I’m probably seventh or eighth generation American. My 97-year-old mother’s grandfather — which means he was my great-grandfather — was enslaved as a child. That’s just on my maternal side. My father’s family’s history is more complicated, and that story is a little longer to tell, but suffice to say, my family name was not taken from a slavemaster.
Anyway, that’s not the point of this message. Even though my family has been here for several generations, I believe there needs to be a comprehensive, clear path to citizenship for our undocumented friends, neighbors, co-workers and their families. I believe people who were brought here as children should be able to claim this as their homeland.
I don’t believe denying citizenship and building walls on land that was stolen from the Indigenous people is either Godly or humane.
But deportation is not high on my personal list of fears.
I also have a steady job (for now). I’ve been able to work during the pandemic, as has my husband. We’re both deemed “essential” workers.
We’re not worried about losing our home, and neither of us has missed a meal (maybe that’s unfortunate).
Hunger or homelessness are not high on my personal list of fears.
My job affords me access to health insurance. Sure, premiums are a pain, there’s more red tape involved in this country than in other developed nations, because our system is for-profit instead of for-people. Still, I can afford the copays (for now), and I’m relatively healthy for a person who is vainly insisting she’s middle-aged, even though the calendar and the mirror tell a different story.
Lack of access to medical care is not high on my personal list of fears.
I am a cis-gender, heterosexual female. I’ve never had to think about my sexual orientation, or feeling as if I was born with the wrong genitalia. While as a female, there is always that fear of abuse and assault that comes from living in a patriarchal society, being killed for being transgender is not high on my personal list of fears.
What names are trending now on the never-ending list of Black people being shot, maimed, killed by police? This week it is Trayford Pellerin (Friday, Lafayette, La.,) and Jacob Blake (Sunday, Kenosha, Wis.). And if you’re familiar with these two cases and point out that Pellerin was carrying a knife, note that none of the Saugus police killed the man with a knife a couple of weeks ago and they were injured. Yet they managed to not fire a single shot. As for Blake, the video that showed him being shot in the back seven times at close range is even more traumatizing with the knowledge that his three young sons were in the backseat of the car and witnessed the whole thing.
So yes, police brutality, being manhandled, killed by police for the crime of existing in a Black skin is high on my personal list of fears, and it is extended to all who could become a hashtag the next time someone in a police uniform “fears for his life.”
I don’t care about marijuana. I don’t use it, never have, and really don’t care if other people do, as long as I don’t have to smell it as I go about my daily business. Still, I do believe the laws and sentences concerning marijuana use and drug addiction are unfairly handed down, with Black, brown and poor people given harsher sentences for use, while those with a little less melanin and/or more money are given more opportunities for probation, drug rehabilitation and other diversion programs.
So while drug addiction and prison sentences from them don’t affect me personally, and it’s not high on my personal list of fears, it is one of those subjects politicians will only touch on when they campaign in certain communities.
And this is my (long-winded) point.
We are not a monolith. While my friend and colleague, Carolina, worries about the mistreatment of undocumented workers and counts immigration reform among her high priorities, she and I share the same worries and concerns about healthcare access and sending our children back to school in a COVID-19 world.
She and I come from different countries, but we share the realization that other people’s personal fears should be our concern too — we come with just as many opinions, worries, fears and priorities as our multi-hued skin colors.
As the last convention wraps up its dog-and-pony show and we barrel headlong into the next two months of campaign promises and slogans, I call on candidates to address all our concerns in all our communities. Don’t just talk about immigration with brown communities and police reform and crime in the Black communities.
Even if it’s not on our personal list of fears, this world — the pandemic, the economy, the job market, healthcare access, police brutality, the proliferation of guns — should be on all of our agendas. We’re multi-faceted, multi-lingual, multicultural, multi-hued people. We are not a monolith.
