http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/29/opinion/valencia-racism-latino/index.html?hpt=hp_c1
There's a great article on CNN today about racism against Latinos - not just racism against illegal immigrants, but against US citizens as well. The article got me pretty emotional, because I know this is happening in cities all over the US every.single.day. Specifically, it happens to my grandma in Texas all the time.
My grandma is Nicaraguan. She was born in a village near Managua and moved to the US in the 1950s. Her father was a doctor in the village and was very well-respected. She met my opa (who is clearly German) and they had 5 boys. My dad is the 4th in line.
My grandparents have been divorced since the 1980s and my grandma has lived several places... she was in Charleston, SC for a looong time, then she was in Orlando for awhile, and just within the last few years has moved to Texas. Since moving there, she's encountered absolutely unbelievable racism. A few examples:
1) Within a few weeks of moving into her house, my grandma put in a new fence around her house. The next day, her neighbors tore it down purely out of spite. I am not making this up.
2) She has repeatedly had letters/notes left on her door or in her mailbox telling her to go back to Mexico. This absolutely infuriates me. Uhhh, #1, she's not Mexican, so she can't go 'back' to Mexico, considering she never lived there. #2, That's digusting. I'm sure YOUR parents or grandparents were legal immigrants, too, so what makes them any better than MY grandmother?
3) She has had people throw things at her house, thus damaging her siding.
She eventually called the cops about all of this... their advice? "Buy a gun." Aka they can't do a damn thing to protect her.
The ironic part is that my grandmother is the most vocal person I know when it comes to illegal immigration. She HATES the fact that there are illegal immigrants in the US. HATES it. Yet here she is, being accused of being one and being told to leave. When, in reality, if people took two seconds to look past her dark skin, they'd realize they actually feel the same way about the issue. Absolutely absurd.
Another hilarious thing to me is that she's been a citizen since 1951, I believe. Which means she's been a US citizen longer than most of the people who are tormenting her. Funny how that works.
I also wonder why my dad doesn't have the same issues as my grandma. His skin is pretty much just as dark as hers... he has brown hair and brown eyes, too. I mean, he's been called Egyptian and Greek and Turkish and who knows what else, just purely out of ignorance, but he's never been distinctly targeted like she has. No one's ever thrown things or yelled at him because of his skin color. At least not that I know of. Weird.
Anyway, the moral of the story is that I literally feel nauseous when I think about the fact that things like this are happening all over the US. To all sorts of people. Including 77 year old GRANDMOTHERS. Like... at what point did our country become so dumb that our citizens now think that anyone that speaks Spanish and has dark skin is cleaaaaarly a Mexican? And that they're illegal? Just... what? Seriously, how did that happen?
Not a fan. Not a fan at all.
