Broken Expectations

When I was a kid, my family called me the count. Whenever I was bored, I would count things. I counted all the lights in the sanctuary of my church, all the cars going the other way on the road, and all the birds eating stale bread off our deck. I would occasionally announce to my family, “there are 11 birds out there.” They would smile, look knowingly at each other, and tell me that was nice.

I wonder if my announcements changed them at all. I wonder if it influenced how they saw the single sparrow, when I announced there were 10 just like it fluttering nearby. At the time, I was so excited at my ability to gather this data that I felt compelled to announce it to anyone who happened to be nearby. I never thought about the effect I could have on the people around me by announcing the results of my count.

I am having a spiritual crisis. I am losing my grip on my expectations. At first, I thought my life had become too segregated; I was simply surrounded by too many people like me. But I think the problem is deeper.

I believe that every person is capable of love and greatness. But somehow that belief is not informing my expectations. I have been hearing a lot of statistics lately. I have been hearing percentages of homes that are owner-occupied, percentages of students who are English-language learning or receiving free and reduced lunch, rates of diabetes and obesity among poor folks, different health outcomes for minorities and single-parent families, rates of incarceration for young black men, and that there is something called an achievement gap. I hate that there is an achievement gap! But I fear that I have come to expect it.

As much as I believe that every person is capable of greatness, if you were to pluck a middle class white kid from Southwest Minneapolis and a poor black kid from North Minneapolis and ask me if I had the same expectations for what they could achieve, I would say no. And you know what, I would have the statistics to back me up.

Something weird has happened to prejudice: we have backed it up. A child is no longer considered inferior because of the color of his skin. He is considered inferior because of everything else in his life.

I am embarking on a spiritual fight to reclaim my expectations. I want my expectations to match my beliefs. The statistics will not tell you this, but I think my beliefs are the reality. Every person is capable of love and greatness, especially if that is what their community truly expects of them.