"In the days following the election, a Twitter thread emerged between award-winning Vietnamese writer Viet Thanh Nguyen and failed Senatorial candidate Lauren Witzke. In response to Witzke’s racist rhetoric advocating for mass Muslim deportations, Nguyen tweeted, “Remember me @LaurenWitzkeDE? A ‘Third World’ refugee who can’t believe you’re still peddling this racist white supremacist garbage. At least you won’t be doing it as a Senator.”
Her response was, “It would be a shame if President Trump revoked your refugee status and sent you back to the Third World where you belong.”
Even as I’ve felt relieved and overjoyed by the news of our first female, BIPOC Vice President-elect, the shadow of that Twitter exchange still feels prescient in the wake of the election. I worry that it’s an indication of a narrative that will resurface.
You see, it’s so familiar to me that I could have scripted out that exact same dialogue in my sleep. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been told to “go back to my country,” especially as an assumed TKO in any sort of political sparring match. In high school, a former friend told me that I should feel lucky to live in America and not “in the rice fields.” Then, you guessed it, she told me that I could always go back to my Third World country if I was so unhappy.
My family and I immigrated to America when I was five, and I’ve lived here for three decades. I spent my time trawling around suburban malls, memorizing the Pledge of Allegiance, eating burgers next to a sunkissed pool. I’ve lived in cities and small towns in different regions. I’ve pored over American authors and musicians, idolizing them as any other kid does growing up. As much as I’ve loved my own Vietnamese heritage, I fully straddle the cultural line with American identity. I’m a citizen. I married a citizen, and my daughter is a citizen. She could run for President someday, though I can’t.
The handful of years I spent outside of the United States are barely more than a collection of memories, as flimsy as a candy necklace. In my heart, I’m an American, with an American’s perspective and inheritance. So when someone tells me to go back to my country, I have to wonder if what they really want is an erasure of my identity. An erasure of me as an immigrant and a person.
There are several latent barbs in the “Go back to your Third World country” rhetoric that Witzke so proudly spews. Let me break it down from my perspective.
- There’s a belief that ownership over the United can never belong to an immigrant, regardless of the fact that this country was formed by immigrants and forcibly taken from Indigenous People. No amount of time you’ve lived in the United States erases your Otherhood or tempers the very air of xenophobia. You could be a highly-lauded writer, a disease-curing scientist, a teacher who devotes herself to children, or a small business owner—none of your contributions will ever matter. And if you don’t happen to occupy one of those widely admired professions? Your contributions are invisible.
- The false position is that citizenship can be “revoked” because of presumed bad behavior, even if it only takes the form of disagreement (i.e. freedom of speech). Dissent is patriotic. Caring so deeply about a country that you’ve put time and thought into how to make it what it could be, rather than settling for the status quo, is a gesture of love. The most unpatriotic thing you can do is remain apathetic.
- There’s an inherent assumption that “Third World” means mentally and emotionally underdeveloped as if someone who comes from a “Third World” country couldn’t possibly engage meaningfully in any kind of conversation and policy. The value assertion and derision in that phrase has been adopted to mean, simply, “People we don’t need to take seriously.”
- The phrase “go back to your country” invalidates an individual’s sense of identity. It presumes, often incorrectly, that an immigrant or POC feels any significant connection to their country of origin. To tell someone to return to a place they may not feel attached to is a form of involuntary migration. It’s a reverse form of diaspora. It makes you feel rejected to your core.
Loving your country does not give you license to tell others they do not belong. That’s not patriotism.
Loving your country does not give you license to tell others they do not belong. That’s not patriotism.
When I consider what I do want to teach my daughter about patriotism, I know a few things. I won’t tell her that patriotism belongs to the person who can slap the most flag decals on their truck. It won’t be the person who tweets xenophobic language, as if it’s their mother tongue, or the President who threatens to leave the country if his opponent wins. In fact, patriotism doesn’t belong to any one person. It isn’t a club with a committee that extends tissue-lined invitations for those they deem worthy. Patriotism, in its truest and most essential form, is a shared experience among all Americans.
I define patriotism as love of country—nothing more, nothing less. I see my daughter embracing her neighbors, celebrating artists in our community, and learning about the rocky yet powerful history of this country. We watch the sunbursts of fireworks on the Fourth of July and talk about the long-delayed joy of Juneteenth. We cheer our country on for its accomplishments and speak against its injustices.
I felt like a patriot this weekend, in every sense of the word. I was proud of my country, even as I know how much work is left for us, how many reparations are still owed.
My daughter is already invested, and so am I, as much as any American citizen can be.
And make no mistake: we’re here to stay.