[INTRODUCTION: Salvatore (“Sal”) Hepatica, a 40-year-old bachelor and computer engineer, peered at the mirror in his two-room apartment and smiled. It was the day before Christmas, and Sal had volunteered to play Santa Claus at his nephew’s school. He had spent hours putting on the rented bright red Santa costume, hat, robe, large white beard, and black boots. He chortled at the new appearance of his face; rouged, bearded, overtopped with the stereotopic Santa Bonnet. He had also been required to stuff two pillows into the jacket to mimic Santa’s iconic corpulence. He laughed out loud as he barely recognized himself.
It was early, so Sal decided to pay a surprise visit to his great-aunt Elvira, Epicac, who lived on the route to the holiday event, snickering to himself at the anticipated shock and surprise of the singular appearance of “Santa Claus.” He was nonplussed, however, when he arrived at his aunt’s door, and she immediately said, “Hi, Sal.”
There is merit and fairness in recognizing others for their personal singularity, as contrasted with a possible reductionist perception as stereotypical members of a subjectively perceived categorial group., It is neither empirically accurate nor fair to reductively attribute populist stereotypical characteristics to lawyers, doctors, accountants, and other functionaries, on the facile assumption that they evince certain stereotypical characteristics. John Smith, Esq., is not systemically or intrinsically a lawyer; he is an individual named John Smith, who practices the profession of law.
Indeed, it is unjust reductionist assumptions about other members of human society that have historically catalyzed the virulent and shameful toxicity of racial and ethnic prejudice. Reductionist ideologies of ubiquitous populations of humanity have eternally resulted in misery, tragedy, and shame, Rev.. Martin Luther King sagely advised, “looking to man’s content of character, rather than the color of his skin.” It is an empirical verity that reductive ignorance fuels prejudice of every toxic category.
It is inarguable that the term “immigrant” simply refers to a person from another country intending to reside in our Nation. It does not connote nor encapsulate any conceivable characteristic, positive or negative. Nevertheless, the American Nation has unfortunately been witness to ubiquitous bias regarding Native American, Black, Hispanic, Jewish, and most notably, Mexican and Central American immigrants.
We presume that we have adequately written of our President, the Chief Executive of a Nation, principally populated by immigrants and their progeny, whose repeated public defamation of the entire class of Hispanic immigrants, whom he has never met, is pernicious xenophobia, inhumanely exacerbated by his appointment of a Gestapo-style masked army to arrest, imprison, and banish to foreign torture prisons, immigrants from Mexico and Central America (inclusive of long-term residential families) without a modicum of due process.
Xenophobia, as is the case with other phobias such as claustrophobia, agrophobia, and acrophobia, is appropriately referable to psychiatric attention and should be so pursued, in the interest of the salubrious health of the body politic.
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