The View From Here

This morning I read this article titled " Anti-Asian Harassment Is Surging. Can Ads and Hashtags Help? With more than 2,000 incidents and little action from the federal government, efforts to curtail pandemic-related racism have fallen to P.S.A.s and social media campaigns ." I am livid. I am afraid. When this began back in March (and still in a recent tweet) with the words of the current US president calling COVID-19 the "China Virus," I was more worried about being harassed and possibly harmed due to my being AAPI than I was contracting the virus. When I brought this up during an on-line gathering at my current workplace, not one person offered a word of comfort and not one person followed up with an email saying, "Hey, I heard what you said and I'm so sorry..." When colleges and universities like to tout that they are a "family" and a "community," they forget that there are those of us that have not been welcomed in...

Hope is the only thing that sustains me, and it is a hope that is grounded in my Christian faith. So while everyday I read about the dumb and dangerous acts and words of our president-elect and his cabinet, I also learn of people who give me hope. A recent story lifted my spirits because it was about Christians unlike some evangelicals who supported the president-elect (can we say mostly middle-aged and old White men?), these are followers of Jesus Christ who in their small way were going to welcome the stranger and the marginalized the way Jesus did. Learn more about their story on NPR .

Well, it has been over a month since the U.S. election and what was impossible became reality. I can't even write the name of the president-elect as I'm still incredulous about the results. However it wasn't unforeseen as I recall a friend of mine from Kenya in his usual prescient way that he thought the Republican nominee may actually win the election. He implored that me (and others like me) as a U.S. American to be the vanguard of the democracy of the nation of my birth. I voted. We lost. It took a couple of weeks for me to get my bearings and to begin to apply the principles of acceptance and mindfulness to my own distress. I also took hold of the concept of Radical Acceptance  that comes from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. It means for me to truly, truly accept the reality of what's happening as awful as it is while also seeking productive change. For me, that change is resistance. Resisting the hatred of those who differ. Resisting the diminishing power...