Things I Learned Playing with Refugees
My neighborhood is one of those newly engineered developments designed to enable low-income families to live alongside affluent households. Despite the design’s intent, wealthier people end up hanging out with other wealthy people and lower income families do the same. It looks good on paper, but doesn’t work yet. I say “yet” because there is still hope for the kids in the neighborhood to build a meaningful culture. It’s probably a generation away.
Everyday after work, my daughter and I go play with the children from the lower income housing. Most of the kids come from Muslim households and many are refugees from countries in the horn of Africa. Very few of the parents know much English (they still know more than I do of any second language) and some of them bear scars of a life I probably can’t begin to understand.
When the Syrian refugee crisis hit the world because of a messy civil war mixed with neocolonialist interference, there was a large negative reaction driven by fear. This response struck me as cowardly and misguided. From political party leaders to every asshole with an opinion and access to a computer, we heard vile racism and ugly generalizations about refugees. We’re a fickle bunch. I won’t pretend playing with some kids from completely unrelated countries makes me an expert on Syrian refugees, but I can say that doing the same will inspire a lot of empathy. To think that some of those kids I chase around the park could be blocked from safety by an arbitrary border is a sobering thought, especially after my nation did a fair amount of bombing and created a power vacuum for ISIS to rise.
Let’s move past the sad stuff and onto some things I’ve learned from hanging out with the children of refugees.
Lightsabers are fun
When my daughter and I leave the house, she will sometimes bring toys to throw down a slide to their death. One time(and the last time), she wanted to take two lightsabers down to the park. Huge mistake. I first let a pair of boys play with them after they annoyingly begged me for five minutes. They beat the hell out of each other, all while laughing. Next thing I know, I had a line of kids waiting to fight with the lightsabers. I should have charged them a piece of candy or a dollar in retrospect (cmon’ this is America) because they kept coming. I had a good rotation going and made sure sabers were being played with fairly. I also did my best to ensure no one died, which I half-assed because I kind of like it when kids play out the struggle between Sith and Jedi. Though I only brought the lightsabers out once, they still ask me if I can go get them.
School totally sucks
You heard me right. I’ve taken this poll scientifically among a wide variety of ages. Once talking to a girl in 3rd grade, she reported “school is stupid.” I had just tricked her into a pushup contests with other kids, so she could have been bitter. Another time I spoke to a young man riding a bike, who would prefer to be playing basketball (at this park there is no hoop, they just throw the ball through the spaces in the monkey bars) instead of going to class. I did find that the younger toddlers really enjoyed school. Upon further investigation, most of them thought school was playing at the park, so the jury is still out with the younger generation.
Superheroes are not at a saturation point
In the past few years, I’ve seen a lot of think pieces about a “saturation point” with superhero movies. Don’t listen to that crap. These kids taught me that not only do they want more superheroes, but they all want to be Batman or (oddly) Thor. That’s right. On numerous occasions, there have been multiple boys and girls pretending to either be Thor or Batman. At the time of talking to many of the kids, they wanted a new Batman movie everyday. EVERYDAY. Don’t believe the critics. We’re just scratching the surface of superhero saturation.
There you have it. These (mostly) Muslim kids of refugees didn’t teach me a goddamn thing, because they are just normal kids doing normal kid things.
The real learning is that if you find yourself afraid or generalizing about people that are different, you should probably try to meet some of those folks. I am sure you’ll find that they aren’t the mass of assumptions you are either making up or hearing about from the media. You will probably find they aren’t so different from you, because we’re all just humans wandering this spinning marble full of greenhouse gases and rich people’s wars trying to make sense of our lives and be happy.
It’s a tall order, but whether you’re conservative or liberal, get out there and meet some people that you don’t know much about. People don’t have to volunteer or be a saint. Just go hangout with someone unlike yourself. You’ll be smarter and more understanding.
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