I have a habit now of listening to podcasts to help me to go to sleep. Usually I end up falling asleep about 20 minutes in, but tonight, listening to Krista Tippett’s “On Being,” this quote caught my attention:

“I see how we have lapsed into calling the people on ships that are floating perilously around oceans or children and parents in detention around our border – how we call them “migrants” – and what difference it would be both for the journalists who are recording this and the politicians who are legislating it and for us, who are consuming it and figuring out what to do as fellow citizens, if we just – I think we have to call ourselves – always to call them, “people.” -Living the Questions with Krista Tippett #1, On Being (emphasis mine).

I can’t help but think of the moment when a presenter came into one of my classes last quarter and asked us “What are you?” She meant, “what class is this?,” but a couple of us answered the question literally. We said, “human.”

I also can’t help but think of how worn and saccharine an appeal to our better nature is “call them people, not migrants.” I do not disagree in the slightest. But this question has cropped up in varied forms in the past. Rodney King cried out saying, “Can we all get along?” and I’ve heard and seen many people say, “We all come from immigrants,” “We’re all the same.” But yet, despite how true these sentiments have been, they have been fairly futile.

I wonder if there’s a better question. If there is, I haven’t found it yet.

As a white, middle class woman, I have the privilege of being able to pronounce that question and let it go. I have the privilege of relying on a stereotype, even one unknown to me, to help my way through an encounter. I have the privilege of sleeping safely and warmly at night. I can only hope that I can use -or better yet, to set aside – my privilege to say, “What can I do to help” to my fellow human, citizen or not.