Up from Brooklyn: An Interview with Janet McDonald - author of memoir 'Project Girl' - Interview

Literary Review, Summer, 2001 by Thomas E. Kennedy

Doesn't she consider the payment of taxes as an investment into the society? I don't like paying Danish taxes much either, but I do like the fact that they help ensure universal comprehensive health care, universal education, kids with great teeth (because every kid gets free dental care up to the age of sixteen, including orthodontics), and a society where essentially no one will starve in the streets unless they choose to. Denmark is far from perfect, but like most other European countries, it does support quality of life, I think, in a more embracing way than the U. S. does. What good is being rich if you have to build a fortress and hire armed guards to protect it?

I agree, which is why I don't mind paying French taxes. I talked with her about that and she was like, "Yeah, I know, but still ..." I think when people have to put lifestyle where theory is, well, sometimes it separates the Real Women from the Closet Republicans. It's NIMBY all over again--sure, I support sheltering the homeless, but Not In My Back Yard.

Americans subscribe to the lift-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps myth because that is what they did, once they'd murdered and stolen their way across North America. Charity is one thing--a voluntary gesture of noblesse oblige, left to the discretion of well-intentioned citizens. But the idea of being forced through government taxation to "subsidize" others through one's own labor, well, that shocks the American mind. Interesting how forcing others through kidnapping and violence to subsidize their lifestyle with slave labor didn't quite have the same shock effect, but that's another issue. Effort brings success. Success gives wealth. Sharing wealth with those who make less effort is unthinkable. That is the American way.

Also of course, God shows his approval of people by making them rich. The Lord helps those who help themselves. What about France would you particularly miss if you had to return to the U. S. now?

I would miss the social welfare aspect of living in France that influences how people view themselves and each other. This is a kinder, gentler, less market-driven world than the U. S. When French truckers or students or bus drivers or doctors or airport workers or lawyers or actors take to the streets to demand higher wages or better working conditions, and they all do, all the time, the inconvenienced general population tends to support them. There seems to be a deep sense here that people deserve jobs, health care, and security. It's not the "I got mine" American mentality. I would miss the culture, the art, the language itself. And the profound respect for personal privacy.

What about the U. S. do you miss living in France?

I miss black American culture, the music, the spirit, the sound of our voices and laughter and idiom. I miss the informality, albeit largely empty, of social interactions among Americans, the easy conversation, the pseudo-intimacy. I miss the ease of it all, the dynamism, the everything is possible attitude. But mostly I miss Wise potato chips.