"America, you great unfinished symphony,you sent for meYou let me make a differenceA place where even orphan immigrantsCan leave their fingerprints and rise up,"
- The World Was Wide Enough, Hamilton
The day of Donald Trump's election was the night of the annual potluck dinner at my children's school. The kids attend a Hartford, Connecticut-area STEM Elementary Magnet School with an ethnically diverse student population. My wife and I grew up in the suburbs, 90-95% white, non-immigrant populations, so a potluck dinner would not be a celebration of unique heritages as it is for our children. Families not only come from urban parts of Hartford and rural and suburban surroundings, but also from South America, India, the Middle East, Russia, Europe and China. Not only are our children the only two kids from our town at the school, but they are not part of any sort of "majority" at their school. The "comfort zone" that some people in the suburbs, even in our town, have will probably be a completely alien concept to them growing up.
I've enjoyed the potluck dinner every year at the school and unfortunately missed last year while in Canada for business; but this year had an even different significance. Barack Obama was out of Washington and his replacement, whether he lead it or not, had motivated a very ugly side of America, a side of America that thinks "us" and "them". A side of America that wants to build walls, label evil by religion. A side, which I believe is fully motivated by fear. Fear is control. A lot of what Trump's first actions have been as president are about safety, a wall, a travel ban from some Muslim countries - yet I'd argue that these were illogical, motivated by fear and not representative of an immigrant country. Were these actions motivated by safety?
But who is safe? You see, the problem with fear, like any sort of strong emotion, is that it is contagious. It is a group thought. But it also leads to irrational actions, without concern for logic and without concern for others. In a school with Muslim children, Latino children, children with same sex-parents, I wondered what the next four years would be like for them?
Flashback before Donald's Trump immigration policy changes and "ban" and back to the days following the election. Something happened. Something unbelievably surprising. It's quiet obvious now that not even Donald Trump thought he'd be elected president; but he was. Protests. Allegations of hate crimes. Awful videos of white students chanting at latinos went up on the internet and were quickly pulled down due to the ages of the perpetrators. Over the last few years as video technology has gotten cheaper, I suspect, racially-motivated crimes (victims of all races, including mine) that were always happening were caught on video.
It's Connecticut, I'm in a Blue State. Most of my friends and family were not Donald Trump supporters and there was really no doubt who would win here. The small group of locals I know who supported Trump - I think there was a lot of surprise. Votes have consequences. Some celebrated like a football team winning on Sunday. Some just didn't want to talk about it, as if an election is just that and it's done, not such a big deal "let's move on." One even regretted her vote, finding out a little more about how Trump was completely against the issue most important to her. One friend who was fairly outspoken spent more than a few days trying to defend her vote. Eventually she disappeared from social media. Turned off her phone. She didn't feel safe. She even called out of her office job a couple of days. I understood what she was going through; but to people directly affected by the election, I understood their continued anger.
We happened to spend a lot of time with a Syrian family at the potluck dinner. My daughter had been a classmate of a boy from the family. They dressed in traditional clothing from their home. I didn't ask anything about the family, when they had immigrated or if they had been refugees. They seemed well-educated and their English was spoken as if they'd learned it many years prior. They were observant Muslims, however, as the mother was unable to shake my hand since I am a man. She apologized as she said this after shaking my wife's hand, not knowing if I would understand or not. I took no offense to this and watched our children play together, looking at the displays setup by different families. Even my son had setup a display of our immigrant ancestors (all immigrating before 1920, nearly all on my wife's side of the family). I look at the Syrian family's display and started to think of what was going on in their country.
A week after the potluck dinner came the immigration ban. I'll call it that, regardless of what the president did or did not call it. Children and naturalized citizens behind held because of the country of their residence in an airport. I would suspect some waiting to meet families, to go to skilled labor jobs, some here for medical treatment. All these peoples' lives on hold. A Syrian family. If they had a relative who was sick, even outside of Syria, could they leave the country and come back to the United States and be welcomed back? If they had relatives still in Syria and they were displaced due to the continued conflict, would they be able to take their relatives to their home in the United States?
Will this family face discrimination? Will they be safe in our country?
Whether my children go to a "diverse school" or make friends of other races or historical backgrounds, it doesn't change the fact that we are still a white, upper-middle class family in a very safe suburban home. I stated above that my children will never have that feeling of being a majority in their school; but they still are part of the majority in the eyes of others. The consequence of the election is actually fairly small to me. We'll be fine. As much as I am angry and concerned about the path of the country that President Trump is taking, at the end of the day I'll probably get a slight tax decrease and some of my clients will lose some federal funding. But to a Muslim family in this country, especially one from one of the travel ban countries, or a Latino family dealing with the constant scrutiny of their citizenship, or to a woman who wants women's health services she can't afford - there's a lot of consequence. There is less security and less safety.
Votes have consequence. I've been saying this since the election. But I must add, that they have consequence to others. If a member of your family has a disability and the ACA is repealed without a replacement that covers pre-existing conditions, you'll suffer. When you voted, you voted against the surety that pre-existing conditions are covered. But you also voted in a way that could harm the safety of Muslims or Latinos or immigrants in this country. And unless you've been in those shoes, you have no idea what that is like. No one immigrates to the United States for the betterment of themselves. They do it for their future generations. Trust me. I've done the genealogy research. The immigrants live difficult lives, many died young and poor; even ones from England or other parts of Europe that have fewer barriers to overcome like language or skin color. It's their children and grandchildren that thrive.
At the end of the day, we all want to be safe. Regardless of who you are, where you are from or how you voted, keep that in mind. We'll all be better off. I think we all just want peace.
“Everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
And no one shall make them afraid.”
They’ll be safe in the nation we’ve made,"
-One Last Time, Hamilton
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