Yesterday I had the honor of participating in Carne Y Arena, a virtual reality simulation of the experience people have at the border. I was horrified by the many similarities between the border experience and what I teach about the Holocaust:
- The waiting room is full of shoes. It is hauntingly reminiscent of the shoes at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
- The separation of women and children by the border police makes me think of a similar scene in the memoir we read of a Holocaust survivor.
- There are videos of immigrant stories after the virtual reality experience. One of them described immigrants being put in dog cages. That makes me think of the dehumanization that was central to the Nazis.
These similarities underscore how important it is for all of us to speak up and say that we will not allow anyone to be stripped of their dignity in our United States.
If I have only one complaint about my experience, and it's that I felt overly coddled before and after. The pre- and post- experience rooms are welcoming spaces with couches and coffee, and the post-experience room includes cookies. It makes me think of the time I saw a play that featured horrific sexual violence and at the end there were Georgetown Cupcakes for the entire audience. I think I'd like us generally comfortable folks to be pushed to sit with our discomfort. Hopefully, we not only survive it, but we use it to shape a more just and loving world.
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