Who or What We Are

“My father was a St. Bernard, my mother was a collie, but I am a Presbyterian. This is what my mother told me…” This is the opening line from the short story “A Dog's Tale” by Mark Twain. The opening chapter continues to explain that the dog’s mother did not understand the words that she used, but only said them to impress her peers. Humans are a lot like that too.

When we moved to Whiteville, I was talking about a friend who was from Chadbourn or Tabor City and I did not recall which. The person I was talking to was almost indignant that I would even suggest that my friend was from that ‘other” town. To me it did not matter – my friend could have been from Timbuktu or Siberia and it would not have mattered one iota. To some people it does seem to matter what label we wear.

In this election season we seem to be focused on that which separates us. We seem to be searching for every way to draw distinction between ourselves and our neighbors. It becomes nauseating after a while to hear one candidate say, “I’m for the common person.” The other candidate says, “I’m more for the common person than my opponent.” Then you hear a third candidate say, “I’m the candidate more for the common person than all the others combined.” Folks, let me tell you something, they’re for themselves first; for the common people until they’re elected; then they’re for their campaign contributors until they start to face re-election. I bet that not a one of them ever had to stretch their paycheck the way you and I do. I doubt that they know very much about common problems.

Instead of electing democrats, republicans, or independents; why can’t we just elect public servants? What ever happened to the common good? Most of us are apt to say that we’ll vote for the person over the party. Yellow dogs or blue dogs – very few of us will turn off our sensibilities to blindly follow one group. A lot of us have chosen instead to think in terms of conservative or liberal. Depending on which side of the bed we get out of in the mornings, we can be either a tough liberal or compassionate conservative.

People always want to make an issue of skin color – I guess that is because it is the most obvious distinguishing characteristic. Skin tone is related to race, the trump card always looming in the political debate. For so many people here in Columbus County and this part of the Southeast, we are not black or white, we are just poor. When you’re poor you don’t fret about who breaks bread with you – only that you’ve got some bread to break. That is the common person’s problem – putting bread on the table. When there’s enough for their family, they’ll share it with neighbors, and lastly with Washington.

It doesn’t take many words to say a lot. In the opening lines of “The Dog’s Tale”, Mark Twain was able to transition from what we are to who we are. “What we are” is American, then Tar Heels, then black, white, red, or yellow. The question of “Who we are?” is answered by our character, our intellect, and our beliefs. For the majority of us, we are God fearing and God serving – most of the time – and only occasionally self serving. For the most part we believe in the goodness of our fellow man, though we recognize the occasional bad apple. When someone asks who a person is, the response is most times a description of the person’s job, or status in a particular organization. In other words, who we are is generally defined by our relationships to people and things around us, e.g. a teacher, a lawyer, a mother, a mechanic, etc.. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. said it best when he said, “I have a dream … (that my children) will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Maybe one day we can stop looking at what we are and instead look at who we are. As Mark Twain might say, “My mother is from Chadbourn, my father is from Tabor City, but I’m a Baptist.”