by Emil Amok Guillermo
Are you traveling this month? Sometimes you don’t realize how much America has changed until you leave it.
For the summer, I’m on the road doing my live performance comedy show.
When on the plane, I wore a mask and found most people (99 percent) didn’t.
I did though.
Then I realized, I’m fighting Covid, illnesses and viruses.
Most people see a mask these days and think you’re ICE.
Just one of the things I noticed while in Canada as an American trying to make sense of our country from afar.
In the college residency hall where I stayed, there was a sign that said “Anti-Racism is not a gray area.”
We’re all in agreement there, right?
Not in America.
Considering the payments the Trump administration is getting from institutions like Columbia University for being too woke, I’d suspect you’d never see a sign like that in an American place of higher education today.
In our country, racism is a gray area. And fighting racism is not allowed. Not when the president and MAGA Republicans are against the Voting Rights Act, aspects of the Civil Rights Act, and Immigration. All policies of LBJ’s “Great Society.”
Affirmative action? These days only for unqualified whites like Pete Hegseth. And nepo-babies.
As for policies affirming equal rights? Are you kidding?
Go to Canada, and see what people are like when they really want to work toward a sense of equity among people of color.
In America, Native Americans are just one percent of the people, and we consider about one percent of their being—as if they don’t really exist.
In Canada, it’s the opposite. Everywhere you go, you see the acknowledgment of First Nation people. In public events, Canadians mention out loud the lands of the tribes they mistreated. Public spaces and events are free to native peoples. An attitude of inclusion thrives in Canada.
In America, land acknowledgments? I’m in the land of the Miwoks and the Yokuts. But I rarely say it aloud. We still have problems with personal pronouns.
In the U.S. in 2025, the Trump administration wants the name Indian and Redskins restored in pro-sports. It wants all DEI to be reversed, erased. At Harvard recently all DEI offices were renamed in a concession to the White House. And more is coming, as the school is shamefully considering paying up to $500 million to the government for its sins of academic freedom.
Sounds ridiculous. But it’s happening here.
Not in Canada, where the moral path has not been totally forgotten.
The biggest thing you notice in Canada is the walking around diversity.
Walk around. You see it.
But it’s not perfect.
One Hispanic man, who was working my arts event as a security guard, stopped me when I was hawking my show. He noticed my name and compared it to his name, and just said, “Me. Like you.”
I was another brown face in a place he wasn’t use to seeing them. On stage in the light.
In Canada, Africa, Asia, people are from all over. Even in Winnipeg, where 91,000 Filipinos live there, the largest visible minority in the province of Manitoba.
One cab driver I talked to was from Eritrea. We talked about teff and Eritrean food. And how he misses his country, but loves Canada so much he’s been there 10 years. Even in the winter when it’s unnaturally cold.
When I left Winnipeg, I talked to another security guard, a 20-year-old Indian girl, we’ll call Sheera, working the overnight shift.
But she had a big dreams.
Sheera had come to Canada to study to be a doctor—and to follow her vision.
“I’m going to be successful,” she said. “In 15 years, I want to build a charitable hospital that has all the facilities, but it’s offered to people for free, only to those people who can’t afford it, but it will be world class, like what the rich get. Only this would be for the poor.”
Imagine that. A Canadian dream. Not the selfish kind of American dream that is the rage in Trump times. The zero sum dream of one winner, the rest losers.
Sheera was a reminder of the good immigrants who come to serve and help. Not the criminal predators that the White House portrays immigrants.
In the U.S., Sheera would be questioned and asked for her papers.
Things are different in Canada. It’s an attitude.
Maybe it’s because it’s so cold there, people are warm where it counts. In their hearts.
I think of Sheera’s conversation when I board my plane for the U.S.
They’re doing something right in Canada. But in America, we harass immigrants with big dreams, because the administration sees all of them as criminals, or potential criminals.
Even the innocent ones. We round them up and send them to third countries.
That’s the America that has transformed from swamp to the Trump crud—his cruel and unusual democracy.
But after this first swing to Winnipeg, the U.S. did do something right.
They let me back in.
Emil Guillermo is an award-winning journalist, commentator, and comic monologist. See him continue his summer tour of the biggest Fringe Festivals in North America. “Emil Amok: 69, Everything’s Flipped” is at the Edmonton Fringe Aug.15-24.
“See his micro-talk show on Youtube.com/@emilamok1
More at www.amok.com
Registration is closed for Common Ground: Building Together conference and gala award banquet in San Francisco on January 24. A shoutout to our planning committee: Jane Chin, Frank Mah, Jeannie Young, Akemi Tamanaha, Nathan Soohoo, Mark Young, Dave Liu, and Yiming Fu.
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