We are all immigrants.
There is only one place that can claim anyone who is not an immigrant, and that is Africa. If you are Black, and live in Africa, you are probably not an immigrant, unless your ancestors wandered away, and came back.
Should I ever have a chance go to Africa, I would be one of those people whose ancestors wandered away, and I would be back. I would not be Black, but I would be back.
All of our ancestors came from Africa. To be an American Indian is to claim to be descended from the first peoples who wandered into North America. It is a claim to be descended from the first immigrants here. The rest of us are later immigrants; quite a lot later, but just later.
What is not just curious, but lamentable, is the habit of early immigrants to scorn later immigrants. Maybe it is just territoriality--"I got here first!"--but very few of us are the first immigrants. The scorn is much larger than that.
It might be the fear of otherness. The new ones are not what we know and understand: they might be dangerous. But, then, some of the old ones are dangerous, too, and some of the new ones are really nice! I ought to be embarrassed about this, but my sensitivity neurons are too old and calloused, but in our family we laugh about something my mother once said about a new Italian neighbor: "She's Italian, but she's nice!"
Maybe it is that life is tough--like now--and some of the newer immigrants seem to figure out how to make the best of it, while we are making-do. But that works both ways, too. Some of us make-do, and some of them have it tough.
The "birther movement"--the stupid assertion that Barack Obama was really born in Africa, and thus is not one of us, and variations on that theme, such as Mike Huckabee's claim that Obama just grew up there, talking to his Daddy and his Grandpa about British colonialism, and thus getting the story all wrong, is so common that it is both amazing and hilarious, except that people are serious!
It is not just skin color, but it is that, too. It is language, and accent, and eye color, and clothing, and privilege, and stupidity, and fear, and religion, and skin color, and anything we can think of that will make some people insiders and others outsiders. We like to have outsiders, too, whom we can blame for what ails us. When shit happens, we want to blame it on someone else. Maybe a Black President. Or a woman. Or that guy over there. Him! He isn't like us, is he?
Should I ever have a chance go to Africa, I would be one of those people whose ancestors wandered away, and I would be back. I would not be Black, but I would be back.
All of our ancestors came from Africa. To be an American Indian is to claim to be descended from the first peoples who wandered into North America. It is a claim to be descended from the first immigrants here. The rest of us are later immigrants; quite a lot later, but just later.
What is not just curious, but lamentable, is the habit of early immigrants to scorn later immigrants. Maybe it is just territoriality--"I got here first!"--but very few of us are the first immigrants. The scorn is much larger than that.
It might be the fear of otherness. The new ones are not what we know and understand: they might be dangerous. But, then, some of the old ones are dangerous, too, and some of the new ones are really nice! I ought to be embarrassed about this, but my sensitivity neurons are too old and calloused, but in our family we laugh about something my mother once said about a new Italian neighbor: "She's Italian, but she's nice!"
Maybe it is that life is tough--like now--and some of the newer immigrants seem to figure out how to make the best of it, while we are making-do. But that works both ways, too. Some of us make-do, and some of them have it tough.
The "birther movement"--the stupid assertion that Barack Obama was really born in Africa, and thus is not one of us, and variations on that theme, such as Mike Huckabee's claim that Obama just grew up there, talking to his Daddy and his Grandpa about British colonialism, and thus getting the story all wrong, is so common that it is both amazing and hilarious, except that people are serious!
It is not just skin color, but it is that, too. It is language, and accent, and eye color, and clothing, and privilege, and stupidity, and fear, and religion, and skin color, and anything we can think of that will make some people insiders and others outsiders. We like to have outsiders, too, whom we can blame for what ails us. When shit happens, we want to blame it on someone else. Maybe a Black President. Or a woman. Or that guy over there. Him! He isn't like us, is he?
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