Race and racism revived
Is the issue of race forgotten already?
Clearly, people tend to forget that which is more unsavory:
At least in the abstract most Americans disavow bigotry. They feel that it's shameful that American citizens are being discriminated against because of the color of their skin. Nonetheless, it's still happening. Unfortunately, it's no longer politically correct to talk about racism. In many circles it's passé, "too sixties."
And living in the American South, as an immigrant, I can feel the racism and inequality in a daily basis: from the fact that my real friends are all immigrants, to the stupid redhead nurse that talks to me slow and in a loud voice, as if I were somehow incapable of advanced rational thought, unnerve me. The people that look at me, Latino, and decide that I am not white enough for their purposes, or that are amazed at the fact that I speak a good kind of English, or even the ones that decide that I would be a good addition to their stable of international diverse friends: you know, because I have to demonstrate internationalism.Interesting are the locals that do not know what to make of me, Latino: and then I remember that this is a class society, and to those I reserve the treatment that somebody taught me, one in which you have to give me my due.
Lastly, and more painful, is to see the effect that this undercurrent of racism is having on me, on us: I have to listen to a Mexican waiter expound his Caucasian virtues: fair skin, father with blue eyes, tall, almost local.
And then I realize that that waiter is the voice of all of us, all of us trying to be white, to fit in, to betray our roots for the promise of belonging.
Technorati: immigration, racism, latino