Understanding the feeling

I was reading Yahoo news and came upon a story from the NY Times about middle-class people facing eviction for the first time. In a way, I am sad that it is happening to anyone but in another I am also kind of glad it has happened to them. Before you start to think I am cruel or unkind it was reading this one line written by a person who was finding it hard when he and his roommate fell into financial difficulties. The one guy had to take a job at a much lower salary then he was used to and the other had been laid off from his over $30,000 a year job and this is what the guy said who had lost his well paid job:

“It’s kind of dehumanizing,” Mr. Brewster-Streeks said of the experience. “They see you as a certain kind of person. We’ve never been that certain kind of person.”

One can only hope that they finally start to realize that no one is that certain kind of person though they used to think of them that way. Now that the know how unfair and unjust it is to be thought of in this way maybe they will finally change the way they think about others in minority/marginalized groups!

It is circumstances and maybe partly how the person was raised with the belief that they are not worth what others are that leads to this vicious cycle that we really need to change. So, I am a bit glad that these people who used to be the worst ones in feeling that those less fortunate then themselves were a certain kind of person are now tasting it for themselves and seeing how unfair it is to label people according to circumstances over which they had little to no control of. Of course I do hope the economy in America picks up and that people will wake up from all these false models and false beliefs and embrace what it is real and true about the world.

Maria