Op-Ed: No One Suffered Like My Ethnic Group

My ethnic group came to this country from a poorer one than yours. I don’t care where you came from; my ancestral country was poorer. And even if it wasn’t, it was harsher. In that country, they were peasants or maybe artisans or maybe even professionals, but they weren’t spoiled. They worked hard. Your ancestors may have worked hard too, but they didn’t work as hard as mine. My ancestors saved up money to come to this country, where they were shunned and called racist things. I don’t care about the indignities your people suffered, my ancestors were definitely treated worse, and they didn’t deserve it.

Yes, your people have suffered in an unjust society. I’m not denying that. I’m just saying, my ethnic group’s efforts to make their way in this world are far beyond anything your ethnic group experienced, and to compare the two would be to trivialize my family’s experience. Some might say comparing pain and suffering, as though it were a numerical metric, is foolish and really defeats the purpose of discussing the history of prejudice. But I’d like those people to talk to my grandma and see what she endured.

Like it or not, there is no atrocity you can pull up that matches my personal inflicted atrocity. Well, it didn’t affect me personally, but it affected my family and by extension me. And because it affected me, it simply is more important than the atrocities that have affected you or anyone else.