Xenophobia In Jeremy Smith's Our Fear Of Immigrants

Immigrants; feared by all, heard by none Xenophobia is the fear and hatred of foreigners. In Jeremy Smith’s, “Our Fear of Immigrants”, Smith argues that native born Americans have xenophobia, and explains the cause of it and how we can all take steps to overcome our fear. Reading this argument really opens my eyes and forces me to put myself in the shoes of an immigrant, evaluate places in my own life and see where I allow xenophobia to manifest, and plan ways that I can personally fight against it. My first step to overcoming xenophobia is to put myself in the shoes of an immigrant. It is so easy to focus only on your personal issues when you lack empathy. To disregard and hide reality from creeping into my thoughts and tugging at my heart, makes life so much easier. That is exactly what I now refuse to do. Reading Smith’s writing and hearing story after story of immigrants who live a continuous struggle of trying to survive while receiving hate everywhere they go, has brought me to tears. To help me grow a sense of empathy, I talked to my friend Juan. Juan is a refugee from Colombia. One day, I asked him to tell me about his life as an immigrant so that I could feel

This examination hurts. To erase any form of denial and to look at my mind in the purest form is tougher than I imagined. The biggest thing that I allowed myself to do was to stereotype groups of people. Things like, “ All Muslims are terrorists.”, and, “All illegal mexicans are drug cartels.”, were lies that I once believed. I determined that it was growing up in the south surrounded by conservatives everywhere I went was what fed those lies. It makes it easier to have an irrational fear of something when people around you have it too. I plan in the future to always keep myself in check to make sure I never allow myself to stereotype groups of people