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From The Asian Reporter, V18, #27 (July 8, 2008), page 7.
Embracing American anger
In our quiet living room, under southeast Portland’s gracious elm, near the western edge of our chaotic new continent, I wondered why Yanks are so unhappy with us. Us immigrants.
Certainly not all Americans feel this way, probably not even most. But enough. Enough Americans are angry to earn Lou Dobbs lots of network TV time. Many are mad enough for local commentator Lars Larson’s red-hot radio talk to get repeated and repeated at break times, on lunch counters, in the basement café under Oregon’s capitol building. These guys get a lot of grim nods from unhappy people. They make sense to a substantial audience.
I worried out loud about this anger, one night, among us — in our living room of American, Arab, African, Asian, Mexican (and even a former Mormon) familia. What is it, I asked sincerely, about us in this house and them in theirs, that makes it so bad? What are these mean looks and those dark hearts about?
Summer night was easing between us, comforting our tired eyes, cooling our city’s concrete and asphalt face.
Maybe ignorance
Ignorance, suggested one of us. He didn’t mean stupid or silly, he meant many folks don’t know enough about this precious planet, about her peoples, about how different but also how alike we are when it comes to everyone’s pretty children. So we talked about this. How every one of us, anyone with an ounce of ambition in his bones, will move to where the work is, will work hard, will work long, will make proud his ma, will please his wife, and dress nice her eager school kids.
"They just don’t know," he insisted. Most old Portlanders simply aren’t around a lot of new ones. And not knowing wouldn’t be so bad, except of course when folks are taken by the awful statistics and the ugly interpretations of newscasters who make a living by sharpening their chops the way they do. On us.
His theory felt right. Times are tense, so Oregonians need explanations. Elected leaders waiting for cues about how to best manage voters’ moods before speaking up, are eclipsed by shrill radio and TV talk showmen.
We need narratives in order to make order, to make sense, of our world. In the vacuum left by our leaders’ silence, in the absence of equally compelling emotions like empathy for another working guy just like you, like compassion for another anxious mother exactly like yours — suspicion and fear work real well.
Certainly racism
Racism plays an important part said another one of us. United States history is sick with it. Our economy, our culture, even Sunday morning’s prayers, are disabled by it. By them.
National emergencies, real and imagined, have roused round after round of popular racism. This is not a partisan matter. Democratic Party Presidents "removed" America’s Indians; "rescinded" Filipinos’ citizenship; "interned" Japanese America; alarmed the nation over sneaky Chinese stealing U.S. technological superiority, screw by screw, slide by microscopic slide.
Republican Presidents "excluded" all Chinese from the U.S.; supposed Muslim sleeper cells bunked by Constitutionally-exempt enemy combatants; declared Mexico’s border just as dangerous; and began building a barrier mightier than China’s Great Big Wall.
Fourteen White Houses, partied by both Democrats and Republicans, have signed race-based immigration policies. Fifteen U.S. Presidents swore solemn allegiance to laws enslaving black human beings to white ones. Racism sits solid in America’s center of gravity.
I looked around our living room that darkening evening. I looked at faces from sun-browned harvest rice to Dove Bar chocolate. Faces distorted by racism. Hearts hurt bad by it. By them.
Racialized policies from opportunist political leaders, and the racist license they hand their followers, we could remedy. Every few years folks would vote this kind of leadership away — if, and only if another kind of leadership steps up. Leaders who’ll lead by listening. Listening to unhappy Americans, really respecting their losses, actually addressing their disappointments.
This is hard, much harder than pointing us out as the source of their sadness.
A lot of loneliness
In a slim moment of quiet, as leafy Ladd’s Addition chirpy birds finally settled cozy in their nests, another one of us proposed yet another answer. "It’s because they’re lonely," he said. He simply said.
His proposition was startlingly profound. Who in our house hadn’t wondered why Americans, a people with so much material wealth and such overwhelming power to take what they want, are still ravenous. What on earth can Yanks still need?
An answer might be: these folks don’t have an answer. They have only this hunger. And then in the middle of this insatiable want: we show up. Brown families. And naturally we’re mistaken as competitors for whatever that thing is, the thing they can’t get enough of. The thing angry American battle fleets will steam across deep blue seas to secure; the thing stealthy strategic bombers will shock and awe others into surrendering. To this hunger.
Force has always worked for Americans, aggressing is almost an autonomic response. Professor Konrad Lorenz’s "frustration-aggression nexus" is now an American sociological default. Violence.
In truth, if all energetic immigrants were immediately deported (not counting NBA centers, Los Alamos physicists, and that charming Dr. Deepak Chopra) America would be an even hungrier country. Not only because immigrants plant and hoe and weed and pick and wash and pack and cut and cook and serve almost everything on our plates. But because those folks in our darkening living room, despite their twisted hearts, their broken bones, know what our nation needs.
We cry like babies, muscular men and smart women alike. We laugh like children, like no tomorrow. We love as if that living room, as if our leafy inner eastside neighborhood, as if our beautiful end on this grand continent were full of love, packed with loving grandpas and mothers, loyal uncles and cousins, stubbornly committed brothers and tender sisters. Because it is. Because we are. And we are never lonely.
Let us lead. Let’s listen to America’s disappointed, they’re not wrong about their sadness. There’s no mistake about their loss. And their unhappiness will be made ours. Let us lead.