go back to where you came from
How many times have I heard this phrase or something close to it? Yelled at me. Once too many.
When did they happen? Most incidents happened when I was in high school and college. One I will never forget.
How did it affect me?
I used to mostly get deeply embarrassed especially one particular time, I’d wished somebody had spoken up other than myself. I hate being noticed, and hated it even more for being humiliated and treated as a second class citizen. The irony of it is that I was in fact born here in Minnesota in 1965.
So I became super aware of the volume of my voice when in public and to this day if I’m out with a group of Farsi speaking friends, I am deeply uncomfortable with their loud voices. I have never felt this way in any other country!
I would imagine almost every immigrant has heard this demeaning power driven phrase. Millions of people for centuries. Over the years I’ve come to notice that this phrase can only come out of the mouth of a deeply fearful and self entitled person. It is so un-American and it is the last thing a person of faith would ever say. “Love thy neighbor” was one of the first phrases I learned living in America that made me so curious and interested in the Christian faith. It is my belief and experience that following deep truths of being human aren’t practiced by most followers of all faiths, rather the parts that separate groups seem to dominate groups. Power and the need to be right, and the belief that only one group have ‘all the right answers, are better, are the chosen ones’ trumps the simple peaceful values taught in every group.
My writing about my experiences as an immigrant was a reaction to an incident about two and a half years ago when a young man shouted ‘go back to where you came from’ to my younger son in an almost all white, extremely affluent, AND Jesuit private college. What did this mean? Why would a young man who has ‘everything’ feel he had the right to tell another young man who has every bit of right as him to go back to where he came from? How is he making this judgement of a fellow citizen? A man he doesn’t even know. A man he’s judging only by his features. Who does he think he is? And does he know where his ancestors came from? Were they Native Americans? My guess would be no.
Of course my son has enough pride and is more grounded and articulate than most people his age that this phrase would never silence him or take away his known rights. In fact his articulateness has everything to do with his passion about his country and the amount of deep thinking he has done up to this age. He’s a ferocious reader and used to delight in learning about everything and is the person who taught me stories are the most important part of understanding cultures.
As a woman who paved a way blindly with my husband in what we perceived as thoughtful assimilation and a love of heritage__not unlike many others__this was so deeply troubling.
In all the years raising our boys, my husband and I never ever shared the prejudices we had encountered as teenagers, later in work, social groups and even parenting groups. The two of us know this is as human as the kindness that more people had showed us over the years. We have always chosen to highlight good people and steer away from people who are ‘confused’ about their moral stance. Steering away always has seemed better than judging, as we both know belief systems can blind people in ways we both were guilty of with our own limited belief systems earlier in our lives in our new homeland. We call it personal growth.
This brings me to the phrase that I think is in particular aimed at representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Talib. They are at the heart of the disgust, fear, anger and outrage of an entitled group who seem to be focusing on ‘brown’ people. I take issues with many of the ways Ms. Omar and Ms. Talib tackle issues. They are young reactionary copies of their elders. Not unlike us Iranians, their parents and their respective countries have always been portrayed as the enemy. I also see how they love America and how they too are learning to adapt to their new jobs, hence making mistakes along the way like every other public figure. How can these two women convince people that who they are and how they think is different than that of their parents? They are targets, and unfortunately they are reacting in an angry way that scares the daylight out of most Americans who see anger out of a ‘brown’ person so alarming.
What should they do?
I would say, when you have power__and in this case two women who’ve been elected by their constituents__ you do your work and you do not respond to hatred. This is exactly how most immigrants or people of color or other ethnicities have paved their own paths. It is the only way. Any other way is a street fight. Why get entangled in a street fight when you have actual thought and policy power?
The other deeply disturbing image is how these four women have been set up together and are being viewed as one!! Not unlike how our president wants to paint a picture of these women as a part of ‘other less clean and deeply infested cultures.’ What does this do? It basically is the oldest tactic the big boys have used to silence voices. I would argue that the old guards are attacking these women to disguise their hatred for precisely how they think, and who they represent. They represent and are voicing change. Not of changing values, rather to follow what we have written as our values and to stop distracting this discrepancy with rhetorics. These women have turned up the volume for voices that many don’t want to hear and are shining the light on injustice.
Diversity is not in color it is in thought and social backgrounds. These four women who have been highlighted by their color are very different from each other. They are all products of a new generation, but they are different.
Ms. Omar also is the visual of what scares Trump’s followers and base. A Muslim woman who by the fact that she is Muslim and covers her head is against America. That’s it. Case closed. If you’re a Muslim, you must hate America.
That is the poison being injected to America.
Iran is a majority Muslim country. In my two travels for the past year and a half in Iran, I cannot even count the many commentary of the love of America and what it stands for by regular Iranians.
For decades politicians have worked hard in America to create a narrative that Muslims and Jewish people hate each other. I have been a witness here in America for the past four decades. This could not be farthest from truth. For centuries Muslims, Jews, and Christians had lived together and had found ways to get along in the area we call Middle East. It wasn’t until the British came to the region, divided every tribe and created countries and borders that started the riff between these faiths and tribes. It really didn’t take hold for a long time, because people lived close to each other and knew each other. Yet the region became prime for every fundamentalist religious group to use these rhetoric to gain power. Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iran, and Pakistan fell into this trap. Little by little other countries in the region have been affected. Each and every one of these countries has been leading a path of separation and hate at social and political level.
So, here we are, in America, aspiring to join these questionable leaderships.
I know we’re better. However, we’ve been primed to be spectators of politics for a long time. We now have a president that educates at the level of a pep rally! Is there any education or contents in these pep rallies? No thinking. No substance. Just rhetorics and wanting to feel good about ourselves “we’re the best.” Who “we” are, I’m not sure. Who needs “to go back” and back to where?, remains to be seen.
