http://i.giphy.com/3oEduWXcahOZFCJTNK.gif

# When the principal announced the death of my friend over the intercom, the whole class bursted into laughter. 

Never before have I felt so alienated, angry, and disgusted with the world.

In 10th grade, two of my schoolmates passed away. Both were terrible tragedies, yet the differences between the social responses to them were night and day.

http://i.giphy.com/Md4Dky57u4VB6.gif

# Justin was a popular kid. 

He was a star on the soccer team and all the girls swooned over him. He had grown up in the city and was well liked by everyone. One day he was the epitome of health and fitness, the next day he was gone. This was a huge shock to the whole school community. Everyone posted about him on social media and organized remembrance events. Half the school knew about his death before the principal mentioned the tragic news in the morning announcement. 

# It turned out that he had a case of acute appendicitis. He had a stomachache and simply dismissed it as eating some bad food. By the time that he was properly diagnosed, it was too late. 

I didn't know Justin well, so while everyone else was weeping for him during homeroom, I did not shed a tear. However, I wished that I could have prevented his death in some way. You see, two years before this, I had watched surgeries at the hospital where my grandpa was a surgeon. I had seen appendicitis surgeries and my grandpa had explained to me how to perform them. Throughout that whole day, I visualized the surgery process in my head and how I could have saved him if I had gotten to him earlier.

Of course, that's not realistic at all, since:

1. I wasn't actually qualified to perform surgeries
2. I didn't have the surgical tools
3. I wasn't Justin's close friend and had no idea that he had a stomachache until after he died
4. Justin probably never even knew of my existence.

This was simply my way of coming to terms with the death of a schoolmate. A few months later, another schoolmate passed away, and that news struck in a way that I never experienced before. I had never experienced the death of a close family, so that was the highest impact tragedy I had ever experienced at the time.

# I first met Ahmed at the beginning of the school year. 

http://i.giphy.com/Ce3E5y0gLMa9W.gif

Many students lived far from school, so we would hangout outside of the school building as we waited for our parents to pick us up. There were a few of us who came from immigrant families. We all came from different countries, but we were able to share common experiences and get along. 

# Ahmed was lanky, pale, and mild mannered. 

Our activities ranged from playing Yu-Gi-Oh cards to doing pushups, from discussing school life to learning to solve the Rubik's Cube. Shocker, none of these activities helped us to fit in with the cool kids, but we didn't care. We enjoyed each others' companionship and that's all that mattered. As a result, very few people knew of Ahmed.

The school day after spring break, as I waited for my dad to come pick me up, I asked our mutual friends, "Where is Ahmed? He's usually never absent." Nobody knew the answer, and none of us really gave it another thought.

The next morning, the principal announced over the intercom that Ahmed's whole family passed away in a car crash while driving to their vacation spot over spring break. 

# Because Ahmed had a really long and foreign name, the principal completely butchered his name during the announcement. Everyone in my homeroom bursted into laughter except for me. 

http://i.giphy.com/1OocZjKBx7xKw.gif

I was in shock. I cried harder than anyone ever did for Justin, and for the whole day.

I usually expressed little emotion during homeroom and hadn't cried in years. 

# But this was unbearable. 

I've never felt such a huge sense of loss and such hatred for the ignorance of my classmates. These hypocrites all cried for Justin just a few months earlier! Now they are mocking my friend's name when his whole family died.

I didn't simply weep for the death of a friend. I wept for the memories of all immigrants whose sufferings went unnoticed because they dared to risk everything in hopes for a better life in America. I knew that my family and Ahmed's family came over to America with nothing, worked overtime everyday, and saved as much as possible in hopes for a better future. We had to leave behind wealth, family, and friends in the homeland. 

Ahmed's family finally earned a vacation after working their asses off for years, and they had to die before they reaped the rewards for all their hard work. Only his immediate nuclear family came to America, as with my family. When they died, there was no funeral. 

# Nobody in America remembered them.

http://i.giphy.com/swJXcFsgzpt6M.gif

My soul was crushed. Here we were enduring all kinds of hardship to chase after the American Dream, and it was all lost in a moment. And worst of all, as soon as we die, they laugh at our names then forget us immediately. Our lives didn't matter.

It dawned on me that if I died, I would not receive a funeral in America. I would also disappear completely after a brief mocking of my name. 

# I vowed to remember Ahmed forever, because nobody else would.

http://i.giphy.com/6bjO1XYKY7NsI.gif

These events did not happen in some backwoods white-dominated place.
This was a city that was almost entirely populated by minorities.
This was a city where everyone rioted in support of Black Lives Matter. 
This was a city that has one of the best-ranked hospitals in the world.
This was a city where all the elected officials were Democrats who promised progressive policies.

---

Years later, I wept for Ahmed again when I heard about the Elliot Rodger killings. While everyone else demonized Elliot as a misogynist, I sobbed my heart out for Ahmed, James Hong, David Wang, and George Chen. Elliot killed two sorority girls, a popular guy, and three Chinese immigrants [1]. Of course, once again, the lives for hardworking, meek immigrants didn't matter to the media. They spun the story to advance their agenda against the "evil white Patriarchy" and "evil guns". 

http://i.giphy.com/Q6xQBxGgpkpYA.gif

No, there was no patriarchy. Elliot was a mixed kid who was confused about his own identity. He was ostracized and never fitted in. Nobody cared that he existed or loved him. He was extremely lonely and mentally ill. He knew that he would be forgotten and unnoticed unless he did something huge. 

# However, rather than striving to make a huge positive impact on the world, he chose to create a memorable tragedy as his exit from this world that has rejected him.

James Hong, David Wang, and George Chen were all stabbed to death in their sleep. This story always escapes the media. We have a huge media problem of immortalizing the killers while silencing the victims who do not fit the political narrative.

>They were expecting their son home for the summer next month, with an upcoming family vacation at Yellowstone National Park to look forward to [2].

This line makes me shed a tear every time I read it. Like Ahmed, David Wang never got to reap the rewards for all his hard work. David was an accomplished computer engineering student and basketball player who aced his SATs. I can just imagine him looking forward to that vacation and uniting with his family after a tough school year.

# But no, all that was taken away from him and his family, and all he got was some assholes on the Internet making fun of his name.

Today, I weep for Ahmed, James Hong, David Wang, and George Chen once again. Terrorists killed 70 people in Pakistan, yet I don't see anyone putting up Pakistani flagged filtered profile pictures nor do I see #prayforpakistan trending on any social media platform. Liberal hypocrisy much?

Members of Project First Generation Immigrants have no name. Through his death, he had a name that was mocked. 

# His name is ... forgotten. 

People pretend to represent us to advance their own political agendas, but nobody really represents us. Our lives didn't matter. 


[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/parents-of-elliot-rodgers-three-stabbing-victims-try-to-piece-together-what-happened/2014/06/19/4546cc9c-f648-11e3-8aa9-dad2ec039789_story.html

[2] http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/slain-roommate-elliot-rodger-wanted-move-parents-article-1.1806049

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