America

Early in my freshman year at Cornell, I sat next to a dorm mate at lunch.  He was the only person I recognized and there was an empty space on the bench beside him.  We ate, chatted, and moved on, separately, to our afternoons.

That evening he told me, kindly but emphatically, that I couldn't do that any more. That side of the dining room was for Black students.  

I hadn't noticed.  I never did it again.  It was a fast and furious lesson that the world was not operating the way I imagined.  

I believed the melting pot theory of Americanism.  Put us all in the soup, stir rapidly, and serve a multi-ethnic masterpiece.  We make Americans out of the raw material that comes our way.  It's what differentiates us from all the other countries.  It's the genius of our republic.

That was sold to me in elementary school; I remember the page in my 3rd grade social studies book.  It felt right to me, the grandchild of 4 immigrants who were very proud to call themselves Americans.  I thought everyone saw the country that way.  

I was wrong. But I was not disheartened, because I saw real change happening.  Growing up, racial slurs and caricatures that were common in the media (and roundly criticized by my parents) gave way to the notion that those views were impolitic at best, down right rude in reality.  

Did the pendulum swing too far?  Asking for universal kindness and attention to what matters to others has a long history - the Golden Rule, anyone?  But the rock has been turned over and all sorts of ugliness is everywhere these days.  

I came to these thoughts because I came across this:  the keffiyeh is the hipster swastika.

Nazi's were hip?  Arabs are Nazi's?  Hipsters hate Jews?  Who's bombing Gaza?

Really, who cares?  It's the fact that the sentence is out there in the world, evoking menace and hate and an astonishing lack of nuance.  

I really don't understand the world anymore.