(Pandemic Diary - day 50)

From my journal: 17 April 2020 (Friday)

It’s about how you deal with differences.

At some point you might feel proud that you have a friend whose orientation or race or religion is different than your own. You might feel proud of that whether you’re a liberal (as it supports the values you espouse) or a conservative (as it shatters the stereotype and tells the world that your not that kind of conservative).

And maybe there will be a point later on when you assume that everyone has friends who are “different” and you feel ordinary in that.

And maybe later you’ll get even further, and in some ideal future maybe you attain that ideal state where you no longer note or even notice the differences, no longer think the adjectives (not “a Black guy”, just “a guy”), when you’ve truly forgotten the superficial differences and apply no label but “friend”.

The first “different” I remember meeting and acknowledging was a city kid.

I guess I knew such people existed, theoretically, but I’d never met anyone that I knew as such until my freshman year in college. Somehow the topic of dirt roads — and the fact that I’d lived on one — came up. There was a guy on my floor in the dorm (a rich white kid from suburban Pittsburgh, I think) who truly didn’t know such a thing as dirt roads existed in Pennsylvania. (The conversation might have started when he saw the army-issue rubber overboots I had for ROTC and asked what they were for).

It wasn’t his fault. It was just something outside of his experience. It was insignificant, and it was easily fixable. But I was still struck by the ignorance, the extent of the difference.

I pitied him, and I felt superior (that good old rural Allegheny exceptionalism). That was silly and unwarranted, but it was real.

I think that might be how it is with some of our other “differences” conflicts.