‘ICE will get you’: Lessons from confronting the bigot in a California grocery store |
Author Raj Tawney usually internalizes offensive comments he receives about his ethnically unambiguous appearance. He couldn’t hold back on a guy in a supermarket.
“Don’t worry, ICE will get you.”
These were not the words I expected to hear as I exited the snack food aisle of the Walmart in Southern California’s Yucca Valley.
A woman had just let me pass with the bag of mini pretzels I was holding in my hands. Her husband, standing nearby, was the one who mouthed off.
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I turned back and shot a glance at them. Did he really just say what I think he said? Does he think I’m an illegal immigrant?
Perhaps he thought I rudely cut in front of her, warranting a disgruntled remark? Or maybe my outward appearance simply fit the description of what he deemed as non-American in his mind, motivating him to blurt out a gut reaction. Whatever his excuse, I tried to shake it off. But as I walked farther away, trying to find my wife, Michelle, in the dairy section, I began to tremble uncontrollably –– not from fear, but from vehement anger.
This wasn’t the first denigrating comment I’ve received in my life. As an Indian, Puerto Rican and Italian American, my ethnically unambiguous appearance has routinely invited ugly, prejudiced observations from ignorant strangers over the years — since childhood, in fact.
On my first day of kindergarten, an Egyptian American girl and I were taken to an English as a second language room and asked if we spoke English. During my teenage years, as my hair grew curlier and eyebrows thicker, classmates reveled in petty name-calling, especially following the Sept. 11 attacks, while adults would sometimes say to me, “You look foreign. Where is your family from?” My usual, earnest response of “The Bronx” didn’t seem to satisfy them.
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