Becoming more American than the Americans themselves
(Originally published in the Western People on 2024-07-30)
2022 European Championships, Olympiastadion, Munich, Germany 17-8-2022 Women’s 400m Final Ireland’s Rhasidat Adeleke celebrates breaking the national record Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/Morgan Treacy (Adeleke's parents are from Nigeria).
We'll call him Paul, because that’s not his real name—at least according to his Lyft profile. He picked me up on Main St. and 5th in downtown Los Angeles, just a few blocks from Skid Row. According to Wikipedia, this area hosts one of the largest stable populations of homeless people in the U.S., estimated at over 4,400. According to Paul, it also houses freshly-released prisoners in subsidised accommodation. You can tell the difference, he said—they look clean, unlike their dirt-encrusted neighbours. I had been waiting obliviously outside a shelter where many of them stayed, not very smart according to Paul, but I was okay since it was the start of the month. The ex-cons had just received their government allowance and were busy organising drugs or doing drugs, or both. But come evening, or especially weekends near the end of the month, and I wouldn’t want to be there.
Paul was angry. As he was pulling up kerbside to collect me, a small jeep reversed screeching from across the street to jam itself into the parking space before him. My driver laid on his horn and shouted, but his young nemesis ignored him, hopped out, and disappeared into the building behind me. An old man with a stroller yelled back at both of them to quit the noise, using some choice words. Other people hanging about near the corner began to look up, as my driver vigorously motioned for me to get in his car, still shouting at the street. The kid was probably one of those just out of jail, probably high and didn’t give a damn, surmised Paul. Probably had no insurance. Probably dangerous with a gun. I suggested it was probably time we got going to Glendale. I had no desire to be part of a live crime documentary on Downtown L.A. Paul reluctantly drove away, muttering “the Crips and the Bloods” several times with a few extra consonants thrown in.
His accent was thick and sometimes impenetrable, but as we talked, his anger abated and his words slowed to be more suited to my Irish ear. His grey beard on his aged dark face made him appear older than his sixty-five years. This was his last taxi stint, he mused. He was simply too old for this. If he had hit the transgressing jeep, it would have meant two months off the road in repairs, and “he didn’t want no government money”. He always stood on his own two feet, earned his way. Had he dropped me off a few minutes later, I would have pegged him as a native of West Africa and mindlessly crafted a familiar narrative of an illegal immigrant chasing the American dream, only to be driving a taxi around Skid Row decades later. But I was wrong. Glendale was twenty-six minutes and a universe away, and we kept talking.
While Paul was from Nigeria, he had moved to the United States for college at “the best Catholic university in America”—whose name I forget or misheard. He then worked on Wall Street for about three years until an insider trading ring was busted by the authorities, and the young, junior traders became the scapegoats. He was inexperienced and stupid, Paul admitted, but always the leaders get away with the money, and the likes of him are strung up instead. Unlike his colleagues, who got hefty prison terms, Paul somehow escaped to West Point, where he spent four years becoming a U.S. Marine. How joining the prestigious United States Military Academy gave him a get-out-of-jail-free card became lost in Paul’s accent, despite my several attempts to find out. Four years and some later, he then found himself parachuted into the first Gulf War under President George Bush’s Desert Storm operation. The Iraqi army was no match for the Americans, and Paul’s comrades quickly made light work of their opposition. He saw service in the second Iraq War as well, speaking Arabic (which he had learned in school in Nigeria) and coordinating with local allies. As a veteran he had retired from the Marines about seven years ago and seemed not overly thrilled with civilian life (though he did like Los Angeles). While mentioning he visited his family in San Diego, his accent became incomprehensible again, and I presumed he was not with them.
Did he find the city getting worse, I asked? No, was his surprising answer. The eighties were terrible downtown, and despite all Paul had said earlier, it was much better even with present-day gangs—the ‘Crips’ and the ‘Bloods’ being two of the better-known. Higher rents had forced many to move away, and with the government not subsidising more costly accommodation, some of the worst moved to Palmdale and some place I think he called “Black City”. As we approached Glendale, he smiled and said I lived in a quiet place full of Armenians, who all worked hard. No gangs. Did he like America? I asked. Yes, he said. It gave him opportunities he never could have had in Nigeria, which was incurably corrupt and societally riven between Christians and Muslims. So much of the world was corrupt, Paul noted—the Middle East, Russia, Africa. He was glad to be American. This prompted the penny to drop. He had never asked where his passenger was from. Alarmingly looking back at me from the steering wheel, he suggested, “You are American?” Conscious of the road, my own accent and his likely ignorance, I replied, “Ire-land, Ireeee-laaand!” I was wrong again.
“Ah Dublin!” Paul smiled. “My sister lives there. We speak every week. You are Catholic also? We have the best schools.” Not expecting this, I nodded and wondered how she ended up there and he went to America. “She is married, with children and grandchildren. Her husband went there first and she followed, but it is a long time ago. Ireland is a great country, great opportunities. They are happy, they are all Irish now.”
Slightly thrown by the realisation of Ireland being viewed as a land of opportunities for ambitious immigrants aspiring to what was once the “American Dream,” I stayed silent until he pulled up on my street. Knowing uninvited questions about politics can be inadvisable in both Ireland and the USA, I still needed to satisfy my curiosity. I guessed Republican and asked him about the upcoming election. The former marine smiled, “Trump divides people. He has no ideas…it’s old. He is like that dictator Saddam Hussein. Stupid. Believing his own talk. When he loses, the party will need to rebuild itself again and get back to what it was”. With that, I opened the door and hopped into the heat-filled evening as my Nigerian-American driver drove off.
America is a great nation built by immigrants, with also a difficult history of conquest, slavery and anti-immigration hatred. We have our own troubled history, but with Ireland projected to surpass ten million in a decade or so, we too will need to accommodate the vibrant mix of ambitious arrivals who see us as a new land of opportunity. Both our countries face a future unlike many of our neighbours, where truly exciting and unprecedented opportunities within a rich economy vie with fear of change and newcomers. Many immigrants arrive in their adopted countries (often accidentally), but become fully invested. Ireland has long celebrated this idea, even seeing our enemies settling among us and becoming more “Irish than the Irish themselves”. Record breaking athlete, Rhasidat Adeleke, is just one powerful reminder of how our country benefits from such movement of people.
Meanwhile, as with his sister and her husband in Ireland, Paul also made his adopted country his home and in doing so, has in many ways become more American than the Americans themselves.