Alexis Jacobs's Blog

Although I’m not a Trekkie, techno-geek or sci-fi addict (okay maybe just a little bit), I recently took part in a group discussion about utopias. What would they be like? Who would live in them? And are they even possible? Most of the participants were futurists with technology or science backgrounds. The kind of people who can tell you all about Artificial Intelligence and nanobot technology, and who already know what futuristic inventions are in the works. After listening to the group for a while, I noticed that one word stuck out the most. Community. And everyone seemed to share the same general idea about what would make a utopian community great, a slice of heaven on earth. It would be a caring, sharing community designed to meet people’s basic needs. The group also agreed on some of these needs – provision for our physical and emotional well-being, access to food and other necessary material goods, and freedom to be ourselves and find a purpose. People would be surrounded by others who wanted the best for them and the community at large. No one would ever go hungry. No one would suffer because they couldn’t afford medical care. There would be no homelessness. No poverty. No isolation.

These days, there seems to be an endless flow of books and movies about dystopian worlds where being a teenager is as risky as playing Russian roulette with a two-barrel shotgun. And we thought we had it hard. In these stories, something catastrophic has happened that destroyed life as we knew it. Afterwards, there’s little to go around, and the government has set a process in place to keep people in check and stop society from going backwards. These dystopias are built around a sense of scarcity, which breeds competition, resignation and ruthlessness. Life becomes each person for themselves, survival of the fittest – the exact opposite of a community, especially a good one. But the future doesn’t have to be so dark. It’s up to us.

We all need community, whether or not we acknowledge it. We have a built-in desire to feel connected to others. That’s why we form families, teams, clubs and anything else that brings us together. Connections give us a sense of safety, strength and belonging. We care about the people around us and they care about us. A lack of community can be harmful to our health. It can give way to victimization, depression, paranoia, distrust, anti-social behavior and loneliness. According to recent surveys, approximately 40 percent of people in the U.S. claim to be generally lonely. In busy, bustling, crowded New York City, the statistic is apparently even higher. This is not surprising. Cities can fuel feelings of separation and isolation, even in the midst of crowds. Most of us are LinkedIn, but not linked-up.

And not only can people feel disconnected, but they can also be missing a sense of shared ownership where they live. This then creates another problem – a general lack of consideration for others. In New York City, people do things like leave their dog’s mess on the sidewalks for other people to step in, or throw their food garbage on the street, even if it brings rats. And some people blast music all hours of the night, not caring if their neighbors have to work in the morning. The truth is, if we knew our neighbors, if we felt we were part of a community, we would probably be more considerate. We would be more responsible and accountable.

But neighbors don’t always want to be known. When we first moved into our small building, we tried to introduce ourselves to every person we saw. We quickly realized that they were reluctant to get to know us or each other. Maybe our neighbors feel it is safer that way. After all, what if your neighbor turns out to be a stalker or serial killer, or worse – nosy? New Yorkers also have a reputation for valuing their personal space in a city where we face bumper-to-bumper traffic on the roads and nose-to-armpit rides on the trains. It’s no wonder that people tend to be neighbor-shy. When Hurricane Sandy hit, the lights and electricity went out in our previous building. It would have been the perfect time for neighbors to pull together to make sure that everyone was okay and had what they needed. Needless to say, that didn’t happen. We followed the unspoken rules of our building, and handled the storm in our own separate, isolated way. But rules are meant to be broken.

I have a friend who lives in a building where a group of residents take turns preparing dinner for each other regularly. They have created a strong bond over time. One day when she had injured herself and her husband was away, these same neighbors quickly jumped in to take care of her children and make sure she had help. People watching out for each other. Is there a better definition of community, or even utopia? In my utopian city, no one would be treated like a stranger. It would be a clean, safe and beautiful place where everyone from the Mayor on down would want to do their part to keep it that way. And people would care about their neighbors’ well-being as much as their own. I don’t look at this as fantasy. I look at it as a growing trend, and a reality that we can all do our part to create. What would your ideal community look like? What would you do to help make it happen?

No matter how open-minded we might think we are, very few people can claim that they have no prejudices.  In elementary school, we learned first-hand that even little humans quickly latch onto reasons to pick on each other.  “Hey Brace-face…Four-eyes…Shorty…Fatty… Toothpick…” were popular words heard on my school’s playground.  And as we grew older, the list grew longer.  Aside from the physical things that kids often pick out, other things were added to the mix.  Our ethnicity, religion, sexuality, politics, and even social and economic statuses became just as good a reason as any for people to reject us – or for us to reject others.  Discrimination is unfortunately a part of human nature – but so is love, acceptance, and the ability to choose how we want to treat others.

Now, discrimination isn’t always bad.  We really shouldn’t accept certain traits in people. We should always speak out against hate-mongers, bullies and abusers.  But it makes no logical sense to dislike someone for things they can’t help, such as their color, birthplace, sexuality, family history, disability, job, education or anything else.  Some people even dislike others because of their birth sign.  I was once introduced to a woman who immediately asked me my sign and then told me, on no uncertain terms, that she doesn’t get along with Scorpios.  She couldn’t get away from me fast enough.  Now, there was a friendship in the making!  I’m personally not offended by people like that, because their attitude says more about them than it does their enemies.

That’s the crux of it.  Our prejudices say more about us than they do the people we reject.  I may bristle at middle-aged women with six or more cats – but that’s my issue.  The truth is, we may never be able to bury all of our bigotries, but we can at least lessen their hold on our hearts.  Let go of our egos.  We can start by first accepting ourselves.  Accept that we’re also not perfect in everyone’s eyes, but we’re still worthy of love and fair treatment.  Then we can make the choice to accept people for what they are, whether or not we actually like or agree with it.

We may have a natural aversion to Democrats, Republicans, short people, tall people, lawyers, clowns, or any combination of these – but we can’t make it their problem.  I still have to treat people with the same respect I want from them – no matter how much cat hair they have on their clothes.  What about you?  What do you have trouble accepting about others?  Do you face any discrimination in your life?

One of the questions I dreaded most after I moved to the U.S. was, “Where are you from?”  It seemed innocent enough.  Someone who had just met me was curious to know about my background.  But this question was often preceded by, “I can’t place your accent”, or some other similar comment from a puzzled-looking face.  Or, as one woman once said to me, “Where did you learn to pronounce words like that?”  It turned out she meant it as a compliment.  In her defense, it turned out that she had never left New York, and I really was the first black person she had ever met with my accent.  She had no idea where to place me.

You see, the answer has never been black and white.  Simply put, I’m a product of multiple cultures, and my vocabulary is sometimes peppered with terms that draw strange looks.  So, when asked where I’m from, maybe I could say, “I’m a British-Canadian Jamaican New Yorker.  Or “I’m a Jamaican-Canadian Brit” or “Canadian-Brit of Jamaican descent”, and on and on using some combination of the above.  But I used to launch into a drawn-out answer about my background, as if I owed some sort of apology or explanation for not fitting into a clear slot.

In answer to the same question, one of my sisters used to just say, “I’m from Africa.” She thought that by going right back to our roots, she wouldn’t have to say anything further.  But she gave up on this strategy after a man from Senegal asked her what part of Africa she was from, and when she had arrived in the U.S.  Now I usually try to sum up my background with a statement that’s shorter than a pitch you might make to Oprah in an elevator. I tell people that I am a New Yorker who was born in England and raised in Canada, and my parents are Jamaican.  Yet, far from satisfying their curiosity, this often spurs on more questions about my heritage.

Over the years, I’ve learned that there’s no such thing as a perfect answer to that question, Where are you from?  No matter what I say, the reaction I get usually ranges from fascination or mild surprise, to suspicion or even objection.  An African-American man once informed me that there were no black people in Canada or England.  I laughed, but it turned out he wasn’t joking.  There were times when I’ve been tempted to say that I was African-American.  But if I did, then I would be denying the rich combination of cultures that helped to shape my identity. 

I love my fish and chips, Jamaican jerk chicken, white Canadian honey on toast, and plain pizza slices, New York style.  England imprinted in me an odd love of thunderstorms.  Jamaica taught me that burning hot sun and migraines don’t mix.  And among many things, Canada taught me that the words “wind chill” really should be “wind kill”.  Now, I’ve been in New York long enough to have earned the right to bitch and moan about an inch of snow on the ground.  So the next time someone asks me about my background, maybe I’ll say, “I’m a Brit-Can-Jam-Yorker…eh.”  Then when they say, “What…?”  I’ll walk away and leave them to figure it out.

No matter how hard we try, it can be extremely difficult to escape from our family legacies.  Whether we come from a legacy of generational poverty, or a long line of women who always seemed to pick dead-beat dads to father their children – it’s hard to be the one to break that pattern.  Very often we find ourselves repeating a pattern before we’ve even stopped to think about it.  Some people might call that fate, but if so, then where does our personal responsibility come in?

Look at the history of the Kennedy family.  It’s not surprising that the term “Kennedy curse” came to be bantered about so much in the media.  They seemed to have more than their fair share of both wealth and tragedy. But far from being a “curse”, most of those tragedies seemed to result from a series of bad decisions and the family’s strong capacity for trying to live above the rules.  When Michael Kennedy ran into a tree while playing football on a ski slope in Aspen, was that fate?  Or was that sheer boneheaded-ness?

Lottery winners are another example.  Television shows like “Curse of the Lottery” have given us many stories of winners whose seeming luck often turned to loss and tragedy.  Yet there is a pattern that weaves through those stories.  Nearly all of the winners’ misfortunes came about because of the terrible choices they made afterwards. Many people who weren’t used to having money in the first place, ended up even poorer than before.  But some of the worst tragedies included people who turned to drugs or drinking, or who ended up committing suicide when their choices lead them down a dead-end path.  One winner died while racing around drunk in her new sports car.  Again, can we really blame fate for their experiences?  Can we blame fate for ours?

Sometimes we can, but most of the time it’s just a convenient excuse – one I’ve used many times myself.  I used to think it was fate that always lead me to commitment-phobic men, and not my own fears of commitment.  Like attracts like.   But while it’s difficult to overcome our histories and break negative patterns, it’s not impossible.  First, we have to stop and take an objective look at the patterns that hurt our lives.  Then once we have done that, we have to CHOOSE to take a different path, to break that pattern no matter how tightly woven it has become.  This means saying “No” when we’ve been accustomed to going along with the way things have been  And keeping a vision before us of what we want in our future.  None of that is easy, but it’s certainly worth the hard work.  Like a curse, our legacy only has the power we give it.

Are curses real? Some people certainly think so.  It’s one of those beliefs that span across all cultures and classes.  In my book “For Better or Curse”, the main character, Manda, is forced to confront this issue after she learns about an Obeah curse that was put on her family decades earlier.  Manda soon finds herself waging a real battle in the present, to break the power of words spoken in the past.

While some skeptics would say this is a subject fit only for fiction, and not for rational-thinking adults who stopped fearing the boogeymen long ago, some people view it as a part of reality.  The New York Post recently ran a story about a politician, Gwen Goodwin, who filed a lawsuit with the NY Supreme Court, accusing her opponent of putting a Caribbean curse on her. She blamed this curse for making her lose the Democratic primary to her opponent.

Now, most of us would laugh at such a claim.  We might be tempted to wonder if Goodwin is playing with a full deck – or if she’s just taking sore-loser-hood to a whole new level. But is it possible that Goodwin actually believes her opponent jinxed her by having a rooster painted on the side of her building?  She insisted the mural was a black magic symbol, and even compared it to a death threat.

What do you think?  Do negative symbols or words have the power to supernaturally affect people’s lives?  We all know that words can hold incredible power over us, especially if we internalize them. If a coworker calls you “clumsy” after you spill something, don’t be surprised if you turn into a klutz whenever they’re around.

Then maybe the real question isn’t about whether or not we believe curses have power – but whether or not we think we have power.  As one of the characters tells Manda in my book, “…just by putting our faith in something…just by believing it to be real…we infuse it with far more power than we sometimes realize.”