The side of the road.

My white privilege landed me on the side of the road, comfortably weeping in my car over a Black Eyed Peas song— five minutes from my thriving suburban neighborhood. I really am as privileged as it gets.

It is often assumed that because I am white I don’t really care about the issues that affect other races. After having a minor panic attack over something that in no way affected me, I can confidently conclude that this is far from the truth.

While I am not typically an emotional person, Jan. 30 was a different day. Driving home after listening to women at my work talk about how they worry for their mothers in Somalia, one of seven countries affected by Trump’s travel ban, the long drive on a scarcely populated road only increased the rapidly producing thoughts in my head. I think it was when “Where is The Love?” came on that the uncontrollable sobbing really began. People really do have me questioning, where is the love?

President Trump’s new travel ban took my breath away. Not in the way that is ever good, but more of the way where I forgot how to breathe, the way where I almost passed out and almost caught a fly or two in my mouth. This ban on anyone who is currently in one of these seven countries entering the United States bewildered me. Could he really do that? Apparently so. I understand this is temporary, or at least is promised to be. I understand that after 120 days the people who were yanked off their flights home to America, the Clemson professor who worries for his students and pets at home in America, the parents desperate to return to work and their children, will once again be allowed back into the same country that deemed them unworthy of entry in 120 days, at their own expense of course.

But my issue is longer lasting than roughly four months. My issue is that we picked seven countries and decided that even if you were legally allowed to be in this country, you really weren’t. We chose to inconvenience these people we know little to nothing about, and all because they were in the wrong place and the wrong time. Sorry, you did everything you were supposed to and legally came into this country with all the correct paperwork and documentation or are an actual citizen, but this is America, and we decided that the best solution to a worldwide issue is to isolate ourselves from those we assume are evil. At this point in my teary rampage, will.i.am made a valid point: “If you only have love for your own race / you only leave space to discriminate.” This travel ban depicts this the United States as a country who prejudicially assume that seven entire countries and the people in them are harmful to our pristine country. Because here in America, we are nothing but pristine.

Why not put a ban on guns? Why not put a ban on people on the no-fly list or people who have been investigated by the FBI? I cannot and will not understand it.

This is where my white privilege got me, questioning if people would ever become accepting of people who are different than them, wondering how many families will go to sleep tonight afraid they will be deported, curious as to the number of kids that will be placed into our horrid foster care system because their parents were detained for being in another country. My white privilege has me contemplating if the other white people would ever get up and do something that wasn’t only good for the Caucasian population. So as privileged as I am, don’t doubt that I am just as infuriated with the way we treat people who aren’t as privileged.