HOW CAN THIS PLACE BE SO PEACEFUL for me yet so destructive to you?
This valley with its lush green grasses under my Converse sneakers. With its bright blue skies over my box-dyed hair. With its morning birds chirping to each other as I type with my thumbs on my phone. With its desert-yellow flowers I capture on my NatGeo app. And as I get closer to my brother's home in the mountains, I walk on cracked asphalt, passing a plastic, broken Pelon con Rico container on the floor, blown out of a trash can by the high winds.
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I CAN'T STOP THINKING ABOUT THE "GOOD GERMANS" in Nazi Germany. The people who knew Hitler was deliberately committing genocide against Jews but who voted for him, anyway. On purpose.
People say that they were doing what they thought--believed!--was right, but how could they believe that murdering an entire subcategory of humans was the right thing? My thought process in response to this, as a Jewish person, goes like this:
There are obvious flaws within the system of thinking here, but I want to be transparent and honest, because that's the only way forward, here, so bear with me. When Trump got elected in 2016 and started generalizing Mexicans in similar ways that Hitler generalized Jews, I of course panicked--because guess what? I'm Mexican, too. My friends told me that I was overreacting when I compared modern early Trumpism to early Nazi Germany, but I was genuinely terrified. Sure, I'm White-passing, and I grew up Christian. But would those things save me if push came to shove? When people start using rhetoric that blames an entire category of people, it's us-versus-them. It's fight-versus flight. It's survival thinking--and there's no reasoning with survival thinking. BROWN FEET. THE FEET ARE ALWAYS BROWN. Four years ago, and now, they're brown.
Children lay face-down on green camping mats, but no packages of Jet-Puffed or Honey Maid or Hershey's, classic American childhood staples, are nowhere in sight. Present instead are large sheets of Reynolds wrap, silver and shiny like a housewife's wedding ring. A woman in an advert grins overenthusiastically holding a huge box of Reynolds wrap, her hands cupping either end of the box like she's describing how big her husband's dick is. I guarantee you a woman did not make that ad. There's a webpage that's titled: WOMEN IN JOURNALISM NEWSPAPER MILESTONES. It's short. Thirteen women are listed between 1739 and 1976. The author of the article is named Bill. In a different advert, in another decade, a boy stands in a yellow rain coat holding Reynolds wrap next to his dog. The boy is pleased. Of course he's pleased: rain boots protect his feet and he splashes in puddles with his beloved dog. I call the woman "woman" and the boy "boy." Most of the people who read this will assume the invisible, default word in front of those words: white. We don't have to specify.
I NEVER FELT MEXICAN. NOT REALLY.
I've written several times about growing up as a privileged half-Latina, white-passing American, and I cannot stress how embarrassing it was to never really meet anyone else going through this. And isolating. Every time I met another Latinx person, I felt like a fraud. I even considered joining my school's Amigas Unidas organization, or the Sigma Lambda Gamma chapter, but I felt "too white" to join. I kept feeling like I had to prove that I knew Spanish, kept apologizing for my grammar. I pretended like I understood the slang jokes that everyone else made. I was lying. I am a proud Latina; I'm proud of the legacy that my Mexican grandparents have set, the stories of perseverance that they told about growing up prior to Cesar Chavez's labour movement. I grew up as a young Mexican girl in Fresno, but my story was far from that of Gary Soto's--I lived in the suburbs, not the barrio; I went to private, magnet, and charter schools and had an attentive mother who nagged me about my grades; there was never any question about whether I was going to college or not, and I even thought of Fresno State as a fallback school rather than something to aspire to*. And to make matters worse: I was never racially profiled. This sounds like a good thing, doesn't it? And it is, to an extent. But it's distressing in that my brother and I have drastically different experiences with this, despite having the same racial blood makeup. This post was written by my fellow writer friend Hank Whitson. His words are re-published here with his permission. BRIANNA JOHNSON MARCHES AGAINST THE PEOPLE who've cast aside their white sheets and wear their hate with pride. They yearn for a hierarchy of melanin that places her at the bottom of the food chain. She's marched before, and she'll march again. What else can she do? She's tried chanting louder. She tried taking the blows, running away, and fighting back. Those marching with her have picked her up, shielded her body, and fought alongside her. Together they've kindled the faith that love will eventually triumph, fostered the hope that history's long arc will bend toward justice in their lifetime. She can't help but doubt it though. She can't help but wonder what it will take for the turning point to come, and what else waits between now and then. |
PART OF THIS COMPLETE BREAKFASTBlog not recommended for sober consumption. |