The "Others"

Political/economic misinformation, these days, often comes in the form of bigoted tribal narratives. When we talk about "welfare"...we are told that the recipients are "urban welfare queens" who milk the system and live high on the hog while stealing benefits... the reality is the elderly and disabled are usually who receive these benefits, many veterans (who also make up a lot of our homeless), and mostly in conservative states. When we talk about the Minimum Wage, we are told that we don't need to raise it because these are jobs held by high school kids just learning to work... the reality is that the average minimum wage earner is a 35 year old woman, trying to make ends meet for her family. When we talk about immigration, we are told that immigrants are dangerous criminals, but in reality immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than native-born citizens... and of immigrants, undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than documented immigrants (shocker... immigrants are usually just regular people coming to the US to work, not to commit crimes).

We have to stop worrying about the "other"...the boogeyman...stop the nail-biting and pearl clutching. Even IF we could correlate a group with some negative behavior...we should be asking WHY? What can we do to solve that problem? Not punish people for their circumstances. We have to start looking at society as a whole, fixing root causes of problems, being POLICY focused, and we need to stop placing blame and protecting egos.