By John Cronin
What’s it like to be an untouchable? You didn’t want to be labeled that. You were born into it. You belong to a particular caste, nationality, or color that sets you apart from whom? The decent people? Everyone else?
Wherever you live, most people think you’re repulsive and not deserving of their attention unless it’s to mow their lawns, clean their toilets, or—if they must look at you—do things for them that are beneath them…like you are…beneath them.
Many countries have untouchables. China has the Tanka people; Europe has the Romani; India has the Dalit; Japan has the Burakumin; and America still has anyone who isn’t white. The advantage of having designated untouchables is that no matter your social standing in the accepted community, there will always be someone under you. Look no further than how easily racists use the N-word. That’s not just bigotry; that’s positioning. They’re saying, “I’m not them!”
No matter how low you are in the community, you’ll never sink as low as an untouchable. It’s the greatest pecking order there is. No matter what sins or crimes you’ve committed, at least you know you’re still part of the main group.
America still treats nonwhites like untouchables, but there’s an added layer today. America now has multicolored untouchables—untouchable rainbows—that everyone, white, black, brown, yellow, or mixed, can look down on and say, “They’re disgusting!”
Our untouchables aren’t in ghettoes or the bad parts of towns. They’re everywhere we look. Under bridges, camped on city sidewalks, and in public parks. You can call them eyesores, but they’re as much a part of our cities as “Lincoln Slept Here” is on a plaque. Our untouchables are part of the scenery. And every time we walk past them, a slot machine of emotions spins in our brains: disgust, pity, fear, anger, hopelessness, and confusion. The spinning never stops, and there’s never a jackpot.
The rainbow untouchables don’t reproduce the old-fashioned way. They exude out of a huge pipe with no shut-off valve. At the front end of the enormous pipe, eight billion people and Darwinian capitalism dictate that you’re a failure if you can’t make it on your own, so the rainbow untouchables keep getting pushed out onto our streets. That will continue because our country does not have the heart, the budget, the intelligence, or the soul to do anything. That would take a miracle.
All the politicians that promised to do something about homelessness in the last election were lying. Do you think offering 53-year-old crack addicts a house the size of a walk-in closet will turn their lives around? People with schizophrenia, PTSD, and other mental and physical handicaps—and no hope—will keep flowing out of that pipe onto our streets, where they’ll become election fodder to scare up votes or topics for heart-wrenching, pro-and-con NIMBY debates. But nothing will be done. Nothing can be done without facing and funding the cost of caring for millions incapable of caring for themselves—and, of course, the homeless will graciously accept our largess.
Photo credit: Susanne Severeid
Maybe we’ll put them in camps because that’s what we do with unsolvable problems. Or make what they’re doing illegal and lock them up because that’s what we do with unsolvable problems. That’s already being done, and there is always room in our for-profit prisons. When they get full, we build more.
The system didn’t fail the homeless. The system is the failure. There are no easy solutions, and the ones that would work would require a miracle transformation. Love your neighbor has been tried, and it never caught on. That would require giving every child the same opportunities, the same healthcare, and the same respect we have for ourselves.
Society can’t keep up with overpopulation. We have yet to figure out how to take care of our people, much less how to educate, provide opportunities for, govern, or find places to live for the people getting pushed out of the end of the pipe. Global warming is no longer alone.
John Cronin
Chronicle Contributer
