Let's talk about walls

"Where there’s a wall there’s a way through a gate or door.
There’s even a ladder perhaps and a sentinel who sometimes sleeps.

There are secret passwords you can overhear.
There are methods of torture for extracting clues to maps of underground passages.

There are zeppelins, helicopters, rockets, bombs, battering rams, armies with trumpets whose all at once blast shatters the foundations."

(Fragment of Joy Kogawa, “Where There’s a Wall” from Woman in the Woods.)

Original photo by Struppi0601

Since the beginning of humankind, we have been building walls and barriers for many reasons. They provide us shelter but also keep people out of certain places while others are to keep us in.

What really happens when we destroy walls that separate us from each other? We unite, we improve our relations, we learn from each other, and together we also learn new things. So why in 2017 are we shocked and scared by the idea of the possible creation of “Agent Orange’s” wall on the U.S-Mexico border? Aren’t we worrying about something that might never happen, instead of worrying about what actually is?

We’re living in a world full of walls that we can't see but are as real as the ones made of concrete. These “imaginary barriers are affecting our society and instead of doing something to fix the situation, we choose to worry about empty promises. Among the many invisible walls are the most obvious ones (or should be): racism, socio-economic classism and what one might call personal barriers.

Even though these are invisible, we are the builders, and we construct them for others and ourselves. The one that we can see more often or that people are constantly talking about is racism.

Some began to call themselves members of a superior race and thought that they had the right to rule over and treat others as they pleased, a right “granted” by God and enacted with terror and violence.

The reason for this may be referred to as “Generational ignorance”. Austrian Psychologist Sigmund Freud defined the superego as an ethical component of the personality and moral standards that are developed during the first five years of an infant’s life in response to the “moral” and “ethical” standards of the parents or the direct environment. Meanwhile, behaviourism relates to one’s response to environmental behaviour and is shaped through positive and negative reinforcement.

Nobody was ever born racist. When a child is born in a racist environment, however, they would think that being racist is something normal. In fact, they would think that it's just the way things are, and now we know that the approval of a group of people could be a positive reinforcement to the exclusion a negative one. If that child started to think differently than their immediate circle, they will be criticised. Add to that peers and family members with a lack of knowledge or education alongside media control by a strong political leader, we’ll have the “perfect” formula to maintain racist behaviour in society.

Other factors that contribute to generational ignorance are stereotypes and the lack of knowledge about other cultures. Some are harmless such as “All Latinos know how to dance” or “Mexicans like spicy food”. However, some others are quite offensive, such as “blacks or Latinos like committing crimes” or “Muslims are terrorists”. Those stereotypes could end up being fake racial archetypes, or even worse, they could be considered facts for certain people that pass them on from generation to generation.

The second wall is the one that might be called the “personal barrier”, which can be divided into two groups: the ones that protect us and the ones that don't. The walls that protect us are those that give us our personal space or privacy, inside which we keep our deepest secrets—those ones that we don't share. Our trust in people also resides here so do boundaries to make us avoid danger.

There are also walls we have to break through, the ones that harm us, and that make us think we can't do certain things or fear the prospect of failure. We have to stop building more of those walls. Always remember, failure is part of the process of being successful. New experiences can bring us moments of inexplicable joy if we try to do new things or start a new path, so we shouldn't be afraid at all. If we fail, we’ll learn from those failures. The important thing is that you shouldn't hit the same wall twice. In other words, don't make the same mistakes. Be confident but think before doing something to avoid failure.

Original photo by Ryan McGuire

The third, and last wall is “socio-economic classism”. This wall, like the first, is generational, and it could even fit into the generational ignorance, but the difference is that classism could also be self-discriminatory. It's similar to racism in the way that people put walls in front of others because of their looks. For example, if you are a business person and you don't follow the dress code you won't fit into the mould of acceptability. That's why we create an image to be accepted by others. People in our society have to dress in a certain way to show success, or stability, and they dress according to their profession or to show that they “belong” to a certain group.

Now, in order to explain how classism could be self-discriminatory, it needs to be to pointed out that the “personal barrier” plays a very important role.

If, for example, you go to a deprived neighbourhood in Chile, you’ll find different groups of people: those who work more than one shift to support their families, those who are happy with their simple lives. There are also those who think that because they are poor, they can’t be happy, or because they live in a certain area, no-one will hire them, so they live on the few benefits that the state provides. This group built a wall because it was the simplest “solution” to their problems. They want to work few hours, close to home and earn a lot of money. They try to find a job and if it doesn’t work they follow the example of their “peers”, to stay at home and complain about everything. People with no government aid that live in the same neighbourhood sometimes work several hours in many different places to change their luck. Chile’s economy is growing every day, and the country needs a bigger workforce to fill all the job offers, and that’s why people from other countries have immigrated, looking for new job opportunities.

There are many other walls: for example, sexism, egocentrism, fear, defeatism and many more I haven’t mentioned, lest I write a document bigger than the Constitution of Canada. What we do have to know, is that there are walls that are constructed in the same way as the ones above and that they are as real as the ones you can see.

I invite you to think about your walls. Find out which ones you possess and just remember that having them is not the problem, especially those which give you your personal space or maintain your alertness and protect you from certain situations or people. The problem is when you let them keep you from doing something, meeting people from other countries or just expanding your circle. Stop playing safe and dressing like others, especially if you don’t feel comfortable. Stop giving yourself excuses to not try to do something that you really want, and also stop putting your happiness in front of others; you can be as happy as you want but respect others’ happiness. If you think that you are better than someone because you belong to a certain group of people, there will always be someone better or worse than you: always someone smarter, faster, taller or whatever you could imagine.

Now, what do you think is a bigger issue? If you still think that Trump's wall is a bigger problem than all the walls mentioned before, it just means that I couldn't reach you, and that’s okay—it’s your opinion. On the other hand, if this article made you think, even though it was just for a moment, it’ll mean that I’ve achieved my goal and I’ll feel like I’ve won a battle. Let’s find our walls and break them down one brick at a time. Let’s help others to break down their own as I did.

Since coming to Canada in 2016, from my homeland Chile I’ve been breaking as many walls as I could. I come from a country with narrow-minded people, where a high percentage of the population are racist and classist: a place where if you have money, you can do whatever you want to others, where some people think just about themselves. Chile is like that because we don’t have as many cultures as Canada, and we don’t have a good public education system. Our parents told us since we were kids that Chile was better than its neighbours and that we need to have money to be happy and that we have to act in a certain way to be normal and that “normal” is good.

Thankfully, I have a really mixed background, and my family is open-minded. They taught me to be who I want to be. I’m happy to be living in Canada even though I can see some walls remaining. Luckily, there are fewer than in my country and fewer than many others. Canada, thanks for getting rid of those barriers that kept us from moving forward, and thanks for this 150th anniversary to focus on what’s happening now. Don’t think of what could, should or would happen if. Let’s focus on what’s happening with us and around us. I wish you all a happy Canada Day.