Over the past decade, I’ve frequently discussed my experiences as a minority and immigrant in the United States. On November 9, 2016, I wrote the article “Trump Showed Me America’s True Colors.” In it, I explained the difficulties I faced with the immigration process under Trump and how much it shaped my earliest (and negative) experiences as a new US resident.
A year later, I explained why I had gotten rid of all my ostrich friends, i.e., people who were comfortable burying their heads in the sand while the rest of us bore the brunt of their refusal to act. I wasn’t a citizen then and had no say in elections and their outcomes. I was entirely at the mercy of people who couldn’t even agree whether climate change is real.
The Initial Solution
Convinced that maybe being a red state had just badly colored my perception, I bought an RV and took off into the Desert Southwest. I was somewhat correct. My time in the Western United States was among the absolute best years of my life. I worked three days a week, traveled often, and met interesting people.
But just a month into my RV journey, I ran into the Confederacy in Arizona and felt for the first time what it was like to have racist White people try to intimidate me into leaving an area. Not surprisingly, I stood my ground.
When I got to Wyoming, it was no better. My videos on my experiences there attracted so much virtual hate mail from racists that my channel went private after 2022. This one had some of the worst, though YouTube has since removed most of those comments:
American Regression in 2022
That same year, I posed the question here: Is America Regressing? Is It Time to Jump Ship?
At that time, the Supreme Court had just struck down Roe v. Wade. That ruling, among other things, taught me that voting progressives and liberals into the US government provided no protection for women and marginalized people. It was undoubtedly a better alternative than the brazened racism we faced under Trump, but it didn’t stop the movement from growing.
It felt like a lost cause, so I packed my things and returned to Mexico. By October 2022, I highlighted Spain as my likely destination and bought my first ticket. Two years later, I am proud and relieved to say it’s my home. America may have disappointed me yet again, but at least I can watch it unfold from the sidelines this time around.
Ultimately, I have no regrets about moving to the United States or becoming a US citizen. But, the best perk it gave me was the ease of access to other countries.
The 2024 Presidential Elections
Nevertheless, I am a model citizen when it comes to civic duties. Millions of Americans chose to abstain from this election. Meanwhile, I was on the phone with my local elections office and the embassy to ensure my vote was submitted and counted. I voted from 4,566 miles away, but some people couldn’t be bothered to go down the street or drive a few minutes to their polling stations.
The voting demographics and their choices were as telling and unsurprising as always. But the aftermath confirmed what minorities were already terrified of—racists getting their platform back. The election had hardly been won when Black persons across the country of all ages started to receive text messages telling them they had been selected to pick cotton and would be picked up by buses and taken to plantations.
I was on the phone with my mom when my stepbrother got his. He’s a minor—as were many of the many other Black boys and girls who received this text message. I could hear my Dad reading the text aloud in confusion in the background. There was an awkward pause after that.
“What’s going on?” I asked my mom. “What is that? What’s he reading?”
Here’s the text below:
Shortly afterward, she left for work. When she arrived, a Black co-worker showed her his phone. He had also received one. Over the next few days, thousands of reports of Black persons receiving messages like these would surface.
Meanwhile, in Tennessee, a Historically Black College/University built by former slaves burned. The fire department believes arsonists set fire to the building. It went up in flames the night before the US Presidential Elections, devastating a college that was already struggling to re-open its doors.
The college making the news was also a profound reminder of how ingrained racism has been in the United States. These schools only existed because, until the 1960s, Black persons in America could not attend regular colleges. It may sound like a long time ago, but many of us millennials have parents born before the 1960s. Parents who, if White, had the opportunity to attend whatever college they could afford, while their Black classmates could not.
As a reminder, Ruby Bridges is still alive today.
The Journey to Spain
It’s been over a year since I last posted on this blog. I shared that I was taking a break to complete my master’s degree and focus on getting an autoimmune condition under control. I invited you all to join me at Substack, where I continued to post about my travels weekly. Some of you did and cheered me on as I took one step or another closer to my final goal.
A month into my master’s degree (October 2023), I got a Google contractor job and began working full-time in artificial intelligence. Still, I completed my master’s degree in Information Technology Management a year early and finally took the RV back to Georgia after four years of travel. It’s now parked at home, awaiting my next visit.
Shadow and I moved to Barcelona and then Madrid this fall. We have a small but beautiful apartment overlooking an area that sometimes reminds us of life in the Desert Southwest. I started applying for a PhD in AI Ethics at a Spanish university, and a professor approved my initial doctoral research proposal. I spent today working on the more formal proposal to submit by the end of this week.
Sadly, shortly after I arrived in Spain, Google laid off the entire team. As always, they cited the need to cut costs, and no one from Google attended the meeting where 50-plus AI professionals from their external workforce were unexpectedly shown the door.
Soon, we saw our roles floating on the market for $5-$10 less per hour than we had been paid. Most of my co-workers swiftly fled to xAI, which is owned by Elon Musk. I initially considered joining them, but after seeing Elon’s involvement in Trump’s campaign, my “I don’t think so” became an “Absolutely TF not.”
Idealist or not, I have bills to pay, so I considered returning to the United States. However, after seeing the election results, I swiftly changed my mind about that, too. I lost 70% of my income when Google gave us the boot, but I’ll keep doing what freelance work I can find and chip away at my PhD while I look for work. I’ve survived worst before.
A lot of liberals say they woke up oddly at 3 AM the morning before the results with a strange feeling of dread. Even in Spanish time, the same thing happened to me. Spain is six hours ahead of Georgia, so I knew the final election results before my mom did. I waited impatiently for her to wake up so I could call her.
“You know who I feel sorry for most of?” she said. “You young women and girls.”
After a pause, she added, “I miss you, but you were wise to leave. Don’t come home.”