And here I thought I’d run out of ways to criticize my nieces and nephews and their parents! For the record, I was not raised by immigrants, but I was brought up by two people who were, and just thinking about working that little tid-bit into conversations the next time I’m with my relations made my eyes sparkle.
After having breakfast with my friend it does seem painfully obvious that being under the influence of parents whose ability to learn a brand new culture was not something to brag about on Facebook or in the holiday mass mailing but was, in fact, a matter of survival must have a drastically different impact on the youngsters than being raised by people whose main priority is that their children be popular, followed by a very close second main priority: making sure the children regard their parents not as authority figures but as friends. In my family, that difference is evident to say the least.
For some reason, by Tuesday afternoon I was exhausted, so I ate some dinner and took a bath earlier than usual, and by 8:00 I was on the couch with a cup of tea and before I’d realized what had happened I’d sat through an hour – a full hour – of Charlie Rose. His guests were a group of mayors of various U.S. cities. I think cities are interesting, so I watched. All of the mayors were male, of course, and all were white except for the mayors of Atlanta and Philadelphia, who were black. Before we nominate Charlie Rose for a diversity award, I do want to point out that having black mayors of those two cities is worth no more bonus points than electing a Catholic one in Saint Louis is. But for Charlie Rose, having two black guys who are neither entertainers nor athletes at the same table at the same time is a huge step in the right direction. Still, it was the Charlie Rose party, and Charlie Rose's commitment to the white male point of view is a hard habit to break: The mayor of Houston is a lesbian, but seated at the table talking about that city was a white guy, which was confusing to me until he answered one of the questions and I saw in the text at the bottom of the screen the word “former” as part of his title.
After a couple of rounds of kissing the mayor of New York City’s ass until it shone so brightly that studio lights really were not necessary, the conversation, much to my surprise, turned to immigration. Michael Bloomberg described the U.S. policy on immigration with one word: Dumb. The mayor of Minneapolis said that people can complain all they’d like about the Somalian immigrants in his city, but should the U.S. decide it wants to do business with Somalia, the tune will likely change. The mayor of San Diego said that universities in California educate many thousands of students from other countries in fields like engineering and computer science – fields in which the U.S. is woefully, inexcusably deficient – and then, upon graduation, they are refused entry and sent home because Republicans cannot stop claiming that we’re “tough on immigration.” And there’s an international airport, he added, less than a mile from the U.S.-Mexico border that handles a number of trans-Pacific flights, so why would we want to build a new one? He’s building a gate instead, so that international travelers can pay a small fee and walk from one country to another.
The former mayor of Houston mentioned two facts he doesn’t believe should co-exist. The first is that the U.S. has rapidly fallen behind many other countries when it comes to having the best and brightest engineers, scientists and doctors. And second, in California and Texas – two states that comprise an astounding percentage of the nation’s total post-secondary student population – the myth that higher education is an elitist-run luxury item that must be slashed until there’s nothing left but the barest of bones grows more powerful every time an elected Republican official utters takes the stage.
Michael Bloomberg said he’s dreading the day when he realizes that the winner of a Nobel Prize is a person who was turned away from this country as a result of our kneejerk reaction to short-term smear tactics.
Because thinking long-term – whether it’s toward the future, or back into the past – is, I suppose, more than you can reasonably expect of a populace that can be easily placated by shows like Two and a Half Men, one that is routinely basks in a sense of warmth when kitty cats are featured on the six o’clock news. For more than two centuries we’ve been arriving here by the thousands and then, once settled, insisting that someone lock the gates and toss the key. At various times in the not-so-distant past we’ve officially hated the Irish, the Italians, the Germans and “the Bohemians.” We really did it up with the Japanese. And now that we’re so comfortable that reading history books is considered an elitist pursuit, our well-fed youngsters – including, tragically, my parents’ grandchildren – have been given implicit permission to not consider where their accessories are manufactured, or by whom, and, at the same time, in a way that almost honors the ancestral experience, accept without question the PR that ignores the fact that the country is being robbed blind by the fanciest refugee camp in the land – Wall Street – and take the easy route instead: Honor the history of our country by following in the footsteps of past generations and blame the most recent arrivals, which in this case is people from Mexico, which is mighty ironic, given the fact that lots of our biggest and brightest states used to be Mexico, until we followed orders issued by God and made those territories our own. Of course, arriving at that understanding would require a bit of reading, which in turn would require the televisions and the iPods to be turned off, and I know as well as anyone that that’s asking a lot.
