In U.S. discourse, immigrants are mostly represented as less than human, a policy problem, or as just that, a category, and categories are prisons.
Interpretation
This quote critiques the dehumanization of immigrants in society and highlights the negative consequences of categorizing people.
Francisco Goldman expresses concern about how immigrants are depicted in U.S. discourse, arguing that they are often viewed as mere statistics, problems to be solved, or categories lacking individual humanity. This reductive framing creates a kind of prison for immigrants, as it strips them of their identities and reduces them to labels, ultimately leading to their devaluation and marginalization within society.
In practice
During a speech on immigration reform, one might refer to this quote to emphasize the importance of seeing immigrants as individuals rather than as statistics.
Of what significance is one's existence, one is basically unaware. What does a fish know about the water in which he swims all his life? The bitter and the sweet come from outside. The hard from within, from one's own efforts. For the most part I do what my own nature drives me to do. It is embarrassing to earn such respect and love for it.
(What makes his world so hard to see clearly is not its strangeness but its usualness).Familiarity can blind you too.
Men have always shown a dim knowledge of their better potentialities by paying homage to those purest leaders who taught the simplest and most inclusive rules for an undivided mankind.
And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word.
But the guilty person is only one of the targets of punishment. For punishment is directed above all at others, at all the potentially guilty.
Do you know how pale & wanton thrillful comes death on a strange hour unannounced, unplanned for like a scaring over-friendly guest you've brought to bed Death makes angels of us all & gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as raven's claws
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