For my 20,000 post: "But mom, why do they have to come HERE?"

Without giving away my exact age, I was a young child in the mid-70's when the U.S. accepted desperate refugees from Vietnam. Although the only television news outlets at that time were primarily the three networks, there was a lot of coverage of it and I watched some of it with my mom. The world outside of my own bubble of home, school and family was just starting to penetrate my consciousness, although my awareness that such a world existed wasn't quite growing fast enough for my parents.

While watching the coverage, and not really fully understanding it, I asked my mother "But why do they have to come HERE? Why do WE have to take them?" While mom was understandably upset at my complete lack of awareness and understanding, she also recognized that I was quite young and didn't really understand the situation or the import of what I was asking. She patiently explained that "we have more, so much more" and that these people not only had nothing at all and nowhere to go, and that they were suffering terribly and in danger in their native land, but that we, as a nation, had helped to create the very conditions under which they were suffering and that caused the necessity of their leaving. She recognized that she needed to put it into terms that my young mind would grasp, so she asked me to imagine that I and my parents had everything taken from us, had no home, no possessions, had to scramble for food and water and other basics every day and didn't know if we'd even eat from day to day, had to watch friends and family being taken away or die, and had to worry every second about being persecuted or killed. I wouldn't even have my "Ginny" doll, a doll I'd received for Christmas a couple years before and that I'd named and had to have EVERYWHERE I went, even school.

While I still didn't fully "get it" right then, it slowly began to seep into my consciousness as I became more aware that there was, indeed, a world outside of my little bubble of existence and that many others suffered in that world, that part of growing up and maturing was realizing that selfishness and insularity were not humane and were not good for either the individual or the society as a whole. This didn't mean that we shouldn't take care of ourselves and our families, by no means. It was not an "either-or" situation. Years later, when I looked back on that incident, I shook my head at my childish ignorance and selfishness. The only good thing about it was that I was a child and really didn't know any better, and that my mother rightfully used it as a teachable moment, a moment that helped galvanize my social consciousness and truly began my awareness of life outside my own bubble of work, school and family.

When I look back on that incident, I also remember how I felt when I first was hearing about the Vietnam refugees being taken in by our government. It was a kind of "us vs. them" feeling. THEY were coming to "take away" things from US. At that age, like many children, I saw things in that "us and them", "black and white", "mine and someone taking mine" way. I also began to realize that some people never get out of that kind of mindset, where they zealously protect what is "theirs" because someone else, someone different, coming along means that "theirs" will be taken away. This is why, as a nation built on immigration and refugees, we've always had a dichotomous attitude regarding both, as even a cursory glance at our history will show. This is the kind of attitude we need to educate against, and do it by touching emotions and making it real personally, as my mother did with me.

When I was older and studying our refusal to accept most Jewish refugees just prior to and during WWII, and what then subsequently happened to them (among them Anne Frank, whose family had applied for asylum here), as well as the very negative attitude the majority of Americans had against such refugees, I remembered my own childish attitude in that regard. And my knowledge of the social sciences told me just how unfortunately common and hard-wired a lot of such attitudes are with many humans and human societies. We are by no means at all alone in that sentiment. But we, as a nation, have often been able to overcome at least some of it and accept and protect more refugees and immigrants than many other nations, with the current exception of modern Europe.

One thing a knowledge of history gives is a sense of longer-term perspective. When people say that "we've never had this much hate and bigotry in our nation", while I can understand why it may seem like that is true, I know from my deep knowledge of our own history that that is not the case at all. There have ALWAYS been such people and sentiments in this country, indeed, there have been even worse instances of religious and cultural bigotry and legal actions against such groups. The very existence of the 19th-century Know Nothing party was to pass and enact laws against Catholics and to legally persecute them. That is just one of many examples. It just seems like it's unprecedented because the internet and instant mass communications makes such attitudes and incidents far more known than they otherwise would have been.

One reason the party ultimately failed, even though they did manage to cause much damage against Catholics, is because enough people began standing up against them publicly in every way they could. And that is what we must do know, with all of the hatred, bigotry and discrimination coursing through the nation, infecting even seemingly intelligent, rational people. Standing up publicly, firmly and consistently against it, even when it may very well be costly or dangerous to do so, is the only thing that will do it.