Hairspray and Injustice

I bumped into God today while I was watching “Hairspray.” Don’t get me wrong-I don’t usually have God experiences while watching movie-musicals, but sometimes God speaks to us in really weird ways. And I have a weakness for musicals, what can I say? So you want to know how I found God while watching annoyingly perky people sing and dance? (side note-the movie rocks. Go see it) If you’ve never seen the movie or the musical, you should know that it’s set in 1962, and revolves around the racial integration of an afternoon dance show. It’s about the acceptance of people who fall outside of the norm. In one scene, the characters are marching on a TV studio, demanding “integration not segregation.” One of the characters, the incredibly popular Link Larkin, knows that segregation is wrong, but he has a hard time acting on what he believes. He’s very concerned with what people will think of him, and with what the effects of standing up for what he believes will be on his future. He eventually gets to the point where he realizes that he cannot stand by and do nothing. To borrow a term from literary analysis, he reaches a crisis point, where he must decide what he is made of, and must act upon that decision. And he does the right thing. He stands up for those who are at a disadvantage. He pushes at boundaries so hard that they topple. His character reaches a resolution in the following lines: (these are paraphrased. I didn’t memorize the whole movie!)
TRACY: Link, they love you
LINK: Not after they see what I’m about to do
LINK grabs the hand of LITTLE INEZ, a young black girl, and pulls her onto the dance floor. After they finish:
CORNY: The Corny Collins Show is officially, now and forever, integrated!

As I was watching, I was thinking of what it must have been like at that time in our history. What must if have been like to be someone who was a part of a march? Can you imagine? Can you imagine what it would be like to want change so badly that you feel the need to physically move, to make your presence known, to literally push at conventional boundaries? Just think of what it would have been like to be surrounded by a mass of humanity, all seeking the same thing. Put yourself there; to your right is your friend, who came with you because you both believe the same thing. To your left is someone who lives on the other side of town. You have nothing in common with this person, except that you’re both literally and figuratively going in the same direction. You want the same thing, and you want it so badly that you put yourself in harm’s way to make a statement. In front of you, behind you, all people who come from wildly divergent backgrounds, and yet all converging to face a common opponent.

I think we all imagine that we would be right there on the front lines of the battle. We all think that we would have been on the picket lines, standing firmly on what we believe. We all wonder how anyone could have seen the discrimination and accepted it. We know that we would have done the right thing. We couldn’t have stood silently by; it’s just not in us to do so. We would have seen the injustice and done something about it. Isn’t that what you think?

And then I ran right into cold hard reality. We’re not faced with blatant discrimination each and every day. It’s not in our backyard, or in our schools, or on the streets (the veracity of these statements is debatable. I’ll get to that later.) We face a different battle, and we’re nowhere near the frontlines. There’s raging inequality, and we’re not marching anywhere. Earlier this week, I was looking for some information on a slideshow I was putting together about my trip to Africa. I found some facts that truly shook my world. I’d like to share some of them with you.

-Six billion people populate the world. 1 billion of those live in absolute poverty, meaning that they live on less than 1 dollar a day. Absolute poverty is defined as the inability to provide for basic needs such as food, shelter, adequate drinking water, and education.
-There are 850 million people in the world who are hungry and malnourished. Over half of those are children.
-Malnutrition kills more than 6 million children every year.
-30,000 children die per day of causes related to poverty and lack of adequate resources. That’s one child every 3 seconds, or 20 children every minute, or more than 10 million children every year.
-Worldwide, there are 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS. AIDS currently kills more than 2.9 million people per year. That’s one person every 11 seconds.
-Only 1 in 6 people who needs AIDS drugs (antiretroviral treatment) gets it. Only 1 in 10 children who needs the drugs receives it.
-The geographical region of Sub-Saharan Africa is home to only 10% of the world’s population. That’s 600 million people. Over 325 million of those people live in absolute poverty. That’s over half of the population.
-This same region, once again home to 10% of the world’s population, is home to 64% of the people infected by AIDS.
-2 million children in this region are infected with AIDS.
-Currently, 13.4 million children have been orphaned by AIDS. That number is expected to grow to 25 million by the year 2010.
-In some countries, the prevalence of AIDS is as high as 30% of the population.

Do you see the injustice? Do you know, way down deep, how wrong it is? I think, I honestly do, that this is our battle. And we have reached a crisis point. What are we going to do? Are we going to stand up for what we know is right, even if it means that we take some risks? Does it mean that we chose to keep living our lives as they are, or do we align ourselves with people from all different walks of life order to affect change? Where is that mass of humanity, all hoping to affect change, moving in the same direction? Because they had it right, so many years ago, when our nation faced a civil rights crisis. Convention is only overturned when people stand together, and by sheer power of numbers, change the world.
This is a different time. Yeah, some of those old problems have had lasting ramifications. You don’t have to look much farther than inner city schools populated largely by minority students to see that. Race is still in issue in our country. Our past has had a dramatic effect on the present, and will continue to have an effect on the future. There’s no question. But today we have a new battle. We won’t solve it today, and if I’m honest, I can admit that I have no idea where we even begin. But I don’t want to be part of a generation who can just stand by and watch. I want to be a part of a generation that marches forward when faced with oppression. I want to push, as hard as I can, against these massive walls, and I believe that someday, when enough people are pushing with me, that wall will come down. And I think that when walls dividing people come down, Jesus rejoices with us.
And, as the annoyingly perky dancing people said in Hairspray,
There's a dream
In the future
There's a struggle
We have yet to win
Oh, When we win,
I'll give thanks to my god
'Cause I know where I've been

There. No one is still reading this incredibly long rant, but I’m okay with that. God taught me something today while I was sitting in a movie. Crazy. I leave in 10 days. Also crazy. I’m getting ready to go, and feeling pretty good most of the time. Still excited, still anxious. Yeah, I think that’s about it for the day. Goodnight.