Posted on 05/04/2006 1:57:19 PM PDT by subaru
The words still sting, just hearing them secondhand:
"You wetback, tortilla-and-salsa-eatin', low-rider-drivin', mariachi-playin', job-stealin', fast-speakin', greasy (I just can't say it). Are you all named Jesus or what? Do you always have to cram 40 into a car and 70 into an apartment? Learn to speak English."
The language makes me ill. It makes me think of white robes and fire and senseless hatred. Of times past. Times I thought shamed us into a little humility.
The quote, to be fair, did not come from a redneck hillbilly bent on driving Hispanics back whence they came. It didn't even come from a would-be state legislator prostituting his soul for votes.
It might as well have. It came from a Hispanic kid at Hayes High School, a girl named Juanita who wrote it a while back and gave it to Nancy Rhodes. It was part of an exercise dealing with the damage caused by ethnic jokes and stereotypes. The words, the horrid words, spelled out the insults Juanita would expect from those who dislike her skin tone, her heritage, her accent enough to hate her before they even get to know her.
Language may be a barrier. But the message, our unpleasant message, comes out clear.
For a few years now the rhetoric surrounding Hispanic immigration has been subtle and muted. Arguments about fair taxation and jobs and wages have flared with some bitterness, but by and large this community has tolerated its new neighbors. At least enough to let them pick our crops and build our homes.
But that is changing. Quickly. It's as if we've reached the tipping point where fear topples tolerance. The rhetoric is intensifying, the letters and e-mails and conversations are more fierce and less deliberate. Enough, Alabama seems to have said, is enough.
Monday's Hispanic boycott of jobs and businesses didn't really help. It stirred resentment as well as debate, and now some Alabamians talk of boycotting Cinco de Mayo.
No margaritas tomorrow. That'll show'em.
Just like passing laws to stop Spanish recordings of the national anthem. I still don't understand that red herring. (Or is it brown?) What is preferable, singing but not understanding a powerful English song, or getting the point - the point of America, really - in whatever language makes sense?
Freedom, in any tongue, rings sweet.
Now don't get me wrong. The issues of immigration are complex and overwhelming. Problems exist and our laws need work. I can't solve those. You wouldn't want me to.
I'm talking instead of the rancor that translates better than any song. A half-century after another pretty important boycott, we're doing it again, turning to catchphrases to justify our fear of people different from ourselves. "Illegals" is now the epithet of choice. Just use it in place of the n-word.
Take your positions, people, but keep your manners. If this keeps up we'll all take a sad step back. And Juanita? Well, Juanita just might be right.
Let's start calling burglars "undocumented shoppers".
And Hugh Hewit was just using the word 'nativist' to besmirch anyone demanding our nation's laws be inforced.
ILLEGALS is not a racist slur(the whole issue is not racist by the way)but a TRUE assesment of the people who steal across our borders ILLEGALLY and expect free services and jobs and rights they are NOT entitlled too. I will continue to use ILLEGAL whenever the term applies.
It seems to me that it makes more sense to teach our kids to just ignore name calling, than to make a big issue of it. People can call me whatever they like. If they call me names, what do I care what they think?
This is an exercise in stupidity.
susie
Yep, and death could call murderers "undocumented reapers"
"It was part of an exercise dealing with the damage caused by ethnic jokes and stereotypes. The words... spelled out the insults Juanita would expect from those who dislike her skin tone, her heritage, her accent..."
The insults she would "expect" to hear.
No one actually called her those things. She wrote them down because she felt that's what people might call her.
The language of the professional victim promoter...aka pimp
I'm sick and tired of liberals and racists redefining our language and controlling the agenda of free speech.
I guess by the same logic all the legal Hispanic citizens in this country who resent illegals for jumping the line are self-hating Uncle Toms then. "Tio Tacos", as the leftwingers call them.
Arguing with liars gets wearisome fast.
B'ham is 99.99999999999% black. What else do you expect to come out of it?
Yes, perhaps I should camp out on Mr. Archibald's porch and call myself an "undocumented resident." His pieces are always totally myopic but this one crosses into the moronic.
The liberal dumb down process continues. If the libs don't like the meaning of a word or phrase or it doesn't fit their agenda, then they seek to change it. For example, torture=being mean to prisoners. Leaking=putting out information harmful to a liberal. Whistelblowing= putting out information harmful to a Republican. Using the word "illegal" in front of the word "immigrant" now is equivalent ot using the "n word." Thus, the MSM attempts to force us to drop the use of the word illegal and just call them immigrants.
It must be his little liberal friends he's refering to because I've never heard that.
The term that sets him off is the truth, "Illegal Alien".
So. These are Juanita's thoughts? Not something she's heard from her "new neighbors"? Imagined insults?
Must have gotten the language and concepts from her fellow countrymen, then.
Overt attempt to PC the issue and change the language.
uninsured motorist? illegal driver?
Maybe we should use Mencina's term -- beaner.
What's the meaning behind "Tio Tacos"?
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