America the Beautiful?

I’m despondent and outraged at the same time when I think about how low this country has sunk.

My parents immigrated here and no one loves America and fights for her more than my family. We knock on doors and make phone calls for candidates, we write to our legislators, we vote, we welcome newcomers to our table, we volunteer in our communities, we celebrate our country with a deep, earnest passion every July 4th. I literally cry when I hear America the Beautiful. My parents gave us a life in America where we have wanted for nothing, and we learned to pay it forward in our actions and service. I’m trying to do the same for my sons, first generation Americans.

Yet America is letting me down right now. How many ways can our government diminish the value of brown people? What’s happening now is the most egregious and horrifying. It’s no hyperbole that I weep just thinking about those children at the border and now scattered around the nation. Many of those images are of boys who look like mine. Brown faces demonized. Again.

We’ve seen this propaganda before. The same people who support and defend these vile actions also think every brown boy wearing a hoodie is a criminal. Similarly, if your name is Arabic you’re a terrorist. Native children were plucked from their homes and sent to boarding schools. It wasn’t too long ago we had Japanese internment camps. We’ve been fed this narrative again and again. This is who we are, America.

Imagine being brown in this country right now. My sons have been taunted and told that Trump will make them leave America. I’ve shielded them from this as much as I can, scurrying in a different direction when such ire is fired. We’ve been followed in stores and treated with distrust. To a kid, this is a palpable sixth sense and they know that something isn’t right. I have been yelled at and told to “go home.” Children dressed as Trump knocked on my door on Halloween reeling off a series of insults. My sons are constantly barraged with the question, “What are you?” Imagine how that would make you feel. We face insults through policy and practice everyday. We face micro aggressions that feel like pin pricks of torture everyday. We smile through it all everyday. The times we do speak up to voice any injustice are met with defensive retorts of, “Well, I’ve never experienced that.” White fragility is real. Read about it. Learn about implicit bias. When a person of color tells you of her experiences, listen. “Yes, but…” is never a good reply.

Based on the tenor of America today, it’s clear that brown people don’t matter. White votes matter. White voices matter. At least that’s how it feels to someone who isn’t white. I mean, consider this, right now we are torn as a nation about putting children in cages. My dog isn’t even in a cage when I kennel him. It goes without saying that these discussions and the level of outrage would be very different if these were white children.

Because my family are immigrants to this country, we take nothing for granted. We value our rights and wear our Americanness with pride. It’s difficult and heartbreaking to continue to do this in a country that doesn’t value people who look like us. Now is not the time to talk about breaking laws or model minorities. That’s for another day. Some might read my words and tell me to just leave. You see, that is precisely the problem.

I can love my country and hate her direction at the same time. Freedom is having the ability to voice it without repercussion. America has been letting me down for a while, but the climate today is worse than what I could have ever conjured up in my nightmares. What’s happening on our borders is unconscionable, government-sanctioned child abuse. I’ve spent my adult life advocating for children and fighting to prevent abuse. Our president and his cadre of advisors are knowingly and willfully putting innocent children in situations that will lead to lifelong toxic stress and trauma. Once again, brown people don’t matter.

Yet, I continue to fight. We have reached a whole new low beyond measure, but the idealist in me knows we will rise. We must. Consider the alternative.