As I sit for a six month mammogram follow-up, I’m just told that I also need an extra ultrasound today. On the long drive from Branford to Meriden this morning I saw so many ads for early detection of cancers. One that tugged at my heart a little more than the others is a new screening for Lung Cancer detection. It makes me a little sad because my mom my diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer very late and passed away at the age of 49.
But I had to ask myself, how sad can it make me? My mother never had health insurance, as I never did before growing up and taking a job that provided it. My mother would have not gotten an early detection screening. She never had a mammo. She never even went to the dentist and started wearing dentures when she was 38.
All these years later, healthcare in the U.S. is still something for people who have money or jobs that provide it for a reasonable cost. I feel lucky I can get a mammo, let alone all the follow-up tests and diagnostics.
Not everyone is so “lucky”. Capitalism and social justice are not mutually exclusive. Did I earn this right?
Social Justice is not the same thing as socialism.
This isn’t a socially just society. How can we walk past the homeless or drive through minority filled inner cities with poor public schools, run down stores and bars on the windows and say “these people didn’t earn their way”???
I get wanting to keep what you have earned. I really do.
I get that there are people who do not work very hard and feel they should have more than they do.
I also get that many of us haven’t completely earned what we do have.
Have you ever done a privilege walk? If not I would suggest looking it up to see what it is. During a robust discussion brought up during a Hygge game a few weeks ago, my husband and brother/sister in-law pulled up one on google and did it together. My results were nearly 20 points behind the highest one in the room. For some reason it upset me. My ACE score is another that upsets me. I should be dead with my ACE number. But I’m not.
I’m in a good place now. I did work for it. And hard. And I still struggle. I get triggered. I’m on meds (partly because I have healthcare). But do I deserve what I have? Do people with early life privilege 20 points above mine deserve what they have? For me it’s an astounding NO to both.
The roads I traveled today, with the banners I saw for early detection screenings are not things I built or had anything to do with. I did not earn the car I drove here in, it’s borrowed money on a loan.
I didn’t create the military I joined at 18 which gave me the money, healthcare, structure and education I needed to be more successful. Those things were there for me, built by society.
Not everyone has these opportunities. If you can even call the military an opportunity. Too many young people I know wouldn’t even consider it, but again they’ve never even really had a shirt or video game they didn’t want. Too many have no idea what hard times are. And another too many have too much of an idea of what hard times are. That is not fair.
How many inner city kids can even read/write to the level it takes to pass the ASVAB to get into the military. How many can’t because they are nursing a sick parent at home or the only source of daycare for a younger sibling? How many are walking around with untreated trauma and don’t have the healthcare “privileges” to get treated?
Never mind the non-material things like love and encouragement. A trauma free household and neighborhood. Hope.
Do I deserve even the work I did to get to where I am more so than them? I don’t think so.
The only way to even the playing field is to realize the privilege you have been given and give some back so others can come up to the same level. Or the government can help do it through taxes. That is not socialism. It’s social justice.
I don’t want anyone cleaning my toilets or serving me coffee who can’t put food on their table, house their children or get a good night sleep. I don’t want them to feel less than me. We are equals. We all came onto this planet as humans and should be treated as such.
Will it cost me more money? Of course, but so what?
What is life if we aren’t going to lift up others?
When will we as a global society learn that there is little happiness in accumulating more than you need?
In my humble opinion if you really think that then you are a slave to money. And if you think you having money and prestige is more important than someone else eating…. I just can’t…
No freedom til we’re equal – Macklemore – Same Love
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