I've been trying to think of words to put to what happened on Wednesday night, 3/19. After taking a midterm, my two friends and I went to In-n-Out in Oakland. The dine-in area was closed and we had to go through the drive-thru. This was around 11:30PM. We decided to park in the nearly empty parking lot by the restaurant to eat and chat and about 15 minutes into our meal, a man walks up to the car. I notice him first and my first response was to tell my roommate (the driver) to not open the door. The man came up to the driver's side of the car and started asking for some of our food. He said, "Hi, can I have some food, I have no food and I'm hungry. I have no car so I can't go through the drive-thru." My friend in the backseat noticed my roommate was hesitantly contemplating whether or not he should give his food to the man so she proceeded to say, "Don't open the door, not only are you putting your life in danger, but you are also putting two other people's lives in danger." After persistently repeating his introduction, he eventually gave up and went off into the dark.
While we wanted to help that man, we had to take into consideration of our safety first. Looking back at the situation now and thinking of Professor Roy's story of being hustled, was that man trying to take advantage of us to get us to open the window or car door? The man was asking for food because he did not have a car to go through the drive-thru, so did that mean he had money? If so, why didn't he go to the McDonald's that was down the street?
At the end of the day, my friends and I never will know if the man was truly hungry or if he was trying to hustle us. In general, how do we change our perspectives in such a way that does not make us suspect every person that comes up to us, needing help, is trying to hustle us? But how do we also not naively let them take advantage of us and our of help?
I am the director of a clinic for mostly homeless and low-income clients, and have had experiences like this before. Once, while I was in Oakland, a lady claiming to have just been robbed asked to use my phone- I let her, but was hesitant because I foresaw what could've happened if she had run away with it. Then, she asked me for money. I usually don't give money to the homeless, but in this incident I gave her everything I had in my wallet (like $20 or something).
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes down to it, I think people like this man rarely are trying to take advantage of good people. Although we can't know for sure, I think this is a stigma that populates the minds of so many people since childhood. Myself included. When I was young, and when my parents and I would drive or walk through sketchy neighborhoods in San Francisco, my parents would tell me to look down and not talk to any of the homeless people.
I think it's important to consider the stigmas that exist all around us, criminalization of the homeless being one of them. There's a statistic out there somewhere that homeless people actually report crimes more often than crimes are reported against them. This being said, I believe it's important to grant amnesty to like persons, homeless or not. Or, at least to have acknowledged the man would have been the best thing to do. A simple sorry or a nod of the head, rather than just waiting for him to leave.