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.
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