Travel!

Hello All,

I have traveled quite a bit since the covid travel bans were lifted, with the intention to search and learn about how other cultures tackle themes of identity, oppression, and community for my professional and personal growth.  I also deliberately traveled (and continue to travel) to gain insights about my ancestors’ passions, struggles, and worldview. Finally, I travel to observe how other people have considered equity based issues in the creation/reformation of societal systems—specifically gender equity. 

But before I begin blogging about the specifics of what I have learned, I will instead speak about the need for travel in the first place—and I will speak to the problematic nature of white culture in America—and how travel can be a salve to begin to heal the wounds we endure and inflict on others.

How does travel address these things?

Travel requires humility—and simultaneously offers us solidarity and community.  To realize all that travel may offer,  requires that you must allow a place to deeply impact you.  

—allow it to change you.  

Go to the places that make you uncomfortable, and wonder about that discomfort.  Go to the places that satisfy your soul’s yearnings, and then wonder why you feel good there.  What was missing? What has been gained?

I also implore everyone to research your family tree, and go to the places you are from.

Go also to the places you are not from, and notice the differences and similarities. Revel in the shared humanity of us all, and know that you are a part of something so much bigger than you thought. 

But for white Americans—it's a problematic process, isn’t it? 

The issue of my own race is fairly straight forward—I’m white—with a bit of a caveat…

    “What are you?”

Anyone of mixed ancestry can relate to this question.  Especially if race is not really talked about in your home—much less why some of us looked more or less white.

I remember being asked this question as a middle schooler—when anxieties about fitting in and belonging were at their zenith. It stopped me in my tracks.  I was white? right? I mean, I know that the family I grew up with were not exactly white, and that we ate different foods, and spoke a different language (Sicilian Italian), but I felt that I was white through and through.  The truth is more complicated—my ancestry, according to my DNA test, reveals what history has recorded—I am 15 percent non-European from various locations in the Middle East—namely the Levant region (modern day Palestine, Lebanon, and Israel).  Some of us look “whiter” than others—and as for me, I definitely passed as fully white in today’s America.  This is because my mother is northern Italian, Irish, and German.

The question of my race came to me only a handful of times in my childhood, usually by other non-white, mixed race children.  There was also unspoken, but deeply felt racial tensions in my family—with my decidedly ethnic looking father doubling down on his whiteness, and putting up a confederate flag—likely in an attempt to prove to others that he was truly “white.”   The confusion I had about racial identities in my family still wafts about—though despite this complicated past, I am, for the most part—seen as white.  To call myself anything else is fraudulent.

So as a white person, I ponder these questions: How do we mindfully, and respectfully traverse the fertile ground of genealogical research and international travel?  How do we research our family trees, and not be crippled by the privilege we hold that our roots are even documented at all?  Should we learn this information and pass it on to our children? Does it matter?  If so, how? And how do we reconcile the original sin–that the very land we sit upon was taken, brutally, and savagely from others? How do our ties to colonial oppression affect our identities? Or even…how does rape and conquest factor into our ancestries?

I believe with my whole heart that it all indeed matters, and that we must learn about ourselves.  I believe that in a desperate effort to carve out our “liberties” here in his land, we let go of our ties to our ancestors, and that this absence is a wound infecting our society and our psyche.

We gave up our roots, and therefore do not respect the roots of others. We bought into whiteness—a toxic social construct which simultaneously strips us of our true ethnicities, while forcing us into a very tiny box which serves a very small percentage of our society.  We are told that we are solely responsible for our own success, and increasingly cut off from community and solidarity from one another.  We are islands—sick, lonely, islands.  Our men are subjected to the worst versions of toxic masculinity, the sickest of whom become rapists, school shooters, and serial killers.  White men are not born this way–they are made–and are both oppressors and oppressed. They are increasingly depressed and forlorn–and their sickness radiates into everything we are as a nation. 

White men in America are oppressed, they just are.  If you do not see this, then you cannot engage in a robust conversation around solutions to the problems all around us.  I am not suggesting that their oppression is worse than anyone else’s or even equal, but it is real.  We need only glance at dipping life expectancy and mental health rates to see immediate evidence of this. 

We (white Americans) have sold out our access to solidarity around working class oppression, and bought in fully to the toxic and cannibalistic notion that we can all just pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and fix any problem that we have on our own–in silence–without help.  The European communities from which we derive do not  believe this way.  They are far from perfect of course, but they do not leave their community members to the wolves.  So why do we? Where does this come from? Why are we all painstakingly taught to avoid interdependence?  This was most certainly not the way we survived as a species. 

Our sickness also leaks out beyond our nation–it impacts the whole world.  Seeing the impacts of the opioid crisis in Canada–whose only crime was being our neighbor, is but one example. 

We are so terribly sad, lonely, and desperate–and unable to describe this oppression or even claim it. To do so would be unpatriotic. 

I am not saying that reconnecting with your roots is a cure all for these ills—but I do believe that it is a part of the solution.  And I submit to all white Americans that you can do this with humility in mind.  

Connecting with your roots will show you your place in the history of humanity.  You have a story which is rich and important.  Knowing this history will teach you that your ancestors sacrificed everything to move across oceans to give you a better life.  Most of them left unimaginable oppression—which is absolutely a part of you.  You are a part of an unending chain of ancestors before you who thrived, suffered, and endured.  They don’t deserve to be forgotten, and their lives hold lessons for us.

Tapping into these lessons teaches us that we are in fact, part of an interconnected fabric of people–not an island at all. 

You are precious, and essential to your community.  Everyone around you needs you–I need you.

Travel teaches us this.

And yet, travel is a problematic activity fraught with privilege and oppression. For one thing, it is expensive–and many people cannot afford to travel far to be sure.  Tourism also has tragic consequences on everyday people in second and third world nations, and eco-tourism impacts native flora and fauna.  I also acknowledge that airline travel is a huge contributor to greenhouse gasses—a major issue which cannot be overlooked.  We will have to find carbon neutral forms of travel if we hope to continue to learn about the world and ourselves in this way.   

But if you can, you should travel, because as a teacher, I can tell you that going to foreign places is the best teacher.

I promise you this–you can find yourself out there, and come back more loving, patient, and ready to connect with your home in new ways.  You will appreciate your time on this earth so much more, and feel a sense of urgency to protect the world and its inhabitants.  You will feel in your bones your place in the human story, which is achingly precious and rare in the cosmos. This new found existential intelligence will animate you in critically important ways.

So go get a passport, cancel that expensive cruise or trip to disney, and go someplace foreign. You’ll immediately see all that is different, but you’ll also be moved by the shared humanity of us all.

Love,

Trina