May intentions

"The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows."

What we’ve bore witness to this first quarter of the year is jaw-dropping. The levels of inhumanity that abound. It’s one thing to know it, and to have always known it. It’s another to watch the indifference even within your own community. It’s something else entirely to have to also witness whole swaths of society realize they’ve been duped. It’s not as enjoyable as you’d expect it to feel because once the veil is lifted, what does that mean for the rest of us?

I am an immigrant. Born of immigrants. I am the third generation to move across the world of my own free will in my recent family history. I think of how duped people were into thinking of the land I was born in as a land of opportunity. The city I belong to ushering in immigrants that didn’t look like me. The feeling of being foreign that doesn’t rinse off—not that you want it to—and what that entails. 3600 miles away and I am still in my mother’s living room, watching.

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I seem to be caught in these endless conversations late…