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The World According to Whom? And then to my right is a window covered in plastic. The opaque covering helps to insulate my room but also mires my view of the street. Recently I cut a 7 by 5 inch hole in the plastic and sealed it with scotch tape, just to see out. The view is limited and murky, but it is all I can afford without sacrificing the insulation. This is my surrounding. This is my world. It is all I know if I never step outside, leaving my couch and scented candles behind. My view is restricted to a blurred sight of a street where I can only tell if it is snowing or how many human-type shapes are presently walking. The smells of my world are comforting and the warmth is nice when I see the snowfall. The amenities here are definitions of myself, for better or for worse. Now think about the United States. Your previous world—how different is it from a warm room? The window I looked out of in America had Venetian blinds, but it was blurred all the same. I come from a state where minorities virtually do not exist. In Boise, there were about 5,000 African-Americans and maybe twice that number of Latinos. I can say almost definitely that was the extent of diversity within the entire state. While it might not have been my choice to grow up in such an environment, it was still my environment. What I was surrounded by became part of who I am today. Good and bad aspects all mesh and combine into this person. Just recently I was involved in one of the most poignant conversations I have had yet. Faults I was not aware of were discussed; comments that I say without thinking were brought up. My world was part of that dialogue and I discovered that it is not perfectly nice in my warm room. Those things I grew up with are part of my daily life and I have little experience with life outside of that world, especially concerning issues like poverty and race. My world-views and race-views, among other things, are murky. Part of why I came to Peace Corps was to grow personally, but when I remain in my warm room with only a view of the street from a 7x5 window made of scotch tape I can’t see the rest of the world well enough. As a result of a debate, I was given an outsider’s perspective on how it looks through my window. Never before had I considered myself racist or unkind. I have always given people the benefit of the doubt and everybody I know seems to think I am a nice person. Now, due to an opinion from one outside of my room, I can see my flaws more clearly and that recognition of my faults can only change things. I will probably always be considered a racist, as a product of coming from a homogenous community, but knowing about it means that I can grow and be more sensitive to the issue. The scotch tape window is getting larger for me and the view is not as mired. Hopefully, one day the plastic will come off and quite possibly I will be able to view the outside of my world in entirety. I am still defined by what is in my world and that is fine—I just hope that someday, the view will be clear. |