X is for Xenophobia

I’m doing this blogging A to Z thing. Today is X.

Xenophobia: n. intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries.

There’s a lot of that going around these days and I just don’t get it. I guess that’s where the irrational part of the definition above comes in.

My maternal grandparents were Irish immigrants. They both sailed for America at 17 (one in 1914 and the other in 1915) to find work – something there was none of in Ireland.

I didn’t know my grandparents, but I heard stories of them sailing for America as teenagers and I always pictured them like the kids in this Schoolhouse Rock episode.

They came here, took the sorts of jobs people give uneducated immigrants, and made lives for themselves. Eventually they met, married, and started their own family. They lived in a neighborhood of Irish and Italian immigrants, and got started on the whole melting pot thing. Their kids’ generation eventually left for the suburbs and another wave of immigrants moved in.

One year I found copies of the ship’s manifests (“Lists or Manifests of Alien Passengers for the United States Immigration Officer at Port of Arrival.”) from when they came over and put them in a frame with pictures of the actual ships (the SS Celtic and the SS New York) and gave it to my mother for Christmas. She passed a few years ago so now it hangs in my kitchen.

Every day, I pass the manifests of alien passengers and I’m reminded that I’m a second generation American. Only one generation separates me from people who left their homes to escape crushing poverty and came to America to start new lives.

And I try to behave accordingly.