In the blogging world, people are beautiful. If they are not, they pretend to be. Most are educated, at least with college degrees. Most have wealth, at least to middle class standards. Or if they do not they have expectations of changing that, if not now then soon.
But there is another world. One that appears seldom in the blogosphere. And when it does, it's usually in the third person, not the first. A news item to be reported. A sad tale presented for mutual hand-wringing, bonding the well-dressed with "we're all right after all" before each one gets into a separate van to drive to the bar. A sound bite that doesn't, because it has no place in the experience of the hearer to latch onto.
When it does appear in its real form, not all dressed up for sale in media terms, it is shocking. Ill-mannered. Greeted with disapproval. How dare ...
In the American Southeast, we are used to thinking of this world as "black". In California, Hispanic (especially Mexican). In the cities, perhaps Haitian, or Somalian, or Cambodian. In much of New England, it is white.
It's a world of invisible people who mow the grass on golf courses, or sweep the grounds at the hotels, or set the banquet tables at the resorts. A world where the high school diploma, even in its current degraded state and with no language barrier to deal with, is still barely within reach. And crippling labels are attached to those who dare to reach. Where the irresistable force of age meets the immovable object of the minimum-wage job over the cleft stick of a pride that refuses most forms of welfare. And "benefits" are a myth as obscure as anything that ever came out of Greece. Where the people are those:
- Who offer hungry neighbors their protection
Though hungry themselves, not knowing when if ever
The situation will be changing for the better
Whose tirades are not the calculated profanity of the intellectual but the visceral outburst of the servant who has heard one dismissive crack too many. Today.
You know me, if you do, as a scientist, an academic with a Ph.D., an intellectual in absolutis who regales you all with comfortable tales, some taller than others, of the middle class.
But this is not my real world. I have entered into it and made my place in it. I am in it, but not of it. For now. For I am a sojourner among you.
My real world is the world of the invisible people. The ones who do what they have to to get by. And sometimes get angry about it.
A world of people who are better than I am. Because I don't think I could survive in their shoes.
- O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2006 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.
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