So here's the thing. We Americans have so many choices in life, but sadly, most of the time most of us remain oblivious to our relative position of privilege vs. that of people in other countries. You have to get out and about, globally, to appreciate what I am talking about.
No one I meet in the daily course of events impresses me more than immigrants. Here in the Bay Area, especially in Silicon Valley, one encounters brilliant people from all over the world. Each has his or her story to tell, and it's never a story you expect it to be.
They come from places our ignorant President has identified as part of the "axis of evil," but there is nothing evil about them. They may be Jews or Moslems but there is no antagonism between them; they are brothers/sisters in the search for algorithmic solutions to our information dilemmas.
They grew up in places that sound romantic, like Casablanca, Kyoto, Venice, or Prague; or in places that we imagine as hell, like Calcutta, Kabul, Baghdad, or Dacca. But none of our stereotypes capture the nuances of their experiences.
Bob Dylan sang that he pitied the poor immigrant, and in his case, he was certainly describing a typical down-on-his-luck American artist's feelings toward a landlord...the role many immigrants find themselves in.
My own landlady is Indian, and, if I were given to a Dylanesque analysis, she comes up short on doing repairs (like repairing those persistent bathroom leaks) that would make life easier here, but she remains kindly disposed to my own oddities, like my ever-changing states of employment, my visibly questionable artistic experiments (think of the colored bottles), and a large cast of characters, both adults and children, who greet her here whenever she might chose to visit.
We like each other, she and I, and I am happy that she got married this past summer.
The very best thing about America is our multi-racial, multi-cultural diversity.
The absolute worst thing about America is the tendency of some among us to disparage that diversity. The racists, of course, will not inherit this great nation, but the immigrants most certainly will.
Anyone who believes in God, and 90% of Americans say they do, has to admit that we are genetically 99.9% the same in our DNA, and therefore race and nationality has nothing to do with anything in the eyes of our Lord.
The title of this post reflects my plans to travel to Nairobi, Kenya, next month, to attend a United Nations plenary on agricultural sustainability. As scientists have established without a doubt, we are all Africans.
Therefore, I look forward to returning to our common home, the place of our origin, where we first learned to stand upright and use our eyes to see beyond our immediate environment.
Where we first learned to consider the bigger picture, the one I am writing about here and now.
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