Blurring the Lines

This past Saturday I attended the ElderLink conference sponsored by ACU. In one of the sessions, Larry James was talking about building community. He began by saying that the most important thing we can do in building community is to blur the lines. Lines - real or imaginary - that separate according to economic status, race, gender, religion, neighborhood... as long as they exist, true community will not be possible.

Ironically, two of the front page stories in today's Morning News describe efforts to sharpen the lines. Below are the lead sentences from each of those articles...

1. The City of Farmers Branch on Monday adopted strict measures against illegal immigrants, requiring apartment renters to provide proof of citizenship or residency and making English the city's official language...
2. Texas lawmakers struck hard at illegal immigrants Monday, filing bills that would restrict birthright citizenship, bar them from getting state benefits such as health care and education, make it illegal for them to get business permits and tax them for sending money south of the border...

Thomas Freidman's op-ed piece in yesterday's New York Times speaks to the same concept on a global basis...

China, in other words, is inevitably going to move back to the center of U.S. politics, because it crystallizes the economic challenges faced by U.S. workers in the 21st century. The big question for me is, how will President Bush and the Democratic Congress use China: as a scapegoat or a sputnik?

Will they use it as an excuse to avoid doing the hard things, because it's all just China's fault, or as an excuse to rally the country — as we did after the Soviets leapt ahead of us in the space race and launched Sputnik — to make the kind of comprehensive changes in health care, portability of pensions, entitlements and lifelong learning to give America's middle class the best tools possible to thrive?

A lot of history is going to turn on that answer, because if people don't feel they have the tools or skills to thrive in a world without walls, the pressure to put up walls, especially against China, will steadily mount.