ARVIN TEMKAR

I USED TO FANTASIZE about taking a trip across America in my younger days.

 In those days, with the rest of my life ahead of me, I was distracted and got caught up chasing other dreams.

 Nowadays, I have lost that desire. It is not the fear of the unknown; it's the fear of the known that give me pause. I know the rest of our country is not like my home base of the San Francisco Bay Area and Coastal California.

 Here it is near impossible not to interact with AAPI on a daily basis. When visitors from back east comment on the diversity of the Bay Area, what they're really saying -- there's a hell of a lot of Asians around here. The black and white paradigm that dominates much of our country's conversations on race and race relations doesn't work here.

 I have experienced bits of Texas, Georgia, Florida, Arizona and Virginia to give me second thoughts.

 Stories from the border of border agents stopping cars and asking for proof of citizenship, of gestapo-like actions by ICE authorities towards legal citizens and refugees, of the rising boldness of white supremacists

 The Bay Area is not without its racists. Ignorance doesn't have geographic borders. It is just that their obnoxious views are not tolerated here so people of color know they are not without support.

 But, then comes a story like that written by Bay Area writer Arvin Temkar, a Filipino Indian who has traveled cross country on his motorcycle. His essay stirs up the wanderlust again and there's an itch to drive the backroads, to have no deadlines or time restraints and play The Who's "Born to be Wild" on the car radio full blast ...

 Here's a sampling of Temkar's  essay:

During my three-month journey around the United States, I noticed something unsettling about the American people. We are afraid.
On an Illinois freeway, I passed gun-rights signs with dire messages like: “Dialed 911 and I’m on hold, sure wish I had that gun I sold.” In an Arizona suburb, as I circled a neighborhood block in search of a friend’s house, a man tailed me in his truck and took a photo of my license plate. In Alabama, a store owner told me that he feels mass immigration could threaten the white, Christian culture he's used to.
As for me, at every gas station, motel and diner I entered, I couldn’t help but wonder whether the color of my skin was going to land me in some sort of trouble.
While I’ve always been self-conscious about my looks, now — as hate crimes against brown-skinned people are on the rise and white supremacy has returned to the spotlight — that awareness has turned into anxiety. How easily, I wondered, could that neighborhood incident in Arizona have turned into a Trayvon Martin-like situation? Would I become the next Srinivas Kuchibhotla, who was told to “get out of my country” before being shot and killed by an angry white man at a bar in Kansas?
This was my first time driving across the country and my first time visiting most of the places I found myself in. I was alone and often afraid.
Noam Chomsky has said that fear is a characteristic part of the American identity. 
“The United States is an unusually frightened country,” he said in an interview on the progressive website Alternet. The fear, he said, “goes back to the colonies.” 
Americans have always been afraid of something — Native Americans attacking, slaves revolting, Mexican immigrants “bringing drugs” or “bringing crime.” The irony though, is that white Americans often brought this paranoia on themselves: The Native Americans were defending themselves from invasion, the slaves were fighting for their freedom. And new immigrants — including illegal immigrants — are less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens.
No spoilers! To read the entire essay, click here. After "Born To Be Wild" the next song on my roadtrip playlist would be Simon and Garfunkle's "America."
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