After keeping my ear on the ground for six months now, the vibrations in Detroit are beginning to make sense. It’s a strange phenomena reading, hearing, and watching so much about what a city is like and then experiencing it firsthand. Life has been so full of numbers lately: secondary research to build empathy, overhearing figures about the city metrics, building a savings account; I forgot how important the human experience can be. Thankfully, a week ago, I was reminded. Last Tuesday, I attended the third iteration of I Was Here. From the event page:
“[I Was here is] speaker series (50% panel/50% dialogue) “I Was Here”, where lifelong Detroiters share their experiences growing up in the city. Hear the stories of those who have come of age experiencing the intersections of race and class while enduring waves of flight, abandonment, and disinvestment and now repopulation, reinvestment and displacement.”
Hearing people’s stories and the discussion that ensued afterwords cut through a lot of the statistics I’ve heard lately and put an existential perspective on Detroit. Please don’t misunderstand me, those stats are important. However! Human faces are easily obscured by massive, unrelatable numbers. When we’re talking about school closings, water shut offs, or how resources are split, I forget that we’re talking about peoples’ lives. Oh the humanity! I’m wondering if more empathy with those being disadvantaged (whether their fault or not) would change decisions we deem conscionable. Maybe it is the cost of existence? The cost of progress? We have to accept that some people will suffer because it is best of the community as a whole.
It makes it easier for me to accept that if I can blame the people suffering, that they caused their own suffering, and if they had made better decisions, this bad thing wouldn’t have to happened. Sometimes that’s fair, sometimes its not. By being aware of it, I hope to catch myself when it’s not. Awareness, right? That’s the first step.
My next step is asking questions. I’ve been listening for six months now and I’m looking for a deeper understanding.