America Is Freezing. Do Not Look Away.

Dear Bird and Deal,

I write to you every week, but this is a different sort of letter that I wanted to share publicly.

America is freezing. Do not look away.  

Consider this a sequel to what I wrote in May 2020. Here we are six years later when you are no longer living under our roof, and you are navigating the world as independent young men. So much has changed in these years. And yet, so much has not. 

I have never been the silent type, and I write this to you from a very chilly San Antonio, Texas. The cold has set in, not the kind you can fix with layers of silk long underwear or a puffy coat, but the kind that hardens hearts, numbs empathy, and turns cruelty into government sanctioned abuse disguised as policy. The kind that tells people to keep moving, mind their business, avert their eyes, stay quiet.

Don’t trust anyone who walks through this moment with a business-as-usual gait, for we are not in normal times.

You know my history. I grew up in Charlottesville. I went to college there. It’s a place I revere. In fact, I’m wearing one of your old UVA sweatshirts I rescued from the donation pile (This just shows how much has changed in six years; you outgrew this hoodie that fits me.). Charlottesville has sadly become known as a place that is shorthand for white supremacy laid bare, for tiki torches and hate chants that didn’t come from nowhere. 

And now here is another city close to my heart making headlines.

I lived in Minneapolis for eight years. I became an adult there. I met your dad there. Our oldest friendships were forged in the IDS Tower, in a city where we walked the streets that later filled with people fighting for their city and their neighbors. Now, in this chapter of America, the fire that burned in 2020 has turned to ice. It wears uniforms and badges, cosplaying war and peacocking male braggadocio like we saw when we played paintball for one of your birthday parties. It knocks on doors before dawn, terrorizes school yards, and preys on anyone who isn’t one of them. It separates families with clipboards and zip ties and worse. ICE moves with a cool, monstrous arrogance and relishes its power to send innocent people, children even, to detention centers, all under the blindly grotesque assurance that this is all “legal.”

And you, my sons, will continue to move through this country in brown bodies.

There is an unspoken hierarchy that puts whiteness on top. It’s always been there. It’s just louder now. Brazen. Unashamed. We see versions of it in our Indian culture too, but in America it’s woven into power, safety, and who gets the benefit of the doubt and who has basic rights.

You’ve had a small taste of what it means to be non-white in this country. That taste will sharpen as you get older. One day something will prickle the back of your neck and you’ll remember being followed around that gift shop when you were little. You asked me why the woman stayed behind us but never spoke to us. You noticed that when we left, she returned to the register and didn’t trail anyone else. You might remember telling me how much easier it was when we flew with Dad because security was easier. 

We’ve been told to “go home,” something I have heard my whole life, well before this era we have been in since 2015. We’ve heard, “Trump’s going to build a wall for you.” It echoes what my family lived through after 9/11, only now it’s soaked in accelerant. People love to romanticize how America “came together” after 9/11. That wasn’t true for people who look like us. That was when we were profiled on flights, harassed, threatened, vandalized. That seeded the xenophobia that fully rooted when Trump arrived in the White House in 2016.

Today, that same fear has a new target list. Immigrants. Asylum seekers. Families whose only crime is hope. ICE raids don’t happen in a vacuum; they’re the logical outcome of a country that decided some lives are disposable, some families expendable, some children collateral damage. It turns out all lives don’t matter after all.

America is freezing. Do not look away.

We talk about the news in our weekly chats, and just like I said in 2020, you are living in historic times. Your children will ask about these days. You can tell them your family was on the right side of history and humanity. This is the defining terrain of your generation: the election of Donald Trump and the damage he unleashed; a GOP willing to trade democracy for power; corporate greed and a lust for power; uprisings for racial justice; and now a state that literally hunts immigrants in the open.

These are the days that will shape you as you grow into men. For years I said my goal was to raise sons who aren’t assholes. I’m refining that. My goal is to raise anti-racist, justice-seeking, feminist sons who aren’t assholes. It’s not enough to say you believe in justice, equality, peace. You have to actively stand against greed, misogyny, cruelty, and all the poisons that make this country colder by the day.

I don’t have all the answers, but I do have some guideposts. The same ones I shared years ago still hold true.

Celebrate your heritage. Take up space. Do not shrink yourself to fit a white world that benefits from your silence and complacence.

Read. A lot. We gave you a multicultural life on purpose. We searched for books that centered women and Black and brown characters when they were hard to find. Keep doing that work yourself.

Learn from people whose stories were erased from your textbooks. Seek out organizers, writers, historians, artists whose lived experiences challenge the dominant narrative.

Write things down. Journal. Document this moment and your feelings. Firsthand accounts matter. Your words will be a gift to your children and grandchildren. I write two pages a day in my journal, and of course, my weekly letters to you.

Listen to learn, not to defend. Lived experience is not up for debate.

Call out microaggressions when you hear them. Stand up and speak out. Remember that we taught you to simply say, “Dude, that’s not cool.” I promise you it works at any age to call out someone’s bad behavior.

Call out gaslighting too. “I’m sorry you feel that way.” “You’re too sensitive.” “I’ve never experienced that.” These are tools of power meant to keep people quiet. Don’t let them work.

Use your voice, your pen, your keyboard, your vote. Remember how I made you write to elected officials when you were little? Keep doing it. 

Ask questions. Lessons are everywhere, even when you’re tired of being taught. Especially then.

Pay attention to power. Look at who’s in leadership. Look at who values proximity to power and will let themselves be tokenized. Don’t be like that. Your heritage is not a diversity prop.

Protest. You know where all the sign making supplies are. You’ve been marching since you were in strollers. You have shown up and even introduced your Dadu to his first protest when he was 80. There’s more to do. Keep marching.

Keep learning. None of these issues stand alone. Racism, immigration, climate change, poverty, sexism — they’re braided together. So are we.

Use the privilege you were born into. Do not go numb. Do not look away. The time for platitudes is over. I’ve made that mistake myself. What I’m asking of you now is this: use your spine, your ears, your voice, and your heart.

America is freezing. Do not look away.

I love you to the moon and back.

Mom