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Immigrants SupportingWhite Supremacy

Diane Aoki
13 min readSep 1, 2020

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What Guides Their Moral Compass?

Photo by Ahmed Zayan on Unsplash

Today, I wanted to write about immigration, to tell my immigration story and make a case for those of us with immigration heritage to take a stand against Trump’s anti-immigration policies. But, as I write this, I have seared into my brain the image of the mother of the 17-year-old who shot and killed two protestors in Kenosha with an automatic rifle. I don’t want to get too off-topic from my original plan to write about immigration but … It’s related. I’ll explain.

When I was a beginning teacher, I remember at the end of the school year making up class lists for the students we were passing to the next grade level. We knew there would be a brand new teacher . The practice was to give that new teacher all the “problem” kids. I was appalled that we would saddle a beginning teacher with the most challenging kids. My colleague said that it was done to her, so why not do it to someone else.

I have heard this as an argument from immigrants who have gone through an arduous process of jumping through hoops to come to the US and then to bring their families over. Rather than compassion, there was antagonism towards those who find a way into the country without legal status. “If I can wait in line, they can too. ”

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Diane Aoki
Diane Aoki

Written by Diane Aoki

Playwright, essayist, teacher, artist, songwriter, poet. Creativity Activist.

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