I am not a political person but recent events have forced my commentary on an astoundingly racist comment by – as I’m sure you know – President Donald Trump.

When I set out to write my book, I sought to uncover why an adoptive father with deeply prejudiced views would consider transracial adoption. I’m analyzing three distinct but intertwined histories: the American family, America’s anti-Asian sentiment, and, of course, the history of transracial adoption, all in an effort to explain otherwise inexplicable behavior.

But I never imagined that my country’s leader, a man describing predominantly poor and black nations as “shit holes,” would hasten my path to an answer.

And here it is:

Trump’s language is identical to my father’s, a man who’d use similar rhetoric to describe those same countries. And that superiority complex, I now realize, is what drives certain white men to determine who’s good enough to come to this country and live among their families, and who has to stay out.

Woeful bigots who transracially adopt might have complex motives rooted in what I continue to uncover, but never has an answer to a deeply complex question been presented to me with such appalling clarity. If racism trickles down from the top, then we have an even more complicated issue to address: How do we protect ourselves against forces so powerful and how can we prevent this from happening again?

For one, we cannot allow ignorant white men’s opinions to pit minorities against each other. It’s a vicious attempt to assign racial hierarchies among human beings. We need to view their commentary through a lens of insecurity and inferiority, the basic root of all immigrant-directed nativistic racism.

I hope that Trump’s comments unite people of all colors against such despicable language. I also hope that this event provokes immigrants to loudly tell their stories, so that we may continue documenting the struggles we encounter every single day.

Thanks, all of my readers, for letting me veer off the path a bit :). You mean the world to me!

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