In reflection I can see the many ways in which power structures have shaped my life and the lives of my family. I was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and lived there for the first nine years of my life.
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One night when I was 8 years old, I was awoken by the hushed whispers of my father and his brother, who was visiting from New York, as they arrived home from an evening out. While at a bar, a stranger overheard them speaking Persian together and asked where they were from.
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I was born in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1970, just after the Kent State massacre. A national strike of student protesters shut down universities and burned dozens of campus ROTC centers across the country. My parents were student anti-war activists.
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My story begins in a small town of southeastern Idaho. Some call it the armpit, some call it paradise; I find it to be somewhere in between. Growing up in Idaho with a Palestinian background and an Arabic name, in my experience, was nothing short of humiliating.
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My friend’s grandfather was a pharmacist in Akka and went to Lebanon to ‘wait out’ the war. My colleague’s family was vacationing in Beirut and wasn’t allowed to return. The young students at the UNRWA school would tell me which cities their families were from in Palestine and ask me if I had been there.
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My father said to me, more than once, “Because we as Jews have over time suffered so much, it is up too us to fight injustice wherever we see it.” I’ve always identified with people who have been targeted for racism, homophobia, poverty, immigration status, as well as gender. Anyone who is other.
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I was born into a Detroit working class family in 1962, the great-great-grandchild of German/Polish/Irish/Lithuanian immigrants seeking a better life in the Motor City. And, in the case of my French colonist ancestors, at least 10 generations of Detroiters.
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My life has been filled with experiences that that have often had me thinking or saying “That ain’t fare”. These experiences are responsible for me formulating very strong feelings about the race relations. I did know the fancy words prejudice, bigotry, racism, intolerance, prejudgment, implicit bias, explicit bias, I just know what I thought “That ain’t fare”.
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