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Part 2, Chapter 20: Public Person, Private Self
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Dear America, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Citizenship, Belonging, and Identity
Family, Love, and Intimacy
Immigration Politics and Policy
Journalism, Storytelling, and the Power of Truth
Summary
Analysis
On top of dealing with “blatant ignorance and naked hatred” from the right, Vargas also has to deal with unrealistic expectations from the left, who think he’s never progressive enough, or in the right way. Vargas explains that there are really two immigrants’ rights movements in the U.S.: one in Washington, D.C., and one everywhere else. Vargas was focused on writing and making the documentary Documented—and not organizing—but he still got into conflicts with many activists.
Vargas constantly gets attacked from every side because people view him as a political symbol, not a complex and imperfect person. These activists don’t give Vargas the sympathy or benefit of the doubt that they would likely extend to their friends, their relatives, and themselves. Thus, they dehumanize him in a different way from the conservatives. And this is all the more reason to focus on humanizing people by telling their individual stories.
Themes
One major D.C. organizer said he couldn’t work with Vargas because he admitted to breaking the law, and another questioned whether Vargas only came out as undocumented to further his career. Actually, Vargas thought he was sacrificing his career by going public. In fact, nine months after his New York Times piece, he only had $300 left in his bank account and had to start borrowing money from friends. Older activists criticized Vargas for being too privileged, too successful, or not Mexican. Younger activists didn’t like that he chose to pass as a citizen and build a career as a journalist, instead of organizing for the DREAM Act, like them.
While Vargas tends to face the same kinds of criticisms over and over again from the right, he faces a wide variety of different, sometimes contradictory criticisms from the left. Every progressive activist seemingly expects him to embody their own personal idea of the “perfect” undocumented activist. They seem to forget that political movements are led by real people, not ideal, imaginary heroes. Few seem willing to actually listen to his story—which, surely, is part of why he wrote this book.
Themes
To try and deal with all this criticism from progressives, Vargas started calling himself “the most privileged undocumented immigrant in America.” He argues that fighting the U.S. immigration system is so difficult that the people who do it constantly try to one-up each other, especially on social media. But because of how other people have helped him, Vargas wants to bring different kinds of people together.
Vargas’s comments on privilege are a clear example of how progressive activists fight each other instead of their real enemies. Vargas suggests that many progressives confuse privilege with a personal moral failing—regardless of what people choose to do with and about their privilege. But in reality, Vargas’s privilege is part of what allows him to be such an effective activist. Vargas emphasizes that true political mobilization requires tolerating disagreement and diversity instead.
Themes
Vargas spent three months traveling across the U.S. to direct an MTV documentary called White People. He learned that most white Americans simply don’t interact with immigrants or people of color on a daily basis, and many believe that they face discrimination for being white. But most people of color are just as separated from white people and tend to view them as an oppressive mass, not as individuals. He realized that “everyone feels excluded from America,” and he started to wonder whether inclusive politics is really possible in the U.S. In 2015, he started predicting that Trump would win the 2016 election.
Vargas’s curiosity and openness to disagreement contrast strongly with the attitudes of the people he interviews, on both the left and the right. Most people seem to believe that they, alone, have the absolutely right answer—few people are genuinely curious about those who disagree with them. But Vargas is an exception. His curiosity comes specifically from his strong belief that most hatred is rooted in ignorance and alienation. This means that people actually can change their beliefs and start to cooperate if they learn about the world and connect with other people’s stories.
Themes
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Just after Donald Trump won the 2016 election, Vargas gave a speech at a racial justice conference in Atlanta. The audience was tense, confused, and pessimistic. When a young man heckled Vargas, saying that he didn’t want to be American, Vargas replied that he “define[s] American by the people who have been excluded from the promise of America” and quoted James Baldwin, who said he only criticized America because he loved it. Vargas understands why citizenship isn’t enough to protect many Black and indigenous people, and why many people with green cards choose not to get citizenship, even though they can. Vargas explains that he still doesn’t know what citizenship means to him. He feels that many people treat him like an object, not a person.
Vargas’s definition of “American” shows how, after a lifetime of feeling like he will never belong, he learned that he could find a sense of belonging by changing his own mindset about what Americanness and citizenship really mean. (However, he clarifies that he still isn’t all the way there.) Meanwhile, Vargas argues that the young man who heckled him is stuck on someone else’s definition of America. He hates this definition, but he doesn’t realize that he can replace it with a different one that is worth fighting for. Therefore, he gets caught up in the U.S.’s downsides—like its history of exclusion, brutal inequality, and widespread racism—but he doesn’t decide what positive traits he wants to foster in their place. In contrast, Vargas decides that fulfilling the U.S.'s true promise means fighting for equity and inclusion.
Themes
