One of the biggest things I came to realize from my off-terms in Washington, D.C. had nothing really to do with my internships. It had to do with D.C. itself. If you've ever been to the city, you might know that it has a lot of issues. The mayor is a convicted crack addict and the murder rate was (I'm not sure about now) the highest of any city in the nation. Pretty ironic considering it's our nation's capital.
So, there I was, in the beautiful part of the city interning at the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform. Everything is great. However, as time goes by it occurs to me that everyone in my group house is white and has a good job. It occurs to me after a while that there are extremely few black people who live nearby. It occurs to me that there are schools being closed down in the city and that there are many more black people going to these schools. I start to hear the white and Asian people tell me how they never go to the other side of the city because they are afraid they will get shot. I see the local government on TV -- here are the blacks and Hispanics.
As I live in the city, I notice how it's divided, and how one half, the white, wealthy half, doesn't care. They stop every now and then to say it's the mayor's fault. Meanwhile, all of them who have families live outside D.C. so that they don't have to send their children to the schools. Meanwhile, all of them have absolutely no idea what it's like on the other side of the city.
I start taking language lessons at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and I meet a young man of 26 who is a teacher in the local schools. He teaches English for various grades. He lives in an area where he says it's unsafe for me to visit. He recounts a story about how one of his students tried to stab him in the eye and ended up nicking his forehead instead. He wants to learn Mandarin among other languages so that he can speak to the Asian and minority communities. He wants to be a police officer in Los Angeles someday.
Then I start a new internship with Refugees International. I'm not sure I can afford to live there even with my grants, so I start working in the local grocery store. This is when I realize that there are black and Hispanic people on our side of the city. Most of the workers in the grocery store are in their forties, and they're working for minimum wage. They go home at night to the other side of the city. I also notice the janitors at the Commission, the hotel staff at the Grant Hyatt next door, and the cafeteria workers at the State Department.
Then I realize that the young men and women in my house are working idealists. Most are wealthy enough to position themselves in a job where they can say they are saving the environment or helping raise awareness of the Native Americans. They don't have to work at a job they don't like; they don't have to work at a job that requires no thought. Some talk about world issues as if they could solve all the problems if the world were placed in their hands. They spend all their time and energy saving a larger world, ignoring the decay around them. And I wonder -- am I just trapped in some bubble? Are the people around me just freaks who don't care about the city or am I not seeing something myself? After all, I don't go to the "other side" of the city that often, either. I am also living in the hypocrisy of it all.
At the end of my summer, the Washington Post shows us the white federal government taking power over the local black government. They decide to show the incompetent mayor how he's supposed to run a city. The majority of voters in the city protest, but what can they do? No one with power is on their side, and no one cares about them. The only reason Washington is doing anything is because they want to wipe out this visible hypocrisy before people start demanding real change nationwide. They want the black and Hispanic folk to stop scaring the white folk. So I guess it's time to show the black folk who's boss. Things haven't changed very much, I suppose.
