We Must Reexamine Assumptions About Neighbors

To the editors:



Re: “Facing Our Neighbors,” column, Apr. 27.

Just as harmful as the generalization that all homeless people are dishonest or deserving of their situations is the generalization that all homeless people are “sleeping outside of the COOP, asking for money outside of CVS, or hanging out close the train stop,” as Seegars characterizes them in his column. While it is important to recognize and empathize with the people we walk past, who seem to be there every day alone with cups outstretched on the street, students should also recognize that there is a large population of homeless people who get up for work every morning at 5 a.m. and walk in stride with us without asking for change or pity.

Seegars is entreating students to treat the homeless more like humans, but perhaps we should go one step further and remember that there is nothing that truly separates them from us as people except perhaps a few years of unfortunate twists of fate. In emphatically writing about a homeless population that is a static and unchanging “they,” he seems to be defining the homeless as an “other,” inherently different kind of population. “Abject poverty” and “the greatest academic institution in the world” may not be as much of a dichotomy as one may think; a college degree is not going to protect a single one of us from being evicted in the future when we don’t have enough for the rent.

Being saddened instead of frightened and disgusted by the everyday view of “homelessness” is a fine first step, but the realization is wasted if it is rooted in a superficial definition of homelessness. Seegars is right in saying there’s no easy answer to homelessness, but if students feel there are no actions they can take and are therefore going to stop at empathy, the least they can do is more carefully reexamine the assumptions they are making about the people they think they are emphasizing with.



LEEANN SUEN ‘09
Cambridge, Mass.
April 28, 2007



The writer is a volunteer at the Harvard Square Homeless shelter.