One Nation, Indivisible

It seems fitting to republish this on the first anniversary of the inauguration of our new president. With DACA up in the air and #shitholenations in the news, this piece feels as true now, and more urgent, perhaps, than when I first wrote it. 

It was election night. The results were pouring in. My phone buzzed with a text from my son: “America doesn’t want me.” This text required a phone response.

I called my boy, half a country away. He answered. His voice was trembling, I could tell he was in tears. “Mom, I’m terrified. I’m afraid to go out.”

For the record, this adult son turns 29 today. He is a world traveler, and street-savvy. He has an art degree, is studying law, and is passionate about pursuing justice for all, that thing we pay homage to in our pledge of allegiance. He is smart, but more importantly, he is kind. He’s of Mexican descent. And he was terrified.

“Mom,” he said, “during the course of the presidential campaign, I’ve been approached in an LA laundromat and a St. Paul coffee shop, questioned as to whether I was a terrorist. I’ve had my life threatened by an off-duty policeman in a bar in Minneapolis, who said he could take me out back and shoot me, and no one would ever find out who did it. This was just during the campaign–how much worse will it be if he gets elected?”

It is the fear of every parent that we cannot protect our children from the world. We do what we can, we prepare them as adequately as we know how, and we spend the rest of our lives learning to let go. For those of us who are white parents of children of color, the world we would protect them from is not one that we personally experience. We are only too aware that the elements they may need protection from are part of the white privileged systems from which we ourselves benefit. It is painful to acknowledge that we can be unwitting players in the oppression visited upon our children.

I felt so helpless as I talked to my boy. I tried to offer support that only seemed to twist the knife deeper, and hung up feeling inadequate and dissatisfied. In a later conversation, I asked him “what can I do to help you?” “Let people know, Mom”, he answered. “It’s important to tell these stories.”

So I share this story today, knowing full well that it is far from unique, and struggling with this ugly irony–that in the same breath in which I am enraged and indignant at how strangers dare to treat my son, this precious child who made mother’s day cards, and brought me breakfast in bed when I was sick, this young man who loves to play with babies and spent his last summer seeking justice for those on death row–in this same breath I am painfully aware that my own unconscious racism leads me to look upon other mothers’ sons with similar suspicion. I catch myself checking to see if my car is locked, when driving through predominantly black neighborhoods. I see a young man and woman of color, walking together down the street, laughing. He holds a television set poised over his right shoulder. The first thought that flashes through my brain, before my Minnesota Nice chip can intercept it is: “I wonder if that TV’s stolen”.  I walk down the street and encounter a dark-skinned stranger, and from some deep recesses of my brain, a racial epithet floats to the surface, something cruel and ugly that I would never speak out loud, and am ashamed to discover I even contain.  Of this I am not proud. And I am not just chagrined–I am horrified. Horrified to recognize the seeds of racism sown within my own heart.

It’s always easier to project our evil onto others than to engage in painful self-examination. I can weep and wail and protest about everything going on out there, but if all that does is allow me to turn the spotlight away from my own failings, then I am no better than the “enemy”, whomever or whatever he or she might be.

I believe that the surest way to peace, to justice, and to “One Nation, Indivisible”, is for me to take a good, long look at my own heart, painstakingly uproot what has been planted, till the soil, and plant a new crop. I pray the harvest will come soon, and be bountiful.

And I wonder–what sort of a nation might we become if we each tend first and foremost to the fruits of our own heart? Shall we journey together and find out?