Refugees- A Reflection In the midst of the national hubbub about refugees in our country, I began reflecting on my own experience and how it shaped my perspective on refugees. As the child of white, middle class parents growing up in the cloistered West Hills of Portland Oregon, I did not recall having much early awareness much less connection with such people and their problems. Then I remembered that our parents signed up around 1963 to host a white Dutch family repatriating from the newly independent Indonesia. The family— father, mother and several children— arrived in Portland through the offices of a relief program. I believe their name was Eskes. My parents and others found a house for them to rent. The relief program provided transition services. I was a newly-minted teenager with many anxieties and low social esteem. I was a little friendly with the oldest child, a boy. What I had only fuzzy awar...
