They Are Somebody

Young Akeem and his buddy Semi walked into the barbershop in Queens looking for a haircut.  Akeem, just days from arriving from his native Zamunda, was already sporting a well-groomed short afro with a long ponytail down his back.  But this was the late 1980’s and he assumed that he needed a different hair style to attract an American girl.  So, he stepped into the “My-T-Sharp” barbershop and sat in Clarence’s chair.  Old Clarence was puzzled when he began to feel Akeem’s soft hair so he asked what kind of product he uses.  Akeem replied, “Oh, just juices and berries”. Clarence, not knowing who Akeem was, where he was from, or his status as the Prince of Zamunda, smacked his lips and reduced the young man to his level by saying “Awe, that ain’t nothing but a Ultra-Perm”.  And while this scene is from the fictional movie, Coming to America, with fictional characters and a made-up plot, the dialogue is funny because of its familiarity.  Eddie Murphy knows something about human beings. We are always more than we appear to be.

Faced with something about people we know little about, we usually place them within our own frame of reference and reduce them to “just_____”.  They’re just…whatever.  They’re just jealous.  They’re just ignorant.  They’re just an idiot.  She’s just stuck-up.  He’s just a thug.  They’re just racist.  He’s just a criminal.  She’s just a gold-digger.  I could go on and on, but I think you get the point.  Even when we don’t assume a negative about someone, reducing them to “just” something allows us to dismiss them.  But the reality is, everyone has a story.  No one is “just” anything.  The person driving an oversized pick-up truck with an American flag on the back window may be a MAGA supporter.  He also may be a young father who lost his job when the factory closed and is afraid of ending up like his abusive alcoholic step-father.  The young black man with his pants hanging off his butt may be a “B” student, taking college classes on-line and trying to fit in to avoid being bullied.  The dude working for the landscaping company that cuts your grass may be a former Pastor in Mexico who came to this country to escape the violence that cost him 3 brothers.

Failing to consider that people are always more than they seem is a recipe for problems.  We know to be wary of anyone we don’t know.  We are conditioned to have our guard up in public because there is so much random violence in our world.  So, most of us know to keep our eyes on the stranger that walks into church and seems “different”.  So, I don’t think it’s wise to assume that everyone is ok.  What I’m saying is that reducing people to something is not good either – it blinds us to the humanity of our neighbors.  Christ tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves.  If love means nothing else, it requires us to regard others – to allow them to be more than “just” what they appear to be.  Failure to do that, allows entire groups of people to be reduced to “illegals”, “ni**ers”, even “sinners”.  I get that reducing people is efficient.  It allows us to navigate a world full of people we don’t know without being paralyzed.  But it also allows us to dismiss the dehumanizing of people that goes on all around us.  If I am more than I appear to be to strangers, then so are they.   To re-appropriate the mantra of Rev. Jesse Jackson, “They are SOMEBODY”.