I stared at him in disbelief.
At long last, on Saturday afternoon, I’d gotten him to watch
Orange is the New Black, which has become
my new favorite show. He agreed to watch
one episode, and I picked my favorite: it’s
about six episodes in, where the inmates hold elections to represent them to
the officers, like student council.
Prison surroundings or no, it’s just brilliant social commentary – and hilariously
written, in my opinion.
It might be a coincidence, but the timing of Orange couldn’t be better for my
emotional well-being. As one of my best
friends is in prison now, in a similar Federal camp like the one that inspired
Piper Kerman’s memoir, I’m keenly aware of the broad strokes of truth in the
show - even if the relationships are dramatized a bit. Since my friend’s situation was the result of
ignorance rather than malevolence, and he’d be a functioning, productive member
of middle-class society were he not there, I’m all the more invested.
Tate, though, sees it differently. As a 7th grade science teacher in
a, shall we say, rougher neighboring
city than Raleigh, especially since he’s a generally mild mannered gamer guy
who looks remarkably like Harry Potter, he has to deal with tough, disobedient,
mouthy kids on an hourly basis. About a
third of the way through the episode, watching the caricatures of inmates of
all races, backgrounds, and education interact, it became too much for him and I
had to turn it off. He said it was like
watching his students.
“Look, I deal with kids just like that every day. They get put in prison because they did
something wrong, and then the officers have to keep them under control.”
“But…didn’t you think it was funny?” I was so disappointed.
“They’re not that smart.
Those are just well-written versions of who they really are,” he said
flatly. “Of course, the officers are all
mean and evil because they have to enforce the rules. Well, how about don’t do something to get
sent to prison in the first place?”
“But they’re still people!”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean the officers are bad. They’re just doing their jobs.”
My feathers were ruffled.
Tate’s job is very difficult, and it changes him in tangible
ways that I’ve already become keenly aware of in our five months of dating. Over Christmas break, I wondered who this giddy
boy was and what he’d done with my usually more serious boyfriend. The stress that often hangs over him was
gone, and he became lighter and more joyful all throughout those couple of
weeks. Since it’s not my first time at
the rodeo of dating a teacher (not to mention that both of my parents are
educators), I get it, and I don’t hold it against him. It just saddens me.
Our conversation left me thinking – who gets the mercy? Who deserves the clemency? Do the correctional officers deserve sympathy,
whether or not they’re short-tempered and unfair? Do the inmates deserve pity and leniency,
since they’re already in such an awful, dehumanizing situation?
Does it have to be polarized, or should both sides get some
slack?
On Orange, some of
the correctional officers are simply horrible, abusing their power and using the
inmates to further their own selfish motives.
One such instance even results in a young girl’s death, among other
tragedies. I don’t doubt that, similar
to the rest of the show, the underlying, broad strokes of these events ring
true in real life.
I’m a bit of a bleeding-heart liberal, as Tate often teases,
citing the cycle of poverty, the lack of role models, and the virtual
imprisonment of abusive situations as many of the reasons many inmates end up incarcerated.
I combed through Piper Kerman’s book with vigor when I first got it, and
did my share of research outside of the book as well.
But I also know I’m biased, and situations like my good
friend’s aren’t always the case.
Sometimes there is malicious intent, sometimes the law is knowingly and
purposefully broken, and sometimes the punishment is necessary. The man who terrorized my neighborhood early
last fall, holding several women at gunpoint and kidnapping them to rob them,
comes to mind.
So who deserves grace, and who doesn’t? Or do we all?
And who measures who gets how much?
I think everyone deserves some grace, and everyone needs some justice. Grace shows us that there is such a thing as forgiveness, while justice teaches us that our actions have real consequences we must face.
ReplyDeleteI think a more interesting and operative question in your situation (not to be dismissive of your questions, mind you; just to bring up an important tangent) is who is responsible for showing each of those things to whom? I know the church answer is "we should all show each other grace all the time," but no one really believes that. If a drunk driver kills people, there is little to no expectations that, say, a judge would show let them off easy in the name of grace. Their AA group might show them more grace, though.
I think the experiences in our lives shape us in ways that allow us to show grace to totally different groups of people in different ways, or even just more effectively than others. I have friends who have had miscarriages, as an example. Can I show them grace? Yes, absolutely, but probably not as well as someone who has been there.
Maybe that's the case with you and Tate here. Your experiences have shaped you in a way that can cause you to relate well and show grace to prisoners in a federal facility in almost that exact situation. (Side note: I haven't seen the show, so I'm just picking up what I can from this blog entry.) Tate's experiences have made him more easily able to relate to authority figures in sometimes unpleasant situations.
The key thing is that neither of those positions is wrong! I think God wants everyone to understand both grace and justice, so He shapes different people to show each of those to different kinds of people, and that balance is necessary.