Who is My Neighbor

 I live in the suburbs 15 minutes from the Washington Monument in good traffic.

A couple of weeks ago president Trump told four Congresswomen to, "Go back where you came from." That a President did something like that was shocking. It was embarrassing to U.S. citizens, but well, that's just Trump. But then several other things happened that changed my perspective. 

I have lived in the same neighborhood for 30 years.  One of the things I have loved most about my neighborhood is that we come from all over, and that (I thought) we embrace the richness of our many cultural heritages.

I have loved that my children grew up with people from all over the world: dancing in quinceaneras with Hispanic friends, celebrating Eid with middle eastern friends, and lunar New Year with Vietnamese and Cambodian friends, and I loved that everyone came to our house for Halloween. 

Foods at our PTA events were a buffet, from Indian to Peruvian, to Soul and Thai, and as a result our palates developed fusions of world recipes because we enjoyed one another's contributions to the richness of our diversity. Our art and artists and musicians merged into international styles that defied the limits of one culture alone.

I have taken comfort that though the rest of the world might be rocked with -isms and harshness, here we treated one another with a welcoming respect.  In the last several days that comfort-ability has been deeply shaken, and from some surprising places.

A couple of days ago two of my long-time neighborhood friends who are both Hispanic were conversing on facebook and shared stories that shook my sense of what my neighborhood is like. My daughter's childhood soccer coach who has lived here for pretty much her whole life, experienced one of those Youtube racist rants you see posted periodically of a screaming white person yelling at a Hispanic person in the check-out line to "speak American" and "Go back to Mexican where you came from."   This happened at my neighborhood Giant.

From that story she and another friend, who has also been here forever, told of the numerous times in the last few years they had been told to "go back where you came from" or had been asked for papers, rather than "is anybody hurt" by the police when they called for a fender-bender, or were put through additional hurdles when they went to DMV to transact car business.  As their stories kept coming my chest felt heavier and heavier.

I was shocked and so saddened. I had not realized.

Then while interviewing a conservative political candidate who happened to be Jewish, he spoke of the fear he had for his children since both the Jewish Community Center and a nearby church with a Black pastor were graffiti-ed - twice recently. 

This is all in my wonderful place where the school I taught in had no ethnic majority, and our children played together without regard for where their parents were from. 

The hatred being pushed by those in authority at the national level had invaded my protected world.

I get it that racism and bias have existed all along, and that those who are not white in our culture have always experienced some level of disrespect and discounting, oppression and racism.  But I thought in my little corner of the world, we were making progress on being human and humane to one another, on being neighbors who were indeed neighborly.

Then this weekend there were two more mass shootings in which the El Paso shooters' manifesto echoed Trump's words about "going back to where you came from."

One of my favorite parables is Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan, which starts with the aphorism to "Love your neighbor as yourself." and  a member of the crowd asks, "Who is my neighbor?"
Then Jesus answers with the parable of a man who is fallen on by robbers and beaten and the person who lifts him from the ditch, binds his wounds, and gets him help is not a priest or a highly respected upper class man of power, but a despised and looked down on Samaritan. 

Tonight that question is getting asked again on so many levels- In my neighborhood, in other neighborhoods across the country, and in the halls of our Capitol and Whitehouse.  "Who is my neighbor?"

We are one another's neighbors, and it is time we genuinely try to "love our neighbors as ourselves."

Please, Don't yell at your neighbors in the check-out line. Don't invite strangers to beat them up or shoot them.  Don't hassle them or try to throw them out or in general try to make their lives difficult.   And if you see someone else disrespecting, being rude, or harming your neighbors speak up. Defend them, bind their wounds.

As Hillel and Jesus said- This is the essence of the law.

I hope We can Be the Good Samaritans, and maybe our neighborhoods can begin to be restored to the uplifting places we once hoped and envisioned them to be.