Ray Buursma: When WE are affected
Today we examine how we think (or don’t) when unpleasant situations affect us (or don’t), and how we then adjust our opinions.
Consider short-term rentals
You save for a decade and buy your dream home in a residential neighborhood with single-family housing. Your neighbors are wonderful. Life is good.
Then, your next-door neighbor sells and moves, but the new owner doesn’t move in. Instead, he makes his house a short-term rental unit. Every week new renters enter.
They are neither neighbors nor residents. They are tourists or partiers, and the partiers aren’t considerate. Their hooting, hollering, loud music and F-bombs flow your way, for noise knows no boundaries.
Calls to the police are ineffective, for noise complaints are a low priority on Friday and Saturday nights. You complain to municipal officials, even sharing the clamor you recorded on your cellphone.
The powers that be seem sympathetic but do nothing. They have the authority to change the rules, but they don’t because they are unaffected. You wish their neighbors would convert their homes into short-term rentals so the officials would experience what you’re going through. But no action is taken, so you’re stuck.
Kudos to Park Township for eliminating short-term rentals and making neighborhoods pleasant for its residents.
Consider homosexuality
What do you think about LGBTQ matters? Most of us are ambivalent, for the situation doesn’t greatly affect us. But if our son, daughter, brother, sister or friend comes out, and if we witness the discrimination, ridicule and attacks they face, we change.
We research the issue and learn orientation is innate, not chosen. We believe our loved one, a good person, should be judged by words and actions and not by orientation. Forced from ambivalence, we are ready to defend.
If this has happened to you, you understand. If not, I hope a loved one you know “comes out.” Odds are you will re-examine the issue and change as well.
Consider refugees and border states
When refugees enter America and seek asylum, they wait while their case is adjudicated. They generally bide their time in southern states whose social service systems are overwhelmed. But this issue is a national problem, and expecting border states to manage all refugees is unfair.
Border state officials are perturbed, not only because they must manage most refugees, but also because northern states seem indifferent to their plight. Frustrated, some have sent refugees, unannounced, to northern states.
Treating aliens, or anyone, like pawns is horrible, but expecting border states to address this situation alone is unfair. All Americans should bear the burden of managing refugees, for the problem is federal. This daunting task should not fall solely on southern states.
(Addressing the plight of refugees is an entirely different issue and worth examination in its own right.)
Consider the flag
Colin Kaepernick created a firestorm when he kneeled during the national anthem. Talk show hosts pounced on his action. “How dare he insult America?” Many white Americans were incensed. T-shirts with “I stand for the flag and kneel for the cross” hit the streets.
But Kaepernick did not insult America. He protested police brutality against Black people, a distinction some Americans simply could not, or would not, comprehend.
Those who chastised him have not suffered racial discrimination, let alone at the hands of police officers, let alone violently. You cannot be abused for being Black or brown if your skin is not Black or brown.
But discrimination by police is real for many with dark skin. They, or those they know, have suffered indignity and fear.
Being racially profiled will not happen if you’re white. You’re the wrong shade. The closest experience you can have is watching videos involving such discrimination, and there are many.
Consider Michigan’s new GOP leader
Former Congressman Pete Hoekstra was chosen to lead Michigan’s Republican Party. This appointment is of consequence for more than political reasons.
Two decades ago, Hoekstra chaired the House Intelligence Committee. He bore responsibility to verify claims Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Hoekstra not only erred (the claims were bogus), his malfeasance convinced others to grant war powers to President Bush who ordered Iraq’s invasion. Hoekstra, among others, has the blood of 4,000-plus soldiers on his hands and has yet to apologize.
Most people no longer care about that war nor about Hoekstra’s appointment. But some might. Imagine your child was killed or wounded in Iraq. How would you feel when you learn the man responsible for your child’s death was appointed to a position of influence, especially if you’re a Michigan Republican?
Conclusion
The ability to imagine ourselves in another’s situation is called empathy. How much do (or don’t) you have? Do you care for the plights of others, or do you care only when you are affected?
— Community Columnist Ray Buursma is a resident of Holland. Contact him at writetoraybuursma@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Ray Buursma: When WE are affected
