A Case for Empathy

As I listen to the news and read the many online articles cataloging the hatred and insults of American citizens toward people who they consider “the other,” my heart grows heavy and a sickening feeling of betrayal floats around me like a miasma. If you ask anyone who knows me, I am the glass half full, rose-tinted glasses wearing, eternal optimist. Sickeningly so… I can take pretty much any situation and say. “Let’s not look at it as X, but Y. We wouldn’t have learned about Y if X hadn’t happened… And Y will help us grow and be a better person….” You get the point… But I have to say, I’m having a difficult time convincing myself that the disillusionment I feel is somehow a good thing. As a child of immigrant parents growing up in a small town in central Pennsylvania, I had an interesting childhood to say the least. But before getting into the details of that crazy mixed up experience, I’d like to preface this story by saying that my disillusionment stems from the fact that I left that small town believing I was American. I identified with my Indian ancestry and heritage, but deep inside I related to the world like any other teenager who had grown up in the 80s - watching MTV, having sleepovers with my friends and hanging out at the mall. I remember having a conversation the first year of our marriage with my husband, who had grown up in India, about our hypothetical children and how they would be perceived in America. He claimed that no matter how long you stayed in this country, you would always be an outsider and that if some circumstances changed, the brown color of our skin would be stigmatized and we would be looked upon in a negative manner. As a young woman of ideals and passions, I very righteously defended American society, stating that he of course did not understand and that that would never happen. I was American. My accent was American. I could sing all the words to Don McLean’s American Pie. How could anyone not think I was American? And of course our children who would be born and raised in this country would be even more so. As the years wore on, my understanding of identity and culture and politics became more nuanced. But at the core, I still believed that I was a member of American society with all its  privileges. I was part of this club. I knew the secret handshake. Now, I feel like not only do I not know the handshake, I feel like the club is not what I thought it was; it was not a welcoming safe place, but rather a treacherous obstacle course where one wrong move gets you thrown out. Whenever I hear a Trump supporter yelling disgusting epitaphs at muslims, blacks and hispanics, I feel the sharp jab of those insults. I feel them mocking my naive belief that as a brown naturalized citizen, I am an integral part of this society. That I am and will always be American.

Now that I’ve explained my reasons for my depressive attitude, let me share a story from my childhood that gives me hope. Okay, so my mother is pretty awesome. At least I think so now. Not so much as a tween. The reason we even settled in a small town in central Pennsylvania is due to my mother’s insistence that we grow up in a real American town not over populated by other Indians like those found in numerous communities in Florida. She had the foresight to see that it was important we learned how to interact and be part of the American community we lived in. Wow, you say. What an amazing woman who recognized that integration was important for us to really become part of the society we had chosen to live in! And she was forward thinking in that. With one minor...okay...major exception. She simultaneously wanted to cling to Indian culture out of a fear that we would lose that part of ourselves. She was a woman trapped between two worlds. One, where she was a mother trying her hardest to help her children adjust to a new world and another, where she was a daughter and a sister trying to please and appease her relatives back home who had certain expectations of duty and responsibility.  So, how did this struggle manifest itself? Let’s go back in time to 1982. I was a young girl about to begin junior high school, on the edge of teenage-hood. An age when any mother would begin trembling in fear as her daughter is about to step into the next stage of adolescence. But for a mother torn between two cultures, the fear of this transition was overwhelming. She unilaterally decide that I was no longer allowed to wear “western” clothes. She would train me to be a good Indian girl by dressing me in traditional clothes. I don’t think anyone can imagine the boulder that lay in my stomach as I dragged myself to the bus stop the first day of junior high, with my shiny coconut oiled braids and my ankle length traditional skirt, my heart pounding as I gazed at the ground, afraid to make eye contact with anyone on the bus. At school, my friends protected me the best that they could with their loyal support and I discovered that despite what people say, middle schoolers can be empathetic. I found a group of other misfits who adopted me as I was - a square peg that stood out for her foreignness. But all was not well. There were a handful of students, trapped in their own ignorance, who thought what fun it would be to torture the strange looking Indian girl. There was hair pulling, taunts, and name calling. I just kept my head down, made it through the day, and cried myself to sleep at night. I know I said that this would be a story of hope, so let me tell you what happened in that small town where I was being tormented for looking different. As I sat in my 7th grade reading class, I heard a rumor going around the school that a popular 9th grader had stood up in front of the auditorium and told everyone to stop picking on “that little Indian girl.” I didn’t know his name and it wasn’t until many years later I found out that it was the cousin of one of my friends. All I knew was after that brave boy stood up and proclaimed his protection, not one person bothered me. Can you imagine what strength of character it would have taken for him to decide to speak up for someone who didn’t have a voice? I am forever grateful to him, not only for taking away my daily tormentors, but for showing me that empathy is a powerful force that can change people’s lives for the better. He saw my foreignness, he witnessed the negative reactions to it, and decided to not silently condone it. He empathized with my fear and pain and spoke up to stop what was causing it. What is more hopeful than that? A child understanding that abusing someone for their differences, denying that person’s humanity, is not right, and when we are confronted by someone who is hurt whether it is physically or emotionally, one should speak out in their defense.

In this era of nationalism and fear, I give you this story of hope. This story of small-town America, of a child who looked at racism and prejudice and decided to speak up. So, when I feel that miasma settling over me, casting a sickly sadness as to the state of America, I will remind myself that empathy will rule over hatred as long as we have the courage to give it a voice.