A little-acknowledged divide

The US is a country of immigrants. This, at least, is what we learn in grade school. The pilgrims escaping persecution, the Irish escaping famine, everyone looking to start anew. "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," etc etc. It's become on the poignant side, though, to hear what modern immigrants have to say about the US, and what many Americans have to say about modern immigrants. Ironic, to say the least.

We all know well the ideal of "the American dream," the streets lined with gold, the inevitable disillusionment upon arrival but continued circulation of tales of the grandeur and wealth of the country that would remain mythical to most. It's disturbing, then, to hear a young Kurd from Tabriz declare the US to be good for finding money and for fun, but terrible for living. Really? A Kurdish immigrant from Iran would rather live in Iran than in the US. Add to that his Cuban roommate also declaring the US a bad place to live, and you've got to take a moment to consider. The orphaned Cuban who grew up in war-torn El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras, was shipped to Moldova, Ukraine, and Canada for political asylum, says he wouldn't want to live permanently in the US. An Ecuadorian student recalls having been called a spic in an American high school; a Ghanaian student comments on the prevalence of racism directed at African Americans. The list goes on. What say you, America?

Fresh off the bus from an eight-day visit to DC, I can't help but think of the difference, the often ignored rift in society as it's become so painfully obvious to me of late, highlighting a feature of my last visit. On a quick overnight trip in December, I'd been roped into joining Salvador and his Kurdish co-workers, Omid and Kamran, to a work party, sponsored by an Iranian company they occasionally worked with - all of us arriving with little intention of staying long and, unfortunately, garbed in jeans and slightly skeptical smiles and smirks. The resulting story is one in which I unavoidably find myself referring to "the Americans," for once not considering myself one of them. Instead, the older, wealthy, white Americans present, lounging in tuxedos and floor-length dresses while enjoying duck appetizers and wine, made it quite obvious that the young, foreign crew I'd arrived with was just that - foreign - and I was quite the odd man out due to the association. After about twenty minutes, we laughingly ducked out, Salvador and Omid commenting on the sad state of the food and boiling down the event to "a night of bull shit." I don't know when I last felt so blatantly un-American or so disappointed in the image of "Americans" that had just been presented.

This past week was spent with these same fellows, joining their everyday lives for a brief period of time and learning about their pasts, their hopes for the future, their interactions and lack thereof with "Americans," always differentiating between white Americans, Spanish Americans, Hispanic immigrants, Persian and Kurdish immigrants, etc. The chief similarity was, unquestionably, a sense of judgement and/or hostility from native-born Americans (particularly in reference to white Americans) and plans of being in the US for work and/or education, but certainly not for living. Live here? No, no. So stressed, busy, self-important, unfriendly. People lack connection, family life is in complete disarray (my own story, unfortunately, emphasizing this. ha). "In this country you never really know someone else, you only know what they tell you," says Salvador.

Please don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not a self-hating American, and, as my friends had to admit, there are good and bad in every country, wealthy bullshitters in every country, hostile people and genuinely kind people in every country. No person or place is perfect. Out of all of it, though, I can't help but think that perhaps the largest problem is often a lack of recognition of the very existence of a problem, let alone attempts to make a change for the better. I come home to the small, white Christian agricultural town of North East, PA, and am unavoidably reminded of this. Do you see the immigrant and racial divides, have you ever experienced, observed, or even considered what it's like to be in the minority?

I was reminded of my time in Ghana as I became the object of more than one curious look when Salvador and I dropped into a Central American restaurant for lunch one day, making me the only non-Latino and native English speaker in sight. Hispanic immigrants live, work, and eat with Hispanic immigrants, as Kurds live, work, and eat with Kurds (with the occasional Persian gatherings to mix it up), all in an understood agreement of avoidance from white Americans unless somehow thrown together. Call me crazy, but it's a divide and virtually unspoken sense of animosity that bothers the hell out of me.