This month is Immigrant Heritage Month in the United States. We are in the middle of a pandemic under an administration that loves corrupted institutions, and living with the most brazen police impunity I have ever seen in my life. As someone who is generally opinionated, I have been speechless. feeling trapped by my two worlds-its not that I don't have opinions or words, its that my two worlds collided so seamlessly that I am ALL, AT ONCE. There is no language I command I can use to articulate how I feel and what I think.
It is the first time in the United States I simultaneously feel completely FOREIGN and completely AMERICAN; completely IGNORANT and INCOMPETENT, and completely EXPERT and CAPABLE.
I feel so foreign because this moment is not about me; it is about the people who physically built this country still not having a seat at the table. I feel so American because it is about how my separation from "whiteness" brings me closer to their very American plight than to the "plight" of those already at the table. I feel so foreign because police impunity is too familiar to me, by the time I was a teen I already had family friends who had been murdered as part of "investigations" with a simple "yep, we killed him, but it was our job", I lived in a climate where the police meant a shakedown for the wealthy and a beat down for the poor. Either way, by the time I was 13 I knew to walk away from anyone in uniform, but if I had to get close, I was ready with the nearest thing I could use as a weapon. There wasn't a celebration where the police wouldn't show up to clamp down on joy. One of my cousins was once beaten because he stammered-literally because he stammered-he had a speech impediment and couldn't show deference fast enough. It was at a birthday party. We partied on like this was normal.
But this police impunity is of an American stripe and plays with my sanity. I find myself saying things like "at least back home they didn't tell us we were crazy"-here a police officer can say they didn't kill someone, even when they DID. A police officer can say he was afraid of Tamir Rice and that's why he killed him and people believe that lie, well- AGREE to that lie. The thing is, I have been in this country long enough that I now understand what that means. Had the Tamir Rice incident occurred back home, we would have gotten a "yes, we killed him, what do you want us to do about it now?" here we get a "he made us do it"-the American stripe of police impunity has a crazy-making gaslighting aspect to it, that I can now read through and find myself translating to my immigrant friends. I am the "American" explaining what "Self-Defense" and "natural causes" and "underlying conditions" mean in American English, versus British English, versus Spanish. As a foreigner, the phrase "Law and Order" still speaks to me, because honestly, I don't wish the alternative on anyone, as an American, the phrase "Law and Order" scares the crap out of me, a cruel chaos unleashed on those the United States would like to keep helpless and powerless-people like me being among them. These are culturally false cognates, and white Americans play on that false cognition to try to bring immigrants into their alliance.
But in terms of praxis I also find myself ignorant and expert. I grew up around a lot of riots-real riots that were more serious than what we are seeing across the U.S. You could call me an expert at surviving riots. Expert at having curfews for protests, not so much. I am baffled by this moment, when a country with more power, data and resources than the one I left is only capable of responding to social activity at two speeds-riot gear and curfews or shopping. The use of protests to set curfews where institutionally weaker countries wouldn't yet pull that tool out makes me feel like I am in the weaker foreign country, not the American one. When people use the word riot to describe protests-I find myself running into another culturally false cognate that leaves me speechless: "You are saying riots, I am seeing protests, what on earth are you talking about? What do you mean? I DON'T UNDERSTAND!"
But I am also an expert at living through and surviving riots. Several years ago I explained to an officer how riot gear escalated situations. I saw him smirk-it almost seemed like he was saying, this is America little girl and I am law enforcement, I know stuff. The irony about his expression was that the precise reason he was dismissing my knowledge was exactly the reason he should have listened. As it turns out my "foreign" experience, held true in America as well...and while he saw me as ignorant, everyone who lived through riots knew I knew what I was talking about. As though your skin and accent adversely colors the weight of the knowledge you share.
I am still speechless about this moment. Its like I am in between two mirrors facing each other catching pieces of reflections as they bounce off of their surfaces, and not really knowing where those reflections belong. Slowly I will find my words, the right words.
This Immigrant Heritage Month I am a bit heartbroken. The United States didn't embrace what we have to offer specifically as people, instead it chose to embrace the values and practices that made us immigrants to begin with: Corruption and Impunity. "Yeay?"
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| Burnt tires during the last protests I witnessed back home. My husband and I were on vacation and proceeded as normal. By U.S. standards this would be considered a riot, for us it was a 5 minute travel delay. |
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