Last week I read a book written about 20 years ago, The Least of These My Brethren by Dr. Daniel Baxter. It is a memoir of a doctor who served on an AIDS ward among the poor and homeless of New York City in the 1990's. The book took me back to my time working with people with HIV and AIDS in Nashville a few years earlier. The illnesses from which Dr. Baxter's patients suffered were similar to those experienced by the people I worked with. I heard again the names of the diseases and had flashbacks to the late 1980s and the suffering I witnessed.
The diseases people with AIDS suffer from are referred to as opportunistic infections because they arise from the destruction of a person's immune system. HIV, however, is the actual underlying cause.
A flash of insight came to me. Donald Trump's election to the American presidency is an opportunistic infection in the American system. The underlying cause is as insidious to our country as HIV is to the human body.
Our nation's HIV is inequality. At some level, pure equality is not possible. Many factors help to determine each person's starting point in life. Where were you born? Who were your parents? What genetic contributions did your family make? What environmental contributions did your family and community make?
Clearly people have different abilities, different gifts, different likes and dislikes which may or may not come from birth. The shaping of these into the person each of us will be is steady and ongoing. For many, our birth circumstances provide advantages which generally only increase over time. Others' disadvantages are so overwhelming any improvement is nearly miraculous.
Probably, if you asked anyone living in America, the response would be that equality is a goal toward which we should strive. Everyone should have the same rights. Everyone should be able to vote, have a job, worship as they wish, be able to speak freely, and pursue happiness.
The problem with equality has been identified often, most recently for me by my sister who reminded me that to someone who has privilege, equality seems like oppression.
Privileged Americans do not actually want equal opportunity. They want their advantage (which of course, they see as equal opportunity). Since people of privilege, in their own eyes, work harder, create more, in short, deserve everything they have and earned it "fair and square." They achieved it entirely on their own.
Their belief structure says poor people are poor because they are lazy. They don't work very hard. They don't care about their homes or neighborhoods, or anything else for that matter. So, "if they worked as hard as I work, they would have the same opportunities I have."
Privileged Americans have a similar set of beliefs about every group that is not their own. Women aren't as dedicated to their work and besides, belong in the house taking care of the children they must have. People of color just aren't as good. God made them to be less, so they should be grateful and happy with what they are given. Refugees and immigrants in general are going to take my job and wreck my neighborhood, so we can't let them in.
The American government is supposed to support these beliefs. The most recent tax law makes that clear. Cut taxes on the rich because they earned that money and the folks who need assistance are takers and don't deserve it. We give them too much already.
The challenge is that some of these thoughts are not conscious. Most privileged Americans do not go around thinking, I'll sue that college for letting that obviously inferior black guy in instead of me (although some have done that). They don't say to themselves, "I'll sexually harass that woman to make her feel more inferior than I actually think she is." But privilege allows these beliefs to be manifest on a regular basis.
When challenged that their actions are racist or sexist, privileged folks claim they most certainly are not and that we are all just too PC (politically correct). When managers are being held to a new, hopefully corrected standard, they whine that they are being picked on and targeted.
Into this land of privileged advantages came Donald Trump, a bearer of privilege disguised as sympathy for those who could have what he has, if only those horrible other people didn't always get in the way, taking their jobs, moving into neighborhoods where they don't belong, getting handouts, leaving the givers poorer.
Mr. Trump has infected the nation with a cancerous nationalism that can ravage the body if not checked. His "me first" approach to everything introduces a creeping fear that "maybe I won't get what I am entitled to, since we are giving so much to the undeserving."
Equality does not mean that everyone has exactly the same things, the same amount of money, lives in the same place, etc. etc. That kind of system will never work, but it does mean that one's color, gender, nationality, educational background, religion, name, or any other factor does not automatically get you anything or deprive you of anything either. It means we all have access to affordable health care. We all have the right to choose what happens to our bodies. It means we all have the same educational opportunities and chances to get meaningful jobs and affordable quality housing.
If we had this kind of equality, someone like Mr. Trump would have gotten no traction. He would have been seen as the pathetic human being he is. He does not care about anyone but himself. He claims to be a genius, but never reads, makes serious inquiries, or takes time to think through anything. He throws tantrums like a toddler and bullies like a 3rd grader on the playground. He is a terrible business man who cheats and lies his way through life, expecting everyone to be OK with that.
Until we can figure out how to effectively treat our nation's underlying inequality, we will have to treat the opportunistic infections of racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, privilege, fear, and so much more. Let's get going. It's going to take a lot of us to rid our society of these deadly infections.
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