OPINION | RACISM

Colonizers Want Closed Borders, Conveniently Forgetting They Entered Our Lands Illegally

Calling out their selective amnesia

Photo by Jason Murphy on Unsplash (Caum, Macroom Co. Cork Ireland)

You’ve been [for] ten thousand years in one place — your culture and genealogy is a part of that place. The forest, the rivers, the coastline, the mountains — we are a part of all that. Our people are from there. And so everything we do in our culture resonates with that.
~ David Lewis, Independent Anthropologist and Historian, Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde

Two nights ago, an online ESL learner dialed in for a session with me. When Carlos first spoke, I mistook his accent for Brasilian. Less than a minute in, I’d learn he was (is) Spanish.

Currently living in México, he shared how he’d lived in Uruguay, Chile, and the U.S. (as well as the obvious, his home country, Spain).

Then came the question I almost always get from Cambly members — “Where are you from?”

Transparency alert: from Carlos’s initial introduction (also, realizing he wasn’t (isn’t) brasilero), I felt my shoulders starting to tense, my jaw begin to clench, and a frown embracing my heart space.

There was a certain air of superiority emanating from his persona across the screen from my…