As an immigrant in America, I’ve learned that criticizing the state of the union is a faux pas, an indecency.
The unspoken understanding is that while we call ourselves “American,” we are and always will be guests. A good guest is gracious, generous with praise, and a delight to the host, never a burden. In effect, the acceptance we enjoy as immigrants is conditional and based upon the pleasantness of our presence and our conviction in expressing our pleasure to be here.
Belonging is understood as a bestowed favor.
When former Vice President Kamala Harris called this country “the greatest democracy in the history of the world” during the Democratic National Convention, I was reminded of all the times I’ve been told to “go back to China” when I publicly expressed sharp condemnation of the U.S. without cutting it with saccharine patriotism. I would have called America “a broken fixer-upper with great promise.” Would that be so wrong?
A more acceptable sentiment from a Chinese American like me might resemble actor Ke Huy Quan’s 2023 Oscar acceptance speech for “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” which was praised by right-leaning political outlet Providence Magazine for his “spirit of gratitude.” The article called his story one that embodies Ronald Reagan’s famous “Shining City on a Hill” address, which styles the U.S. as a paradise we would be so lucky to gain admission into.
America sees itself as “a nation of immigrants,” but the more accurate description is a “settler colonial state” established on land stolen from Indigenous people. Despite hard-fought civil rights and inclusivity progress in recent history, the idea that this is a “White nation” endures and grows.
The “American Dream” Quan spoke of is about working hard and being rewarded for it. However, the unspoken end goal involves traveling along the identity sliding scale from “immigrant” to “settler.” This is how one can truly be an American, not just belonging to this nation, but becoming one to whom America belongs. The dark implication of this shift — which whitewashes this country’s past and present violence — is at odds with the sanitized mosaic of mainstream multiculturalism.
In a recent conversation with The Emancipator, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen posed the uncomfortable question, “What does it mean to want to belong to an empire?”
It is a question that gets at the very heart of American immigrant identity. Is our belonging, in fact, conditional on accepting and participating in the ways of the American empire?
The second Donald Trump regime seems to suggest “yes.” Those who have spoken against the U.S.’s role in the genocide in Palestine were among the first seized for deportation for their “thought crimes.” This implies that embracing a more agreeable ideology or simply blending in, would have protected them.
That is an illusion.
The stakes are too high for us to cling to fantasies of bolstering our claim to belonging through exemplary behavior. Being a “model minority” is, at the end of the day, a weak and indefensible position from which ICE can pluck us with little explanation. Now is the time to raise our voices, become troublemakers, faux pas be damned.
Nguyen called for each and every one of us to rally ourselves around decolonization as the unifying cause, to link civil rights with anti-genocide, and to embrace the notion that nobody is free and safe until we all are. In order to do so, it is vital that immigrants abandon the guest mentality of needing to earn their place here through the host nation’s approval. This false security and liberation is not worth a lifetime diet of bootlicking, and certainly not worth the continuous subjugation of others that we are required to turn a blind eye to.
This is not belonging, it is barely the suggestion of it.
As The Emancipator’s contributing managing editor Halimah Abdullah writes, “the radical act of belonging starts by simply declaring it so.” I used to believe belonging is something external, that is sought out or given, something that requires permission and potential moral compromise. In truth, there is scant empowerment in molding and twisting myself into some narrow shape to squeeze into a slit; even less than losing myself within the proverbial melting pot.
Belonging to America as an immigrant will not come from supplication to its so-called exceptional greatness, but from taking a hammer to the ugly parts of it that hurt, exploit, and kill, and by making it into something far greater with our own hands, shaped by our vision.
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