My parents are afraid. My family lives in Southwest Arkansas. Our home is a fifteen-minute drive away from Hope, a small town populated by roughly 10,000 people. My dad is a poultry farmer for Tyson and my mom is an elementary-grade educator. They are constructive members of American society, but they are also Mexican immigrants. My parents left their country as teenagers to build a home and provide better opportunities for me and my siblings.
The presidential campaign was a shocking time for my family. For months, we watched in horror as white supremacist groups, who were emboldened by Donald Trump's rhetoric, gained confidence. Knowing that Arkansas is notorious for having housed groups such as the KKK, my parents were passionate about the outcome of this election. Our safety depended on whether generalizations would change the way immigrants and the Latino community are viewed.
As documented citizens, my parents should not be afraid. And yet the fear is there on the premise of potential discrimination and hate.
I was a senior in high school during the election. When I learned that friends of mine had supported Trump, I felt disgusted and betrayed. I distanced myself from them and scoffed at their opinions. A conversation I had with one classmate is emblematic. It was before band practice and the hallways were bustling. Then I saw his hat--the ugly red baseball cap with its bold white lettering: Make America Great Again.
I pointed at it and contemptuously asked why he was wearing such a thing. Based on my Mexican heritage, he probably knew exactly where the conversation was going. "He's not trying to deport you, just the bad guys. The illegals. And how would the wall affect you anyways?"
I couldn't find words to express that the terms "bad hombres" and "illegal aliens" are all too often conflated to mean everyone that looks like one. I couldn't tell him that my father has been accused of being illegal and forced to prove that he wasn't. I couldn't explain that this sort of speech leads to discrimination and prejudice against groups of people--solely based on appearances.
History proves that the very same nationalistic and xenophobic speech demonstrated during the election can have a negative impact on the public. Studies at the New School for Social Research show that the expression of prejudice forms a chain reaction in which generalizations are accepted and discrimination is legitimized. And when harmful generalizations are normalized, it becomes all too easy to target groups of individuals. It happened during the Holocaust and the Cambodian genocide--and it is happening now on American soil.
It may seem like a large leap, but human-rights violations are known to begin with division. Division that springs from generalizing speech. No, Trump is not by any means Hitler, but it is necessary that we understand that a win for him was synonymous with a win for the alt-right groups that endorsed him. Groups that thrive on the very same division and hate that leads to mass enslavement, removal, and murder.
Last year I was blinded by the insensitive generalizations that were aimed at me, my parents, and my grandparents. When I see my family, I see hardworking Americans--not gang members or drug dealers. So, in my hurt pride, I mislabeled all Trump voters as racists.
But over time, I soon found it impossible to dismiss everyone that supported Trump as racist or prejudiced. I couldn't simply generalize a group of people in that manner--even in retaliation to the generalizing my ethnic group faces. That was not the Arkansas I knew and the people I grew up with. If I wanted to be respected as an individual, then I needed to do the same for others.
It is difficult to imagine that seemingly harmless stereotypes can have a connection with extremities such as genocide. But it is a reality. We cannot tolerate generalizations and xenophobic language as a society. It has a harmful effect on how we interact with fellow Americans and human beings. While it is impossible to completely agree with each other, it is possible to respect others despite minute cultural differences.
The time has come for us to re-examine our societal values and the way in which we empathize with our fellow Americans. That is the only way that we can make America great.
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Diana Aguirre is a Mexican American student majoring in human rights at Columbia University.
Editorial on 05/04/2018