Trump, part 2

So what do Chinese people think of Trump? Actually I have no idea what Chinese people think of Trump. You would need a VERY large scale survey to start to draw conclusions about what Chinese people in general think of Trump.

However, I can tell you about a few of the conversations I’ve had with Uyghur people about Trump. In the neighborhood where I live a majority of the residents are Muslim, and thus they are very interested in Trump. “So Trump is banning all Muslims from America, huh?” people—taxi drivers, waiters, random people who strike up conversations with me on the bus—ask me on a frequent basis.

At this point, I find myself in conflict. Do I take the optimistic stance and stress the fact that Trump is, in fact, not actually banning all Muslims from America and that our court system has considered his executive order unconstitutional, thereby exaggerating a glorified American democratic process and making the situation sound better than it actually is (read: the reality is that our country was built on genocide, colonialism and large scale institutional racism)? Is it better to emphasize that there are significant numbers of Muslims in the US, thereby perpetuating the false American dream that “anyone can make it in the land of the ‘free,’” or do I take the pessimistic stance and emphasize the larger reality of institutional and social discrimination against people of color, and the fact that Trump is, in fact, a dangerous fascist?

So I try to be reasonable: “Well, the ban was actually only new immigrants from 8 Muslim majority countries and the ban has been suspended by the courts,” I explain, though I’m unsure why I’m trying to make the situation sound better than it actually is. The truth is that immigration to the US, especially for a Muslim, is a long and difficult road filled with institutional and societal prejudice and racism, and under Trump it’s only going to get worse.

I continue with my explanation for the hundredth time: “Nonetheless, he is an evil person who discriminates against women, Muslims, and people who are not white, and many people in America strongly oppose him, and there are often protests in the capital,” I clarify, perhaps making Americans sound a little more heroic than we actually are. This is usually followed by vigorous nodding and agreement. 

Here are some snippets from various conversations I’ve had with people about Trump.

“So what do you think about Trump?”

“Well considering that he is sexist, racist, and opposes immigration, especially Muslim immigrants, I oppose him and his policies.”

“Are you Muslim?”

“No, but I don’t agree when people are prejudice against entire groups of people.”

[vigorous nodding]

---

I went in and got a massage by A, the short blind boy wearing a doppa, and while he was working my shoulders, he asked me about Trump. “Is he restricting immigration by Muslims? Do Americans support that? It sure would have been good if Hillary had been elected, huh?”

“Sure would have.”

---

“I used to like America (amerikini yaxshi koreyttim), but not anymore because of Trump’s policies toward Muslims, so now I want to go to Australia.”

---

“I have a Uyghur classmate who immigrated to the US, she already has her green card and brought her parents over. But now they’re worried about Trump’s policies toward immigrants and Muslims.”

---

M has started wearing a shepke (hat with a brim) instead of a headscarf because she’s worried about getting kicked out of school. I told her about how I had heard that some Muslim women in the United States also started wearing shepke instead of headscarves to avoid discrimination after Trump was elected.

“Isn’t Trump Christian though? I don’t understand why a Christian would be so hateful towards a religion that is so similar to their own,” M said.

“I know, it doesn’t make sense, it’s just prejudice, there’s no logic behind it, it’s just conservative, uneducated people not understanding people who are different from them.”

“I didn’t know that there were Americans like that.”

---

I told them that our right to gay marriage was not necessarily protected and that it could be reversed by Trump and the judges he appoints. “Obama was awesome, wasn’t he?” they ask me and I nod with nostalgia for those days.

---

In my daily life, people tell me all the time that their only option of survival is to go to the US because they can’t breathe here. Sometimes its gay people who do not have the social or political freedom to marry who they love. Sometimes its women whose hearts are breaking under constant slut shaming and completely universal belief that women should know that their place is in the kitchen and nowhere else. Sometimes its teenagers who know that their lives have no hope for the future in this place. Sometimes its academics who fear for their lives based on the subjects they teach.

And yet, I tell them again and again—your life will be even harder if you go to the US. I have no choice but to tell them: Don’t consider making the United States your home. There is discrimination against Muslims, people of color, non-citizens, and non-English speakers across our whole country, in the police and in the institutions, in our culture and in our economy. When they hear this truth, their face falls.

Somehow though, their images of America stay bright in their minds, their belief that America is the land of the free and happy cemented in their minds. They insist, “But I’ve seen on TV that Americans seem so…happy.” It’s a lie, I tell them, as countless college students chase after me on the street to practice English with me so they can one day study abroad in America. “Why?” I ask. Because America is beautiful and free and the life there is so rich and happy and free, they tell me.

If only they knew the truth of what awaits them.

I have heard the stories of countless people who dreamed their entire lives to go to the US. The vast majority of them never realized that dream. But for those who did? The blood, sweat, time and money that went into that journey was serious—often costing their own or the family’s entire life savings or livelihoods. And then when they got to the US, they were met only with prejudice, detention, police brutality, and endless hours cleaning other people’s homes and taking care of other people’s children.

Perhaps for the chance at religious and political freedom, it would be worth it for them. That’s how desperate they are. That’s how terrible their situation is. They would risk their entire lives and life savings to go to our country even if it means living a life of penny pinching on minimum wage working thankless jobs. That’s how much political and religious freedom means for them, how starved they are for the human desire to pursue independence, dreams and desires. Lack of freedom of speech really does feel like starvation and suffocation sometimes, an emptiness in the human life. Not being able to speak your mind and constantly censoring your speech is a kind of hungry suffocation for something more.

And so it goes around and around, the inequality of the world we live in piercing right into the hearts of our little conversations: because you were born in a certain place, you will never experience basic human rights and you will struggle to survive in both body and mind. Because of political restrictions on immigration, you will probably never be able to get an immigrant visa. Because of cultural relativism and ignorance, if you do make it there you will be discriminated against for your skin color, your accent, and your religion. Because of the exchange rate, you will struggle every day to put food on the table.

In this way, I believe the real failures of our system lie in the way people’s lives have been destroyed by the policed borders between nation-states.

The conversations I have with people here about Trump certainly illustrate his significance—not only his policies but also his racist ideas have penetrated the Uyghur people’s view of the United States and understanding of how Muslims are seen in the world. This significance—the way Trump’s racism and his policies have spread throughout the world—should not be overlooked.

However, is Trump drama distracting us from the real issues at stake? For example, the issue of how the combination of capitalism and the policed nation-state, a system that was been built on colonialism and slavery for the purpose of furthering capital accumulation. Instead of focusing on the attention-whore clown that is Trump, maybe we should be focusing on how the system as a whole has failed each and every one of us (okay, it hasn’t failed the 1%, but it has failed the 99%).

TLDR: Trump’s influence around the world is frightening and significant, and we should oppose his racist and fascist discourses and policies. However, the failures of the capitalist nation-state system as a whole across the entire world, rather than one silly man in a single country, should be the focus of our attention.

Trump, part 1

When Trump was elected, I was at first a bit exasperated and annoyed with white Americans’ doomsday reactions. 

People told me they couldn’t stop sobbing. Didn’t they consider that there were much worse events going on around the world that we should be more concerned about? Genocide, war, and starvation in Sudan, Palestine, and Chechnya just to name a few. What about those things? Were those deaths not worth our tears as well?

“Calm down, people. We’re going to have another election in four years,” I wanted to say. Didn’t they understand that many places around the world are under dictatorships that have no end in sight? Didn’t they understand what an extreme privilege we possess to even have an election in the first place? In the place where I live people don’t even dare to dream of voting. 

Didn’t people understand that even having the right to be posting whatever they wanted on Facebook was a privilege that many people do not have access to? Didn’t people understand that there were people—1.8 billion Chinese people to be exact—who do not have access whatsoever to Facebook in the first place, but even if they did, would not be able to post what they wanted, but instead would be subject to arrest if found with a post criticizing the government? Didn’t they realize that our situation, even if it was bad, was still 10 times better than most places in the world?

People declared the desire to move to Canada. Didn’t they understand that even being able to consider taking refuge in Canada was an enormous privilege? Did they know that the privilege of even carrying a passport in the first place is a privilege that for many people in the place I’m living now is nothing more than a pipe dream that will never be realized? Most people in the world cannot travel or move freely to other countries when they find themselves under political, social, or religious persecution. But not us. We have the ability to move to other countries if we so desire. Did they ever think about the fact that most people around the world cannot leave their own country freely, and if they do, they are more often than not rejected by the receiving country?  

But then again, I thought to myself, what right do I have to say anything at all? As a white US citizen, I may not be directly affected by Trump in the anxiously visceral ways of fearing for my life, the way many did feel after the election. My heart wrenches for the refugees seeking solace in our country only to be rejected again and again. I’m not ignorant of the facts. I know what Trump represents: a fascist, racist, sexist America greedily striving for power and control, not only in our own country, but across the world. But I cannot ignore the fact that even with Trump, our situation is privileged compared to so many around the world: we have the freedom to move away. We have the freedom of press to criticize the government. We have the right to assemble and protest. These freedoms of mobility and speech are freedoms that the people in the place I’m living do not have. In the recent past, people here have been shot and killed for protesting, and arrested on life sentences for writing about their opinions.

The next time you feel frustrated or sad or angry over Trumps policies, just stop for a moment and be grateful for two facts: 1) you will have the chance at another election in the near future, and 2) you can talk on the phone with your Congressional representatives (and be grateful that you even have an elected Congress!), write a newspaper editorial, email your friends and family, and post on social media without the fear of getting arrested and killed.

Dear Grandma

This was a letter I wrote last week after learning of my grandmother's death on May 7th, and was read out-loud by my aunt at her funeral yesterday.

Dear Grandma,

We’re not so different, you and I. Some people say that characteristics skip a generation. Is that what happened with us? Because we’re both super sassy, you and I. Did you know that when I was a little girl and being a smart mouth, my parents would tell me, “you’re being like your grandma”? Maybe it was their way of telling me that I was being too honest; I was saying out loud what I thought. Whether or not it was true was beside the point. I was saying it without thinking first about the way that it might hurt someone else. I’m still like that, sassy and straightforward with my emotions and my thoughts. It gets me into trouble sometimes. Okay, much of the time. But sometimes it’s a good thing. It helps people to know what I’m thinking and what I need. It helps me to be honest.

It’s only now that I know such talk was your way of showing that you cared. It was your way of showing love. It was also your way of showing your insecurity, your vulnerability, and your anxiety. I know that you always only wanted the best for Ruth and me. You wanted us to be in a safe environment growing up. You wanted us to be healthy. You were also insecure about yourself, your own body, and your own life, and perhaps you projected this shame onto my family and me. Is this why you would leave without saying good-bye? I know that you loved me, and you wanted to be close with me, and you wanted to protect me. It is only now that I realize you were feeling intense pain yourself, and you wanted to show your love for me, perhaps protect me somehow from feeling the same shame you felt.

There is something else that we share in common. Perhaps a propensity to isolate ourselves, move to far-away lands that are not easily accessible to family and friends. Me? China. You? Rural Michigan. Perhaps we did this because we have a vision for ourselves and our health and happiness. For you, it was easy access to hiking, biking, and swimming that you chose to make a priority. For me, it’s easy access to learning foreign languages and working with different cultures. But perhaps in doing so we ended up isolating ourselves and our relationships. Perhaps we built walls without even realizing it. Perhaps when we built those walls, others don’t have the energy to knock on them, and they just give up. And so, we too give up, and then 20 years pass and you’re gone and the opportunities I had to visit you are gone. I’ll never have another opportunity to go swimming with you, or eat ice cream on the beach, or watch fireworks on the harbor, or ride my decorated bike in the parade with Sam, or read on your living room couch, or go swimming at the club house, or take walks in the woods with you. Those things will never be able to happen again. I didn’t take the opportunity to do those things with you when the chance presented itself, and I can never get that lost time back.

But maybe there is still some hope here, maybe I can go back to Presque Isle and visit your grave and go biking in the streets and swimming in the lake. Maybe I can bring my kids here on summer vacation and we’ll watch the fireworks and the parade on Fourth of July and we’ll think of you and I’ll tell them stories of your tenaciousness and your spunk and your sass and your honesty. And I’ll tell them that you left me with perhaps the most important lesson of all: don’t give up on your relationships because they don’t reach out, or they’re far away, or they’ve put up walls that you don’t understand. Talk to them, tell them what you want the relationship to be like, ask them, “why are you putting up walls?” I know it’s not your fault that we didn’t spend a lot of time together when I was younger, just as it’s not my fault either. Maybe you were too scared, maybe you were not able to be vulnerable with us the way we needed you to be. But that was the only way you knew how to show us that you cared. Perhaps in this way you have given me a gift, shown me how much we need each other, and how our relationships are worth saving and worth talking about no matter how much hostility there was in the beginning. Because at the end of the day all we have are our relationships.

You and I didn’t always understand each other. But maybe that’s because we are so similar that we couldn’t see that we were staring at each other in the mirror, our defense mechanisms and our anxieties clouding our relationships and making it hard for people to feel close to us. Regardless, I know you love me and I hope you know that I love you too, always and forever. I will come back here with my own children to show them the place that you loved so much. I’ll think of you, and I’ll remember why you loved it here so much and I’ll remember that life is short, something to be treasured.

Over Thanksgiving last year, you said to me between laborious breaths over the phone, “I doubt I will ever see you again.” I knew then that I had to come back to Michigan to see you, and I did. Me with my concussion, you with your weak heart. A weak heart that was actually not weak at all but stronger than any of us could have ever imagined, pounding through your chest and keeping you breathing throughout the winter, the blood pulsing through your veins as you gasped for oxygen. We laid next to each other in bed, sleeping and holding hands, you scowling at me when I accidentally touched your back with cold hands. We slept and listened to the radio and laughed and cried together.

Again, we are not so different, you and I. You had panic attacks in the same way I did, hyperventilating and confused, scared but not sure about what. “I am NOT scared to die,” you insisted over and over again. We talked about it, and you begged and pleaded with me: “I want to die, I want to die,” you told me over and over again. “I know, I know,” was all I could say while holding your hand. “It’s going to be okay,” was all I could say between my tears. I knew how you felt. I had felt it only a few weeks before, after sick with a concussion I had fearful images of me dying and what my funeral would look like, images that would leave me in the throes of panic attacks.

My concussion was painful, but I don’t regret a single minute, a single move that I made. That concussion brought me back to you, brought me back to Michigan so we could celebrate Christmas and New Year’s together. That concussion brought us closer than we ever had been, allowed us to spend more time together in one stretch than I can ever remember. And what a gift that was. What an honor that was to spend that time with you. Thank you for letting me take care of you. You were vulnerable with me, letting me do and see things that were embarrassing, letting me into that part of your life, into that private space that I had never before seen before. Letting me see that vulnerable side of you, for before you had always put up a shield for me. It was a shield made of love, a shield made out of protection for me and my safety and health, but it was a shield nonetheless. This winter, both of us sick and lying in bed, we were finally able to be vulnerable together. And perhaps for the first time in our lives we were able to sit in peace together.

I had a dream about you recently. I was taking care of you in your hospital bed and you kept thrashing around uncontrollably. I was trying to hold you down, but I couldn’t and you almost knocked over the computer that was next to your bed. There was a bottle of cat shampoo that I just had to pour into a plastic bag, but it kept spilling all over the floor and all over me. While I was distracted, you escaped. You rode off in your nightgown on a boat, sailing off into the lake’s horizon. Later, the lake froze over and you came walking back to me on the ice and we embraced.

Grandma, I know you’ll always be there for me, even if it is only through memories and stories. I’m glad you were finally able to escape the misery you were in and I hope you’re out there, riding on boats and skiing and swimming and hiking with Sam and Hope like you love to do.