Once upon a time in America, we were proud of being a melting pot
For the past few years, I’ve been studying Italian. I spend Thursdays with Claudio at the library working on verbs and vocabulary and trying to become a fluent Italian speaker. Claudio is a 90 year old Italian immigrant who has lived in this country for 50 years.
During the course of our lessons we discovered our like-mindedness and our conversations began to veer off into politics, history and philosophy. We still do the basics and then often I will read out loud an essay that Claudio has written on Dante or the Catholic religion, or whatever else is on his mind. He enjoys the writing and I enjoy the spirited discussion. In Italian! I have also heard, in bits and pieces, the story of his emigration to the United States. Coming of age during the time of Mussolini and Hitler, his eyes have seen a lot.
Claudio was born in Istria, a Croatian peninsula which was part of Italy before WWII. After the war it was taken over by Tito and Yugoslavian communists who sought to take revenge on the Italians and his brother was captured, imprisoned, and sentenced to death. He himself, placed in a camp, eventually escaped and found his way to a small town in Italy, where many refugees were being resettled. I do not have the full story yet, just a general outline, restricted as we are by time and language. So, I don’t yet know what happened to his brother or parents. Eventually, he found work as a waiter, then somehow got an education and applied for immigration to the United States. Parts of the story are still sketchy but I am aware that for a period of time he was homeless, living on the streets in post-war Europe.
Naturally, this history has shaped his perceptions of our current political situation. And so, two days after the election, mired in a stew of despair and hopelessness, I dragged myself to the library to meet with Claudio, who I was hoping would give me some comfort and inspiration after all the difficult situations he had faced in life. I was so wrong.
He had written out his thoughts in Italian and as I read them aloud, I began to cry. Someone who had been through innumerable challenges could not find even a glimmer of hope in Trump's election. He seemed heartbroken. His fear and distress were written all over his face. His contempt for Donald Trump was palpable. He is not personally threatened like so many other immigrants but he remembers coming to America and seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time and welling up with emotion and pride. America, to the rest of the world, was a beacon of hope and freedom, a symbol of all that was good in the world. A melting pot. That symbol is no more. It’s a farce. The wrecking crew has begun their work.
For anyone who studies history and politics, it is not difficult to draw parallels to 1930s Europe and WWII, to see the thread between freedom and fascism as fragile and easily broken. To imagine in the mind’s eye just how Hitler and Nazi Germany happened and ask ourselves “what would I have done”, sure that the answer is “I would have fought it. I would have stood up against it. I would have protected those who were persecuted.”
My gay and Jewish friends are very nervous. My Indian friends, who have lived in the U.S. for 35 years, have had a family meeting to discuss a “contingency plan”. My Japanese daughter-in-law wants to leave the country. A Chinese associate reports he hasn’t been sleeping well. I worry about my son, who we adopted as a child from Korea and is a member of the U.S. Navy. My husband’s black assistant has been called the N word several times in the past few months. My grandchildren are Asians. My disabled niece is horrified that a president would ridicule a disabled person. And I am a woman disgusted with the misogyny of our president-elect.
I am feeling sick to my stomach since the election. Horrified that the American people chose hate and bigotry and kicking 20 million people off Obamacare over common decency. And yes, I am afraid. I woke night before last at 3 am with a gasp and a beating heart. I no longer feel safe.
So, we are about to see what we are made of. Do we have what it takes to fight oppression and discrimination? What if it includes violence? Will we defend our fellow Americans or avert our eyes and cover our ears when we see racism and bigotry? I hope and believe that if we all work together, stay unified, and protest without violence, if all hands are on deck, united against the coming surge of right wing intimidation and attempts at erosion of civil liberties, we will prevail. Our country has seen hard times before and certainly will again.
At Target a few days ago a friend started chatting with the elderly woman behind her. She told my friend that she is 87 years old and had told her children that she will not die while Trump is the president. And my 90 year old friend Claudio left me with this thought: For the next four years we will just have to fight this together. He is not going anywhere. And neither can we.
