There is an old folk saying quoted by Swedish historian Gunnar Myrdal, “If you are black stand back, if you are brown you can hang around, and if you are white then that’s all right.”

I came across it in Myrdal’s book, “An American Dilemma,” many years ago. It popped into my head when I heard the president of the United States proclaim that the country is full and closed to immigrants. But not, I assumed, in his vernacular, if you are a Norway (white) person.

Where are we headed, I wondered. Should we blow up the Statue of Liberty and along with it the words of Emma Lazarus, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”?

These symbols of freedom are to me what America is all about, and what brought my grandparents to this place well over a century ago, and why, lucky me, I am here.

Sidney M. Rosen

Hawaii Kai

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