My grandmother was a simple and tenderhearted soul marked by the injustice she suffered as a child. She was the youngest child born into a large family of poor sharecroppers. Her mother died before she was one-year old. She was mistreated by a hateful stepmother. When she would see an unjust situation ignored by folks who should know better, she would quietly say, "A heap look, but few see." For me, she was a model of empathy. In spite of bearing witness to injustice, she never failed to be optimistic. I think her advice was that justice begins with seeing.
I found myself in need of her advice in the aftermath of 9/11. In my w
orkplace there was a young, Muslim man from Pakistan. He had not been in the country long and his English was not good. His job in computer support isolated him from the rest of us. He was shy and did not interact much with others. His physical appearance was exactly like the pictures on the TV of the terrorists. I was not the only person in the aftermath of 9/11 who recoiled from him. Others at our workplace expressed suspicion and disdain for him.
While his reaction to 9/11 seemed to be one of pain, mine was pure anger. As I participated in water cooler conversations about bombing Afghanistan to smithereens, he was trying to become even more invisible. I saw his vulnerability as a Muslim in American. As much as for him as for me, with a whole lot of effort, I began to seek him out. I joined him for lunch in the office kitchen. I tried to engage him in real conversation in the halls.
He turned out to be a great guy. He had a wife and baby daughter he was crazy about. He worried that the car he had bought was a lemon. A raccoon somehow got trapped in his garage and freaked him out. "Are they dangerous?" He always brought his lunch to save money. He and his wife had just bought a house in a good neighborhood. He missed his family in Pakistan. I liked him, and I respected him. He was nothing to be afraid of.
We never directly talked about terrorism. I never told him that like a lot of people, I had a strongly negative reaction to Muslims after 9/11. But in making an effort to see rather than look, I ended up with a loyal workplace buddy. He earned an advocate and defender at the water cooler. I got VIP gold star computer support! It took effort to see beyond mistrust and physical appearance, but it was the right thing to do and was worth the effort.
The people around us are a collection of rich and poor, sick and healthy, cruel and kind, truthful and full of lies. Our lives exist under a similar burden of inescapable influences and institutions. Amos pleads with us to at long last leave the comfortable place (and pew) and to love God simply and wholly, to open our eyes and see each other, and to be advocates for justice.
