By Aldo Gonzalez
Transcribed and edited by Aly Gonzalez
Recently, my mom reminded me that I spent a whole year living in Mexico in my youth. As a son of Mexican immigrants, born and raised in Wisconsin, that seemed pretty cool to me. I grew up speaking Spanish and valuing Mexican culture, and we've always made it a point to visit my extended family in Mexico each year — but that isn’t the same as growing up there. So I thought, 'Wow, my bicultural credentials just skyrocketed!' I then asked my mom, 'How old was I?' She replied, 'Uh, I think around two or three.' Aw, man! That was disappointing to hear. Still, I think and hope I have a useful perspective to share as far as immigration goes.
Some background about me: I love the Tangle ethos and have been a big fan for many years. I grew up Catholic but wasn't religious until high school. Since then, I've yearned to seek the truth and bridge divides for things that matter. I got a glimpse into just how damaging our divides are when I wrote opinion pieces for a local newspaper; I remember writing a piece that I thought was relatively uncontroversial, back in Trump's first term, suggesting that we shouldn't have a knee-jerk reaction to everything Trump says or does. Instead, I argued, we should evaluate policies based on their merits and recognize that others who are less controversial (maybe even your favorite politician) have suggested similar ideas before. Nevertheless, it still upset some people.
However, what surprised me the most was the reaction to a pro-life piece I wrote. Print copies of the newspaper were distributed throughout the area, and I invited my friends to check it out. One friend told me he sat down to read it, flipped to my essay, and found rips around where my piece was supposed to be. I was pretty taken aback that someone would tear it out of the copy. This is the sort of thing that I've always heard about but never thought would happen to me.
The way we have meaningful conversations is broken. There's no other takeaway than that.
I try to ameliorate that through better listening and open-mindedness, but I haven't always been great at that. Some of it came down to my media consumption; I was once an avid listener of Ben Shapiro, who I thought had a lot of insightful things to say about politics and life, some of which I still carry today. However, I was only getting my news and politics from one source. This left out a lot of nuance and didn’t help with polarization or tribalism. I cannot thank Tangle and the Equal Rights Institute enough for helping to change that.
With that, back to the main story.
