Blank Notes

I don't want to be a dick, but I kind of fucking love America.

Parts of my genetic material have been here for over 200 years, working on farms, shipping furniture up the Mississippi, settling down in the beautiful Midwest.

Parts of my genetic material have been here for about forty years, memorizing all of John F. Kennedy's speeches while still across the Atlantic Ocean in Nigeria.

I love America. Red, White, and Blue--these colors would be nauseating together unless I felt the way I do about this great country.

And I love Americans too. We have great potential; we have great freedoms. America is not perfect, and when I am really depressed about my life and the lives of those around me, I think we are never going to get back to the ideals we once held. But even on those days, I still recognize that Americans themselves can be amazing people.

But let me be a dick, and let me just say this: I hate people who want to volunteer in other countries. I know I shouldn't, and I know America will only be great in the ways it once was if we as Americans help other nations in need.

But I can't stand people who seem to think that America isn't hurting right now--people who think that their time is better served in "third world" countries. That pisses me off, and I'll give you three reasons why:

1. There is horrific amounts of poverty in this country. If I choose to believe all the random statistics sent to me through commercials (which I do), then one out of eight children in America are in a state of starvation. That's 12.5%. That is way too many children. You want to help people? There are plenty of people who need your help here.
2. Fun fact: America's biggest problem is how poorly distributed wealth is. Go to a third world country. Yes, go. Most people will be poorer than Americans, but there's one part of the sentence you really need to pay attention to: "most people." Even in the worst environments, where dictatorships and communism control most of the wealth, the majority of people will be living in similar situations. Misery loves company, right? People don't assume they are poor unless they have our western ideals of wealth superimposed on their lives: "Oh, Nicaragua doesn't have Wifi? Those poor savages." Do you want to be that person who is so shallow that they do not recognize happiness on a stranger's face? Who attempts to right situations that are not actually wrong?
And yes, some third world countries may have deplorable living situations, but I would argue that being poor in America, when you can see all the successes of the wealthy, is just as bad as not having Wifi to power your iPhone. We need to help other countries, true, but it always seems like people are trying to tell me that non-America countries need their attention much more than America.
3. Finally, and this kills me so much: When people tell me that they would much rather volunteer in an African country than in underserved American communities, all I can think of, and I keep saying it to myself, wanting to yell at them this question because I have no peace from it: "So you'd rather help Africans than African-Americans?"

Is it wrong for me to think this way? Potentially. But America deserves the respect and attention of other Americans. I am going to be living here for the rest of my life.