A Challenging Day in NYC

Wednesday’s Update:

Today has been such a learning experience for so many of us. One Coe group was at Baby Buggy, a place for toys, essentials, and accessories for families that need things for their babies. Another group went to a soup kitchen, and the other group worked with kids and packed bags of food.

I’m going to talk about my experience specifically, as Katie did yesterday, because today’s service really made a difference in how I see service and people.

The soup kitchen we worked in today tested my patience more than I’ve been tested in a long time, and I found myself struggling to care about these people, struggling to remember why what I was doing mattered. As I served today, I was faced with some of the rudest, most disrespectful, and ungrateful people I’ve met in my life, and as someone performing a volunteer service for them, it was certainly a challenge to appreciate why I was there.

Our first task of the day was to stack small pallets of canned food along the walls of the soup kitchen, which is located in East Harlem. There were quite a few cans, and it took us about 20 minutes. For that 20 minutes, 3-4 men were standing outside the door talking amongst each other--about us. They made comments like, “They’ve never had to work a day in their lives. They don’t know what hard work is. Their parents do everything for them.”

We felt degraded, like we were the ones in need. From the moment we began working, we were immediately turned off by the entire situation. Serving such rude people who immediately judged us based on our position at the soup kitchen was challenging. To top it off, as we served, many of the clients complained about how much we gave them. “That’s too much!” or “Come on! What’s wrong with you? A bird would eat that! Give me more!” or “What’s that? Gross! Serve better food!”

I have never experienced such a challenging service opportunity at a soup kitchen before, but it was certainly a learning experience. A few moments required us to get a little snippy--”No. You’ll take what’s here or you won’t eat here.” kind of comments. They usually complied, though one man started crying and a few others tried to argue with us. In the end, they always accepted what we had to offer.

Though it was challenging, it was also one of my favorite experiences because I learned so much. I was given the opportunity to consider so many perspectives I never had before. I thought about privilege and choice and second chances and over-/underestimating others. We all think about stereotypes, even when we see someone for the first time--how they look, what race they are, how they are dressed. All these factors play into first impressions, and we all do it to some extent, but we don’t always consider it from someone else’s eyes--how others see us.

Similarly, we don’t always put ourselves in our friends’ shoes either. As we reflected on our service and experience in New York City, our advisor asked who felt like a minority in New York, and a few people raised their hands--all of them white. As a white person, it is interesting being in New York where racial diversity (especially) is plentiful. In Iowa and at Coe, diversity is certainly not nearly as prevalent.

When we discussed the difference, I mentioned that I had been near Central Park on 5th Avenue and Madison Avenue, and I was almost relieved to finally be around white people. Most of the neighborhoods we’ve been in contain many people who are not white. When I said this, a Hispanic student in our group said that now I knew how they felt, and I am grateful to have this incredibly small glimpse into what life might be like for minorities at places like Coe. It’s not so much that I felt that I was ever in danger or that people were afraid of me or anything, but I definitely knew I stuck out. I know that when I get on the train in Sunset Park (where we’re staying), the chances of running into another white person are very slim.

Overall, today certainly made me think a lot about diversity and first impressions. I considered that others, no matter their situations, have a basic human right to feel safe and respected. It seems that for some people (like those at the soup kitchen in Harlem), it’s important to them to almost force people to be respectful. I think it might give them a perceived notion that because someone doesn’t try to argue with them or tell them what to do, they are respected. Respect is important because without it, many of the people we have served this week would have almost nothing else.