To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow. ~William Faulkner

I’ve been very sad to hear about the intolerance that’s been going on in the states lately. Last week, I wrote about how being black in Venezuela has worked to my advantage in terms of crime. While there was a bit of humor to the topic, I don’t think that anyone being mistreated because of their race or ethnicity is a laughing matter.

Many of the expats here in Caracas have been asking me what the he** is going on over in the US. Why are Americans all of a sudden becoming even more intolerant? I’m not going to pretend to know the exact reason the US is seeing a surge in people being a lot more vocal about their racism. What I do know is that they’ve been given a huge stage to put on a show. And who’s providing this stage…the American media.

My theory is that there were always racist and intolerant Americans. However, there was a time (post Civil Rights Movement) when it became taboo to openly express their views on people who are different, so you almost forgot they existed. The only places they ventured to spout racial epithets were their own homes or places where like-minded people congregated. On a national level, we tried to uplift our conversations and reverting to the use of racial slurs was considered politically incorrect.

Somehow, around the time we elected the first mixed-race president, the standards shifted. So now it’s common place for media outlets to give a lot of airtime to the minority of Americans harboring a lot of hate for immigrants, homosexuals, blacks, Muslims, etc. Unfortunately, some of us have become desensitized quickly to hearing such ignorance and anger in the mainstream media. Next thing you know, we’ll be seeing television series with similar themes disguised as comedy.

I hope that before we erode any more of the progress that has been made in the last 40+ years, we’ll start to self-police and expect more from each other, as well as journalists. In the interim, I will continue to teach my children that race is irrelevant and harboring hate will destroy their souls.

N.B. The title of this post is a quote from an unknown author.

All day yesterday CNN had stories about immigrants all over the world. As SB 1170, Arizona’s ridiculous immigration bill went into effect, it was interesting to see that undocumented immigrants is not a problem inherent to the US. Hearing these stories (sometimes sad, sometimes uplifting) reminded me of a post a wrote when I first started this blog “Is it me, or has it gotten better?”. At that time, I felt that immigrants faced fewer obstacles today than they did 20 years ago. I was thinking about the many first generation immigrants like myself who held positions of leadership, were well-educated and still held a strong connection to their countries of origin. I also thought about a time when young Haitians living in the Northeast were forced to say that they Jamaican to avoid facing stigmas and/or violence. Now, it felt like more of us made a point to declare our heritage.

From afar, I’ve been watching this immigration bill unfold amongst Arizona immigrants, as well as the Federal Government’s reaction. One of things that has struck me as odd is that they have debated this issue as Latino problem. I may have missed it, but I have yet to see a black immigrant speaking about immigration reform and what it means to them. I know that Latinos outnumber us (heck, they outnumber Caucasians in some states), but why does it seem we are weak faction of this movement? Where are the representatives from the Caribbean and sub-Saharan African countries? From what I understood, they were facing just as many obstacles to obtain legal documentation.

Now, I’m not trying to divide immigrants by singling out blacks because we all have the same issues. However, I think it’s important that we fight just as hard or even harder for fair immigration reform. Otherwise, should we expect to reap the benefits?