It is a fight that has been going on for millennia – how we treat each other. As a dispensable resource or as another human being? As a means to an end or as the end itself? Stranger: danger, or a friend you don’t know yet?
Back in 2021, I read A Different Mirror, A History of Multicultural America by Ronald Takaki. The book made it abundantly clear that one could have immigrated to the USA in so many different ways:
- the bottom of a slave ship or on a 747
- picking in the fields of California or building the internet
- carrying sleepers for the Trans American Railroad or studying at the Ivy Leagues
- not allowed to own property or invited to homestead the Plains
- arriving without any visa or with a route to citizenship
- with just the clothes on your back or followed by a 40-foot container
- coming all by yourself or having a network to tap into
As an immigrant, it is easy to feel that one is observing America more than being a part of it. The body is here but part of the soul is still somewhere else. This history is not my history. This culture is not my culture. To ourselves we are but one person. Not our sister or brother. Not our neighbor or our colleague. Please relate to me as me.
But we don’t wear a sign on the top of our heads saying: “I am a Slovakian student,” “I am a Scandinavian spouse,” or “I am a tourist from Thailand.” From the outside, we are observed and evaluated based on superficial signifiers that all too often are reacted to from the basest of instincts: Are you from my group or are you Other?
I followed Takaki up with Don Lemon’s This is The Fire, What I Say to My Friends About Racism.
In the book Lemon writes:
“Pulling yourself up by the bootstraps” is not a thing. Because gravity. If someone tells you, “I pulled myself up by my bootstraps,” I have news: They didn’t. They are simply failing to acknowledge the parents, teachers, social safety net, or educational opportunity that gave them a foothold, a handgrip – some kind of help fused with good luck and canny timing. That’s how life works.
I fought hard for every inch of success I’ve achieved, and there were plenty of people trying to shove me back down or dismiss me, purely because of the color of my skin, but my life was defined by people who loved and lifted me. I seek out and forge relationships with people who will continue to love and lift me. I’d be an ungrateful fool if I said I did it myself.
It seems to me that many of the people who have a strong belief in the bootstrap philosophy have either themselves or their ancestors entered this country as part of the people who got in on the right side in the list above.
It seemed a coincidence that the New York Times had just written about the very same subject: gravity.
There are two conditions under which you possibly can pull yourself up, down, or sideways by your bootstraps: if you live on the International Space Station or if you are submerged in water. (That said, I strongly recommend not wearing boots while submerged. While you may float, they may not. Or they may float better than you and turn you upside down in the water.)
When gravity is temporarily repealed, a lot of interesting things happen. For one thing, the body floats. And when it floats, the blood pressure falls. The blood doesn’t need to fight gravity to return to the heart; consequently, the heart muscles don’t need to pump as forcefully to maintain circulation. Long-distance swimmers know of this. Doctors know it makes a difference whether you are standing, sitting, or lying down when they measure your blood pressure.
Astronaut Scott Kelly spent a year at 0 G floating around in the Space Station. To stay fit, he had to go through a rigorous exercise routine almost every day; not lifting weights – obviously – but straining against resistance. When he returned to Mother Earth, his heart had lost over a quarter of its muscle mass, his head had swelled, and his bones had become more brittle.
I think this is a fitting description for people who have “pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.” To think they could do so, they must think gravity doesn’t apply to them. And now we know what happens to people to whom gravity doesn’t apply:
Their heart shrinks, their heads swell, and they become overall more brittle.
As Lemon puts it:
“Gravity is a thing. Telling someone to ignore, transcend, or defy the dynamics of gravity does not make gravity not a thing.”
The rest of us relate more to Lemon’s “I’d be an ungrateful fool if I said I did it myself.”
