There are a lot of terrible things going on in our country right now. Gun violence. Police Brutality. Poverty and extreme inequality. The list goes on, and on, and on, and new examples seem to pile up under each category with increasing speed.
In some pockets of the United States, these homegrown atrocities take on a mythical aura of distance. Not because those places are particularly safe or physically isolated, but because the prevailing mindset in those communities doesn’t believe issues underlying problems on the news — inequality, racism, etc. — are “real” or important.
One of those places is my hometown. It houses a population of 8,572 and a proportionally small mindset. It would be too much of a generalization to say that every single individual residing within town lines holds the same limited views — but every time I go back, I’m astounded by how out of touch my community is with the rest of the world.
I grew up in a Catholic, conservative household. It was an unspoken rule that we, my three siblings and I, were all expected to absorb and follow our parents’ beliefs without question. Before I came to Harvard, my relatives would warn me not to “come back a liberal,” as if this were the worst thing that could happen to me at college. “Remember your roots,” they’d say.
It was remembering my roots that prompted me to distance myself from them — politically, at least. Examples from my own life — my best friend coming out as gay, my adopted brother’s questions about his biological, black family — were all reasons I needed to retract the beliefs that had shaped my upbringing. My stomach twists with shame when I think about all the years that I sensed the ideas my close friends and family members held true were limiting, but didn’t start a conversation to challenge those boundaries. That shame deepens when I realize I needed an example to change my beliefs — and couldn’t come to the same conclusion by the example of history.
When I come home from Harvard, it’s as if the world collapses in on itself to only exist within our county. I argue with my parents about gun control, systemic racism, the Syrian refugee crisis, each session ending with their assertion that I’ve been “brainwashed” by Harvard. Logging into Facebook is an invitation for infinite posts defending Donald Trump and the Confederate Flag. The highway is awash with bumper stickers pressing for the end of Planned Parenthood and the rise of a Great Wall on the US-Mexico border. My subset of the South is stubbornly adverse to any form of change — especially that which would promote those suffering under the current system.
I look at the people who raised me, the friends I grew up with, the community that shaped me with confusion and hurt: how can they look at the state of our world and not see that these things are pervasive issues? How can entire communities be completely blind to their privileges? Worst of all, how can the people holding views ranging from uncomfortable to reprehensible be some of the people I love most in this world?
This is the scary thing, the thing I’m not unique for noticing and writing about. The unknowing racists and the outright bigots, the people who are varying degrees of deaf to the dire need for change in our country — those people are close to you. More often than not, they’re your neighbors. Your friend from high school. A cherished relative sitting across the Thanksgiving table from you. They’re not the obviously evil, gun-wielding cloak-wearing figures we remember from Civil-Rights Era textbook chapters. They’re normal, everyday people.
So every break, I find myself stuck between two modes of reaction. One is to avoid topics of political valence at all costs to enjoy the time I have at home in artificial peace. The other is to lash out, sit my argumentative relatives and high school acquaintances down with a list of statistics to prove their ideology wrong. Neither inclination is entirely possible — these topics are bound to come up, but my voice often falls on ears uninterested in listening. And it’s frustrating as hell.
I wish the tension between the place I’m from and the world around it could be remedied with an Adele song à la Saturday Night Live. I wish I were proud of the place I’m from; and until I am, I wish I could singlehandedly persuade each person I care about there to change their views.
I’m stuck between loving my extended family and recoiling from what they stand for, wanting to defend where I’m from but separate myself from its discriminatory core. And while I’m pulled between two types of feeling, I don’t want to call my hometown my “home.”