Is ignorance really bliss?

Text by Victoria Medina

Photo by Keri Azevedo

Before leaving my home in Tucson, Arizona, I constantly kept up to date on new changes made by the government, and I worried about what those changes meant for my future. I was particularly concerned about the treatment of immigrants and the racial profiling that occurred during the mass deportations in the U.S. 

The similarities between Trump’s attitude and actions toward immigrants and the events of World War II, specifically the Holocaust, have been alarming to witness. Before leaving the U.S., I read reports of immigrants who were taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement as they were in the process of gaining legal status to reside in the country. Parents were taken while their kids were at school, and foster kids were taken from their foster homes.

The portrayal of immigrants, specifically those in the Hispanic and Latine community, as the villains of society has been harmful. To say these people – my people – are violent, hostile and malicious, and to generalize them as criminals is dangerous.

Traveling far from home is hardly an easy feat. To venture into a foreign land for the first time, on my own, was a little intimidating. I grew up with a protective family that worries about my safety every time I leave the house, and I worry about them, too. My family is blessed to have been born in the U.S., but that does not mean we are safe from racial profiling.

The new development of the “Alligator Alcatraz,” an immigration detention center built in the Florida Everglades, has me particularly scared. It looks eerily similar to other detention facilities, like the concentration camps of Europe during the Holocaust. The name alone is frightening, and it makes me fear the possibility of being detained for being Hispanic when I return to the U.S. from France.

With the anxiety all of this news causes, it’s tempting to simply ignore the headlines from my home country. When I arrived in France,  I thought of the bliss I would experience from the lack of access to the media.

I feel a sense of security being away from the U.S. for a total of 32 days. I am comforted by the distance of nearly 5,800 miles between France and Tucson. It is like having a weight lifted off my shoulders, relieving a substantial amount of tension stored in my body.

Experiencing a new country for the first time has deterred me from using my phone as often, which has lessened my access to news. So far, it has been a refreshing cleanse from endless barrage of escalating crises in my country.

I am not the only U.S. citizen with this perception either. As I have aimlessly scrolled through my phone, I found other users who described feeling relief from the media as they traveled internationally as well.

Our reprieve from the endless stream of news is a privilege many others won’t have the chance to experience. I feel guilty wanting to be ignorant about what’s happening in my country; it feels wrong for me to choose to be uninformed when others are actively struggling back home.

However, now that I have spent two weeks in France, I see the need to strive for balance. I want to stay updated on the most relevant information from home and I realize it will be better for me to keep up with the news as it unfolds than to process a bucket all at once when I return. But I also want to indulge in this chapter of life. Taking in my surroundings during walks along the city streets, sitting down to enjoy each meal rather than having a quick bite, and taking trips to the beach with my host mother are precious moments I don’t want to miss. After all, I am in France for the first time, so I might as well have some fun!