My Reality and the News

This is a bit of an unusual topic for me on this blog as it is not really an issue specific to pediatrics. But I have been thinking about the difference between the news coverage of racial, ethnic, ideological, and religious hatred and what I experience every day.

I probably interact with at least a hundred different people every day. I interact with folks from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, different countries of origin, different religions, different socioeconomic circumstances, different political parties, and different sexual orientations. I interact with police officers as well as people who have been convicted of crimes. And most of my encounters with all of these people are pleasant interactions with folks with good hearts. And some of them are absolute saints.

Unfortunately I do also see the effects of poverty, violence, mental illness, and lack of education and they are sobering. When I get home and start going around hugging everyone in my family, one of my kids will say “Did you see something sad today, Dad?” In my experience, neither sainthood nor sadness is confined by demographics.

As a middle-aged, white professional, I certainly have advantages in my dealings with society. I know this not only from the stories of those who do not share those advantages, but also by objective psychological data that reveal our biases, biases that we do not even know we have and that we find offensive when we recognize them in ourselves. Some of my advantages were earned and some were bestowed upon me by outside forces. But even the ones that were earned were more easily obtainable for me than they would have been for some others who started with a different set of conditions.

People are just people. If you are religious, we were all created in the image of God. If you are not religious, we all share the same cosmic chemical origins. Either way, we are all just people, related to each other and deserving of each other’s respect. But we are people whose experiences and identities are unique and it is important to acknowledge that my experience is not your experience and vice versa. The only way we understand another’s experience is to listen. Pretty much every religion has some version of the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” In order to do that, you first need to see that other person as a person, just like you.

Last week a little African-American boy wandered into my office and struck up a conversation. He was intrigued by a picture of my children and asked me all sorts of questions. And yesterday at the end of the visit, two African-American children gave me hugs as they exited the exam room. Those children simply treated me like a human being, not like some alien from another demographic. We would all do well to follow their example.

PS – I like hugs from brown and white children as well.