A lot of words have become cliché because of their seeming overuse. One of these is “xenophobic.”
The latest headline is that President Biden has accused Japan and India—two of our needed allies— of being xenophobic. He’s probably not off base in his claims– various cultures around the world make no bones about their desire for purity, for “unadulterated” DNA. It’s just that one might wonder why this is news now, when only recently people were talking about how much the U.S needs Japan and India as allies, given the indisputable emergence of China and its no limits relationship with Russia.
There are those in this country for whom the label would seem to apply, namely the Republican “Freedom” Caucus, along with governors in southern border states. Well, and probably millions of Americans who have bought into the ugly effluence gushing from Trump’s pie hole at the behest of people like Stephen Miller.
What is it, exactly, that these people have against those who, despite what we may see and hear on a daily basis from the paranoid Right, prefer to see America as the shining city on a hill, a place that can offer them escape from the hell they’re running from? The fact that so many want to come here says a lot about where they’re coming from, doesn’t it?
There’s a difference between working out a border policy that takes into account the monumental tasks of processing and assimilation and the myriad attendant needs, and harboring a hands-off attitude of suspicion and even hatred of anyone who isn’t white and (Protestant?) Christian.
Citizenship in America demands a fair amount of all of us, including an ongoing effort to tamp down the irrational suspicion and fear, and to recognize the humanity of those who are making mindboggling journeys to get here.
And dare to take a look at your own family trees, for crying out loud!
3 Cents' 