An Open Letter To The Racist Asshole At Starbucks

I don’t know you, and I wish I had never known you. I don’t even have a name for you, a face, a description. All I know you is as “the asshole Caucasian man.” And so you shall stay that way.

My mom was minding her own business trying to get her coffee to fuel herself through her 80+ hour work week when you decided to muster up the courage audacity to speak up and tell her something. Something along the lines of: “Get out of this country, you illegal.”

When I heard the account of the situation come out of my mother’s mouth as she wearily walked up the steps of our house, my eyes filled with fire, my heart began to race, and my soul burned at the thought. I then asked her if she had said anything back to her, and to my disappointment, she told me that she did not. She did not because she feared for her life.

And in my head, I began to play out the scene imagining that I was there, and wondered what I would say if I was there with her.

As my anger built up inside of me, I tried to picture you in the worst way possible. I tried so hard to imagine you as everything bad in life, everything that crawls in filthy alleyways late at night, everything that I try and avoid stepping on when I walk to class.

But even that’s too good for you.

I could be a good person for once and drop fact bombs on you, hope that you’ll be persuaded by the statistics, but from my experience, I know people like you don’t think like I do. So I can scream and shout as much as I want, but you will never hear what I have to say.

Maybe others will in the process, and that’s all I ever hope for.

My mother is the kind of person that people don’t often get to know because she spreads herself too thin. She works at at least a dozen different hospitals and spends at least 80 hours a week working. That’s double what most people work, double full-time.

At those hospitals, she takes care of children. Children. That’s the kind of person you told to get out of our country. She takes care of children as they grow in moms’ stomachs by performing echo-cardiograms on them, scanning their hearts. She makes sure that no congenital heart defect goes unnoticed, makes sure that parents are well-informed about their child’s well-being, and makes sure that the world knows about the importance of heart health and what parents can do to avoid heart defects in their babies. Then she goes and scans the hearts of adults.

She scans the hearts of adults just like you.

My mother is the person you go to to check for leaky valves, holes in your heart, restricted blood flow of your ventricles, and so many more that I can’t even fathom as a college student.

My mother saves lives through prevention and knowledge.

My mother is the type of person that only works. Her closest friends are those she works with every day, her hobby is coming home and spending time with the family, and she keeps in touch with the patients that she’s helped.

She keeps in touch with her previous patients.

That is the kind of person you told to leave our country.

Sir, you asked a hardworking woman who contributes to our economy, our society as a whole, to leave this country. But you wouldn’t care, because you only assumed that she was of no worth when you told her to get out.

Sir, you assumed the worst of my mother, a woman who cares for children, who saves lives, who keeps in touch with her ex-patients.

The worst part is that you assumed all illegal immigrants are of no worth.

Sir, my mother spent more than 12 years of her life trying to become a citizen of the United States. No, she did not try, she succeeded.

My mother is a citizen of the United States.

She spent 12 years becoming naturalized, being in tune with the American way, learning about what it means to be an American. Then she took the test, and we waved flags at the naturalization ceremony.

In those 12 years, she worked.

With a green card tucked away in her purse, she worked just as hard as she does now.

Helping people, taking care of children, saving lives.

Sir, you assumed that my mother was an illegal immigrant of no worth that had nothing to contribute to this nation. Did no one ever teach you that it was wrong to assume things of people?

Because I was taught that by my mother, despite her working 80+ hour work weeks.

I can’t ever imagine what went through your head, what impulses occurred in your brain, how many seconds it took for you to decide to tell her to get out of this country.

In a way, I am thankful for your audacity because I am able to tell the world about people like you and play a part in stopping your kind.

Maybe you heard the tone of her voice, the dictation of her words, the enunciation of her sentences and assumed that she did not belong here.

My mother is published. She spent hours upon hours outside of her work week in order to create educational material for future cardiac sonographers so that they too, could save lives.

I would truly like to know what you’ve accomplished in your life, but even a minute of my life is too precious to spare in learning more about you.

I never cared to know you, and I never ever wanted to know you.

But here I am, forced to know you, forced to assume the best about you because that was how I was raised by my mother.

And I hope that maybe you had a bad day when you told my mother to get out of our country. I hope that maybe that was just the first thing that came into your head, and I was taught that the first thought is always what you grew up knowing but the second thought is your true morals. I hope that maybe you didn’t mean to ruin her day, but I can’t imagine what your intention was when you told her to get out.

The only thing I can think of is the fact that you told my mother to leave this country to hurt her.

I’m happy to inform you that she just chuckles at people like you.