By Joseph Q. Jarvis | Special to The Deseret News | Published: 16 March 2025
At 15, I went on a cross-country motorhome trip with my family, which stalled in a small Texas town when the engine froze. While we were stuck for a week, two unforgettable events shaped my perspective.
Early in the week, my father gave me cash and sent me with my brothers to get haircuts. I found a barbershop and waited, but after several others were served first, I asked when our turn would come. The senior barber, a Black man, gently told me he couldn’t cut my hair because of segregation laws. He directed us to the white barbershop. Coming from a predominantly white Phoenix suburb, I had never faced such discrimination. It was an eye-opening moment.
Later that week, my family gathered around a motel TV to watch the first moon landing. Seeing the American flag planted on the lunar surface filled me with pride and optimism about what our country could achieve together.
Today, just like back then, there are deep societal divides in my country — not just by race, but by gender, wealth, education, faith and political alignment. Americans are ridiculed and rejected for who they are and what they believe. Hatred has replaced compromise. But now government is not expected to help because it is seen as the enemy rather than a solution.
I believe that at the heart of our crisis is the absence of care and compassion — like that shown by that Black barber who wanted to help me but couldn’t. We are collectively failing to live up to Abraham Lincoln’s admonition, delivered upon the occasion of his second inauguration, just as the Civil War was ending: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
American society is ruled now with bipartisan force and harshness. We are on the left hand of God. We have not strengthened the diseased, healed the sick, bound up the broken or sought out the hungry, thirsty, estranged, unclothed or imprisoned. We are not enjoying the blessing of mercy in our collective lives because we are not merciful.
We need a return to kindness, to truly caring for one another. Nowhere is this more evident than in our broken healthcare system, where hundreds of thousands die prematurely each year because they cannot afford care.
Though we pay more for healthcare than any other country, too many are left to suffer. This neglect fuels resentment and division. When people see others getting care while their loved ones are abandoned, anger grows, and society fractures. If we want healing, we must start by helping those in need — just as that barber tried to help me years ago. Join us in making a difference at www.utahcares.vote.
Dr. Joseph Q. Jarvis is the chair of Utah Cares, a political issue committee planning to put health care reform on the ballot in Utah in 2026. He is a public health physician, author and film producer.