1/8/23

By Josh Rubin

The debate over how we should respond to the plain fact that there are places in the world that do not offer their inhabitants the things that make life livable—things like safety, food, shelter and hope—that debate seems to force us into dark corners that are premised on the belief that injustice is not only defensible but natural. This narrows the range of our discussions, since they begin from a position that rests on concessions that would lose us the battle, even if we got what we asked for.

The borders that we have constructed and their justification starts with the idea that the dice that are thrown, the ones that determine the largest part of our fate—where and into what social milieu we are born—is in some sense fair, and because random, beyond redress. This despite the rhetoric recited from time to time that we are entitled to a level playing field. Do I have to point out that nothing makes that playing field more uneven than the borders, both physical and social, that protect the supremacy of that roll of the dice?

Yet each discussion of national boundaries begins with the idea that we must keep our borders secure. The range of responses after that debate is put to rest is limited to who we, the better off, will decide is worthy to be allowed to cross those fateful barriers. And, because we are flawed creatures, perpetually nervous and under assault by the robber barons that make our lives feel precarious, we make those determinations along a spectrum that runs from barely generous to overtly greedy and racist. Need I point out how darkness of skin correlates with our response to those people in motion?

But that’s not enough. The latest rules issued crystallize the composite criteria for reprieve from fate. Some of you, though dark, may cross, but only if you have enough money to fly in and can prove that you have family or friends rich enough to take care of you. In other words, if you are not running for your lives, possessions on your backs, babes in arms.

Here we are again. Debating between unfair and even more unfair. How do we let more light into this debate? Can we go back to the strange claim, when viewed in isolation, that there is some justice in the randomness of fate? Or can we try to recognize a possibility that while the universe has proved it can be unfair, that we may be able to do battle with entropy, rather than buttress it?