Notes from No Man's Land

"This impossible equation equaled out, of course, only if one was willing to assume that some human lives are more valuable than others. This, in the name of "morality."

Eula Biss

Notes from No Man's Land

A couple of weeks ago I read On Immunity, by Eula Biss, and was so impressed by it that I went out and found her collection of essays on race in America immediately after.

A couple of weeks ago I was discussing the Refugee crisis with my little sister and she said that it was so bad because "people believe that their lives are more valuable than others" and it amazed me how, while the occasions and situations are different, the underlying issues that we are talking about seem to be the same. (If you don't know about the refugee crisis, read some news, watch this video, educate yourself because this is important.)

Notes from No Man's Land is brilliant. In it are a collection of essays about different experiences the author has had in different locations in America. It is brilliant. It is split into three parts, New York, California, and the Midwest, and each offers different stories about race in America and offers brilliant insights on gentrification, various expressions of racism, and how they are linked to place. Eula Biss's prose is beautiful, her essays are well thought out and well researched, and I think that this essay collection is extremely important.

The issue of race is an extremely tender issue in America.  It is still prevalent in social policies, yet there is still a pervasive denial of it as no one wants to admit how they benefit from it (John Metta's essay discusses this wonderfully). Biss explores the subject from several different angles, class, ignorance, blatant racism, fear. In one essay, she deconstructs Little House on the Prairie, showing how the "otherness"  leads to fear, and how this fear, and the spreading of it, is a harmful action, "Inspiring fear in others is often seen as neighborly and kindly, instead of being regarded as what my cousin recognized it for-a violence." 

The essay that touched me the most was the one about guilt. I feel very guilty for how my country, and my ancestors have treated the "other:" Native Americans, African Americans, Muslims, Latinos, any one labeled as "other." I've struggled with the question of how do we move forward when people still feel such irrational fear, and why people still feel such fear. "We are afraid, my husband suggests, because we have guilty consciences. We secretly suspect that we might have more than we deserve. We know that white folks have reaped some ill-gotten gains in this country. And so privately, quietly, as a result of our own complicated guilt, we believe that we deserve to be hated, to be hurt, and to be killed." To deal with this guilt, it seems that most Americans have chosen to deny it. To claim that these feelings are justified because of racist reasons and ignore the deeper problems and the lasting inequalities.

This collection was phenomenal. I highly recommend it, to everyone. The prose is beautiful, the essays filled with sociopolitical insights, and the subject matter extremely relevant.