited his sign, yet did she ever ask him if he ever had support? Why did he end up on the streets of Denver, recently or ten years ago? How did someone whose life, in some ways, may have been comparable to the harsh reality her nephew survived, become an external afterthought – a person who we could jokingly critique as if we had the authority to evaluate them however we pleased?

My conclusion is a complex one: I wonder why we sacrifice our sympathy, respect and understanding of friends and loved ones when it comes to strangers and unfamiliar community members. As people who collaboratively sew the fabric of this nation’s culture, I think we need to be able to accept that the personal is not only political, but applicable, too. When we break traditionally cemented conceptualizations of what a person’s life might be like because of a trait or circumstance – be it socioeconomic status, race, sexuality, whatever – we never apply that experience to the unfamiliar. 

We know that we can never fully understand the life of another person, but how can we render their experiences worthless or irrelevant, when we haven’t met them, haven’t asked them questions? They could be coming from the same page as someone you know, relatively speaking. And whether or not they are, if you didn’t know them personally, does that mean their life is not worth the challenge? Could you muster up the the reconciliation you may have achieved in order to accept a relationship or friendship that confronted preconceived notions or culturally-embedded labels for a complete "stranger?"

You tell me.