It is incredible to me as I become more aware, more connected, and more informed about what's going on in the world around me, to see how alive racism is in the United States of America. As a child, as a teenager, as a college student, it didn't touch me; it didn't cross my radar screen in the slightest. I didn't see what was going on.
But all around me now, I see examples of racism rising strong among the American people. African Americans are reminded that they aren't ever truly citizens in this nation by the birth certificate issue raised to prominence by Donald Trump. We see racism against Hispanic Americans being pushed to the forefront in Arizona in state laws and school boards aimed at discrimination against native Spanish speakers and the Hispanic culture. The September 11th attacks gave us the opportunity to start expressing our racist views about people who are, or only look like, Arabs. And somehow, the idea has gotten around that Chinese-made products are more dangerous than those from other countries; we all know the Chinese are out to get us. We have stereotypes, put-downs, generalizations, and fears about every race and nationality that isn't our own.
But throughout all of these issues runs the incredibly disappointing thread of ignorance-- ignorance that says that this land with our man-made borders belongs to us, the white people, and no one else has the right to claim it.
But it never was ours to begin with. It belonged to natives who lived here for generation upon generation until we crossed the ocean looking for new lands and peoples to conquer. The original inhabitants of this land were not white, did not speak English, and did not practice Christianity; they didn't fit into our ideal vision for this land. But just because we were able to kill and exile the Native Americans doesn't mean that any of this belongs to us. Just because we were strong enough to take the land and resources that belonged to them doesn't mean we have a God-given right to be here.
The nation that we did build on the land we stole from the natives was a land of immigrants. Every white person who set foot on this ground in the beginning came from someplace else, was born someplace else, and brought with them a culture and a heritage and a language from another land.
We all came from someplace un-American.
And we brought all of our cultures and religious beliefs and family traditions and melded them into a new thing, into a complicated, multi-faceted, new, American culture, American life, American experience.
So how do we come away from all that as a nation that continues to demean and dehumanize people we see as different from us, as less than us, as a threat to us?
How did we get here?
And how do we get out?
