RP2: Imagined and Real

            Imagination. Imagined. Real. I stand on their home, or at least what used to be claimed as their home. I am eternally grateful that I am able to stand on what they called their home. Guilty…I feel guilty. I am angry that people of history thought their agency to be better than those who first populated this piece of earth; angry that these people, whom were immigrants themselves, thought it righteous to drive the indigenous from their home. How could these people of history now call those displaced from home, the alien, when they themselves were foreign not too long ago? According to Parreñas and Siu, diaspora is an ongoing and contested process of subject formation embedded in a set of cultural and social relations that are sustained simultaneously with the “homeland” (real of imagined), place of residence, and compatriots or coethnics dispersed elsewhere. According to Parreñas and Siu, diaspora is displacement from the homeland under the nexus of an unequal global political and economic system. According to Parreñas and Siu, diaspora is the simultaneous experience of alienation and the maintenance of affiliation to both th country of residence and the homeland. According to Parreñas and Siu, diaspora is the sense of collective consciousness and connectivity with other people displaced from the homeland across the diasporic terrain.

            Imagination. Imagined. Real. I stand upon the land of those who were displaced from their homes into reservations. I stand upon the land of those who experienced alienation upon contact with sickening white power. I stand upon the land of those who share the same pain of being forced to move: a collective thought, a trail of tears. They were on the inside, but now they reside outside in an elsewhere, while those with whom I share a skin pigment, moved in and nestled up to the fire that welcomes so many home. While the immigrant may be a part of the diaspora, the diaspora may never be a part of the immigrant. They did not immigrate here. We did. So tell me, why? Why are they the outcasts and cooped up? Why did we take free reign of their land? “Land of the free.” I spit on those words. It is not that I’m not patriotic, no. I’m thankful for those that tried to defend their homeland, and sorry that they had to endure such hardship. They are the true America for me. Those whose blood, sweat and tears stained the very ground that I walk on. While my reality may exist in Michigan, and while my home may reside north of Detroit, my imagined home will always reside across the great Atlantic. My homeland, my motherland extends through the Mediterranean Sea. My imagined home, my real home, is where my ancestors lived. Greece: my heart, my pride, my soul. I cannot pretend that I am an American. Sure, I live there. Sure, that is where my life is. But I will not up hold “Land of the Free” until they really are.