When We Fight for What We Love

Pieter Brueghel the Elder: The Tower of Babel (Wikimedia Commons)

Over the weekend, in a sun-soaked apartment, my close friend and I did pelvic floor exercises together. We took deep breaths to unlatch new degrees of movement.

“Not everyone can tell, but I’ve changed a lot in the past few years,” I confided in her.

“How so?”

“I’ve found myself shifting away from slogans. Yes, I want ICE out, but I also want to find other ways to say ICE out.”

“Why?”

She always knew what to ask.

“I want to be creative.”

“And what does that look like?”

“Well, let me ask you this. Do you think it’s possible to hate ICE but not love the people they are targeting?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think it’s possible to love the people they are targeting and not hate the agency?”

“No.”

“So, do you think the heart of our struggle against hyper-capitalism is learning how to love one another again?”

She rolled onto her stomach and let her head rest on her arms while she looked at me.

“Do you think we have ever known how to love one another?”

I smiled at her head of curly brown hair. The conversation had just gotten interesting.

Decent and Indecent Language

As a fluent Kannada speaker, it is all too obvious to me that language contains within it a worldview. In Kannada, for example, there is no way to say “good-bye”. There is only “see you later”. We do not say “I am sad”, we say “sadness is happening to me,” which positions the self as dynamic versus static.

A decent language can breed a decent culture, which we can all agree is desirable. The language that I gravitate towards is clever, vivid, lyrical, and masterful. It is the language of Charles Dickens but it is also the language of Toni Morrison, S.L. Bhyrappa, and Lil Wayne. However, language that is clever, vivid, lyrical, and masterful can still be indecent. Decent language is thoughtful and humane. It can take many forms across race, gender, and class, but at its core, it is humane.

It is my belief that during President Obama’s presidency, we shifted towards a national language that was calm and erudite, much like him. Phew. That language permeated the rest of the Democratic Party, the press, the internet, and, because language travels across the boundaries of the online and offline and vertically across hierarchies, it seeped into us regular folk.

Then, President Donald Trump exploded onto the scene in 2016 and gave us permission to unleash our unfiltered thoughts. President Trump’s language, both online (his Twitter handle) and offline (his podium during rallies) captivated America. He gradually expanded his influence across the American language with shocking words, buffered by comedic delivery. I am afraid this encouraged not free speech per se, but mindless speech, and I winced at the resurgence of inhumane language that I thought vanquished. Indecency had become fashionable.

So, where are we now? We have another three years of President Trump, but after him, will Vice President J.D. Vance carry the torch? I believe so, and his indecency is far trickier to name:

“What unites Islamists, gender studies majors, socially liberal white urbanites, and Big Pharma lobbyists? It isn’t the ideas of Thomas Jefferson or even Karl Marx. It’s hatred. They hate the people in this room, they hate the president of the United States, and most of all, they hate the people who voted for him... This is the animating principle of the American far Left. They are arsonists, and they will make common cause with anyone else willing to light the match.”

Vice President J.D. Vance, 2025.

The demonization of the other is heavily implicit in this quote, a practice which is now commonplace in American politics. But let us forget the politicians and look one another in the eyes. When did we, the people, become so indecent towards each other? And how do we find our way back towards a decent language in indecent times? (The combination of ICE raids in Minneapolis and the release of the Epstein files has, incorrectly, made me feel like there is no decency left in the world.)

Decent language is the precursor to a decent world. My version of Genesis is:

In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

Then God said, “Let there be language”; and there was light.

Or God said, “Let there be light”; and there was language.

Who is the enemy? 

The events unfolding in Minneapolis have gripped the nation’s attention and mine. It demands many emotions from us, from sorrow and fear, to confusion, anger, and fascination. As with all news, it is told to us as a story and there is certain language used to describe its characters. Two interlinked characters come to mind: the “domestic terrorist” and the “illegal alien”.

Surely Alex Pretti and Renee Good are not “domestic terrorists”, I thought to myself after watching footage of their killings. A terrorist is defined as someone “who uses unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims”. Both of them were unapologetic and even aggressive in exercising their right to protest, but neither of them were causing “unlawful violence”, that too against civilians. In Alex Pretti’s case, he was actually protecting a civilian. But of course, there is power in labeling them as “domestic terrorists”. It makes them the enemy that is on the inside. Do we accept this designation lying down or will we refuse them?

The term “illegal alien” was codified by Ronald Reagan in 1986 and had been used in media and legal conversations for decades prior. In the 1970’s, President Jimmy Carter helped popularize the term “undocumented immigrant,” which The New York Times adopted. This push and pull over the term is proof that language is powerful but also dynamic. Whoever controls language controls power in society because when you bend language to your will, you also bend reality. In truth, there is no “correct” term. Both “illegal alien” and “undocumented immigrant” are accurate. The question is, which language is most decent? Which language is thoughtful and humane towards the subject matter?

It is on us, the American people, to adopt a new language for polarized times. A language that redirects focus onto who and what we love, not who and what we hate. To quote Bad Bunny at the Grammys, “We don’t hate them. We love our people, our family”.

A Language of Love

Regarding ICE and Minneapolis, this moment undoubtedly looms large, but it is also part of a continuum. It is part of the larger question of who belongs in America and which Americans’ well-being matters. Does America belong to the wealthy or the majority? Will it belong only to the White or to all of us who claim the identity “American”?

Whoever controls language controls power in society because when you bend language to your will, you also bend reality.

Here again, I look to the power of language and how language unlocks our imagination. In Britain, for example, I would be a British Indian (no hyphen). Here in America, I am Indian-American, which is its own category of person. But what if I drop the hyphen? I would be an Indian American, which is an American who happens to be Indian.

Let us take it a step further — what if I am just an American? After all, I have no legal ties to India, not even an Overseas Citizen of India card. When I drop the hyphen, I am not dropping the food I eat, the language I speak, how I feel in my skin, the clothes I wear, the holidays I celebrate, the music I listen to, my religious identity, or my Eastern values. I am, instead, beckoning all of this richness into America and the American identity. If I am, in my totality, an American, then the definition of the American expands. And why not drop the hyphen? It is not always necessary to wait for the welcome mat to be rolled out, and as Frederick Douglass said, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress”.

I am, indeed, delighted to be part of the Indian diaspora, an Oregonian, a Northern Californian, and to belong in other small communities, but I want to feel like I belong in this country as well. I want to feel like there is a place for me in our national imagination; a place for a creative, kind, and nature-loving socialist. This brings me to my original question: who is a friend and who is a foe to America? Who is the American worth protecting, and who is disposable?

I have to come clean that for the last ten years, I have had rage in my heart. Rage against different demographics that I learned to see as the enemy, so I know what it means to hate, or nearly hate, an entire category of people. How I felt back then was the result of living in too insular an environment. So, it is because I have traversed a formidable terrain to arrive at where I am today that I know the value of that very undertaking. One does not abruptly arrive at a language of love. It is a language you discover within yourself as you step away from hate.

I was happy to see this baby reunited with his father, and I believe that the language of love, which will be the language that paints the picture of our future, is a language that cradles life as precious as this.

Adrian Conejo Arias and his son, Liam Conejo Ramos, after being released from ICE detention

*This article is being reproduced with permission. See more of Aishwarya’s writings on her Substack.

*The opinions of contributing writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of We Are One Humanity. Submissions offering differing or alternative views are welcome