Think about it. How many relationships end? How many marriages last? How many families stay together? How many of your neighbors do you talk to? How many people who dress differently do you feel comfortable around? How many cultures do you feel you understand? How strongly do you feel that our government uses teamwork to make America's well-being its top priority?
In the wake of #PrayforParis, I have seen a stomach-turning number of people slandering Middle Eastern people and Muslims as though they weren't persons, as though they are all one and the same, as though we Americans were better than them and owed them nothing. These Facebook personas couldn't understand why others were calling them out on racism. They wanted to turn away migrants without exception because they are the people who are bringing the violence – I am reminded of the propaganda that painted slaves as animalistic and out to kill white people (which, by the way, is not dead propaganda, especially with all the recent violence associated as retaliation against racism). Labeling all the desperate migrants according to the recent violence is unethical and incorrect. Those migrants run from the very violence we fear and it is hypocritical to tell them to just sit tight. They can't just sit tight. They are being chased and massacred.
If we stand with Paris, we have to stand with those migrants." | I know, politics says it is really hard to assimilate these migrants into our countries. It takes money and space and paperwork and suddenly a heap ton of more resources. But we are not entitled to our resources just because we were here first. We are not entitled to our country just because cultures are different and because we have worked and lived and died here before they have. We have a duty to not only stand with Paris but with those migrants – who are not names and numbers on a piece of paper, who are not a migrating herd bent on destroying us. They are victims; they are we. And if we stand with Paris, we have to stand with those migrants. We have to stand with all of those oppressed by ISIS. Their lives will never be the same in a way we have not experienced and hopefully never will. Don't you dare turn your back – not on ISIS, not on those migrants, not on humanity. |