I have never been a racist in my 30 years on the planet. I don’t want to be a racist. I think it’s absurd to judge a person by the color of their skin. To look down on someone because there skin has more pigment than mine, never made any sense to me… until now.
Yes, let the hate mail begin, but I fear that I am becoming a racist.
I grew up in the Seattle area, and never noticed any racism in my family or friends and to be honest I never gave it much thought. I met a girl, got married and had a baby. I decided that the city life was not the right place to raise my child, with all the violence and drugs, so I moved to a small town out in the country.
I make a living on-line, so I can do that.
So here I am in this small town, and the only people here are white and Mexican. I notice right away that some of the white people look down on the Mexicans, and I figure it’s because they were raised out here in the middle of nowhere and are uneducated and/or ignorant. I had no idea that I would someday be joining them.
Here, in my little town, we had our first shooting. A man was shot in the parking lot of our only bar. He was a family guy, with kids and he was shot by a Mexican. It shook the town and showed us that crime can come here also. Life went on, at least for everyone else, the man who was shot died.
Next year, all of a sudden we have graffiti on our street signs, roads, rocks and even some houses. No one has a clue as to what is going on. Then the local realestate office is broken into and trashed. More strange graffiti is painted everywhere. Turns out we have a local gang. In a town of a nine hundred people, where everyone seems to know everyone else’s business, we suddenly have a gang.
So I ask my teenage what the deal is with that, and guess what. The gang is made up of all Mexican teens. So this gang of about 10 Mexican kids, has changed our peace loving, safe feeling town into a gang sign, spray painted ugly nightmare.
I have grade-school kids who have Mexican friends. They often play in our yard, and I was watching them play the other day when I noticed that the 10 year Mexican boy was doing strange things with his fingers. Having grown up in Seattle, I knew what was going on so I walked over and sure enough, there he is trying to teach my kids how to “throw gang signs”.
It was hard raising kids here, because my kids thought I was to hard on them by making them stay close to the house, while they can see 3 year old Mexican kids who are allowed to play in the street and go up into the mountains. No, I am not kidding, that is common practice around here. You see little Mexican boys and girls ridding big-wheels and running in the street several blocks away from their houses each and every day.
When I go to the store, often I will find a mexican mom with 6 kids, and they are all running around acting crazy, while I make my kids stay with me as I travel about the store. My kids want to know why they can’t run around and get into everything like the other kids.
Now I am starting to see a change in me. I am starting to wonder why it is that if the Mexicans are less than 10 percent of our population, why do they make up over 80% of the crime?
When I drive by the food bank, I always see a line about a dozen people long, and they are all Mexican. Sometimes I donate to the food bank, you know, to give to those who are less fortunate. That is when I have some spare food. Things are always tight at my house for some reason.
At school, the mexican kids are bullies and the drop out rate for them is extremely high. Most of them never graduate school, so they don’t take it seriously and they don’t mind ruining it for everyone else by disrupting the class and creating an atmosphere of fear.
Oh my… I am feeling a bitterness coming on. A resentment. Thinking that things do not seem fair.
So then I wonder why it is that I have no health insurance, but the Mexicans who keep popping out kids have medical provided by the state? Why are my taxes paying for their medical? Doesn’t seem fair!
Another amazing thing just happened in our small town. There was a rape. First one I know of. It was a gang rape. Two teenage girls were raped by 5 boys from the football team. Guess what? Yes, they were Mexican boys. Turns out the girls didn’t even tell because they were so afraid, but the boys were text messaging the girls death threats on their phones. They were saying that if the girls ever told what they did to them, they would kill them and get their families, etc. Those text messages left a permanent trail, and it was hard evidence. And someone else found them on the phone and broke the story.
Whoa… now I am feeling pissed.
These parents don’t watch their kids right from an early age, they let them run wild. They get free food from the food bank. They get free medical from the state. My taxes help support them, and then their children lash out and hurt society.
Tell me how that is fair? TELL ME HOW TO NOT BECOME A RACIST?
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“TELL ME HOW TO NOT BECOME A RACIST”
By not assuming that everyone with hispanic heritage is the same.
Other areas of the US have the same problems with lower-income african-american, native-american, asian-american and european-american groups. The issue is not one of race, but of education and opportunity. My wife has exactly the same problems with her own (european-ameican AKA white-trash) family. They see no particular value in striving to better themselves so they don’t respect other peoples environment, property or person. This is why our children will never meet these people.
The racist element lies not with recognising that the majority of trouble makers in your town are hispanic, in assuming that ALL hispanics are therefore troublemakers.
or just go with it.
The way not to be a racist is not to make generalizations about a group and then attribute those judgments to individuals of that group.
If you don’t want your kids hanging out with friends that teach them gang signs, that’s fine. If they get some new friends, and you don’t want them hanging out with them because you *assume* they will be a bad influence because they are *also* Mexican, that’s prejudice.
Judge all you want. Just don’t prejudge.
The criminal element in your town may be traceable to a particular cultural group. That doesn’t mean it’s racial. It doesn’t mean other members of that group do everything the group does.
if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck…
As a poor college student, the state pays my health insurance because i make under a certain income.. so it’s not just mexicans..
I think you hit the nail on the head in the very beginning, tho you didn’t seem to know it. When you said ‘I notice right away that some of the white people look down on the Mexicans…’
Right. My opinion is that this it the source of the problem. The Mexicans never felt at home in their home, so they ganged together, so they could be strong too in the place where they live.
The more they ganged together, the more the two subcultures (Mexicans, and the rest of the town) divereged.
Once one side has no respect or compassion for the other, then the other side must stop showing such to remain in a psudo-dominant position. Since one side is so much in control of the other, the other acts out in the ways they still can and not get caught. Violence, and vandalism are common.
This is a rational issue that any rational person with open eyes will have to struggle with at some point in their lives. I think the answer is to make a distinction between race and culture.
Race is unchangeable. We don’t ask for it. We can’t change it. Culture, on the other hand, is eminently changeable. And all cultures are NOT created equal. Culture is not special. Not precious. Not above criticism. It’s just human software. Features differ. Some cultures have important components missing. It’s a fact, and we should stop tip-toeing around it. After all, culture can be changed, it just takes some courage on the part of the individual.
Don’t become a racist. Become a “culturist”.
Public discussion on issues like this are always tainted by the voices of shills from all sides. The only way we can understand what’s actually going on and have an honest discussion about the topic is to really drill deep and parse out the subtlety. What Jason said is exactly right, but if anyone were to make that kind of statement in the mainstream media or on the floor of the senate, he or she would be crucified.
I can understand your frustration. We have gang problems in our town too and most of the members are Latino. That said our town is also full of solid Latino families. Not all Mexicans/Latinos are gang members, bad parents or poor neighbors. I think it is wise to take each person for what they show themselves to be regardless race, religion or socio-economic status.
Sounds like you have a problem with lower class families. Not necessarily their race.
Every population has people that are uneducated and uncivilized, and usually these people live at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. Unfortunately, a large portion of the Mexicans that cross the border into the US were desperately poor and come from this background (although many are hard working decent people). It is not surprising that they behave rudely and have high rates of vandalism.
Contrast to the Cubans, immigrants who came fleeing Communism and are comprised of mostly middle-class well-educated people and professionals. They are hispanic like these Mexicans, but they are law-abiding productive people and have become quite rich. Visit Miami if you want to check it out.
Also compare to the upper and middle class Mexicans in Mexico. The point is that education and socio-economic status is what matters, not race.
I am impressed with MANY of these comments!
Some very well thought out posts on here.
I love hearing from you all.
It has given me a lot to think about.
You’re not being a racist, just a realist. If you lived in Detroit, you’d have the same problem with the niggers.
Acknowledging the truth isn’t racism, sexism, or otherwise discrimination. Certain minority groups have much higher levels of criminal activity than others (although we don’t know whether this is cultural, otherwise environmental, or genetic). Many scientists believe that there may be intelligence differences between races. Male and female brains are physically different (ratio of black matter and white matter), and men and women have different types of intelligence (men are better at spacial reasoning, for instance, and women are better at multitasking). Dr. Watson, Nobel laureate and codiscoverer of DNA, proclaims this publicly. Larry Summers got kicked out as president of Harvard for making comments stating that male/female differences should be researched. These aren’t idiots or crackpots. These are some of our top scientific minds.
Simply acknowledging the above doesn’t make you a racist. Acting on the above doesn’t make you a racist either — there are real problems that are correlated with racial groups, and treating race as a blind spot can hinder solving them. What would make you a racist is treating individuals differently because of the above. For fairness, we want equal opportunity. Even if it were shown that blue-skinned people were, on average, genetically 10% dumber and 10% more violent than green-skinned people, there would still be a few brilliant blue-skinned people. Having an equitable society means that if someone were born blue-skinned, if that individual was a smart and as hard working as a given green-skinned person, he or she would have the exact same opportunities to succeed. People wouldn’t treat her or him differently because of the group they belonged to.
That’s the goal you should strive for. Be angry at the Mexican kids messing up your neighborhood. Be resentful of the medical benefits that your taxes pay for. Just don’t take it out on individual Mexicans. If there’s a Mexican in your community who is smart, friendly, and hardworking, treat him or her the same as your white friends. If there’s a white guy who is as violent as the Mexican vandals, treat them the same as the Mexican vandals. Do it because of who they are, rather than because of what group they belong to.
You’re not being a racist, just a realist. If you lived in Detroit, you’d have the same problem with the niggers.
It seems you don’t hate ALL mexicans. it seems you only hate these mexicans.
Phlod spelled pseudo wrong….
Mea Culpa. Mea Maxima Culpa.
I certainly don’t dislike all Mexicans. I don’t think I am a racist, but I do think I can see how stereotypes are created. Prejudice is when you pre-judge someone, and I am post-judging.
It doesn’t matter what the skin color of a person is, if they behave as I outlined above, I am going to have an issue.
As Jason said, I may become a “culturistâ€.
This is an issue, where an intellectual can spend years debating, but a common guy who doesn’t have or won’t spend time, thinking about such things, will find it easier to lump everyone into a single category.
I always wondered how racism came to be, and now I think, at least in part, I understand.
Uh yeah…welcome to the real world… what’s the quote? Everyone’s a little bit racist… but in your case its entirely ok… you observe the behavior, you note the sources and you make expectations based on that…it just happens that because of the evidence you are now equating Mexicans with anti social behavior…but what can you do…that’s what you experience…
What is it with Mexicans and the need to create vast smells everywhere they go? Is there a genetic flaw with their sense of smell?
Men wear a gallon of cologne and women bathe in perfume.
Their laundry smells of either super-strength dryer sheets (1 box per dryer load) or 1 bottle of strong scented fabric softener.
Hell, I can’t even go out in my yard sometimes because I can smell those dryers shooting out that stench into a 300 foot radius from their house.
I am not really sam malone.
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