Writing Letters: the Privilege

The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in Denver has a letter-writing ladder where people can sign up to occasionally write letters to the Editor of different newspapers in response to articles related to immigration. I've been on the ladder for years, and have been asked to write a letter a few times each year. It seems more frequent since 2016, but that could be because the months race by so quickly all events pass in a blur.

The most recent request landed in my inbox on Friday, asking me and a few others if we could write about the current administration's efforts to push back on high court rulings that stipulate immigrant children must be reconnected with their parents within a certain time frame. I pushed the task to the bottom of my to - do list for a few days, because I had excuses: writing blogs for work, acting as a single parent while Rob travels during the week, picking up the children constantly, etc.

But all the to-dos on my list, most of them related to my children, stuck in my craw as I reflected on why I needed to write the letter. Young children, many younger than five years old, have been taken from their parents by our Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This policy was created purposefully to deter families from coming to the United States, even though families on the run in Central America and Mexico have no way of getting the news about our policies, and even though the separations cause permanent psychological damage to the children. Do we think that parents from other countries love their children less? Suffer less? One immigrant father killed himself after ICE took his child away.  The national outcry is fading even as the damage remains.

So I wrote the letter. When a rep from the Denver Post called to say they wanted to print it this week, and ask if I still wanted that I said yes, though my insides churned a bit. In the past, I have received hate mail from published letters related to immigration, and though I was never in actual danger, I dislike conflict and I dislike hate mail.  The uncertain feeling, the sensation of standing on the brink of invited conflict, relates back to my privilege in this country.  I could sail along in blissful ignorance of the wrongs our government inflicts, and they would never touch me personally. That is a problem in the United States today.

Here's a passage that captures my feelings, and makes me continue to submit letters and say yes to publication. It's from Teaching Tolerance, Issue 60, Fall 2018, page 41:

"In that way, white privilege is not just the power to find what you need in a convenience store or to move through the world without your race defining your interactions. It's not just the subconscious comfort of seeing a world that serves you as normal. It's also the power to remain silent in the face of racial inequity. It's the power to weigh the need for protest or confrontation against the discomfort or inconvenience of speaking up. It's getting to choose when and where you want to take a stand. It's knowing that you and your humanity are safe.  And what a privilege that is."
(Cory Collins, "What is White Privilege, Really?").