What is greatness (in the USA)?

I've been back from Eire for almost two weeks now and with graduate school starting I have definitely had a combined culture shock. I am going to write some more about being away later on, with parts of my journal from the trip but right now I just want to repost something from my tumblr account that I've been mulling over since returning Stateside:

So, what exactly happened to the Civil Rights Movement? After the 1960s and 70s.
I mean, yeah we have come forward quite a bit...but it seems like things have just puttered out especially in the last decade or so. One step forward and three steps backward? Maybe I have an idealized view on the 90s and what I remember of the 80s, but things seemed to have degraded a lot since then.

Here are some points: We had one of the nastiest elections in the last four years with politicians and citizens being super disrespectful to each other and even now to our first non-White president, Barack Obama. We have politicians and regular folk calling other human beings "illegal", we got schools being shut down while military spending still hasn't been curbed nor have the armed forces withdrawn from multiple occupied countries. Women still don't make as much money as men do, check the data. Folks are still being killed in this country for being queer, or brown and poor (or all three).

This is not the vision. This is not the United States.
The melting pot isn't supposed to be cultural genocide.

What happend to the vision?

How are we all equal?

How can folks say this country is great?

Israeli Hypocrisy and the Immigrant Experience

So, there was a story about an immigration crackdown in a mostly African immigrant neighbourhood in Tel Aviv this past week. I’ve sat on this news for a while mostly because I was too chickenshit to say anything about it and also because it depresses me. Last night my friend (who is also half Moroccan Jew like me) told me a story about how his mother, growing up in Israel, would eat apple cores out of trashcans because she was hungry and her family too poor to afford proper meals. I was incensed and felt the call to write something

In the United States, we Americanized Jews are fed this idea of Israel as this egalitarian safe space where all are welcome and we are with our “people”. The irony is this is wholly untrue, especially for those who are not European Jews or residents of Israel who are from Africa such as refugees, migrant workers and other similar groups.  I remember a story especially, back in 2010 where Ashkenazim (European Jews) didn’t want their children studying with Sephardim (North-African, Middle Eastern, Arab, Persian Jews etc) and were taking their kids out of schools. Segregation is illegal in Israel.

Recently, the anti-African hatred in Israel has grown to disgusting proportions and really highlights a gigantic disconnect between rich European Jews and their poor African neighbours while mirroring the Sephardic/Mizrahi experience in Israel for generations (though perhaps not to the extreme of current oppression): There have been numerous race riots where Africans are targeted, the police have been racially profiling migrant workers, Israel is building a detention centre for African migrants, sex-trafficking victims from Sudan and Ethiopia were put in a jail because shelter space was limited, but perhaps most chilling was the cheering of police as they hunted down Sudanese on the streets of Eliat.

I am the child of generations of Iberian-Sephardic Jews who made their home in Morocco after the racist Catholic monarchy expelled them in 1492 (same year they started conquering the “New” World, by the way). I am the child of Moroccans that survived the Holocaust because the King of Morocco refused to bow to the colonial Vichy regime’s Nazi policies. I was not born to sit here and be quiet while injustice is meted out by a powerful few.  A writer for Haaretz, Sarah Kreimer put it well: “What would my grandfather say about migrant workers? We owe it to ourselves – as a society that understands what it means to be refugees – to treat them with basic human decency and respect.”

What is happening in Israel right now is wrong, very wrong. It is contrary to the teachings of our people. Palestinians are being pushed out of their homes and murdered in the streets, African refugees are being treated like criminals, land is being occupied, bombs are blowing up Jewish children in the name of G-d, drones and missiles are ripping apart communities. It must stop. I am only one voice, but I am raising it up.

I dedicate this article to my grandmother.

The News is Bad For Your Health

Damn it. My blood pressure is rising! I know that it is probably in the interest of my mental health and well-being to stop reading the news in the morning when I am opening at work, but I can't seem to help it. It's a little ritual I afford myself to be in the know since I don't have cable or Internet at home. I try to read a variety of sources, both local, national, international and non-English. The local ones get to me the most because I tend to read the comment sections. I really, really need to stop doing that!


Anyway, one of the big stories of this week is the proposed ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) facility to be opened in downtown Portland, near the university and OHSU. First off, let me just say, if you are a POC like me, don't read the damn comment sections about this news article. The point is though, the news is bad for your health. Everyone has an opinion about news articles, and many of them are nasty when it comes to immigration. Racists. Yeah, that's the word of the day...and don't try to call it something else.


I am definitely not for this facility to be opened up, because I am pro-immigrant and pro-America (the ICE is contrary to American beliefs and ideals!) but also because it will change the face of Portland. What happened to the Portland I moved to years ago? Yeah, there's a lot of racial problems here, little racial diversity...but for the most part we all got along. I feel that the opening of an ICE facility will further damage this city. We're supposed to be "progressive" here, so why are all these local anti-immigrant (racists) folks on the net applauding the idea of an ICE facility in Portland to round up "illegals"?


Where is my blood pressure medication!?

Racism-induced Exhaustion

I wasn't sure how long the men had been on the train, to be honest. I don't usually pay attention when I am on my way home from work. At some point I had started a short conversation with the two Brazilians nearby mostly because I never get to speak Portuguese in Portland.


Later on I was talking on my phone to a friend, in Spanish, relating to her my day and the neatness of running into Portuguese-speakers on the commute home. As the train pulled into the last stop, my stop, I put my phone away and as I approached the exit heard the loud end of a conversation about how "we should just close the borders and then tell them all to shut up."


My knee-jerk reaction was rage, of course. Those men weren't looking directly at me when they said it...but you know that feeling you get when everyone is talking about you but they're not actually acknowledging your presence nearby? They probably didn't think I even understood English...and I'm not even Mexican. At all. The shocking part was their appearance...they all seemed rather innocuous...for older White men. People are ugly when they think you're not paying attention or that you don't understand what they're saying.


So when my friends or acquaintances (mostly the White ones) whine at me about how they don't understand why these horrible racist things happen to me or around me and that  I "must be hanging out in the wrong areas" or with the "wrong people," I smile now, thinly. I don't have anything to say anymore. I'm too damn tired of experiencing it,  pointing it out, and "discussing" it.

 I just want to know who the hell you're all hanging out with.