This article by Peter Jamison is as good a read about what divides us as Americans than any other read so far. He writes about the people with respect and frankness. He doesn't create judgement and for that reason it is excellent journalism.
I think back on the day I started my education that would change my life and that of my children. It was a JPTA (Joint Training and Partnership Act) program in the State of New Jersey. It was a grant program designed to lift people out of poverty and provide them with a trade. I entered the medical professionals training with about 28 other candidates living in the same town and the surrounding towns of me. Of those candidates there was two men and one was a minority and the rest were women, mostly divorced women with children. We were in the age ranges of 20 to 50 years of age. There was little to no discrimination in the program. Anyone that wanted to attend and took a simple test to qualify was let into the program.
There was a younger woman that sat in front of me I will call Barbara. She was younger than I and was single, no children. She was pleasant and came from a strict religious background. We talked every morning before classes. Our first semester would end with primarily lecture and reading and testing. There was one clinical day entered halfway through that semester to get our feet wet and demonstrate the ability to care for someone else and exhibit compassion in that care.
Some of us, primaily the mothers of children group which was approximately 12 or so; would get together to study before major exams and there were enough to create a friendship among us. The entire grant program was simply nice. We were learning for a better future with more options and better pay than we could ever achieve currently in our circumstances. It offered some security for the years we would retire. There was enormous promise in all that we did and it was palable at times. I asked Barbara if she cared to join us one weekend to study, but, she was very shy and introverted and declined. I told her, "Okay, then I will see you Monday."
As the first semester closed it became known to me that Barbara was lacking in clinical and a few of her classes were marginal, but, passing. For that reason she was asked to sit through the first semester again and grow her skills with a second round of opportunity. She called me aside in the parking lot and told me she thought she would simply leave the program. I discouraged her from doing so and offered to even tutor her if she needed someone to emphasize the material or the clinical technique. She declined and shed a tear and thanked me for being a really good friend. She stated I made the time that semester enjoyable and warm.
There are some Americans for whatever reason that don't achieve as others do. They were provided a public education just like every other kid on the block. They might even appear to do well and get decent grades, but, in the long view of life, they just can't cut it the way others can. I graduated high school with a well class of 200 students. Amazingly, 70 percent of those went on to higher education and some like my best friend, the valdicorian of our class, went on to achieve incredible education and later work that paid six figure salaries. She was amazing. We are still friends and exchange Christmas cards to this day.
But as to Barbara. I was employed by then and making enough money to move my children into a safety zone of the Middle Class. I had incredible health care benefits, vacation time, sick time and you name it, the job was a great job and I was only at the entrance level. But, I was running late to get home one day and I stopped at Burger King to pick up some fun food for supper. I was standing there and a clerk came to wait on me and all of a sudden I hear a "Hellooooooo," from the back in the kitchen. I looked and she came striding out to me and said I will wait on you. It was Barbara. She was happy. She had a grin on her face I have yet to see on many others I know.
She got me my food and told me it was on her. I told her I couldn't do that. I mean after all what does a Burger King clerk make? I was sure I was doing better than her and she stated, "Let me get us some soda and have a seat for just a few minutes." So, I sat at a table and she came with soda and we talked.
She was fine. Really, really fine and she said she made the best decision she ever could to leave the program. She was still unmarried without prospects, she and her mother shared a house and her mother was aging a bit, so the income from her job was a help. It was more than a help actually, she explained she was now manager of the Burger King and really enjoyed the work and the people. She even got the opportunity to say "No, I am sorry, I don't think this job will work for you," and not hire some folks.
See, Barbara wasn't really able to be in the same profession as me. She was unable to work past her inhabitions and couldn't quite get the techniques right. Yet, she could make fast food to beat the band and do it one handed. She found a nitche where she was queen and she was happy being that queen. She made good money. She had some benefits. Most of all she was appreciated by her mother who meant a great deal to her.
When I read stories like this and I look across the vast expanse of the USA I think about Barbara and how I would never want her to change or impose my beliefs or ideals on her. She could not live in that world and be happy. Some would say she was simply an underachiever. That wasn't it, she was ambitious as me, if not more so. Barbara simply fit into the world differently and grew into a place in that world where she could live with capitalism and be happy.
See that is the comparison of the two women I came to call friend and admire. One a valdictorian that was as much a young lady as I when we decided to see that gynecologist for the first time and get "the pill." One was a quiet, biblical scholar that lived with great affection for a widowed mother that dedicated herself to spiritual purity that I could only imagine. Spiritual purity and being acceptable to God is not as easy as seems to most of us, but, then there is a reason for Carmalite nuns that never show their face to anyone after they have earned their "habits and veils."
What is not always easy if for people on lower incomes to thrive in the USA capitalism we call an economy. That is why being considerate of the poor and what Republicans call underacheivers is important. If governance pays attention to these folks and uplifts them to have an equal standing in our politics that means they are as much achievers as anyone else. They are our equal in our national voice and they will be heard in one way or another.
I think we need to reflect on the differences we have between each other. After all, both women called me friend.
And. Oh. President Biden is absolutely correct to insist on the vaccine and those resisting it have the right to do so in most cases so long as they test for everyone's safety. What is really needed is as many vaccinated Americans that we can get and close the gap on contagions of COVID-19.
By Peter Jamison
Lake Chaweva - Her text messages with links (click here) to medical research had gone unanswered. Her halting pleas at the kitchen table had failed. And by the time Laurel Haught pulled into her driveway to find her daughter Sam’s car newly adorned with an Infowars bumper sticker, she could only conclude that her campaign to persuade her child to get the coronavirus vaccine was going nowhere.
Laurel was vaccinated. Sam was not. They lived together, along with Laurel’s vaccinated husband and Sam’s unvaccinated boyfriend, in a tumbledown chalet above an artificial lake outside Charleston. It was a home with creaking floorboards, bulging photo albums and a fireplace that had burned through three decades of Thanksgiving nights and Christmas mornings. It was a home the Haughts had always cherished, and it was about to come apart.
“Y’all got to move out,” Laurel, then 57, told her daughter. But Sam, then 32, appealed to her father, who didn’t share his wife’s alarm about the risk of contracting the virus. The eviction was overruled. So Laurel decided there was only one thing left to do: She moved out herself.
She drove just eight miles away, finding refuge with another daughter, this one inoculated. But across that short distance was a rift that is dividing households across America....
