David Allen is Bursting the Bubble

This past weekend, I was away conducting field training with the Greyhound Battalion. We went to Aberdeen Proving Grounds with three other Battalions with rucks packed to sleep in the woods and study tactics for 3 days. The vans only transported us 40 minutes away from Baltimore City, but our area of operations felt like we were completely disconnected from civilization. We were immediately expected to organize ourselves in our given task organization, draw weapons, and initiate movement to our first patrol base where we awaited directions for our first mission. For the remainder of the weekend, cadet’s minds were fixated on the operations we were ordered to conduct. Some students may have entertained thoughts about the amount of homework they had due on Monday or how good chipotle would taste in comparison to the MRE’s they were eating, but their focus was mostly on their immediate task of effectively carrying out ambushes, raids, and attacks. As a result, field training became a temporary world where the only things that matter were relative to the mission. The Baltimore area task force was in a bubble that could not be permeated by conversations about external problems like the impact of drone strikes overseas, the unreported horrors in isolated countries like North Korea, or even problems closer to home like America’s system of mass incarnation or the homes falling apart in McElderry Park, Baltimore.

As cadets stripped of cell phone communications in isolated terrain, we are not expected to think about these issues. Why would we be? The problem is that when these cadets went home on Sunday night to their warm dorm rooms and pantries filled with plethora’s of food, these thoughts still never crossed their minds. Why? Because they entered a new bubble. The bubble of college students who come from wealthy homes in New Jersey, New York, and the surrounding areas.

“A Beautiful Ghetto” indirectly calls out these bubbles that communities like our institution has statically placed around ourselves by presenting readers with authentic snap shots of reality. Our Jesuit institution boasts and brags about the ideals of justice and equality that they stand for, so they make an effort to insert conversations about these ideals in the classrooms. Consequently, students discuss issues like racism and poverty from the comfort of their desk. A desk that costs their parents $60,000 a year. Such classes create an illusion that the students are getting closer to the problems they are discussing, but in reality they are far removed from them. David Allen tries to combat this and ground discussions in reality by putting images of truth in front of his readers.

This book differs from all other texts we have studied this semester because it does not have words on every page that guide the readers comprehension. This book presents life in Baltimore Ghettos in its raw form. As result, the conversation about Baltimore’s issues will be grounded by the faces of actual humans who bear the burden of the issues discussed. These snap shots provide an authentic look into the emotions expressed on people’s faces and the sense of community revealed by their body language.