Michelle Cruz Gonzales's Blog

This Is My Fucking Country

Originally published on Hip Mama
by Michelle Cruz Gonzales
November 10th, 2016

 This is my place. My people have been here since borders were only imaginary, ‘just a line in the dirt,’ but this fact gives me no right over anything more than anyone else. Before my people, there were other people, and before them, the original people. And I don’t wish to outnumber anyone, or get revenge, or gloat, and I know that we all belong, and that there’s a way we can all be heard.”

redwoods

This is my fucking country.

I have never, ever had this feeling more acutely than I do now.

I didn’t build it, create it, or dream it into being, but I am here to claim my space in it, and you should too.

15058046_10209639071026414_193192769_n

Somehow, I have always claimed my space, DIYing my through it all, going to protests, beating my drums, writing punk songs, poetry, stories, books, working hard to stay visible.

Still, it would be easy to slink away now, to take my hot flashes and run, to build a house on the property I happen to own in Mexico, and to sweat it out there. But this is my fucking country. I was born here too. I know rivers, granite rock, dragon flies, oak trees, rancherias, peninsulas, bridges, panoramic views, lakes in the Midwest, lightening bugs, bayous, marshland, and a city of Angeles.

trump-protest

In 2010, Gregory Rodriguez wrote about what he saw as the coming white-supremacist backlash, in his article, “The White Anxiety Crisis.”

Though whites will become a minority in the national population, the vast majority of individual states will probably remain majority white. (This is because the most profound demographic change is happening in a handful of the most heavily populated states.) A strong white-minority political consciousness is most likely to arise in regions that are nowhere near actually becoming majority-minority. It is in these regions, where white-minority status is more phantom than reality, that politicians and demagogues can best     employ the rhetoric of white ethno-nationalism.”

Rodriguez, who actively writes about immigration, ethnicity, and race relations, and who is also the author of Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans and Vagabonds: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America (Pantheon 2007), foresaw what would happen in 2016, what activist and CNN commentator, Van Jones, recently, and aptly, named the whitelash. And in many ways it does feel like that, like being lashed by white folks, being told to go back to where we came from, being put back in our place.

But this is my place. My people have been here since borders were only imaginary, ‘just a line in the dirt,’ but this fact gives me no right over anything more than anyone else. Before my people, there were other people, and before them, the original people. And I don’t wish to outnumber anyone, or get revenge, or gloat, and I know that we all belong, and that there’s a way we can all be heard.

f4003584e847990e3cae4b5d8062e342-los-angeles

So quit threatening to move to Canada, when you know you won’t do it, and knowing that so many couldn’t just pick up and go. This is all our country, the rivers, the granite rock, the dragon flies, the oak trees, the rancherias, the peninsulas, bridges, panoramic views, lakes in the Midwest, lightening bugs, bayous, marshland, and a city of Angeles. Don’t let some pussy-grabbing, wall builder make you think otherwise.

Back to Michelle Cruz Gonzales’s Author Page