Apart from Native Americans, most immigrants who became Americans had different pathways. By today’s standards, most settlers, including the Pilgrims, would not have had legal standing when they arrived on American soil. Native American did not have ICE.
Millions of early migrant Americans may have been illegals, perhaps starting with Columbus in 1492. They might have been illegal aliens, in today’s dehumanizing and humiliating terms.
My journey to America started in January of 1977 when I was accepted to do my master’s at Michigan State University. My family, my friends and I were thrilled.
I was exposed to the powerful allure of American culture growing up in Zambia in Southern Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. I flew on a Boeing 707 from Zambia’s capital city of Lusaka to Heathrow in London. I flew on the massive Boeing 747 from London to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and then to Lansing in Michigan.
I was curious, eager for the new experiences and to learn, know, understand, and enjoy this new, fascinating and exciting American culture. I was busy taking graduate courses, so that I could quickly finish my master’s degree and return home to help my country. My Zambian government had paid for everything, including tuition and board.
I had been listening to the radio since I was 6 in 1960 when my father would shush us children, finger to his lips. He would quiet us down as he listened to the news in British colonial Northern Rhodesia, now independent Zambia.
This was in rural Zambia at Chasela Primary School, where he was a schoolteacher. Since I graduated from University of Zambia in 1976, I have always owned and traveled with a short-wave radio.
My graduate Spring term classes ended in May 1978 during my first academic year at Michigan State University. I took one graduate class that ended early that summer. The rest of the summer I was free to explore. It was one of the most adventurous periods of my young life as I soaked up American culture.
I was listening to National Public Radio in my dorm room in Owen Graduate Hall when the announcer said for the next two weeks there would be Congressional Hearings to investigate the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
When the radio went live to Congress for the hearings, I was mesmerized.
I could hear the noise of what sounded like a large gathering of people in a room. Then the gavel sounded. Silence, and the chairman of the Congressional committee spoke. I could hear through the radio the seriousness of the moment, the careful questions, and detailed respectful and expert answers.
I could feel the gravitas, pride, respectful, polite verbal exchanges and responses, and decorum of the moments in the highest legislative body in America. I had time to listen to two weeks of live hearings. I have seen so many live Congressional hearings and a few explosive ones since 1978.
Nothing would have prepared me for the utterly disgraceful oversight hearings with Attorney General Pam Bondi. She descended so low into the mud that I am not sure there are any words to describe the hearings. I happened to watch all five hours of the live hearings. I was appalled.
When each Democrat was asking a tough question, Bondi was not even listening. She was busy ruffling through her huge folder to locate the list of insults she was going to read about that member of Congress.
The insults never answered the questions. There was rude shouting and yelling throughout the hearing.
What if Bondi’s terrible behavior is how we conducted everything in our lives in American society? Think and ask yourself, “how would the family, the church, teachers and students in school and college classrooms, the courts, the police precincts, company board rooms, and especially the military operate?”
America would be a chaotic and abysmal society. The Pam Bondi hearings and her conduct confirmed what I have always known. This is why my parents and all parents tell their children not to talk back as they try to ask the child questions or rebuke the child.
In all circumstances, someone who talks back to an authority figure or to questions never learns or really listens. Because that person is too busy thinking of what insults they are going to rudely say in response to the question or advice.
Congress and the American top political leadership have descended so low and the bar for honorable behavior is so low that it is below the mud. That is what the hearings merely confirmed. The hearings had no useful information, and zero dignity — a shame for this great nation that is 250 years old.
Mwizenge S. Tembo, Ph. D., is an emeritus professor of sociology. He lives in Bridgewater.
