Anika+H’s+Final+AmEx+Speech+2016


 * The Eyebrow **

When I was six years old I always thought that my older sister Aleesha trying to plot my demise. She would honestly scare the bejesus out of me on a daily basis. Now when I say scaring of course she didn’t fail to scare me in the literal sense. I mean that little troll would always hide behind walls and before I turned the corner she would jump out at me. But she would also scared me psychologically.

I remember one day I was watching the Barbie rendition of ‘princess and a pauper’ and she crept over to the couch. And in a surly whisper as scary as an eight year old could be she said “When you’re sleeping I’m going to put hot wax on one of your eyebrows”. She paused giving me a crooked smile and clarified that she would not be waxing my eyebrow off. See for a second my six year old self breathed a sigh of relief until she explained that I would still lose an eyebrow. She clarified that by just leaving a waxing strip on my eyebrow without actually waxing it I would be forced to wax my own eyebrow off the next morning. I remember at six years old being terrified especially because I’m a pretty heavy sleeper and at the time we shared a room with bunkbeds and she pretty easy access to my eyebrows. See now as you can tell I still have two eyebrows so she never delivered on her threat. But the thing is neither of us forgot about it and since we went to the same elementary school whenever saw me in hallways, during recess, or during snack time she would take her right pinky finger and with a completely straight face she would stroke one of her eyebrows.

Looking back at it why was I so scared? Why did I have such an irrational fear of a little eight year old girl with Velcro spiderman shoes and a matching bowl cut? The fact is that, the reason I was scared was because I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand the fact that my sister would never in a million years have the nerve to actually do something so maniacal, so calculated. I didn’t understand that she was just messing with me.

But it is with this simple explanation that I’ve started recognizing one reoccurring theme through all the literature we’ve read and all of the history we’ve learned this year.

We fear what we do not understand.

And I’ve found that this has held true for most instances of mass hysteria and bigotry. But in the interest of time and the fact that no one, especially me wants to hear me talk for an hour let’s just take a look at a few examples.

Let’s start with Japanese internment camps and work our way from there

See now Japanese internment camps are a perfect example of not understanding something entirely, being scared and acting irrationally. Without any real reason other than having Japanese heritage and in some cases if people thought you had Japanese heritage over one hundred thousand innocent people were forced into work camps. Inability to understand that despite being American citizens and sharing nothing but ancestry with the Japanese fighting in World War II sweeping generalizations heightened fear against most people of Asian descent and led to the detainment, isolation and abuse of these Japanese-Americans for two and a half years.

Another example of fearing what we don’t understand is with the red scare

With the Red Scare and McCarthyism alone Americans began fearing themselves and each other. This resulted in mass hysteria, the conviction of innocent people, the separation of families and the overall loss of dignity. Only with further invasive involvement in Vietnam and Korea America’s dogmatic anti communist platforms were finally coupled with widespread disapproval. Fear of communism only reduced when the American endorsement of oppressive dictators and the loss of hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties became common knowledge.

Fear of things that we are unfamiliar with can also be seen with mixed attitudes towards progressivism or liberalism. Let’s just take topics of immigration, LGBTQ rights, racism, sexism, abortion all as examples. All topics hotly debated, and with people on both sides deeply divided and opinionated often times it’s hard to step back and consider what each each side has to say. But the point is we can’t scared of changing our opinion. We can’t be scared of seeing that maybe we’re wrong. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I want people to try to be rational.

If only I accepted that I might wakeup one day and be left with one eyebrow or even if tried to understand by asking questions like Which eyebrow did my sister plan on targeting? When was she planning to do it? What compelled her to think of such a maniacal plan?

Then I probably wouldn’t have been sacred of my eight year old sister. I would’ve just seen the sticky bowl cut wearing, Heeley loving eight year old who psychologically scarred me ten years ago.

In the America that I want to grow old in I want people to keep an open mind, Don’t fear the unknown embrace it explore it.

Thank you