Collective Trauma: The Fallout 27

I read something in this weekend's Globe and Mail that I find alarming, but not surprising. And this is not news to me as I have been aware of this for some time. The article is about the poor doors. These are segregated entrances in buildings for people of mixed incomes. They are built by developers who have agreed with the government to reserve a small percentage of the units in their new buildings for people on low incomes. But don't start singing Kumbaya, Gentle Reader. These buildings have separate entrances. That's right. Poor doors. The well off burghers who get the luxury condos or apartments also have their own spiffy entrance, all polished marble and brass and original artworks. The poor tenants get something very bare bones and ugly. So, the wealthy tenants needn't worry about having their delicate upper bourgeois eyes offended by the appearance of poverty. This is 2018 in Canada, for God's sake! no one would ever dream of doing this to people from visible racial minorities, and thank heavens we've turned that corner. So now, it's the poor, the final refuge target for bigots. Yes, I know there is still racism, there is still racial profiling by police, and black parents have to give their teenage sons "the Talk", and this happens over and over. But we know and accept that this is horrendous and the outcry whenever these egregious racist offences occur is loud, deafening and very heartening. And now, even people with mental health diagnoses are stepping into the limelight for losing stigma and discriminatory treatment. The poor are still an open target. I have written elsewhere on these pages about the crappy treatment that we get from immigrants who judge us ruthlessly and cruelly because they have done a lot better in this country than some people who were born here. and I still don't think that the slur "Bum" has reached the category of the N-word (nigger) as the new F-Bomb. Here's a bit of irony for you. The last time I heard the B-Bomb, was from a low-income tenant who lives in my building. He didn't like the homeless people begging in front of the Seven-Eleven across the street. He called them bums. This guy, by the way, is black. There is a sense of social stigma that comes with poverty. I know that is one of the reasons my family shuns me. They were all upwardly mobile. I reject materialism and live modesty. The fallout? I didn't even learn of the death of my father till three years after the fact, and this I learned from an aunt of mine (now probably deceased) who only phoned me to find out why I changed my name (it was to distance myself from my abusive relatives, of course!), and only when I asked if she knew what had happened to my father did she tell me that he died three years ago. She must have felt very guilty about this, and she never called me again. That was six years ago. by the way, she got my phone number from my step-cousin, Lanice, who died from cancer in 2014. She, not a blood relative, was the only person in the family who befriended me, and she was also a conduit of news. Now that she is gone, I know absolutely nothing. Lanice and I were out of touch for a number of years, by the way, ten I think, following a nasty falling-out. During that time her stepfather, my uncle, and his daughter, my cousin both died. I only found out a few years later. my treatment from my family should not be surprising to you, Gentle Reader. There is still a huge force of animus against the poor especially in this aftermath of global capitalism. Only now, rather on the late side, are some of us finally starting to wake up about this. There is more social change coming, and it could be something very ugly, or maybe something beautiful. I don't know what to expect, but this growing gulf between haves and have-nots is, to say the least, troubling, and we are really going to have to rise up and fight for economic equality. Working hard no longer cuts it, and it often means that we simply remain stranded, as I and many others have, in low paying work for the rest of our lives. Of course we can do better, but we've always been rather ethically bankrupt and this is yet another condition of our Collective Trauma.