Thanks-taking

Most people don’t give shit to others on Thanksgiving, so I call it Thanks-taking instead, borrowed from Noemi, who I don’t personally know but whose words are precious to a white girl in a sea of unearned, uncomfortable privilege. A few years ago – hard to tell how many now – I did the “serve food at church” thing with my father and his wife on Thanks-taking. The church folk cooked the food – all sorts of oppressive meat dishes – and I went because I wanted to feel like I was doing something – not just to get out of the house, but to participate in something larger than myself. After the food was served (which is fucked right there – how about everyone pitching in and filling their plates as equals?), everyone sat at big long folding tables – if you ever went to a big protestant church, you know the ones. The church folk sat together in a big white mass, chuckling at stories about what they’d done that morning before arriving to cook for the “needy.” A lot of the folks who came for the free food sat alone or in smaller groups, away from everyone else.

I sat with a young man from Tobago. Decent with geography for whatever age I was, I nodded in recognition but asked why the hell he was in my hometown of 60k uncomfortably segregated Midwestern people. His presence at that particular dinner should have been my clue: he was there to attend the Christian university across the road from the church, where everyone in my family had gone for three generations (except me). He, on the other hand, was the first in his family to go to college. He was sitting near enough that I could remain somewhat close to people I knew while conversing with someone new, but as much as I enjoyed talking to him, not getting up to eat with the older men in ragged flannels still haunts me. I took a different approach than the supposed role models around me, but I still could have done a lot more. Why the fuck didn’t anyone sit with the people for whom they claimed to have cooked? Why were they afraid of the aging men who lived on the streets (mind you, no ladies were in the crowd)? I maintain it’s because people are closer to collapse of all they know than they realize or want to believe.

Is the same sort of dynamic created when I sit at tables with omnivores who don’t want to ask why I don’t eat animals? Anyone who knows me understands I don’t force the issue. The protest is my existence, and some people who live on the streets exist in the same fashion, so to speak. Someone has to be a voice for those who have a different language or way, so some of us stand in. I have love for freedom, whether it’s safety from slaughter or the destiny to sleep under the stars. The problem is that, as a vegan, I’m the animals’ absent referent. At the particular church Thanks-taking dinner in question, those people were right there. There’s no ethical blank to fill. Those who cooked chose to show up. But then they chose to look away. Don’t invite me over if you can’t handle what I bring. This is a potluck, however you believe you contribute.

Almost every year at this time, I think about the guy from Tobago (likewise, every time I think about Tobago, I wonder where he is now). I was probably doing my share of othering him, but I couldn’t help but be sad for the entirety of our conversation. I wondered how he ended up in what I considered such a miserable place, how he believed my small racist town could lead to his personal salvation. He missed his family. I bet he missed familiar food. He probably missed hugs, the kind that go on for more than ten seconds and don’t just happen after the sermon has ended.

These are the things we should be thinking about, should be experiencing and watching around us. Everyone is so hyped on post-racial hope, but it’s still driven by fear. When do we get up and go sit at the goddamn table with the guys from the shelter? When do you bring the next friend home, knowing you might not have them a year from now? Buy Nothing Day is soon upon us again, to remind us to stop our paranoid consumption, to start talking and touching and living again. I will go to the deer park to take photos, watch my cat dream, and make some messy, wonderful stew because Danes don’t know how to use butternut squashes (but score – the store stocked some anyway). Stay tuned for videos of me cutting up my credit cards.