THE AGE OF ANXIETY
Some U.S. citizens in the Bay Area feel unwelcome in their own country as the tide of anti-immigrant, anti-minority hostility in the nation rises
Laurie Laxa woke up with her heart pounding and her eyelids swollen, maybe because she’d been squeezing her eyes tightly shut. She had just had a nightmare that ICE had detained her.
Laxa is a U.S. citizen. She was born here. But as a child of Filipino immigrants, she is sensitive to the rising hostility toward immigrants and minorities in this country.
“I was telling them, ‘I was born here! I was born here!’ I was pounding on the table,” said the Fairfield resident, who had just finished watching the Netflix series “Orange is the New Black,” which included a storyline about women being detained or deported by immigration authorities. “Then I showed them proof I was a citizen, and I woke up.”
After President Donald Trump’s tweets telling four minority congresswomen they should go back to where they came from, the
mass shootings at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, by a gunman who said he was targeting Mexicans, the workplace raids in Mississippi and the Trump administration’s recent announcement that it wants to impose a wealth test on legal immigrants, many nonwhite residents of the diverse Bay Area are experiencing something unfamiliar: feeling unwelcome in their own country.
Some residents are carrying proof of citizenship. Some are having tough conversations with their kids about race and discrimination. Some are afraid to speak Spanish in public. And mental health professionals report seeing increased anxiety or despair among their clients, especially people of color.
“I’ve been in practice about 20 years, and it’s never been like this,” said Helen Hsu, a psychologist at the Vaden Health Center at Stanford University.
Laxa, an office supervisor at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, has two dark-skinned
sons, one of whom was told two years ago to go back to where he came from.
“We’re being judged based on the color of our skin,” she said.
To Neftali Nevarez Sr. of Pittsburg, that’s nothing new. Now 68, he came to San Francisco from Mexico when he was 12.
“When I came here in 1962, it was about the same,” he said. “It wasn’t Trump at the time, it was everybody. I was in junior high. People at that age are mean.” Back then, he said, some Mexicans tried to pass for white.
After the civil rights movement, things seemed to get better for a while, but “racism was always latent,” he said. In the 1980s, he points out, California Gov. George Deukmejian vetoed a bilingual-education bill, and the state passed a proposition making English its official language.
Today, his son, Neftali Nevarez Jr., says more people are feeling emboldened to show their bigotry. Nevarez Jr.’s 8-year-old daughter has asked him why the president “doesn’t like Mexicans.”
But he and his wife, Johanna Rengifo, who is of Colombian descent, are uncowed. They’re both doctors. They’re U.s.-born. They are raising their daughter to be bilingual and to have a sense of resilience and Latino pride. The Walnut Creek residents try to speak Spanish in public. Still, Rengifo acknowledges that being born here gives them privileges others may not have.
“I empathize with those who are fearful,” she said.
Nevarez Jr. said bilingualism is a “gift” to their daughter. He added: “I try more than anything to be an example of what an immigrant family can accomplish here.”
But Elisabet Revilla, director of La Clinica Latina at Palo Alto University, says other Bay Area residents — especially those who may be undocumented — are afraid to speak Spanish in public. She and her colleagues see clients who are apprehensive, especially when they hear about immigration raids.
For some, “not speaking Spanish is one way to hide from” the anxiety, Revilla said.
Steve Hill, whose grandparents on both sides were immigrants from Mexico, doesn’t share the same anxiety other Latinos feel. A San Francisco resident whose parents were born in the United States, he says current levels of immigration can no longer be sustained.
“Our borders have to be closed or at least restricted,” he said.
But Hill said that Trump can be “crass” and that he is not “satisfied with the way the message is being delivered.” And he doesn’t agree with a wealth test for immigrants, saying that anyone who is working or going to school should be allowed to stay in this country.
Monisha Bajaj, a University of San Francisco professor who was born to Indian immigrants and grew up in the Bay Area, says she tries not to let her 6-year-old son see her cry over senseless violence, like the El Paso shootings.
She took action early on, alarmed by the rise of hateful rhetoric, then Trump’s ban on travel from six majority-muslim countries. She and other parents in Berkeley formed South Asian Kids for Social Justice, which has held about a dozen sit-ins for children and parents since Trump was elected.
“We needed to do something to talk to our brown and black kids,” she said.
The group has addressed Islamophobia, bullies, political activism. They’ve listened to a South Asian author who wrote a book about someone who was bullied because of her name, and they’ve gone to protests.
“We’re trying to be a model for our kids: hope in the face of despair,” Bajaj said.
Hope is something longtime activists continue to hang on to.
“The last couple of weeks have been hell,” said Alex U. Inn, her voice loud but sometimes shaky with emotion at a protest and march against racism that she organized in San Francisco last weekend. “If you don’t feel your heart is heavy … you don’t have humanity or a heart.”
As a black, queer woman, Inn, whose given name is Carmen Alex Morrison, says she feels like she’s been an activist for as long as she can remember. She’s also a tech employee whose work as a drag king with the hip-hop group Momma’s Boyz is political.
But since Trump was elected, she has attended about 100 protests and marches around the nation. The protest she led Sunday was called “Make Racism Wrong Again,” a phrase she put on hats and shirts that she has sold to some friends and allies to counter Trump’s “Make America Great Again” caps.
The rally drew about 100 people, if that — a turnout that frustrated the Rev. Diana Wheeler, who spoke onstage.
“If you’re a white person like me, you need to get it,” she said. “If you are a Christian, why aren’t you out here? Nonparticipation is not an option. You need to be helping people feel safe.”
Wheeler says she has talked with people who are wondering if they should carry their naturalization papers with them. “We shouldn’t be having these conversations,” she said.
Alicia del Prado, a psychologist in Danville, says her minority clients have reported feeling more distrust of others, especially of white people. They’re also feeling more self-conscious about how they’re being perceived in the workplace.
“They might already be coming in with another issue, and this is intensifying it,” she said.
That’s what has happened to Jaena Rae Cabrera of San Francisco. She says she has struggled with depression for a while, but in the past three years, she has switched careers, gotten a divorce and tried to kill herself.
A first-generation Filipina American, she identifies with minorities being targeted. She has seen news about people being assaulted or being yelled at on BART for speaking another language.
“It’s been hard to feel good about anything,” she said. “I have a lot of rage, sadness and general depression.”
Another source of stress: Her Republican grandparents supported Trump. “They were immigrants, and it just doesn’t make sense to me,” she said.
Cabrera, who used to be a web news producer and didn’t have much contact with the public, now works in adult services for the San Francisco Public Library.
“Now I can help with bridging the digital divide or helping people get jobs,” she said. “I feel like I’m doing more good, and that helps me get through the day.”