As Americans, we hold our heads high on the pedestal of freedom. We wax poetically about liberty, wearing it as a mantle of international justice. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are after all, key tenets of our way of life. Yet I venture to say that one integral value is missing from our American Way. Dignity.
We continue to shame those who need our help and put down those who are not like us. We target immigrants and refugees as criminals at best, terrorists at worst. We impose drug tests on the poor and accept the elderly living in squalor. We have no shame when it comes to feeding our own wealth, yet we fail miserably at feeding our own children. We maintain that those who are poor somehow deserve it, even the children. We value life in the womb but not in the world. We flippantly lay blame and judgement at the feet of those who need us and view the otherness of everyone as a liability, a statistic. These are parasites among us, never fellow human beings. As our sense of equal dignity vanishes, the ugly head of judgement and bigotry will vanquish us.
My own state’s Governor, Pat McCrory, recently remarked that transgender citizens are “not a protected class.” Even my 10-year-old son shrieked at that comment, asking in equal parts rage and childhood bewilderment, “ Aren’t all humans a protected class?” This is what our world has come to? We must prove our worth and value? We are judged by the lot we are dealt, by how the stars aligned upon our birth? We place so much value on personal responsibility that we fail to take responsibility for the common good. Community has been rendered meaningless. And dignity is lost.
I blame this in part to the proliferation of cul de sacs and backyard decks. Gone are neighborly front porches and sidewalks creating a physical sense of community. But I digress…
In America we allow our veterans to waste away, hanging their heads in shame when they need us the most. We stigmatize mental illness and denigrate those who plead for help. We say depression is simply a mood, not a condition that requires medical attention. We do the same for postpartum depression, judging mothers who are hurting at the most fragile time of life. We fail to fund education, the foundation from which dignity rises. We allow fellow citizens to live in unsafe, unclean conditions while we celebrate the obscene wealth of reality TV show stars. Our principles and priorities are misguided as we scramble to protect ourselves, all the while not understanding that the reward when we protect each other is that we care for ourselves too. This is community.
We are a nation that has lost its value of dignity in its fight for personal freedom. We consider spending money on our fellow human beings as an expense, not as an investment. This is shameful pure and simple. Everyone stacks up as a balance sheet debit, and no one is granted a positive sense of dignity. By all measures the one percent among us should be polished and educated and cultured. They are dignified yet cease to grant dignity to others outside their own socioeconomic realm. They are afforded every advantage in life yet feel no tug to give back, to contribute to lift up others. Not all, of course, but so many. Even legislators, our elected officials who are tasked, nay trusted, with caring for all their citizens, continue to demoralize entire populations and professions (like teachers). They pass bad policy that sanctions discrimination (like HB2). We reserve dignity for those who’ve earned it. This mindset is teeming with flaws and bigotry, especially when overlaid with the hypocritical teachings of the conservative religious right. Liberty and justice for all without an accompanying sense of dignity still binds us in shackles as nation. If we are truly to be free and if we are truly fighting for this freedom in all corners of the planet, we must start with valuing the inherent sense of dignity in every person.