Category Archives: Culture and Society

Being Qualified No Longer Matters

It took “Dancing with the Stars” to jolt me into the realization that many voters no longer care whether candidates are qualified. Bobby Bones, who hosts a nationally syndicated country music radio show, has a large and devoted following that just voted him into the finals on “Dancing with the Stars.” He’d never scored higher than 8 with the judges, but viewer votes pushed him to the top, eliminating a star who’d repeatedly scored perfect 10’s. Bobby Bones is certainly a delightful person who’s overcome a heartbreaking childhood, but this is dancing with the stars. I was fine with keeping him on the show along with the other stars who couldn’t dance, but voting him into the finals? Come on! Even Bobby was giving a thumbs-down when he eliminated the best dancer of the season.

I should have realized about qualifications when Hilary Clinton, arguably the most qualified candidate ever to run for President, was defeated by Donald Trump, who had no experience in government. I hoped Trump’s election was a fluke, and, after all, Hillary, the qualified candidate, had won the popular vote. Still, “I can’t stand Hilary” was often stated as the reason why a voter acknowledged but ignored her qualifications. But somehow I imagined that, given all those likeable stars on “Dancing with the Stars”, the dancing would determine who won. Or that the judge’s scores would prevail. Thus the jolt. Now I am truly frightened for our country.

Many voters now seem to vote for candidates who are like them. It’s deeper than preferring candidates who look like them. With Obama’s election and the recent Congressional elections of the first Muslim and Native American women, the first black women from New England, the first Latina women from Texan, most of us seem to have gotten over the need to elect candidates who look like us. (Both Bobby Bones and the dancer he defeated are white males.)

Instead, many voters seem to be choosing candidates whose personalities make them feel good about themselves or who could be their friends. Quotes from Bobby’s followers included “I can’t get up in the morning without listening to you. I love you Bobby Bones.” It’s the same as “I can’t stand Hilary.” Trump’s a master at being a buddy to his base. The crudeness, barbs, and nasty tweets bond his followers into an in-group. And when Trump boasts at his rallies that he knows better and does better than any other President, isn’t he conveying that, by supporting him, they, too, know and do better? It appears that his base says, “Who cares if he’s qualified? He’s one of us!”

But when I analyze how I choose political candidates, my analogy with “Dancing with the Stars” breaks down. Mike Pence is qualified to serve in government, but his positions (banning abortion, curbing LGBT rights, promoting coal over clean air, and funding vouchers for charter and religious schools) are not mine. I can’t stand Pence, but that’s because of his positions more than his personality. Was that what the voters who couldn’t stand Hilary meant? Were they referring to her platform or her likeability?

I realize that for me, it’s not qualification in the “can-do” sense but in the “what I value” sense that drives my vote. It’s not friendship, shared background, nor making me feel good about myself. I’ve even voted for a crook because his positions match mine. Perhaps, because I value dancing, my analogy does hold.

Qualification, personality, platform – on what basis do most voters vote? Not knowing may be scariest of all.

VOTE!

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I urge everyone who hasn’t already voted to go to the polls on November 6. Only if we all vote, will we know what most Americans want. Remember the term “silent majority”? Well, the silent majority has let the voting minority take over this country. I cringe when I hear any politician say, “This is what Americans want.” Unless most Americans vote, politicians can’t speak for “Americans.” And who knows: if we all vote, we may find that we are not as divided as we think.

But you say, “My district is gerrymandered so that my vote doesn’t count.” I say, “Vote in every election and for every local and state office because it’s at the state level that districts are gerrymandered. Choose candidates who will district fairly or, more cynically, who will gerrymander in favor of you.”

You say, “The electoral college determined the 2016 election. Clinton won the majority, but Trump is president. Why bother to vote?” I say, “The electoral college applies only in presidential elections. Vote in 2018 for Congressional candidates who will work to eliminate the electoral college.”

You say, “I can’t vote.” Perhaps you committed a crime or your name has been removed from the rolls. I sympathize but ask that you not give up. Next time, volunteer to get out the vote for a candidate, especially a candidate for governor, who will see that whoever is in charge of elections will work to reinstate you.

But how do we know which candidate to vote for? Who will represent what we value and want? With fewer newspapers, more social media, and a deluge of 30-second TV ads, it’s hard to find a candidate’s positions. Attack ads like “My opponent will take away your Second Amendment rights” should make us ask for specifics. Will he eliminate the Second Amendment, take away my bump stock so I can’t kill a lot of people with my hunting rifle, make me wait for a background check before I can buy my gun, or force me to hunt with a bow and arrow? Maybe if politicians talked about the details, they’d find enough in common to write bipartisan legislation.

It used to be easier to vote by party. The Republicans, who used to be counted on to guard the nation’s treasure, are now running up the deficit. They’re pro-life but seem to have little interest in providing those lives with services or a healthy environment. Democrats are willing to support the newborns with SNAP, housing subsidies, and clean air, but then they want to send everyone to college for free. Voters who would ban abortion but fear climate change must decide which issue takes precedence.

To learn positions, voters must seek information about individual candidates. The League of Women Voters’ non-partisan voters’ guide, www.VOTE411.org, is available in New Jersey and some other states. Voters need only enter their address to see the responses to League questions of every candidate on their ballot (provided the candidate answered). Voters who don’t know who their candidates are can use their sample ballots to find their candidates’ names, Google them, and then visit their websites or read what’s been written about them.

“Too much effort,” you say? Nonsense! You’re looking for people who share what you value and want: a “you” but with power. What is more important than having a say about our wealth and health, the people around us and the planet we share?

“But,” you say, “the candidates I vote for rarely win.” Yes, but as in sports or the lottery, you cannot win if you don’t play. Keep trying. Vote!

The Right to Life

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“The right to life”—we are all endowed with it. It’s in the Declaration of Independence, next to the right to “liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Of course we believe in the right to life. But what if that life will be denied the liberty to pursue happiness? When we stick up for the right to life by trying to ban abortion, do we consider whether the child whom we mandate be born will have the love and care to maintain life? Do we consider whether the three rights are equal? Or whether “quality of life,” as implied by liberty and the pursuit of happiness, should be taken into account? And are we talking about only the unborn lives or also those of the living who will be impacted by each new child? Because I can’t answer these questions for others, I support the availability of abortion.

I know a couple who already had four young children when they found they were unexpectedly pregnant with a fifth. The baby would likely be as beautiful and bright as its siblings, but the parents had neither the money nor energy to absorb another child without jeopardizing the welfare of all five. In a decision that would remain painful throughout their lives, the parents chose abortion. Abortion was not taken lightly. No need for the in utero photos brandished by pro-life supporters. The parents could picture the child whose life they were ending. But they could also picture the struggle for food, bedtimes with too few beds, no time for stories, no room in the car for everyone, and not enough money to be sure that each child would have the chance to experience anything—from camp to college.

Not that I prefer abortion. Contraception is my solution. I’m furious when two people, perhaps even strangers, hot for sex, and likely inebriated, have a one-night stand that results in a human being no one wants or is prepared to raise. Furious if a child is conceived to prove its father’s sexual prowess. Furious if its mother spreads her legs so she can boast, “See, he loves me. I’m going to have his baby.” No child asks to be a badge of its parents’ sexuality. Each baby deserves to be the result of a loving commitment to raising a human being. But since it’s unlikely that sex will be limited to those times when adults want to create or increase a family, contraception is the answer.

But contraception isn’t always reliable, affordable, or available—and never in rape. And so I support abortion because I care most about the welfare of the child after it’s born, not its right to a life that could be miserable. To me, abortion—like food, adequate housing, educational opportunity, and, most importantly, the parent’s desire to have a child—must be available to insure that each child born can pursue happiness.

What about the mother’s right to liberty? Without abortion as an option, a woman is forced to carry an unwanted child through birth. Nine months of her life dictated by others—perhaps because the contraception she’d counted on failed. Pro-lifers might argue that the baby can be put up for adoption. More cruelty— because once a woman has heard and held her baby, maternal instincts kick in. Giving the baby away is wrenching. And what if the child is not adopted? Right now, more children are eligible for adoption than there are adoptive parents. Even if we believe that life begins at conception, can we recognize that abortion might be a better alternative than lives constrained by whatever conditions caused the request for abortion?

Republicans in Congress, sympathetic to their evangelical base and with no respect for a woman’s right to liberty, champion the right to life of a fertilized egg but show little interest in assuring that the resulting child has a chance at happiness. They’re reluctant to increase support systems such as CHIP, to raise the minimum wage for over-worked parents, or to allow the puny tax breaks for the middle class to extend beyond eight years. Don’t the conditions of life count, too? Who should be the judge?

Your God or My God?

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The Supreme Court is hearing the case of the Colorado bakery artist who refused to create one of his masterpiece wedding cakes for a gay couple because doing so would violate his belief that marriage is between a man and a woman. His refusal was a slap in the face to the gay couple; their love was unworthy. Here’s the problem: does the baker’s religion also condone demeaning other people? Or is this a question we forget to ask when sticking up for our religious beliefs?

The baker argues that the Constitution guarantees the right to freely exercise his religion. The First Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” He exercised his belief. Were the gay couple able to exercise their belief that their marriage was valid?

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are major monotheistic religions. We all have one God, but we evidently don’t share the same rules about how God wants us to behave. So when we stick up for our religious beliefs, we’re like children on a playground taunting, “My God is righter than your God.” I picture God, the Father, looking down and shaking his head in dismay, “Oh dear, the children are fighting again.”

We sing hymns: “With God on our side.” But do we really want God to takes sides? Religious beliefs pit Shiite against Sunni, Evangelical against Episcopalian, but it’s hard to picture God cheering, “Go Sunnis! Get those Shiites!” Or “Homosexuality’s here to stay, Evangelicals go away!” If, as we say we believe, God created heaven and earth and all its creatures, would He take sides among His own children?

The problem with justifying a position based on religion is similar to that of the Supreme Court when deciding how to interpret the Constitution. Some Justices look to the Founding Fathers for their interpretation; other Justices take into account today’s reality. Who is more right? Thankfully, the Constitution is a paper document. God, however, is supposed to be God.

Perhaps instead of concentrating on what religions tell us not to do, we should rely on what they tell us to do. Jesus said, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” The same words appear in Judaism, Leviticus 19:18, and are sometimes called the central commandment of the Torah. I’m no expert on Islam, but I’ve read a quotation from the Prophet Muhammad, “None of you have faith until you love for your neighbor what you love for yourself.”

I have to give the bakery artist credit for fairness because he stopped making signature wedding cakes, even though he lost money. But what if, instead, he had whispered to God, “I’m sure You don’t approve of this marriage, but I don’t want to hurt their feelings and, after all, it’s up to You to deal with homosexuality,” and then had smiled at the gay couple and asked what decorations they wanted on their cake?

Righteousness—sticking up for one’s beliefs—feels good, but it doesn’t lead to peace. And with conflicts raging almost everywhere—for power, property, and profit—I want peace. “Peace” is stenciled on my Christmas cards and extolled in the carols I’ve sung since childhood. So for this Christmas season, I’ll stick to the Golden Rule and try to respect rather than demean other people.

Musings

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I’ve blogged only once since Trump became president—a blog about white supremacy. Helplessness and fear do not inspire blogging, yet may I share my despair?

Recently I went to a rally in support of DACA. Before the rally even got underway, we were told that the previous night ICE had taken away four Princetonians. I imagine men in black bullet-proof vests, ICE stenciled on the back, pulling up to a house in the Witherspoon/Jackson neighborhood. The house is dark and peaceful, its occupants sleeping. Suddenly the door bursts open and four people are dragged out—to detention camps, to deportation. ICE is not the nice Princeton cops who obey Princeton Council’s resolution to protect immigrants and who trust me with the key to the Suzanne Patterson Building, no questions asked nor ID needed. ICE is strangers who invade my town against my wishes.

Can I help? I march and chant with 200 others. I choke up when a Dreamer takes the mic and asks “Couldn’t you have given up part of your Thanksgiving for me?” She’d been on a four-day hunger strike before Thanksgiving to call attention to her imminent deportation. She’d sat, hungry, outside a Congressman’s office and been ignored. She and others had tried to interrupt the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade to state their case. They were removed. Now she’s crying. She knows no country other than the United States. In coming here her father had wished only to give his children opportunity. Is that a crime? Time is running out and she is desperate. With the others I cheer my support. But what clout do I have with the five New Jersey Republican Congressmen who don’t support a clean Dream Act?

Thanksgiving—and the Girl Scouts publishes an essay arguing that little girls should not be forced to hug relatives they may see over the holidays. I’m shocked at this attack on family. My granddaughter not hug her grandpa, my husband? And then I remember hearing from friends about sexual abuse—abuse committed by inebriated fathers or by that dear old friend of the family whom they’re told to call “Uncle Jimmy.” My skin crawls. How can men do this to little girls? The Girl Scouts are right. But what do we do about those fathers?

During Thanksgiving grace, I give silent thanks that North Korea has not yet fired a nuclear warhead at the United States. If it hit Seattle, I’d lose my daughter and granddaughters. If it hit Manhattan, my son would be vaporized, never saying good-bye to his children. No matter. They and I would have little time to mourn him as radiation drifts across New Jersey. Is it worth treating my melanoma when Kim Jong Un may rain cancer down on all of us?

And then there’s the tax reform bill. Medicare and Medicaid slashed. Deductions for property tax, income tax, and student loans gone. “Personhood” inserted as part of the attack on abortion. Little tax relief for those earning under $70,000—which is everyone earning minimum wage—and a huge tax break for the 1%. Any attempt at fairness is obliterated.

And so I write the nine Republican senators who haven’t yet agreed to support the bill and beg them, in individualized emails, to vote against it. Beyond signing thirty online petitions per day, it’s all I can think to do. Then on NPR I hear that Senator McCain, the one I counted on, the one who saved Obamacare, has thrown his support behind the bill. And before I can post this blog, the Senate has approved the bill.

The world as I knew it, the world as I wanted it, is being destroyed and I feel helpless to prevent it. Are words enough?

White Supremacy

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It’s been a long time since I last blogged, but Trump’s election left me speechless. Then I read the latest Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report on white supremacists and was suddenly struck by how pathetic their beliefs are. I’m better because my skin is white? Skin color isn’t even one of my accomplishments. It’s like little kids boasting “I’m older than you are.” Wouldn’t it be more valid to base one’s worth on something internal? Probably that’s what experimenters realized when they tried to correlate white skin with larger brains, more refined morality, etc. Their attempts, now discredited, are an admission that skin color is a feeble basis for superiority.

Do we need white supremacy to compensate for our individual disappointments? My mother based her superiority on the triple bulwark of race, ethnicity, and religion. We were WASPS, “not Catholic, not Irish,” she often added, to reinforce the point. But mother had few personal accomplishments, and her ambition was to be rich and a member of high society. She was thrilled when I dated the grandson of IBM’s founder, ate steak with his family, and drove around his property in an antique car. She was furious when I turned down his invitation to go yachting because I’d already promised the day to a young man of lower class.

I can understand that she resented my failure to bring her status. I can understand that she was not content with having kept me well-fed, clothed, and educated. I don’t understand what kept her from trying to find herself and to take pride in her own accomplishments. By ninth grade, I had an inkling of what I might accomplish and no longer needed to rely on being a WASP. But perhaps personal disappointments—unemployment, poverty, and a sense that the American dream is no longer possible— lie behind today’s resurgence of white supremacists.

Of course, supremacy denotes power. For our own safety, we’d like to be members of the group in power, and, in America, that’s people with white skin. I’ve certainly benefited, and I’m well aware of the institutional injustices that people of color have been powerless to prevent. It’s natural to fear that people who don’t look like us won’t share our interests and so will trample us if given power. White people, black people, Latinos, Asians, Muslims—all of us want to protect ourselves. Trump’s “Make America great again” was a familiar appeal to white supremacy. But did white people win?

Trump really represents Wall Street, corporate interests, and billionaires. Look at his cabinet nominees—certainly mostly white (and male) but all members of the 1%. Look at his policies. Trumpcare would have reduced by millions the number of people who have healthcare while letting each of the nation’s 400 richest families save $7 million per year. Medicare, Medicaid, and social security are on the chopping block. Investment brokers who handle retirement funds will no longer have to put their clients’ interests ahead of their own compensation or company profits. Banks may risk our savings. The Environmental Protection Agency is being decimated, and global warming, which threatens our existence, is denied.

The 1% is now supreme, the group with power. They do not share our interests, and they will trample us. People of color will be hurt the most, as usual, but so will the rest of us. For all our whiteness, we are watching our social safety nets disintegrate while the richest among us get tax breaks.

White supremacists have been duped. Skin color has nothing to do with values. If we want supremacy and its power to protect, we must band together with people who may not look like us but who share our interests. We’ll need a platform that rises above the divisiveness of race, ethnicity, and religion—a platform based on the need for shelter, sustenance, and security. And we must vow to vote in such numbers in 2018 that no elected official dare ignore us. Paradoxically, our success will give each of us a sense of personal accomplishment.

My College Reunion

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I’ve just returned from my 50^th reunion at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and, as after every reunion, I’m struggling not to evaluate my life in black and white.

Reunions are joyous: catching up with classmates, revisiting Wellesley’s gorgeous campus, and huddling in the dorm with my old roommates until the wee hours, just as we did fifty years ago.

But reunions invite us to take stock of what we’ve achieved. Every five years our class produces a fat record book full of statistics and personal narratives. Reunions invite us to compare ourselves to others, and, compared to Wellesley’s famous “others,” I’m a failure.

Perhaps such comparisons are a hazard of any reunion, but at Wellesley the bar is high. I remember my interview at Wellesley fifty-four years ago. On a table in the admissions office was a Chinese vase given by Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, a Wellesley graduate. As the daughter of a name-dropper, I was impressed. Would some of her fame rub off on me? Today I share the Wellesley name with Madeline Albright and Hillary Clinton, who was a freshman when I was a senior. Perhaps I passed her on campus without, of course, knowing she is likely to become the first woman President of the United States. Being a Wellesley graduate makes for a good game of six degrees of separation.

But there is pain in having known famous women. Cokie Boggs Roberts and I were together in the Wellesley Widows, an a capella singing group, for three years. I adored her. We shared intimacies. She even stayed at my home in Greenwich after the Widows took a spring trip to Jamaica. But we went our separate ways. She became famous, and I know that now she doesn’t remember me. I shared a dorm with Diane Sawyer. Same story. Everyone in the Class of 1966 is proud that one of us became a Wellesley College president and another is a wealthy woman whose generosity built the college’s social center and whose contribution put our class at the top of giving this year. These classmates know me, but they’re too busy, and I’m too intimidated to consider ourselves friends.

And there’s the challenge of Wellesley’s motto: Non Ministrari sed Ministrare. “Not to be ministered unto but to minister” – four Latin words that capture the College’s mission: to provide an excellent liberal arts education for women who will make a difference in the world. Have I made a difference?

After every reunion I must remind myself that I am me, that apples can’t fall far from the tree, that it’s OK to fill the center of the bell curve. Without the bell, there would be no end-points for the famous others. But this year, while I’m consoling myself with clichés, I receive a letter from a classmate whom I don’t know very well. She’s seen my blog and writes, “I was really glad to have made the time to read your pieces, and I respect, too, your long career teaching in an inner city school. You have made a more lasting and positive impact on America than the rest of us put together.”

What an overstatement, but I’ll take it! I needed affirmation of my contribution. I realize, again, that failure is not the opposite of fame. And if fame is recognition, perhaps I am famous. Last week a security guard at the Sun Arena in Trenton asked if I’d worked at Trenton High School. He hadn’t been my student, but he remembered me bustling around the school on student government activities—30 years ago.

My reunion doubt is gone. Why make comparisons? Why be a name-dropper? Instead, like my classmate, I’ll write letters affirming the contributions of others who, like me, are neither famous nor failures. We all make contributions, and we all need recognition.

I’m Racist

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Recently I was told by a person of color that I’d ignored racist comments made by my white friends at a meeting we’d both attended. I was amazed—mortified. Why hadn’t I heard or recognized the racist remarks? How could my friends have made such remarks? The accusation seemed based on a huge misunderstanding.

I asked whether my accuser had assumed we were talking about race. I begged for the specific words used so that I could address the issue. But she replied only that, no, there was no misunderstanding. She hadn’t made assumptions, and she found it disheartening but predictable that I, like everyone else, would not want to lose my position and prestige or to address microaggressions. She advised me to be honest when looking at my friends and to recognize that it’s comforting to look around a room where everyone looks like me and assume they’re not racist. Clearly, she was disappointed in me.

I take seriously the criticism and counsel of a black person. I’ve learned enough about white privilege to realize that I and my friends might unwittingly be at fault. And microaggressions are tricky—sometimes intended to be complimentary to an individual but always demeaning to that person’s ethnicity or race. (“Courtney, I never see you as a black girl.” “ Are you really Asian?” “Are you sure you have the right room? This is an honors section.”) We could have tripped up. I am disappointed in myself.

But was my accuser right? When I’d told a former colleague and friend from Trenton High, a woman who is black, that in retirement I’d been attending a discussion group about race and white privilege, she fairly shouted at me “Why are you wasting your time?” I protested that I was learning from black people in the group. “They’re all victims. Move on!” she said in disgust as she hung up. I felt disappointed in myself then, too.

At Trenton High we rarely talked about race and never about white privilege—though that same colleague laughingly told me that, when I arrived at Trenton High, she’d thought, “White woman…? Probably can’t get a job anywhere else.” At Trenton High, values trumped race; black and white idealists battled the black and white staff members who preferred the status quo. Ironically, after I’d retired and begun attending discussion groups, a second black colleague complained that I thought too much about race. I can’t seem to please everyone, but I’m still more anxious to please black people than white people.

Am I racist? I guess that depends on whom I ask. Some black people perceive racism where others don’t. Some insist “Never tell me to ‘Get over it.’ ” Others cry “Move on.” But black people don’t think alike and don’t have to. White people don’t.

What now? I know better than to continue questioning my recent accuser about her perception of my racism. Such dismissiveness would only bolster her contention that I’m unaware of my privilege. Of course, I don’t want to be racist. It would be helpful to know exactly what alerted her to my friends’ racism, but I will probably never know. I’m grateful to have a diversity of black voices in my life and to have learned that no one black person speaks for all black people. So I will take my accuser’s criticism and counsel seriously—and move on.

Giving Time

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My recent posts have been about giving money, but when a friend expressed awe at my husband’s and my generosity, I felt embarrassed. I hadn’t meant to boast but rather to point out a need. And I know that my friend gives generously of her time. I’ve overstated the importance of money.

The gift of time is, despite the clock, immeasurable. My friend has become a surrogate mother to the mentally handicapped daughter of a friend who died years ago. Each night the young woman calls. My friend listens to the young woman recount her day and reassures her that she cares. It’s tedious but necessary. I know because I get calls from a similarly handicapped fellow I taught almost 50 years ago. I listen to the litany about his trips to Walmart, the mileage on his car, his problems on the job (with nary a question about me). But he calls only once a month. Listening every night is true generosity, and I admire my friend’s devotion.

Another friend has chided me for seeming to belittle the time given by Princetonians who volunteer in Trenton with TASK, “People and Stories,” and soccer. I apologize. Time given to others—whether individuals or organizations—is time taken from oneself. And driving to Trenton adds more time. Of course, time spent with others can be rewarding. I enjoyed my time teaching so much that sometimes I’d forget it was payday, and the school secretary would have to wave my paycheck to catch my attention as I clocked out—but only sometimes. Nowadays I devote a day each week to visiting my paralyzed friend in her nursing home. Time spent shopping for her and sitting with her eats into time to accomplish what I’d like to get done, but I love our visits. She does too. Time is a gift.

Then I remember her exclamation of joy, “I can look out my window!” For a year, she had lain in bed or been placed in a wheelchair facing the TV. To see outside required turning her head because she was unable to move her chair. Medicare had promised a mobilized wheelchair as long as she stayed in her home, and we tried to keep her there until it arrived. But bureaucracy delayed delivery; money for round-the-clock care ran out; and she had to go into a home as a Medicaid recipient. Medicare doesn’t give motorized chairs to people in nursing homes, and even the appeals of our Congressmen couldn’t produce a waiver. Finally I bought a Jazzy—a bright-red, motorized chair—and unwittingly gave her the simple joy of looking out her window.

My thesis collapses. Which is worth more: the time I spend with her or the time she spends looking out her window and driving independently around the nursing home because I bought her “Jazzy”? I guess the answer is: give time, but, if needed, and if you can, give money too.

Giving – With Strings

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Since the publication of my article “Volunteering in Trenton,” I’ve found a young man, recently home from the army, who needs financial help. He’d like to become an EMT and then go on to college to become a social worker. He was on the way to his goal— had gotten a job near a bus route, saved money, bought a used car, and then found a better-paying job to which he drove fellow workers. But the car broke down one morning on the way to work. He called at 7:15, but my husband and I, cozy in bed, suggested they take a taxi. We weren’t getting up to drive to Hamilton and rescue them. It turned out that he and his fellow workers were fired for failing to show up at work. Without savings to fix the car, he fell into depression, rarely leaving his bedroom in his mother’s house in Trenton. Six weeks later I learned the whole story.

I could have suggested that he buck up, borrow bus fare, and start all over again. But since I’d just told my readers that the “effective help” Trentonians need is money, or at least a ride, I’d have felt like a hypocrite. Besides, depression is a disease. Instead, I suggested to my husband that we get the car fixed and pay the tuition for the EMT course so he could start immediately. He’d be responsible for finding a job that fit with his class schedule, maintaining the car, and getting his financial house in order for the future.

My husband surprised me. He balked. “We don’t have the money.”

“How much do we give to charity?”

“Thousands.”

“Couldn’t we make him our charity for 2016?”

“Yes, but how do we know he won’t waste it?”

“How do we know for sure that the charities we give to don’t waste it?”

“OK, but what if he doesn’t finish the EMT course, and we lose our investment?”

“I think we can trust him. We’ve known him since he was a little kid.”

“Don’t you remember the Land Rover?”

Ah yes, the Land Rover! Almost twenty years ago, we supported one of my Trenton High students through college and then added his wife and her tuition, a car, and, eventually, their child. Of course, maintaining such a household wasn’t cheap, but it was an excellent investment. They earned degrees, got good jobs, and finally were on their own. Then the first car they bought was a new Land Rover. We were dismayed. Why something so ostentatious? Hadn’t we taught them not to waste money?

But it went deeper. I was reminded of the stereotype of black people and cars and felt a chill. Suddenly the young man who called me “Mom” was not like me: he didn’t share my values. For my husband it was a slap in the face. The person he’d been supporting at my request now drove a more expensive car than he’d ever owned. Given all the money he’d shelled out, the Land Rover should have and could have been his—if he’d wanted one. That Land Rover—synonymous with being taken advantage of.

Now, in our conversation about helping this second young, black man with his car and EMT tuition, my husband uses words like “hand out” and “soft touch.” But is it a hand out or a hand up? Can we just leave someone to drown in depression, perhaps become suicidal? After all, pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps is physically impossible. You’d give him food—the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen is one of our charities. But isn’t it better to teach him to fish? And won’t having a car to get him to class for EMT training be like teaching him to fish?

What about returning to the army? Sure, they’d look after him, but is that his choice? Isn’t the problem that poor people have so little choice? Wasn’t the army his only option when he graduated from Trenton High? How depressing to be back at square one!

What about getting a bang for our charity buck? We just saw a segment on the PBS Newshour comparing the cost effectiveness of vaccinating dozens of children versus delivering one baby in Nepal by C-section. Yes, but didn’t at least one doctor defend everyone’s right to health care? How can anyone say “No” face to face?

I, too, hate to feel used, but we had no contract that said, “You can’t buy a Land Rover with your own money.” Isn’t any investment, whether in people or the stock market, a risk? Is a gift with strings a gift? Is giving about the giver or the recipient?

The young man has told me that he will disappoint himself, as well as us, if he doesn’t complete the EMT course. I want to trust him. I do trust him. And finally, my husband trusts me. We’ll see.