It was your typical story of prejudice and judgement: a teenager walks into a store where they are immediately greeted with suspicion and contempt, treated as little better than a common thief for no other reason than their age, their clothes, their hair. And the teen telling this story to me was nothing if not convincing in their tale of woe. Oh, the injustice of it all, the sadness of man’s inhumanity toward man, the stinging shame of once again being unfairly singled out all because of their appearance. With a few dramatic gestures and carefully inflected quivers in their stricken voice they seemed to be asking me the eternal question the persecuted have always asked of their tormentors, Why me, oh lord, why me?
To an outsider, this display of wounded pride and hurt feelings must have been quite impressive. Even I was impressed by what an elegant speech it was: so passionate, so expertly argued, and so full of exquisite little details about the wrongness of judging people based on their appearance alone. To top it all off there was a poignant bit at the end about the narrow-minded prejudice that overtakes those over thirty, before finally wrapping it up with a sincere lamentation about how this, this right here was what was truly the cause of most of the misunderstandings and bloodshed in the world.
Like I said, it was wonderful. It was beautiful. And it would have been great, except for one tiny detail.
The maligned teen in question actually had been stealing at the time.
That’s not the point, I was told. You don’t understand. And while, on one level I could maybe, kind of, sort of, a little bit agree, on every other level I was unable to hold back my disbelief long enough not to come back with, Well, if that’s not the point, then what is?
The aggrieved stare I received in return convinced me that the actual point in question must be this: the ability of the average adolescent to summon up a sense of outrage at the unjust treatment they receive is inversely proportional to the amount of indifference they display at the unjust treatment they dish out. And that while some people might consider that to be a liability, or even a personality defect, in truth it is a trait that will come in handy in all sorts of professions. Televangelists. Politicians. Tobacco company spokesmen. Really, any job that requires the ability to hold two competing versions of reality in your head at the same time and still emerge feeling both unscathed and morally superior.
I’ve noticed this ability in other aspects of teen lives as well; I call it the “Get Out of My Life/ Can I Have Some Money?” syndrome. I’ve also seen it in the argument entitled “Everyone should be allowed to follow their dreams and do exactly what they please—and their parents should pay for it.” (When I point out that the first half of that argument would mean that, presumably, the parents would then also be allowed to follow their dreams and do exactly what they please, and that it is unlikely that the parents’ dreams and desires include “lifelong servitude to ungrateful children,” there is always a long sigh, as if I am yet again missing the point.)
It’s then that I understand the frustration the framers of the constitution must have felt when people brought up the conflict between “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and the slavery question. Of course, at least our Founding Fathers were honest enough to say, “What part of ‘3/5th of a human being’ don’t you understand?”
Then again, Thomas Jefferson was probably never followed around suspiciously by a “loss prevention officer” at Walgreens. Although he probably should have been: he did have long hair.