#putting it in their history textbooks that they excluded black women from history they REALLY FUCKING DID THAT SHIT BRODY WAKE THE FUCK UP

[babybabymerrychristmas]

oh my god i just remembered that a terf on here tried to argue with me about my sources because i told her that it's literally in my history textbooks that white people didn't view black men and women as men and women with and i quote "omg you're using a college textbook like we don't already know how racist white people write those textbooks" yes babe, that's the point!

if racist white people are ADMITTING to not viewing black people as men and women in their history textbooks, you know they really did that shit. like??????? how are white people writing textbooks about white history saying "yeah our bad we definitely excluded black women from womanhood in order to keep slavery in power for hundreds of years" not directly proving my fucking point you fucking dumb ass cunt.

[nan-drw]

This is not the India Mahatma Gandhi dreamt of when he began his Satyagraha.

This is not the India Babasaheb Ambedkar envisioned when he drafted the constitution.

AND this is definitely NOT the India I was born in!

These people, who claim to be the leaders of this once thriving nation, have managed to systematically annihilate the very spirit of its existence and democracy.

It all started out very normal, in 2014, the year BJP came into power and Narendra Modi took centre stage as Prime Minister, with a promise of 'good days'.

I don't know if the 'good days' ever arrived, but I made several observations.

Modi (of course) dished out a few fancy schemes. Mob lynchings and minority persecution became common. About 20 billion dollars were spent on foreign visits. The economy dwindled. Random rants about Pakistan. Demonetisation. Women were (are) being brutally raped and murdered. Laws were arbitrarily amended for the worse. Filmmakers were accused of 'hurting the Hindu sentiments' when it was clearly not the case. History textbooks and names of cities were changed for no reason. Farmers commited suicide. An entire state was detained. More rants about Pakistan. Detention camps (!) were built. Peaceful protestors were beaten black and blue. Politicians who opposed the government were (are) trolled for no reason. Pushing for a One-Party system. And worst of all, the media either slept through all of it, or was busy putting the central government on a pedestal for no apparent reason or achievement. Journalists who tried questioning the government were shot.

Despite all this, they got re-elected in the centre once again in 2019 and this time all hell broke loose, for the public could now see them for who they were, anti-democratic, anti-secular, extremist, divisive, Islamophobic, fascist brats!

In December 2019, the Citizenship Amendment Bill (now law) was passed. This law provides citizenship to anyone identified as being in India illegally, if they are from a non-muslim community (Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, Christians, Parsis, Buddhists) and originally from Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan. This act, clubbed with the National Register of Citizens is dangerous. Under NRC+CAA, millions of people have to present documents proving their Indian citizenship. If you're from a non muslim community and you do not have the required documents, then chill, you'll still be 'Indian'. But if you're a Muslim, you immediately lose your citizenship due to CAA and will be either deported or sent to detention camps. They carried out NRC in Assam and about 19 lakh people lost their Indian citizenship and were sent to concentration camps.

Also, it's not just about the Muslims. Think of the poor people. The illiterate people. The destitutes. The transgenders. The tribals. The people who DO NOT wish to be associated with any religion i.e. athiests. There are so many more.

Some of you might say, so what? Just show the documents and get it done, simple! NO. IT'S NOT THAT SIMPLE. IT'S NOT SIMPLE WHEN YOU HAVE TO PRESENT 60-70 YEAR OLD DOCUMENTS IN ORDER TO PROVE YOUR INDIANNESS. Also, do you REALLY think that every person carries the birth certificates, insurance policies and other documents of their ancestors? Think again.

I am a Muslim and I'm scared. For the first time in my life; I'm scared to be in my own skin, of my own identity. I'm afraid of calling myself an Indian. The possible outcomes of the implementation of NRC+CAA makes me shiver. Who knows, I'll be gone from the face of the earth. Or left to rot in a detention camp? Or something else?

Remember the last time concentration camps were built?I don't think I need to remind you of it.

BJP is a fascist part which rose to power largely because of its favour of 'Hindutva'  and follows the ideologies of the RSS. This includes the building of a Hindu state. A quick google search will tell you how impressed the RSS leaders and BJP fathers were with Hitler and supported his Nazi system.

These new laws are eerily similar to the Nuremberg laws and Reich Citizenship laws of Nazi Germany, which dictated who all were eligible to be Reich citizens. It excluded Jews, the same way the CAA excludes Muslims. All of it was done (is being done) legally following constitutional norms by those in power. The Nuremberg laws were, in many ways, the beginnings of Genocide against the Jews.

With the Citizenship Amendment Act, Modi and Co. Is trying to bring the system in India too. It's a step towards their dream of a 'Hindu state'. The act is fundamentally discriminatory in nature, undermines the constitutional right to equality and discriminates on the grounds of religion. Also, now that everyone is after NRC CAA, nobody is asking the real questions, about the state of the economy, the rising prices, the never ending crimes against women...the list goes on.

A genocide against the Muslims is well underway in India.

Ever since the bill was passed by the parliament, students of the Jamia Millia Islamia University, Delhi have been actively involved in peacefully protesting against it. They've been joined by students from educational institutions all over India, plus the general public, who understand what this new law really is. The BJP has been trying hard to stop and discredit these protestors. The police, acting on Modi and Co's orders is resorting to extreme violence in order to stop the students and protestors. The police have open fired on the students, molested the female ones, sprayed tear gas and beaten students mercilessly(many have ended up in hospitals with broken bones, injuries, one guy lost an eye). They are provoking the peaceful protestors to resort to violence and then putting them in jail for crimes they did not commit. BJP, and their blind supporters (bhakts) are spreading fake news through their social media and labelling the protestors terrorists. The government has shut down internet and other modes of communication in several parts of the country, the whole state of Assam has blacked out. We don't know what's happening there.

Now we understand what Kashmiris have been going through. Cut out from the rest of the world (since almost 140 days, a record for any democracy), under constant watch of the military, stripped off their basic human rights and what not!? We are sorry Kashmir, we failed you.

I salute the protestor's spirits, they haven't lost hopes or taken backfoot because of the violence instigated against them by the police; they've stuck to their cause and are responding with almost superhuman strength! I pray for them all day.

If you are reading this, please spread this! Tell about the situation of India to everyone. Raise awareness. Be respectful in disagreements but demolish opposing arguments using pure logic. Stand united! If you can, participate in the protests. If you're already doing it, kudos to you! Remember, DO NOT RESORT TO VIOLENCE. If you're outside India, please help us and tell people about this state of affairs in India. Educate people about the ill effects of this law. Please! I request you please help us! We need to show these fascists the power of the people. We cannot just silently stand by as Modi and Co make a joke of our constitution and morals! This cannot, and should not continue!!! This is not about being a Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Sikh or Jain or Parsi, it's not even about being political, it's about being an Indian! It's about being a human.

....And now, coming to the Ostriches, those who have their heads buried in the ground, those who are pretending there's nothing wrong happening in the country right now, those who think that NRC+CAB are not anti-national, those who are still supporting the BJP, those who are silent because they don't want to make political statements, I have only one thing to say to you; when we are silenced, I hope you regret being silent.

From the Quran-

And never think that Allah is unaware of what the wrongdoers do. He only delays them for a day when all the eyes will stare, in horror...

[bunchofbooks]

It’s Time for Kyrsten’s Opinion: Watch Us Rise Edition

My tenth book of the year was Watch Us Rise by Renée Watson and Ellen Hagan. Watch Us Rise is told as a narrative, but includes poems and drawings of the students. The book follows a group of friends, Nadine, Isaac, Chelsea and Jasmine - with most of the focus on Jasmine. They are juniors at their revolutionary New York high school, but soon realize that the curriculum in the theater and poetry program focus on the “classics” and type casting the students. Jasmine and Chelsea decide to quit their programs and start one on their own - Write Like a Girl, a collection of essays, poems and actions posted online to inspire others to be involved. Their work becomes viral and before they really are able to get their feet off the ground, their school shuts down the club. However, Chelsea and Jasmine refuse to be silenced. 

Below the cut is a spoiler - free review of Watch Us Rise. If you have read this book, please feel free to shoot over a message with your thoughts on your experience reading it as well as leave a comment with book recs for people who may have enjoyed it! 

Before the actual review I wanted to give a content warning for the following potential triggers: sexual harassment, misogyny, racism, death of a parent, body shaming and victim blaming. If any of these are an issue for you, but you still want to read Watch Us Rise, just know that they are throughout the book and read with caution :D 

The major issue I had with Watch Us Rise was how Jasmine and Chelsea saw and treated other women. Jasmine and Chelsea wanted to let the girls at their school know that they didn’t have to look or act a certain way; however, they on a few occasions disrespected women who opted  to have plastic surgery. At one point Chelsea and her sister, Mia are watching a reality TV show and when Jasmine says that the show the sisters are watching is garbage, Chelse says that “It’s so I can make sure we rage against the system so that no one ever has to see a Botoxed face ever again” (64). At another moment during Thanksgiving, Jasmine’s mother is cooking dinner and Jasmine asks her mother if she ever feels like her father makes her cook or expects her mother to cook. Jasmine’s mother informs her daughter, “Your dad and I don’t make each other do anything. I like to cook, so I cook. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t” (222). While our main characters want to let the other girls that they speak to know that they don’t have to adhere to traditional roles that women have had in history, they completely discredit the value of women who enjoy these traditional roles. I cook because I want to, not because I have a man behind me telling me I have to, I wear makeup because I enjoy putting it on, not because I have a boyfriend somewhere who expects me to wear it. Within this issue is another problem I have with our antagonist. . . Mostly because the antagonist is a girl at school with Jasmine and Chelsea. I feel like when it comes to books about feminism, especially YA and middle grade books, a great disservice is being done when we have antagonists who are also women who are also victims to the same inequalities as other female characters, and the character Meg is no exception. Meg does eventually learn her lesson, but makes really insensitive comments about Jasmine’s weight as well as dress up in culturally appropriating Halloween costumes just to irritate our protagonists. Isn’t a main idea of feminism to, I don’t know, build women up and show that all women are equals, not continue to pit them against each other? 

My other complaint with Watch Us Rise was the health of Jasmine’s father. Readers know from the first page that Jasmine’s father is ill and he is not going to get better. I was expecting this to be another educational point of the book, how black patients in this country are treated differently in medical facilities than white patients. Nope. Mr. Gray died for Jasmine’s pain and only for her pain. The book would not have changed at all if he had been in remission from cancer or if he had never been diagnosed at all. This is a personal pet peeve of mine in books, especially YA books where parents die. It’s almost like wives and girlfriends dying in adult romances to fuel man pain, but instead the parent dies to fuel their child’s pain. 

While at this point it might sound like I hated this book, but that is so far from the truth! In fact, during most of the book, I was asking the book gods WHERE WAS THIS WHEN I WAS A MIDDLE SCHOOL / HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT?!?!? Watson and Hagan do this amazing job of showing that even those who have great intentions can really mess up. In one scene, Jasmine’s drama teacher, Mr. Morison tells Jasmine that in their improv class session, she was showing so much energy and tells her that “Jasmine, your “girl with attitude” confidence is perfect. . . I think you may be the only one who can pull it off in such an authentic way” (77). Jasmine reminds her teacher that she has performed a variety of roles and the only one Mr. Morison can think she would be well suited for was one where she was sassy and angry. Let me repeat that. . . Mr. Morison told his black student that she would be perfect for a stereotypical role in the media of a sassy black woman. I believe that Mr. Morison said this as a way to encourage Jasmine, however how many times have women heard the phrase, “you’re pretty for a (insert descriptive word here)” comment. At another point, Chelsea and Jasmine begin making shirts for their group and when Jasmine comes to pick up her shirt she notices that there are no plus size options. Chelsea was in charge of making sure everyone could participate in the t-shirt sale and mistakenly excluded her best friend and co - founder of Write Like a Girl! Jasmine and Chelsea eventually reconcile, but I really enjoy the idea that everyone messes up even with the best intentions and learning from your own prejudices that you might not even have realized you have is such an important piece of being a feminist. 

Watch Us Rise is super educational, without reading like a textbook. When the protagnoists introduced feminist icons, it was written like two people talking about a shared interest. I never felt like information was jammed down my throat or it was too dense to handle (textbook authors, I want you to take notes here!!). It made me reflect on my early days of learning about feminism, which was I’m ashamed to say mainly rooted in Tumblr when I was a senior in high school, so it was a very white feminist POV that I am proud to say has greatly expanded and is continuing to expand with new life experiences, but enough patting myself on the back. . . 

Chelsea and Jasmine have so many safe spaces provided to them in their school, community, and home. Something that again, I wish was made aware to me when I was in high school. I love the idea of a YA or middle grade reader picking up Watch Us Rise and realizing that just because you don’t have this safe space in your home, you can have on in your school or your community. I just love the idea that books are bringing safe spaces to people who could really use them or need them and making readers realize they aren’t alone. There are adults who want to hear what they have to say, again something that I wish I had known in high school when I was blabbing to my parents about whatever I was interested in when there could have been other trusted adults around me who would have loved to hear what I was obsessed with or even been able to contribute. 

Finally, another important aspect of Watch Us Rise that I noted was the importance that the internet played. It was nice that the authors included parts where Chelsea or Jasmine went to there internet and looked up other feminist icons to look into on their own time. The last pages of the book also include other icons to look up, resources to go to and books to check out if the urge strikes readers. So many times I feel like authors just make the characters aware of the political issues they are interested in and it’s refreshing to see some characters coming from a place of ignorance, the way we all do when starting to become socially or politically aware. 

Overall, I gave this book ⅘ stars. I would 100% read this again and wish I could somehow learn what the future held for Jasmine and Chelsea. Would I recommend this book? Absolutely. I think that it would be a good starting point for students in middle school if they are interested in reading about feminism, but aren’t quite ready for books like Nowhere Girls and The Female of the Species. 

[omgstupendousbouquetbasement]

Women’s Voting Rights Activists Highlighted in New Exhibit

Feminist author and activist Gloria Steinem once said, “Women have always been an equal part of the past. We just haven’t been a part of history.” But American women became an important part of history when they gained the right to vote in 1920. Making waves Reaching that groundbreaking milestone was the culmination of decades of struggle by women working at the state and national levels for political empowerment. Women such as social reformer Susan B. Anthony, abolitionists Sojourner Truth and Lucy Stone, and activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who helped organize the first women's rights convention in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York. Now, a major new exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., explores that complex period in American history.  “Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence” offers a rich visual presentation of the women’s suffrage movement over a span of 130 years, ahead of the 100th anniversary of passage of the 19th Amendment. Portraits of persistence “As a historian, I was really interested to look at the 19th Amendment and what that meant in 1920, and how its legacy unfolded,” said historian and exhibit curator Kate Clarke Lemay. She explained that the suffrage movement didn't just appear out of nowhere. “They had these abolitionist foundations. They had partnerships with the temperance movement. And that is really how they built momentum across the country in the very early stages.” The seven-room exhibit features more than 120 objects from 1832 to 1965. Photographic portraits and paintings, videos depicting historical footage, and books, banners and posters, provide an in-depth look at the people and events that helped shape American history. It highlights well-known and lesser-known figures associated with the women’s movement. How many people know, for example, that Victoria Woodhull was the first woman to run for president, on a third party ticket in 1872? Or that activist Lucy Burns served six different prison sentences for picketing the White House? Or that a group of American women, while studying abroad in England, were inspired by the British suffragette movement to organize at home? Led by suffragist Alice Paul, they staged the first major nonviolent march on Washington on March 3, 1913, which attracted between 5,000 and 8,000 women. Silent sentinels “It’s really important for the Smithsonian, and certainly the National Portrait Gallery, to put faces to the women who really marched toward getting the vote and the passing of the 19th Amendment in 1920,” said Kim Sajet, National Portrait Gallery director. “This exhibition is really about that journey, and about the women who really agitated for the vote, but also for the women who were left out of the history books,” she said. About a third of the collection includes representations of women of color, she said, “because they’ve really been erased from history in many ways.” That includes African American women, who were often excluded by white women from the main suffrage organizations. That is particularly relevant, given that "black women were organizing just as much as white women,” Lemay said. “So this exhibition works to show a more complete history of the women's suffrage movement by looking at biographies of African Americans, Native Americans, and other women of color, to complement the better-known story that we have in our textbooks." The exhibit includes abolitionist Sarah Parker Remond, who filed one of the earliest lawsuits protesting race segregation; Ida B. Wells, who advocated for federal laws against lynching; and Mary Church Terrell, who established the National Association of Colored Women. Women today American women have immense political power today, Lemay observed. They make up a huge voting bloc, more than 120 women now serve in Congress, and many others are in major leadership roles. “If you start from where the exhibition starts in the 1830s … and then trace that thread with the suffrage movement up to this very day when women are actually leading our country, you can see the great continuum and the grand narrative journey that these women had to undergo to achieve that,” Lemay said. “And I'm really excited to see what happens from here on.” “Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence” is part of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative, “Because of Her Story,” and one of the country’s most ambitious undertakings to research, collect, document, display and share the compelling story and history of American women.  The museum hopes the exhibit, which runs through January 5, 2020, will deepen people’s understanding of women’s contributions to the nation and the world. from Blogger http://bit.ly/2PwZfxC via IFTTT

[pixelatedlenses]

So it’s the 20th in Japan, but the 19th in America, and that means that this still counts. I hope I can accurately convey my feelings. Please understand the meaning of this, and honestly, if you have any statements of the “But Japan bombed Pearl Harbor!” or “But Japan was a colonialist country” variety, don’t comment at all. Japanese-Americans and their Diaspora are significantly different from Japan and the actions of the former Imperial Army. Japanese-Americans often fought against Japan and the former Imperial Army and definitely fought against the Axis Powers. Do not discredit that history by saying, “But all Japanese!” anywhere on my blog. Today, and this blog, are not the place to have that very important conversation concerning Japanese imperialism in China, Korea, and Southeast Asian, which yes, is very important. As a historian who focused on that very thing for their thesis, I will tell you it is necessary to engage in that conversation. There’s a lot to unpack and discuss, especially considering recent dialogue between both countries and rising tensions that stem from the 1906-1910 forced colonization of the Korean peninsula. That is something that we must discuss.

But not today, and not in this moment of remembrance.

Today is about Japanese-Americans and their respective diaspora specifically, about interment, and remembering why we cannot let another people become a scapegoat and captive in America again.

If you didn’t come here with that intent, please accept this blessing in the form it comes. Also, forgive me: this is a five page blessing that goes into a lot of discussion. The blessing’s still there, it’s just tucked between a bit of a reflection.

Some articles to read:

From the LA Times, an article about survivor and member of the 42nd Regimental Combat Team Tokuji Yoshihashi, age 94.

From CNN, an article by George Takei talking about Japanese-American interment from a personal point of view. I recommend also reading up on his play Allegiance which focuses on Japanese-interment.

From The Japan times, a general article discussing current measures to establish designated, government recognized days, and additional measures, for Day of Remembrance.

Note: These are only a few resources, but I encourage you to seek information and open dialogue to learn. We remember because we don’t want to forget horrible grievances, and learning allows us to keep from treading that ground again. Find your local Japan-America society, go to universities or Japanese Community centers, and respectfully allow yourself to be taught about this part of American history so that you can become an ally and understand a bigger picture.

Today is Day of Remembrance in memory of the thousands –tens of thousands, to the sad tune of 120,000 American citizens– . It’s the 75th anniversary, and many who lived in the camps still are alive, living testaments to racism in America that is currently seeing an ugly revival. It comes in the form of White Nationalists calling for persons of Muslim faith to be put away in camps, in anti-Semitism, in the school-to-prison pipeline that steals away innocence. It comes in racism blocking change.

As I made my commute from Minami Fukushima to the station this morning, I listened to the final chapter of Book 1 of Harry Potter on Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. It’s become something I really enjoy lately –shoutout to @hpsacredtext for such a quality product, all the way from Fukushima City, Japan– and have felt has revived my spirituality through the use of a pop culture medium being used to reflect on ourselves through religious practices.

The focus of the podcast was love, in many different forms.

I had to pause it before they got to the type of reflective practice they were going to use, and before they give a blessing to a character: both are parts of the show I rather like, and almost look forward to each listen. However, in the spirit of HP and the Sacred Text, I want to offer a blessing, in my own, small way, of love to Japanese-Americans on this day.

It is, of course, a blessing of love.

I want to start with the fact that it is, in its own right, interesting that this day comes during Black History Month. I don’t think I ever noticed this growing up because honestly, my education about Japanese persons was limited to social media and what I understood from poorly written textbooks: it wasn’t until college that I got a Big Picture education. Black persons have often been imagined to be composed of grief: a grief of a lost heritage, of a lost land, of being taken, used, called chattel, then ignorant, then colored, and now thugs, of being continuously beaten down by society so that we will settle into “our place” and one day, ascend to become good persons, productive members of society, but always remember that we’re still Black, and therefore less. It’s a quite privileged image to see a people as constantly overcoming and therefore strong: it kind of excludes the fact that many Black persons feel incredibly deep pain from that forced rhetoric.

In the words of many Black persons greater than I that have come before me, that’s some mess if I’ve ever heard it.

But above all else –above a fetishized image of the sexualize image of Black persons, above self-serving guilt about our pasts, above a month where we’re barely the spotlight– we are made of love, and that is a fact I’ll take to my grave. It is writ into the fine lines and creases on a grandmother’s face, put into her cooking and the warm hugs she offers. It is in the smiles of the multitudes of black women who are living their lives, lights up in the eyes of black men facing adversity. It is in our children who are the future, in a black child’s victory for the entire community, in a president that made it possible to have a 2nd, 3rd, 20th, 50th Black President, in a light that shines through a national community of brown and black bodies, eyes looking ahead towards an even brighter future.

I feel that the same light, the same pervasive brightness and power, is in Japanese-Americans also, because it wasn’t so long ago that we were cut from the same cloth: dangers to society, hated, and forced into captivity, made to be scapegoats for a war that wasn’t there, and forced to atone when they were American citizens. For a long time, persons of Asian Descent –Chinese persons in the 1800s, Japanese persons in early part of the 1900s, then Korean and Vietnamese persons in the latter part of the century, and now, persons in the Middle Eastern regions – have been the target of hate. This has always been alongside Black hatred: I’d dare say that the hatred of Asian-descending persons and African-descending persons almost always occurs alongside one another.

This has not changed, of course, since 1942. As my grandmother would say, the shackle’s just aren’t visible anymore, but just because you can’t see something don’t mean it doesn’t exist.

75 years may seem long, but my grandmother is 94: she saw this, and many other acts of hatred, exacted upon Japanese-Americans. She saw the One Drop Rule be extended to Japanese persons: one drop of Japanese blood, and you were suddenly the enemy. One Drop, and you needed to be contained.

(I should add that I came to realize, shortly before I left for Japan, that my grandmother is first generation also: first generation born free. Perhaps that why this day of remembering persons of captivity is so important: I’m only the third generation, and just recently –only since really, the late 1980s, but more the 1990s – got to experience what freedom with all rights attached feels like, and it’s still an ongoing struggle to keep those rights. My hope is many generations will continue to experience rights and that one day, they will be a part of their being and no blood will be shed to protect them. I will most definitely fight for that future knowing I won’t see it: it’s worth it to me.)

Sadly, she and I and many people around the world are both seeing the return of that sickening thought as it’s exacted upon persons of Muslin faith, primarily from the Middle Eastern regions. Once more, the One Drop rule is coming into play. One Drop, and you’re suddenly a terror that needs to be contained. One Drop, and you lose the right to exist as a free person, as an American. You’re labeled a threat. One Drop is enough to damn you to being exclusively bad: it’s a hideous truth that has made a return, notable especially during last year’s political race, and with the ascension of a transparent, White racist businessman bent on excluding as many “bad people” as he can.

(I even live near a former site where German-American persons were held: two places actually, one of which is a beautiful lake, the other of which held Japanese-Americans exclusively. You’d never guess that thousands of Japanese-Americans waited there, assumedly wondering why they were there and where they’d go. Texas, being a state of big empty places, is of course, riddled with former camps and forts that hold the memories of Japanese-Americans alongside German-Americans. Regretfully, little to nothing is taught in Texas schools, though with its vicious desire to repress anything that’s not family friendly, it should come as no surprise that Texas Education administrators want little to do with its continuously ugly history.)

So I want to give you a blessing.

I give a blessing to all the Japanese-Americans that will get asked, “But yeah, how much Japanese are you?” today, to the people that will get asked to read Chinese fortunes, write their friends name in kanji, read a stranger’s tattoo, or otherwise be pushed into a racist box. I give a blessing to people who are white-passing and are told it’s “cool” you’re Japanese, to Japanese-Americans who are called Chinese, to Japanese-Americans who have ever been told their lunch smelled weird, have been policed by others about how much of their own culture is theirs, have been told that they have no right to it because they’re not Japanese enough. I give a blessing to Japanese-Americans with parents from Japan who have heard teasing remarks, to Japanese-Americans who feel distance for being American and Japanese. I can’t imagine that struggle: I’ve never had to have it. But I’d imagine that it aches sometimes.

I give a blessing to older Japanese-Americans that may still struggle to love America when it betrayed the trust of its citizens.  I give a blessing to all Japanese persons who lived in those camps and still say the pledge, who sing the anthem and feel pride for their country, who want to make America a place for all. I give a blessing to first generation, second generation, ongoing generations of Japanese descending persons who struggle to be mixed in a world that wants things Black and White. I give a blessing to all who are a part of the Japanese Diaspora and are proud, who need representation and work to create it, who can’t create and wish for it.

Most of all, I offer a blessing of protection in these dark times when a percentage of America wants a return to internment, wants to see groups of people labeled and placed away, partitioned off from society. I offer all Japanese persons a blessing that they never see that day again, whether for Japanese persons or for Jewish persons: for Black persons, persons of the Muslim faith, or anybody who is marginalized, brown, black, and different. I pray that your children, your families, your friends keep strong hearts and know that we will not let that happen. I do not want another Executive Order to take us back to fear mongering and scares.

We cannot let that happen again.

I give a blessing from the bottom of my heart that you’ll find what you need and feel that American is Your America through and through. I hope that you will let love in its many forms guide you, and let that keep you and let your head lay peaceful at night.

Love is what will get us through these dark times, when racism, White Nationalists, White Terrorism, and fear by all is so prevalent. Love from white allies, from Persons of Color, and for a future where Our America is a colorful tapestry of heritage, languages, culture, and representation will help to enact the change to break down racism and open up dialogue.

God be with you, and also with you. Lift your hands up and rejoice because we will all rise together.  This is my blessing to you, Japanese-Americans. I see you, I hear you, and I proudly stand with you. Go forth in glory, for you’re Our America. You make up My America, a Land for All. Hate will not win when we band together. Hate cannot prevail in the face of rightful justice. Hate cannot prevail when peoples –formerly oppressed– do not let hate rise up.

Hate will not be the victor.

That is my blessing as we go forth.

Amen.