“They” and “Us”

Last updated on: June 12, 2014 at 2:59 pm by Matt Talbot

“They” and “Us” 2014-06-12T14:59:51-05:00 Matt Talbot

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

MY FAMILY MOVED TO BENICIA, CALIFORNIA when I was 13 ½ years old, on March 11, 1976. Benicia was a much smaller town then — the suburban growth boom that marked the era in the Bay Area had just reached my new town, and the Southampton development to the north of town existed, but only a couple blocks up from Southampton Road had been built out, and even in the older part of town, my parents’ house up on M Street had almost nothing but fields and horses to its north, all the way to the freeway. Sheep still grazed on the west side of town, where a Taco Bell is now.

We had moved from Richmond. Richmond, California. The city consists of The Flats — that portion west of Interstate 80 on the coastal plain next to San Francisco Bay, where the poorer people live — and The Hills, which overlook the flats. The Flats were (and still are) beset by violence and crime, and were dangerous enough that I have struggled for years with PTSD from my time there.

I remember a few weeks after we moved into our new house, my sister and older brother and I walked across M Street and into fields high with dry early-summer weeds and thickets of rattling anise stalks. We ran through the fields like the children we barely still were, laughing and playing silly games. Looking back I can see we were very much like prisoners released. Moving to Benicia from the mean streets of Richmond was like the end of a war.

Late that afternoon I ran with my face turned up to the sun, my arms out like wings, deep into the fields, and at some point I found myself alone, surrounded by thick brush, my only companions the sounds of buzzing insects and warbling birds, and I was covered in the pungent licorice scent that came from a trail of broken anise weed. I stopped, felt an odd weight in my chest and sat down. The world seemed to lose color, and I put my hand to my face — and suddenly I was weeping in great, gusting sobs.

I wept that day with grateful relief at having survived Richmond — and more than that, at having found myself in a place where I didn’t have to survey the street at every moment to see who might be out, whether they were armed, and what their intentions might be. In my new town, I could just walk out the door and explore its alleys and neighborhoods in complete safety.

I wept with pent-up sorrow, the lid suddenly off a grief I had dared not fully express, or even allow myself to feel, in a place where it might be taken as weakness and thus make me a target.

I wept, too, with sadness for the dear friends I’d left behind. Part of it was selfish — I would miss the company of people I could not remember not knowing — but part of it was something deeper. I had left people I cared about in a terrible situation, and was helpless to help them.

“Why am I in this field, crying with relief,” I thought, “and yet my old friends cannot share this with me?”

Survivor guilt is a common experience in people who have survived traumatic events that others have not, and in that moment in the field there was certainly a pang of that — and I have had occasional bouts of it since.

While excessive or misplaced guilt can be destructive, it is also possible to transform it into motivation to right wrongs and prevent others from suffering what you have. This has informed my writing about my old neighborhood here in this space. My beloved childhood friends in Richmond suffered terribly, and did not deserve the suffering they endured — they were, after all, just children.

I write also because Benicia, and places like it, can play an important part in alleviating the problems besetting Richmond and places like it.

There are many organizations in Richmond that do vital work to help its residents — pastors of churches, workers in nonprofits and other charitable organizations, volunteers who try to offer a constructive alternative for at-risk young people who might otherwise turn to the many destructive and life-threatening ways of coping that can be a powerful temptation in streets that often seem hopeless and devoid of mercy.

This is all vital work, but it is not enough.

An idea I keep coming across in discussions of the problem of urban poverty is that Richmond is Richmond because of a lack of “personal responsibility” in its residents. While it is important for anyone, whatever their location, to take responsibility for improving their circumstances, I can also say that Richmond is not lacking in that particular virtue.

Richmond is Richmond because too many there lack power — the kind of power that comes from economic opportunity. And this is where more prosperous places in America like Benicia can be of help.

I believe we who have more ought to commit ourselves to the task of making sure that everyone in Richmond who wants a job can get one — and not just a “job” that involves minimum wage and little hope for advancement. Richmond has a deep pool of tragically underutilized talent — people who would be savvy, intelligent, charismatic, dedicated employees. They are worth far more than the minimum wage. If the market is not providing those jobs on its own — and it is safe to say that it is not — then we need to act collectively to correct that situation.

I have mentioned before in this space that Richmond is not just a troubled city, it is also a symptom of a wounded society, where too many people dismiss others in different circumstances as “them.”

“We” can shake our heads in little mimes of concern when one of “their” children is gunned down. “We” bemoan the poverty that besets so many parts of this country, but think of it as an immutable characteristic of “them.” And while it may be diverting or engaging to speculate about what might be done, it is at the end of the day not “our” problem.

Unless you and I can take responsibility to bridge that divide — unless “we” can admit that “they” are truly “us” and that “their” children are “our” children — then we are standing in the way of healing that division.

The ongoing emergency in our poorer neighborhoods is our greatest moral scandal. With their grinding poverty and their unconsoled victims and relatives whose bodies and minds have been wounded by violence, Richmond and the many places like it stand as searing indictments of our society’s greed and selfishness. The violence and the tattered social fabric of Richmond is a poignant expression of the outrage — more than that, the unutterable pain — of priceless children of God who have been told, with words and the bleeding wounds of a million injustices large and small, that they are People Who Don’t Matter.

Why do I care about Richmond, and write about it often? Because I want all the children of the friends I left behind to run carefree through the fields of America, turning their face to the sun — weeping with gratitude, as I did, that they have been delivered from their suffering. I want “their” children and “our” children to be friends and peers and neighbors.

And I want those children’s children to roll their eyes whenever Dad lectures them about how tough things used to be back in the ’hood, just as I rolled my eyes when my father talked about trudging through snowdrifts to school.

Matt Talbot

Previous Post

June 11, 2014

Response to Cardinal Dolan

Next Post

June 16, 2014 Thoughts on Vocations II: Images of the Priesthood

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 2019 A Consistent Ethic of Life Aaron Weldon Abortion absurdity Abuse Scandal Academics Adoption Advent Africa agreement/disagreement with Church teaching Alexander Schmemann Alexham Alterity America Amnesty International Anarchism angels Anglicanism Animals Annual Statistics Anthony Anxietas Apocalyptic Apophatic Appalachia Aquinas Art Atheism Atonement Augustine Authority Baptism Beauty Bible biblical criticism biblical scholarship Bioethics Bishops Black Catholics Black Theology Blackadder Blogs Books Breastfeeding Brett Salkeld Buddhism Bush administration Byzantine Catholic Calvinism Canada Canon Law Capital Punishment Capitalism Caryll Houselander Catholic Blog Awards Catholic Blogging Catholic League Catholic Social Teaching Catholic Worker Movement Catholicity CFL Charity Children Chris West Christ and Culture Christian Democracy Christian Unity Christmas Christology Church Church Doctrine Church History Climate Change Cohabitation Colbert Collegiality Communion Communism Comparative Theology Competition Conferences conscience conscience rights Consequentialism Consistent Life Ethics Consumerism Contraception Contrition Conversion Converts Coptic COVID-19 Creation Critical Thinking Cross Cuba Culture Culture of Death Culture of Life Darfur David Cruz-Uribe David Wheeler-Reed Death Death Penalty Democracy Demons Desert Fathers Devil Dialogue dignity Disability Disarmament discernment Discipleship discrimination Dissent Distributism Division Doctrine Domestic Church Dorothy Day Double Effect Doubt Down syndrome Driving Early Church Easter Eastern Churches Ecclesiology Economics Economy Ecumenism Education El Salvador Election Election 2020 Ellul Embryonic Stem Cell Research Empire Energy Enlighenment Environmentalism Ephraim Radner Episcopal Church epistemology Equality Eschatology Ethics Eucharist Europe Euthanasia Evangelization Evil Evolution Excommunication F.X. Durrwell Facism Facts Fair Trade Faith Family Fashion Feddie Feminism Feminist theology Fertility Fetal Rights Fiction Film Finances First Things flags Folk Religion Food Foreign Affairs Forgiveness Frank Sheed Free Speech Freedom gay & lesbian persons Genocide George W. Bush George Weigel Gerald L. Campbell Girard/Mimetic Theory Global Warming Globalization Gnosticism Good Friday Grace Gratitude Greed Grey Cup 2009 Guadalupe Guest Post Guest Posts Gun Control Gustave Martelet Habitat for Humanity Hans Urs von Balthasar Harry Potter Hate Speech Health Health Care Healthcare Heather King Hebrew Bible Henri de Lubac Henry Karlson Herbert McCabe Heresy HHS Mandate Controversy History Holidays Holiness Holy Spirit Homiletics Homily Homosexuality Hope Hospitality How Far Can We Go? How Far Can We Go? Human Person Human Rights Humanae Vitae Humility Humor Hunger Hunting Identity Idolatry Ignacio Ellacuría Imagination Immigration In Memoriam Income Inequality Inculturation Indigenous People Individualism Inklings Intellect Interdependence Internet Interpretation Interviews Introduction Iraq War Islam Israel Jain James Alison James Martin Jazz Jesus Christ Jews Joe Biden Joe Hargrave Johann Baptist Metz John Allen John Henry Newman John Paul II John the Baptist John XXIII Jonathan Josef Pieper Joseph (the husband of Mary) Joseph Bernardin Joseph Ratzinger Josh Brumfield Journals Joy Judgment Just War Justice Kari Lundgren Karl Rahner Katerina Ivanovna Kenya Keynes Kingdom of God Kyle R. Cupp Labor Language Latin America Law Leanne Ogasawara Legion of Christ Leisure Lent Liberalism Liberation Theology Libertarianism Libya Lies Life life & dignity & responsibility of the human person Literature Little Way Liturgical music Liturgical Year Liturgy Living Simply Living Wage Local Church Lombard Lord of the Rings Louis Dupre Love M.Z. Magic Magisterium Mark DeFrancisis Mark Gordon Marriage Martin Luther Martin Luther King Jr. Martyrdom Marxism Mary Masculinity Matt Talbot Matthew Fish Matthew Levering McCain Media Memorial Day Mennonites Mental Illness mercy Michael Iafrate Middle East militarism Miroslav Volf Mitt Romney Modesty Moral Theology Morality Mormonism Morning's Minion Mother Teresa Music Muslims Natalie Nate Wildermuth Nationalism Native Americans Nature Nazis Neuhaus New Evangelization New York City News NFP nihilism Nonviolence Not Abortion Nova's Ordo Nuclear weapons Nuns Obama Occult Old Age Opus Dei Ordination ordination of women original sin Orthodoxy Oscar Romero Other Voices Pacifism Palestine Palin Papacy Papal Peace Messages Papal Social Encyclicals Particular Affections Partisanship Patriotism Paul Paul Ryan Paul VI Peace Pentimento persecution Personalism Phantastes Philosophy PKD Planned Parenthood Pluralism Poetry Policraticus Politcal Apathy Politics Poll Pope Benedict XVI Pope Francis Pope John Paul II Pope Leo XIV Population Postcolonialsim Poverty Power Prayer Preaching Predictions Predictions for 2012 President Barack Obama priestly formation & discernment Pro-Life Progress Prophetic Witness Proportionalism Public Diplomacy Public Policy Question Quotes Rachel Maddow Racism Radical Catholic Mom Radical Catholicism Raymund Schwager Real Catholic TV Real Presence Reconciliation Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange Religion religious freedom Responsibility Ressourcement Resurrection Rick Garnett Ridiculous Crap You Never Thought You'd See Robert Barron Roe v. Wade Roman Curia Rome Russia Sacraments Saints Salvation History Sam Harris Sam Rocha Same-sex Marriage Saskatchewan Roughriders Satire School of the Americas Science Scripture Seamless Garment Second Vatican Council Seeing Sex sexual violence Sexuality Sia Sin social justice Social Security Socialism Society of Jesus Sofia Loves Wisdom Solidarity Sophia soteriology Soutenus Spirituality Sports St. Dismas St. Joseph Stanley Hauerwas Statistics Stimulus Suffering Sunday Reflections Supernatural Supreme Court Symbolism Syria Taxing Technology Terrorism The State The Tea Party The Trump Administration Theological Anthropology Theology Theotokos Thomas Merton Throwaway Culture Tim Muldoon Tim Riley Tim Tebow Time Titian Tolkien Torture Toys Trade Traditionalism Transgender Transportation Transubstantiation Trinity Truth TV U.S. Affairs Uncategorized Unions unity among people who disagree US Catholicism USCCB Usury Utilitarianism Utopia Valentine's Day Vatican Vatican II Veterans Vicarious Suffering Video Violence Virgin Mary Vocations Voluntary Associations Voluntary Poverty Voting Vox Nova vox nova blog war War and Peace War Strategy Wealth Weirdness Welfare state Women Women Priests Work Woundedness Youth

Select a Month June 2026 May 2025 February 2025 January 2025 July 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 July 2023 March 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 November 2021 September 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

True or False: John's Gospel identifies Jesus as 'the Lamb of God' in the first chapter.

Select your answer to see how you score.

FALSE TRUE