[clearing out elders’ home / politics]
I mentioned a few days ago that Kavi would be inheriting the family silver. Along with the serveware and the tea service, there’s silverware for twelve.
It’s sort of funny the reason why she gets it — there are four grandchildren, so why does it come to Kavi? It’s not because she’s the oldest (though she is) — it’s because Kev and I decided to give our kids his last name, Whyte, and his sister’s kids have their father’s last name instead.
Very traditional, but it means that Kavi and Anand are the only Whytes in the next generation, and the silverware has a W on it (which, amusingly, looks like an M for Mohanraj, if you turn it upside down), and nobody thinks Anand has any chance of ever wanting to host a formal dinner party, so it goes to Kavi.
The ‘W’ may not actually be for Whyte, interestingly — it’s from Kev’s mother’s side, the von Weises, and we’re not sure if it’s handed down from them, or it was a wedding present with her new initial on it. Possibly it was von Weise, and it’s just a coincidence that Ann happened to marry Ron Whyte, and the W still worked.
It’s worth something, of course, but we’re hoping Kavi’s never in a position where she needs to sell it — it’s family history and heritage, and it’d be lovely to pass it down another generation or two.
But at the same time, it’s all ridiculous — when this set was created, Kevin’s mother was still from a social place where one might occasionally host a formal dinner. We’ve never hosted such a thing, or attended one — it’s the sort of thing you see on TV, watching Bridgerton or Downtown Abbey. Ann was in the Social Register, and had a ‘coming out’ as a debutante.
Kevin was in the Register too, but at some point went and had his name taken out — if I’m remembering right, it was because his best friend Max was Jewish, and thus could never be in the Register, and Kevin had issues with that. It would’ve felt like joining a whites-only club. So he marched in and demanded they take him out, and they did.
Of course, they redo the Register every year with the new births and deaths and such, and so they put Kevin right back in the next year. He stopped paying attention after that. It’s not really part of his life.
We did think, very briefly, about whether Kavi might want to do a ‘coming out’ — there was something satisfying about the idea of a half-brown kid joining those ranks (Ann didn’t think there’d be any problem with that now, so I suppose the rules have loosened over the generations). I think I might’ve had to join the Junior League?
Kavi liked the idea of a giant party, of course, and dressing up like a princess in a fabulous white gown. But the whole thing was way too elitist for Kevin, and despite any princess fantasies I may possess, too elitist for me too.
Not to mention, we probably couldn’t have afforded it — there’s a pretty steep set of costs associated with coming out — not just the dress and the gloves and the elocution and dancing lessons, but actual charges, if I’m remembering right. Not the sort of thing you can afford on two professors’ salaries — it’s for the kind of people who have old money, enough to live on the interest.
I don’t think Ron is from that background — I wonder if Ann’s parents thought she was stepping down the ladder when she married him. I wish I’d had the chance to ask her.
I was talking to Kavi a little last night about the new set of presidential executive orders, and she was just bewildered — she didn’t understand how they made any sense at all.
Why would even Trump want to do these things? Why take children out of schools to try to frighten their undocumented parents into coming forward? Why shut down all DEI efforts and funding? Why shut down so much science research? Why leave the World Health Organization? Why leave the Paris climate accords?
I told her it was hard to explain, and I didn’t understand all of it. But that a lot of it came down to fear.
There are a lot of people in this country struggling, a lot of people who are having a harder time feeding their families than their parents had. And when people are scared, and feel like resources are scarce, human instinct is to divide into ‘us’ and ‘them’ — to protect ‘us’ and drive away ‘them.’ (Scarcity economy vs. abundance economy.)
Often that divide is along racial lines, and so in 2017, Trump tried to drive the Muslims away, and in 2025, he’s focused on the undocumented low-wage workers, mostly from Mexico, Latin America, South America. The white men who’re having a hard time getting jobs think it’ll be easier if there’s less competition for those jobs.
And if women stop working outside the home, there’ll be even less competition for those jobs. And if we stop spending tax money on things like science research and aid to foreign countries and the environment, they’ll have more money in their pocket and can afford to send their kids to a nice summer camp, maybe buy a second car.
Maybe if they change everything, they can go back to an imagined way of life where their lives would’ve been much easier. (And yes, when unions were strong, working class folks did typically have an easier time affording a house, a car or two, good schools for the kids, etc. But that’s a different conversation…)
Kavi didn’t seem to think any of that was a good enough explanation for Trump’s actions. It’s not all of it, certainly. But it’s a piece, I think. He’s a populist demagogue, and he does what he thinks his base wants.
So here we are, with this family silver that is worth a lot of money, probably enough that I’m thinking we might actually want to keep it in a safe deposit box at the bank, rather than at the house. And it’s beautiful, and I love it, and yet part of me thinks we should sell it all and donate the money to some organization fighting for racial justice.
We’ve never had a need for a safe deposit box before — we’ve sunk most of our money into our house, but we don’t actually have a lot of fancy jewelry or expensive paintings, or much of anything that someone would want to steal. The laptops and TVs? We’re rich in plants and spices and craft supplies.
And yet I told Kevin last night, that I do feel like our family is a little safer in this new Trump era, because I ended up marrying a rich white man, instead of, say, a poor brown woman (which I certainly could’ve done instead — I didn’t know Kevin had family money until we were years into serious dating).
Kevin said we don’t have enough money to be really safe, which is true, but he admitted that his being white and male definitely helped.
Kavi asked me whether the birthright citizenship issue affected us, whether she should be worried. I told her no, we were lucky. I came on a green card, had one when I had the kids, later went through the formal process, became a US citizen. And my sisters, who were born here, were born to parents who had green cards too, who also later became citizens.
At least so far, the birthright citizenship change affects people who are here on work visas, other temporary visas (such as student, I think), or are undocumented, which isn’t anyone in our immediate family.
And yet, I just read about two women in Minnesota who were pulled over by the cops and held and interrogated for two hours, even though they had their green cards with them — they had come here as students, were now working good jobs, living their lives. It made me wonder if I should be carrying my US passport with me, proof that I’m a citizen. I’ve lived in this country more than 50 years now, but my skin is still brown.
Our family isn’t planning on going anywhere, but when Trump was elected last time, I had a pair of lesbian friends who did move to Canada with their kids. If you’re someone at risk, I would never tell you that you needed to stay and fight. I’m worrying about my trans friends every day now.
But those of us who are (relatively) safe? There’s a lot of work to do here. Maybe we start with the work of looking closely at who we are, where we come from, what privileges we hold, how, perhaps, we can extend those privileges to shelter others.
I told my students in class yesterday that if they needed any kind of resources in this new administration — an immigration attorney, access to birth control, etc., that they should consider me a resource. I may not be able to help them directly, but I know a lot of people. I can probably find someone who can actually help.
Sorry if this is a bit of a muddle. I’m trying to sort out some of this in my own head. A lot of things to think about. No conclusions.
