Over the last two and a half years, open white supremacy, anti immigration sentiment, and anti women sentiment have been on the rise. With a president who is openly sexist, racist, and xenophobic, it all makes sense why the average American would think that this type of rhetoric would be okay. So it also makes sense that the number of hate crimes has steadily risen, and that mass shootings by white supremacists would also continue. But all the rants and the hate completely obliterate what really unites all of us to each other, and that is our humanity, our love for others and our love for the supposed rights that we think we have. 

Today, a friend shared this article entitled Swimming to America, a Love Story, in which the writer details her father’s treacherous path to coming to the United States during a Mao-ruled communist China, all via escaping the mainland and physically swimming across to Hong Kong. She highlights his struggles and ultimately, his love for this country. And she insists that every single one of us who can say our parents, grandparents, or great grandparents immigrated here — we’re all immigrants, too, and we have to not only remember that, but share that story to ultimately bring humanity into these cold, awful hate-filled conversations we see in the media, by ICE agents, by humanity-lacking right-wing politicians, and by our own president.

I wish we’d have this dialogue more openly, but my biggest fear is that the dialogue just cannot happen because we refuse to listen to each other anymore, and we selectively choose what “facts” and “statistics” to believe.