Drawing the line at the wall
Amy Cohen
Issue date: 4/26/07 Section: Op/Ed
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Remember when you were still in grade school and you built small walls on the floor with your Legos to separate your playing space from your brother's or sister's? The thin multicolored line that snaked straight down the center of the playroom, dividing the space up. Or maybe you drew lines in the sand at the beach. Your sand castle goes there and mine goes here. In a materialistic world, that separation of property is innate and almost natural. Almost.
Like hundreds of other students at the College this weekend, I was one of the masses that laid out in the sun with a magazine or some homework on the grass to take advantage of the gorgeous weather and equally handsome campus in the spring. I flipped through the shiny pictures of the latest National Geographic (yes, I am that dorky) and marveled at the many articles. I came across one with pictures of a rusted steel wall that cut the desert landscape of the picture in half. On one side were tenement slums, garbage pushed up to the wall, mangy dogs and dry red clay dirt. The other side featured cultivated green grass, a small town off in the distance and an American flag. Welcome to the U.S.-Mexican Border at Tijuana.
There has been much talk in the past months of building a wall along the border. Many words have been thrown around in relation to it, such as "national security," "economy" and "illegal." But what would this wall really accomplish if built? It would definitely send Mexicans the statement of "this is where I belong and this is where you don't." Walls are built for protection; they are built to keep the owners in and the outside world out. Walls mutely scream that neighbors are embarrassed of each other. Other than its implications of embarrassment and intolerance, this wall would boldly announce a message of hypocrisy. It would take everything our beloved country is built on, such as liberty, freedom and capitalism and squeeze it between the links of its fence. We are a nation made up of the immigrants from around the globe. Since the first settlement of Jamestown in the early 1600s to the Statue of Liberty welcoming thousands in the 1900s, we have historically, to be completely cliché, been a melting pot of other cultures. This is a national identity that we have not only cherished since an early age, but has also set us apart from every other nation. Since when are we justified in telling a nationality, "No, please don't come in," when we grant access to others?
Like hundreds of other students at the College this weekend, I was one of the masses that laid out in the sun with a magazine or some homework on the grass to take advantage of the gorgeous weather and equally handsome campus in the spring. I flipped through the shiny pictures of the latest National Geographic (yes, I am that dorky) and marveled at the many articles. I came across one with pictures of a rusted steel wall that cut the desert landscape of the picture in half. On one side were tenement slums, garbage pushed up to the wall, mangy dogs and dry red clay dirt. The other side featured cultivated green grass, a small town off in the distance and an American flag. Welcome to the U.S.-Mexican Border at Tijuana.
There has been much talk in the past months of building a wall along the border. Many words have been thrown around in relation to it, such as "national security," "economy" and "illegal." But what would this wall really accomplish if built? It would definitely send Mexicans the statement of "this is where I belong and this is where you don't." Walls are built for protection; they are built to keep the owners in and the outside world out. Walls mutely scream that neighbors are embarrassed of each other. Other than its implications of embarrassment and intolerance, this wall would boldly announce a message of hypocrisy. It would take everything our beloved country is built on, such as liberty, freedom and capitalism and squeeze it between the links of its fence. We are a nation made up of the immigrants from around the globe. Since the first settlement of Jamestown in the early 1600s to the Statue of Liberty welcoming thousands in the 1900s, we have historically, to be completely cliché, been a melting pot of other cultures. This is a national identity that we have not only cherished since an early age, but has also set us apart from every other nation. Since when are we justified in telling a nationality, "No, please don't come in," when we grant access to others?