Having moved in this past week, I’ve been trying to pick out a welcome mat for my dorm room.
I still have yet to choose one.
Welcome mats are essential in establishing first impressions.
They set the mood for who is and is not welcome, which is why I’m reluctant to make such a monumental choice. Or maybe I’m just bad at decision making.
Still, I don’t feel entirely alone in my doormat-induced indecision. Even the United States seems to be having similar trouble selecting its next welcome mat.
In an election where walls and borders dominate the discourse, the real question that candidates are trying to answer is what our next welcome mat should look like.
When looking at Indiana lately, we haven’t had too much success revamping our doormat design. Governor Mike Pence’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act tried to turn our welcome mat monochromatic, and the exclusion of refugees added a subtitle that read “(Un)welcome.”
As a nation, we could easily choose an imported welcome mat stamped “Empire.” We could refuse to translate “Welcome” to the languages of our immigrant neighbors, and we could decide to emblazon the mat with exclusive religious symbols.
Alternatively, we could design a homemade welcome mat, one that is universal and requires no words to be understood. We could create a patchwork quilt that speaks of home to all who see it.
For me, Bloomington’s welcome mat is something like this patchwork quilt.
It’s the smell of local coffee shops, the sprawling farmers’ market, the sound of music as I walk passed Jacobs School of Music, the towers of books in the Herman B Wells Library, and, most of all, the smiling faces I meet on the sidewalks and streets.
Certainly, it’s not perfect, but it’s personal. It’s full of life and color, and captures an ideal of homegrown diversity.
Yet, to set our sights on a symbolic welcome mat would be to subscribe to the same fallacious thinking that has shaped the campaign cycle into the farcical, oversimplified circus it has become – an election that favors images and insults over clearly defined policy stances.
Promising to install a “nice door” in the border barricade is an attractive vision, of course.
A door enables regulated entry, which is what immigration reform aims to achieve.
Who could be the gatekeeper of the U.S.’ new, shiny door?
No legitimate policy proposals have endeavored to define the conditions of entry and I’ve yet to see a plan for equitably enforcing any such regulations.
Proposing that we design a nice welcome mat indeed makes for a convenient analogy, but it likewise brushes the real problem under the rug. It’s merely a more positive reprise of the “nice door” scheme that leaves policy proposals hanging out on the doorstep.
The sentiment that comes alongside a welcome mat is just as — if not more — important than the mat itself.
That being said, we as individuals can make the effort to create a welcoming community here in Bloomington, and we can vote for representatives who articulate actual policy stances.
Classes start today, and I still haven’t decided on a welcome mat.
In the meantime, I’ll leave my door open.
kmilvert@indiana.edu
