I don’t understand the obsession with “being seen”. Or how much or what kind of being seen it is that would make people happy, or whether that kind of feeling is something that someone else, even magical white people, can grant to African Americans.
I feel like I see black people all the time. They’re everywhere. They’re an extremely lively and dynamic and expressive people with an enormous cultural footprint. I grew up in a part of the country where there never was a slave population and that had very little post-slavery immigration of blacks. So we had only a few black people. But in our cultural minds, black people loomed largely. You learned about then, you listened to them on the radio, you watched them in movies and on TV, they were taken for granted as one of the major cultural components and influences of American life, despite the fact that there were virtually none of them where we lived.
Everyone in the world knows about African Americans. Everyone in the world knows their story and contributions. My people have a story too. He have our place, our journey, our struggles, our heroes. No one has any clue about us. Virtually no black people will ever see us or care about us, much less anyone else or people from other countries. That fact that we’re white doesn’t mean anyone knows about us or sees us, just because some white people somewhere are famous or successful. That’s not us, that’s not our place, our story, our success or failures. We could disappear and no one would know or care. I think that’s just a fact of life for most people, in fact. I think you feel it more in a big city.
And that’s the thing. You can’t legislate or demand that people see you and give you significance. Only you can create that, and only your family and friends and community can give you that kind of existential significance.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if someone on the other side of the world or the country or even the state knows my name or cares about me or thinks I’m important. That peace with your place in the universe starts within your own soul. It can’t be bought or voted into being or distributed by the government or the university or television. It comes from having people who know you and care about you. A life, however big or small, where you’re needed and valued. A home, however great or humble, where you’re important, where you have a family that loves you and resoects you and friends that like you and neighbors who appreciate you. It comes from taking responsibility for your life and how you live it, whatever the world throws at you.
This is how people have always gained these goods. It’s how people will always gain them. These are the things that lift you up. Your family, your faith, your friends, your children. These are the people you need to matter to. They’re the only people worth being seen by.
When I die, and we all will, the government isn’t going to stand by my coffin and weep, or remember all the great times we had and how much I had meant to it. The media isn’t going to be there and care. People from other towns and countries aren’t going to be there. Even when great and wealthy and famous people are dying or going through something really hard, if you don’t have the support of people who know and love you, your family, your children, people you have loved, if those people don’t see you and aren’t there for you, nothing else matters. You don’t have anything if you don’t have that. And if you have that, then you have everything. You have goods that cannot be lost or stolen. You have water that doesn’t run dry and treasure that doesn’t tarnish.
I won’t deny that people feel this burning need and painful lack in their lives. But I think they’re being sold a false story on where to look to get it fulfilled.
Making Nobody Happy 