“If you do well in school, maybe one day we can send you to a college in America” is often the narrative many international students, especially those from South and East Asia, have grown up hearing from their parents.
It was like our own version of the American dream. A lot of us who did end up coming to the U.S. for higher education grew up envisioning America as the country where everyone was accepting of differences, where our differences would not carry any baggage. Rather, these differences would be celebrated, because America was supposedly the land of the free and the just.
It was the country where discrimination didn’t occur, especially not on the basis of skin color (at least since 1968), religion (at least before 2001), gender (at least since 1920) and definitely not socio economic status.
That was before we got here. Before Facebook and Instagram blew up with xenophobic rhetoric. Before my parents began to worry about my safety in America being a person of color. Before my brown best friend was held to the ground by a security guard at a club for nothing more than a trivial reason, to satisfy a personal racist whim perhaps.
Now we live in a different America, one that none of us signed up for.
Upon asking my Chinese friend how she feels in America today, she tells me that she’s worried because people don’t feel the need to suppress their inner racist anymore. She worries that those who didn’t dare to express racism before are now empowered to do so, often in aggressive ways.
She brings up the important point that international students already face many struggles that domestic students don’t, which is only exacerbated by a lack of awareness for our issues and current concerns (not to be confused with laws regarding immigrants).
The thing about many of us international students (although I can’t speak for all the 50+ countries represented at the school) is that we choose to come to the U.S., incentivized by narratives like the one above.
However, if America stops accepting us and what we have to offer, we are well educated and adaptable enough to relocate and take our skills with us to somewhere else in the world that does treat us with the respect we deserve, one that doesn’t discriminate on the basis of appearance.
The America we knew was one that valued merit and goodness. That’s the America we need to save before it’s too late.
Maansi Kumar, a Contributing Writer for the Voice, can be reached for comment at MKumar18@wooster.edu.