Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
On Anonymity and Shame
The distance from anonymity to shame is a short, taut rope with the letters S-T-I-G-M-A dangling from the line.
So I am glad when I see people who are homeless choosing to speak up and be photographed or filmed. When a person who is homeless looks into a camera and tells her story, she might remind you of your sister. The homeless man you sped by on your desire to quickly get away from the intersection where he is holding a sign asking for money might explain how a freak accident cost him his job and put him on the street.
It is something of a controversy in the homeless services world – to photograph or not photograph homeless people. During the recent Point in Time count in our city, interviewers were told that under no circumstances should they photograph someone they were interviewing. Probably wise since there could be an inference of power in the interviewer-interviewee relationship. Still, the anonymity of the count, the facelessness of it, gives us just a number. And a number without the stories that comprise the number is hollow. The only thing we care about with a simple number, a count of how many people who are homeless, is whether the number has gone up or down. We hide the real people under the guise of protecting them, not embarrassing them. But what we’re really doing is perpetuating the stigma of homelessness. You must be ashamed to be homeless so we’re going to do you a favor and not out you to the world.
I wish we cared less about the numbers and more about John or Billy or Helen as human beings. I wish we offered them the opportunity to tell their stories, engage us in conversation, charm us, make us laugh, show us their lives, and explain what would make their lives better. I wish we would untie the rope and let S-T-I-G-M-A fall to the ground. It happened with #MeToo, amazing women stepping forward, throwing stigma off like a fake fur coat, and their so doing has changed the culture.
Last night there was a news story about the increasing number of people camping outside of our local County Courthouse. A group I work with, Street Angels, is featured in the story for having given tents to many of the folks in the encampment. Two homeless women spoke to reporters. Look at their faces. Don’t you wish there had been time to learn more about their lives?
One group that is trying to take the one-dimensional mask off homelessness is Invisible People. Several times a day, Invisible People uses Twitter at @invisiblepeople to post photos and brief stories about people who are homeless all over the U.S. Even these little snippets of stories will change how you think about the guy holding the sign at the intersection where you’re straight ahead not wanting to make eye contact.
Everything changes when we ask homeless people to tell their stories. They become one of us. We become one of them. They stop being numbers and they start being friends.
___________________
Photo by Jonathan Kho on Unsplash
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
Jan, during my working years, I did myriad pieces about homeless people. I found it difficult to be detached in many cases. I bonded with one fella who “lived” in a cardboard box on a Massachusetts Pike bridge. I would Check on “Vern” periodically to see how he was doing. He never asked for anything. I would discreetly stick a few bucks in his jacket. I lost track of Vern for a long time until I received a note from the NY City Police. They found Vern’s body in an alleyway. Among his few possessions, one of my businesscards. I recall feeling profoundly depressed that day. I did a “tribute” piece to Vern on New Year’s Eve in 1989. A few days later, a reporter from another TV station complimented on my story and it’s sensitivity. I said I was just remembering a friend I wish I could’ve helped more.
That’s exactly the connection I’m talking about. You really get it. On another note, how is it going with the CI?
Jan, thumbs up after my first post op eval. If all continues to go well, they’ll activate the cochlear parts on the 24th of this month. Thanks for asking.
You’re so right in this post, Jan, we do tend to hurry past vagrants on our streets but who is anonymous and who is ashamed? Surely when we ignore those in need we should be ashamed at leaving them to their fate and remain anonymities in their eyes. But what probably happens in most cases is that ordinary people just don’t know what to say to a beggar or a homeless person. Organisations that work to help them are different. They want to help and can. But the ordinary Peggy or Joe, who has a spare couple of dollars in their purse, will shy away from giving it to the homeless or the starving because because they know that deep down they want to give them much more. They want to give them some sort of better life, and they just don’t know how to. The problem is rife in our cities too, but all too often people run away from throwing loose change at what is effectively their own consciences. I know that during my three years in Vietnam as a journalist at the height of the war I started by giving money to beggars, and then discovered they were professionals who mutilated their children to get more money for displaying them. It wasn’t easy, and I ended up helping out at a hostel for blind orphans instead. Helping the genuinely needy, indeed knowing who is genuine and who isn’t, can be a very hard task. Thanks for the chance to get this off my chest. Cheers. Anton
Thanks for sharing your experience. Yes, you are so right – helping can be very complicated.