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This week, I'm hosting the show with Anna, and I'm excited to share with you all what I've been working on for the last few months.
Over the summer, as protests erupted around the world in response to the death of George Floyd at the hands of police, there were also lots of protests in my Brooklyn neighborhood. One afternoon on a socially distant walk with a close friend, we ran into two marches and a rally within five blocks. There were constant streams of marchers for months on end, often right past my apartment building.
When I'd look at my phone, I'd see Instagram stories filled with resource after resource. I recognized the utility in everything people were sharing, but it felt like there was something missing. As a Black person, so much of what was being shared was to support my community, but I didn't always feel included in what I was seeing. I was craving more nuanced conversations.
I'm also the child of two immigrants, and I was having lots of conversations with my family and my friends who are also from immigrant families. These conversations were complicated, but also really fascinating. And I wanted to have more of them.
So that's what you'll hear this week: several conversations with members of immigrant families trying to make sense of this moment. These conversations aren't answers or a conclusion, but I could relate to so much of what was shared. I hope you can see yourselves reflected in them too.
—Afi and the Death, Sex & Money team
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This Week on Death, Sex & Money
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During the past few months, our producer Afi Yellow-Duke has had conversations with listeners who are also from immigrant families about how they're talking with their own relatives—about identity, race, racism, and politics—in an unprecedented year. Hear several of those conversations in our new episode, out today.
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Your Stories: Conversations Within Immigrant Families
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We heard from a lot of you who come from immigrant families over the past few months. You told us about the complicated, layered conversations you're having with your relatives right now—about everything from race and racism in America, to the upcoming election, to your own family histories.
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"My family immigrated to Massachusetts as political and Jewish refugees in 1991. These last few months we've been having a lot of very difficult conversations around the very racist, very oppressive core of this country. I've found that there's just so many barriers for us to work through, like generational, political, cultural, before we can even come to an understanding of what systemic racism is and how it manifests and how it's still manifesting today. It's just, it's a lot to absorb for them.
The biggest issue for them is that they see their lives as literal proof of the American dream being this very real and available thing to anyone that just wants it badly enough. Because they did, and they worked endlessly and tirelessly to achieve it. So to explain to them how their skin color and the cultural signifiers of. Their background actually worked to their advantage in working our way out of welfare and into kind of the cushy suburban life that they have now, obviously it feels like a slap in the face to them. And I think also underneath everything, there's this idea that kind of permeates all our conversations, which they would never actually admit to. Even though they're loving and empathetic people, I think they find it hard to care or relate to any of the outrage and anger that I'm feeling because what they lived through in the USSR was so horrible. The trauma that they endured was so intense that all of this violence and oppression and police brutality like barely registers for them."
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"When I bought a truck with a camper from my first generation Mexican immigrant dad, he told me to make sure I keep the camper locked in case any 'mallates' try to sneak in. I was going to send it to Mississippi where I was living at the time.
Mallate is a derogatory word for African Americans. It’s awful how racist Mexicans are, and with what's going on in the world, I think I need better tools to talk to my dad about racism. We just started talking about discrimination and I’m going through some harassment, and conversations about racism and discrimination are hard in my family."
—Anonymous
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"Race is difficult to talk about in my family because my parents don’t really understand systemic racism. They certainly understand overt racism as I’m sure they’ve encountered it at one point or another in their lives. One of the first times I tried to talk to them about race was as a teen, when I asked them not to use what I would consider to be a derogatory term for Caucasians in Cantonese, which directly translates to 'ghost people' on account of Caucasians... well, being white. It didn’t go over so well cause they didn’t see what the big deal was so I dropped it. To be fair, in Cantonese as far as I know, there is no respectful ‘term’ for individuals of other races/ethnicities. It’s all ‘black people,’ ‘brown people,’ etc. as far as I’m aware. I don’t really think 'African-American' exists in the Cantonese language. It’d be a pretty difficult mouthful even if it did.
Fast forward to the murder of George Floyd. My parents were helping me move to a new city for a job when it happened, and I was absolutely devastated along with the rest of the world. I wrote a long post on Facebook talking about how I had failed the African-Canadian and African-American community by sitting on the sidelines content being a model minority. I didn't want to broach the topic with my parents though. We were travelling multiple days in close quarters and it could be a really difficult topic to broach at the best of times.
After I moved into my new place, I saw a comic on Facebook that someone had drawn up to communicate the enormity of the problem that African-Americans/Canadians were facing, to bridge the gap with our parents/grandparents. The comic equated the difficulties that our black brothers and sisters were facing with the difficulties that Chinese people faced in Tiananmen Square. I fired it off to my father on WhatsApp, and expected to have to have a lengthy conversation once they had read the comic. To my surprise, he wrote the following back to me, and I’ve never been more proud of my father in my life: 'I just read the comic. We will share this with our friends. Black & yellow should stand together.'
I honestly believe that it’s possible to talk with our immigrant parents about this type of thing. Justice is a universal human experience, and something we all long for in the face of oppression. However, it just takes a little bit of work to communicate that in a language that our families with understand."
—Carlos, 27, Ontario, Canada
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Listen to This: Audio We Love
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The second season of the podcast Last Day began with what could have been the last day of Kevin Berthia's life, when he drove to the Golden Gate Bridge during a mental health crisis. Host Stephanie Wittels Wachs, whose brother died from a heroin overdose in 2015, turns her attention to rising suicide rates in the U.S. in the new season of the show—telling the stories of people who have died and the people who loved them, and examining how suicide intervention works and what happens next.
The new podcast Resistance has a real "first draft of history" spirit to it. In the first episode, you're following along in (almost) real time as 22-year-old Brooklyn resident Chi Ossé moves from never protesting, to leading marches throughout New York City, to launching a campaign for New York City council—all in a matter of weeks. It definitely feels like the trajectory of political history in America is moving at lightening speed, and Resistance captures some of what that sounds like.
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"This podcast has been such a powerful resource, a window, and a comfort. I never miss an episode."
—Erin, Connecticut
Join Erin in supporting our work at Death, Sex & Money!
Donate now at deathsexmoney.org/donate.
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To all of you reading this while standing in an early voting line...
Thanks for doing your part!
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