By the Numbers
[Trigger Warning - writing about the Holocaust in this essay]
Many years ago I stumbled upon the PBS television show, “America By The Numbers.” It was hosted by Maria Hinojosa, a Pulitzer Prize winning Mexican-American journalist. Although there were only two seasons, it left an indelible imprint on me.
My memory is that through interviews of everyday people, charts and graphs of population statistics, and voice overs that provided helpful context – the “numbers” of an ever-changing America helped explain the cultural tensions that were often just a felt sense.
Who lives here and who works here matters.
I have lived through many different waves of rhetoric – scholars and politicians trying to paint the picture of what is happening and what that means. I recall hearing speeches that included “it takes a village,” “we are a melting pot,” and more.
I grew up when the “We Are the World” music video took hold of radio and MTV airwaves. The internet wasn’t mainstream just yet, but following the wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Korea, Americans seemed less willing to simply “other” different cultures and peoples. Rather than far away places and people we could never hope to understand, global travel, trade, and cultural exchange increased the curiosity about other people’s approach to life and living.
Why do I bring this up now?
Because current front runner for the Republican nomination for President of the United States is doubling-down on rhetoric such as immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of our country.
Rightly, the domestic and international media is drawing the direct connection between this claim and Hitler’s debunked fixation on a pure bloodline and supreme Aaryan race.
In college, I applied to take part in a year-long study of the Holocaust. It was a partnership between colleges and an organization called March of the Living. I participated in the first ever year where they included students who were not Jewish, calling it the March of Remembrance and Hope.
We studied for a full year – six students on my campus convening on certain evenings every month to hear recorded lectures, review required reading, and to discuss what we were feeling and learning. Our program culminated in a week-long trip to Poland. When we, the contingent from the University of Puget Sound, arrived, we were assigned a bus filled with young adults from multiple other schools, and each bus was matched with a living Holocaust survivor. Fred was in his 80s and brought food from home for the entire trip because he and his wife had made a commitment to not spend even one single penny going into the economy there. On and off that bus for over a week, we were escorted to ghettos, death camps, and other locations of significance.
I will never forget how surreal it felt to be guided around death camps by expert guides there to answer all our questions. I especially recall the bright sunny day when we were guided around Auschwitz-Birkenau. In my imagination, I guess I had always pictured it as gloomy and cloudy every single day – to match the mood of the place. But on this day, in the summer of 2001, the sun was shining, and the birds were singing. I remember our guide telling us how carefully everything had been preserved in the camp – the barracks, the guard towers. Then she mentioned that something was certainly very different though. We had climbed approximately two flights of stairs to get up to one of the guard watchtowers where we could look out over the whole camp in order to absorb the vastness of this place.
Our guide told us, “you see all the green grass everywhere?” “Yes,” we replied. “That wouldn’t have been here,” she stated matter of-fact. “Because it would have been trampled by all the people?” a student in my group supposed. “No. Because it would have been eaten already,” said our guide.
We were silent.
Any and all rhetoric hinting at racial superiority or inferiority should cause serious concern.
Centuries of junk science pre-supposing one race, nationality, or religion of people as physically, morally, or intellectually superior have been disproved definitively. The Human Genome Project was crystal clear.
So, what can, and should we do as adults who live and work in multi-racial community?
The U.S. has long been more racially, ethnically, and religiously heterogenous than many countries around the globe. However, U.S. based institutions including education, healthcare, banking, and the workforce writ large have struggled to equitably value and serve both children and adults mixed across these meaningful lines of difference.
We can combat the dog whistles designed to mobilize people freaked out about the idea of “racial purity,” dominant and recessive genes, and interracial couples and families. As a reminder, it was not all that long ago (1967) that Loving v. Virginia was argued in front of the Supreme Court, in order to finally decriminalize race-based legal restrictions on marriage.
We can also practice naming what is true, simply practicing using numbers to tell a fuller version of the truth than the sometimes watered down version which fails to mention important realities and complexities.
Here are just a handful of numbers that I find meaningful at the moment:
• The United States will return to being a population that is majority People of Color in my lifetime (estimates clock in around the year 2045), meaning that if we use the word minority in the future we should know we are referring to white people
• Children of color already make up the majority of kids in many U.S. states
• All current colonies of the U.S. (aka “territories and freely associated states”) are majority People of Color
• According to the Bureau of Indian Affairs there are currently 574 Federally Recognized Tribes inside the geographic boundaries of the U.S.
Like the pop ups on TV, following public service announcements and after school specials – “the more you know.”
I’m curious, what numbers surprise or inspire you these days? What calls you to courage - catalyzes you to take action? Let me know.
My commitment to you, on this journey of 52 essays in 52 weeks, is that next week I’m going to finish and share an essay about the land back movement.
Yours,
Trina
P.S. I strongly recommend listening to this interview with Maria Hinojosa on the “Death, Sex & Money” podcast