The America I Return To

As an American living outside of the United States, I have the chance to feel both extra privileged and ashamed in the same breath. 

I have spent much of my 20s and 30s angry with America. In college, I was tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed on her behalf, peacefully protesting what I see as her promise. This activist sentiment softened when I had kids and my life focused on more domestic (literally) causes. As a parent, I felt more aware of the issues, but my world got smaller as I gave my energy to the needs immediately in front of me -- family and work. My form of demonstration became voting and (too-small) check writing.

I took the boys to their first protests while they were still in diapers; a rally for LGBTQ rights and for gun control. In hindsight, these topics of love and safety felt easy to explain to a family with white privilege. In fact, I was so tongue-tied on how to explain race to my young kids that I inadvertently avoided it, incorrectly thinking it was something we could address at a later date. It wasn’t until 2017 when I attended a seminar put on by the local Community Coalition on Race that I learned I was unintentionally instilling color silence into my two white sons. This needed to change immediately. 

When Adriana, our au pair from Chiapas, Mexico came to live with us in 2017 I had the chance to see the United States through her wide-eyed wonder. She was amazed by the beauty, her relative sense of safety, our options -- both in life and in the grocery store, and it gave me a renewed appreciation for it all. Adriana was the perfect example of how communities, and the United States, are made better by the people who strive to live here.

Still, while Adriana fell in love with America, I grew increasingly discontent with it. I had no good answer when she asked why we called foreigners ‘aliens’. Families were being separated at our borders. I became worried about this smart, courageous woman as she walked home from church and explored NYC on weekends. 

Fast forward to 2019 when my family moved to Japan for one year. In our first two weeks, our phone notifications alerted us to three mass shootings - people gunned down as they tried to go about their everyday activity. On the other side of the world, it was crystal clear that being a random victim of gun violence was the polar opposite of freedom. How were people putting up with this?!?  I embraced not living in a country that seemed to be using the wrong definitions for the values it was trying to instill.  

Things continued to look worse for America as COVID inevitably reached its borders. As we watched people protest against wearing masks, we whispered, “only in America” under our own protective masks. (As I post this, Japan, a country of 128 million people has had 927 deaths explained by COVID. The current count in the United States with a population of ~350 million is ~117,000.) People spoke of the feeling of collective grief during such a pandemic and the first grief I could identify was for the lost leadership of America. 

And then, America started to protest. At home on their smartphones glued to the news, the injustice against George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and too-many others -- even more since then --  finally felt unbearable. At first, we only heard of the violent protests. But then hard-working journalists and civilians amplified the volume of the thousands of small, peaceful protests in unexpected places. America was waking up. 

To witness this waking up from Japan, a culture that respects conformity over individualism is particularly eye-opening. This kind of social uprising is unfathomable here. (As is the idea of police killing people.)  

Americans rage loudly. We wear our hearts on our sleeves. We don’t let the ball settle. On the international stage, we are the teenager in charge. Our immaturity and brashness are obvious to the wiser folk in the room. But so is our idealism. And so is the uniqueness of a culture that can inspire protests around the world overnight. It would be naive -- adolescent -- to think a long-lasting change movement can be sustained from a few weeks of overdue outrage and reflection. But a few weeks of outrage and reflection is exactly how the change starts.

This time “only in America” is said with a little more pride and a little less shame. Only in America, indeed.

The America I left felt like an angry, divided one. The America I return to has a lot of work to do. White privileged Americans, like myself, have a lot of work to do. And luckily now, more of us realize it. 

For the first time in far too long, I return to America thankful for Americans and their response to Black Lives Matter. ‘Only in America’ will continue to ring true for better and for worse, but by walking forward together, may we consistently see the better side prevail.