Reflections on Status

About status. What is it, exactly? How does it define every one of us in some way? How is it that we should spend our lives looking for it, abusing it, cursing it, observing the world through its unseeing eyes. From the beginning of time, even the first societies and clans were organized into had and had nots. And today, its not too much of a leap to say that everyone you know has one - and walks around in society according to it daily. Our statuses are like our pointy-eared dopplegangers that follow us around and either pull us along on a societal leash or trip us under our feet. Status has many forms, some of which disguise themselves as things like personality - your job, family, education, skin color, age, gender, neighborhood, speech patterns, marriage, hobbies, beliefs, you name it, can all be a status. All of which can be related or completely unrelated to who you really are, but usually status has your number because of its great influence on your daily life. Deny it you might, but it follows you everywhere without asking and it wont leave until you do. Its like plasma to your hemoglobin and it requires a painful and sometimes impossible psychological surgery to extract your true identity from your status. Usually, scraps of old status remain always, even when status changes. And learning to live honestly along with whatever you think your status is, well, that can be a bit of a Descartian process. No one can really tell you what your status is - that’s something you and society negotiate together based on your perception and those around you. But ultimately, you know you have one. And illusory and ambiguous as it might seem, ignoring it as an important piece of your path to self discovery means it can eventually have its way with you. And then you wont recognize the difference between you and it. This thing you will always have but never own. Haven’t you heard, being born is going blind. And then spending your years learning how to see again. In my experience, most of the time this means learning what you are not in order to find out what you are…underneath the tender tissues of your status.

If you think that there is a society on earth that doesn’t operate based on status, then you are most likely wrong. For some, the status might look pretty different than what your society has chosen. In Africa, having fair skin and many children is a sign of status. In the states, its being carefully tanned  from a vacation in the Bahamas and having a job that may or may not leave you time for children. In Africa, feeding and refreshing any expected or unexpected guests with beverage and a meal is a necessity and one of the most basic cultural curricula, even if you are poor and have little. The cable guy will join you for dinner after he works. In general, you are always very welcome. It does not matter what or how few clothes you have, but when you come to church they should be clean and well-ironed. Who you know matters. And in a country of vast corruption from the bottom rungs all the way up to the top, it’s sometimes the only thing that matters. We watched a well-known journalist friend of ours shout down a local policeman aiming to intimidate Scott out of his camera with one or two important names, which were enough to bring about the shame of the first testament. A very gravely mistaken judge of character on the part of the policeman and it showed on his face. But it was clear, had we not been with such a man of social stature, we would be filling out a very expensive claim for travel insurance. Who you know is just as important back home of course - but has a little less of a visibly sharp edge on a day to day basis. When traveling in Africa, being white has a meaning unto itself that I never thought about before - one that brings me right round into the face of my doppleganger, my inherited status. In most cases, our stories, opinions, financial situation or even our purpose for being here is irrelevant. Our white skin blinds like the sun on a white-hot summer day. If we don’t know someone very well, and sometimes even when we do, let them believe whatever they might about us because nothing is likely to change that perception. The children we don’t know love to come “touch the white man” (its woman, if you please), they sneak a feel of my hair or just stare blankly at us and when I reach out for their little hand, they withdraw it as if I were a ghost. And I am. I am a ghost. I am  “a white” who has wandered too far from my country and bleeding the same color blood as those around us to them seems sometimes impossible. And you of course cant blame them. They are friendly, curious, welcoming and smiling, glad to have you on their front porch sharing a drink. But it’s a hard realization that many don’t really want to get to know YOU. They just want to know a white. They want to shake hands with your doppleganger. One that is so different, so vastly far from the life they know, that they cant imagine having such a person as a real friend. And after you’ve taken a long hard look at that doppleganger, and another one in the mirror as your mind starts to pick pieces of your privileged life apart in an effort to make sense of who you are, after all that, you realize you can’t blame them one bit. Your people would probably do the very same. Because status at first sight always commands the conversation. And only later, once you really spend time with someone very different than you, taking pains to strip away the layers and stop blinking into the blinding light of status indicators, then you can really start to see the smoldering candle glow of who they really are, the one that burns so steady and warm underneath it all. Maybe you can start to see your own. Getting there is a challenge, and when you do, be cautious - status still controls the laws of motion for everyone on earth, like streetlights at an intersection. But the glimpses are more fun than every neon light in Vegas.