17 Questions I Wish I Had Asked My Immigrant Father

My dad as a young man smiling at toddler me playing in the snow in our first suburban neighborhood. I am wearing a pink snowsuit and sporting a Princess Di haircut because my mom was a fan.

For years, one consistent question I would get from young people in anti-racism conversations was about talking to their elders:

“How can I respectfully talk to my elders when they say racist things?”

At first, my answer was about accountability, encouraging these young adults to express their discomfort with the statements, explain why they felt that way, try to change their parents’ behavior, and ask their parent to not make those jokes/statements around them.

As time went on, and I got more experience talking about anti-Black racism with people who had migrated to the United States and had American-born adult children, my answer shifted.

The reality was that conversations that kept centering the “I” were about boundaries, not about calling in people to change their behaviors. There’s a place for the boundaries (especially for those parents who refuse to listen or change), but if we’re looking for transformative, multi-generational, cross-cultural conversations with people whose hearts and minds could change, we need to center our relationships with them.

I also found myself hearing and discussing more and more migration stories with uncles after my dad (Allah yerhamo) died. One uncle asked me whether I knew how he and my dad had originally met. I…