Friday, March 6, 2009

I am not Racist, but...

Today I was watching NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, sometimes I do this to keep myself in the loop with world, and I saw that they were doing a weekly expose called "We the People" which is about "the growing clout of Hispanic Americans." They ran this for a week and I missed most of it but I did catch the viewer email portion today as seen below:


I want to focus on the first two viewer emails only. I will do NBC a favor and answer these ridiculous emails, which is really the same email considering the statements. First, I want to preface everything I say with this, when someone says something like "I have nothing against Mexicans.." and they follow it with a "but" or an "except", then were are dealing with Racist people. Plain and simple. Please do not say you don't have an issue with a group of people when you really do.
So with that said, I will start with Gerry. Well, Gerry, I think you do have a problem with Mexicans. You say that you do not have a problem with Mexicans in the US, so that leaves the rest of Mexico. English is not the official language of the United States, so technically none of us really need to speak it. Last time I checked, learning a language is an actually requirement in most high schools. So, my question is, if the French decided to move here, would you have an issue with your children learning French?

What ever happened to the Global community Gerry? Or are we going to perpetuate the reason why the rest of the world hates us when we start talking about how "we the people" do not need to learn any other languages? Welcome to the 21st century! Latinos/Hispanics (or plain ole Mexicans to you) are multiplying at a very fast rate and pretty soon there will be more of us than there are of you.

Let me address Linda from Florida. You believe that there is nothing wrong with Hispanics coming to this country so that means you must see something wrong with Hispanics who are already here. Lets talk about "our country", who just so happens to have a black president. Technically Linda, we are on stolen land from the Native Americans (Indians to you, which I am sure you see nothing wrong with them living on reservations either). So, before we talk about how people need to come to this country and need to speak English, just remember who is doing all the jobs that most Americans are too proud to do.

Lets not forget that most of America used to be Mexico. So technically, English is the foreign language in this country. English is a common language but it lacks the richness and culture than many other languages have. What makes this really interesting is that many words in English are "borrowed" (or taken) from other languages. Sounds like the American way to me.

3 comments:

Jeri said...

i have such a problem with people like that- we DO NOT have a national language! im sure these are the same people who have a spanish speaking person cleaning their house or taking care of their kids or doing some other incredibly important job...

and dont get me started on native american issue- guys, they are called NATIVE americans because they were here first- we even have a holiday about it- its called thanksgiving, aka thanks for teaching us how to farm the land , heres a blanket covered in smallpox.....

we are a land of immigrants, so unless these people emailing are of native american descent (which im sure they are not) well, when their ancestors first came here, the american public was probably saying the same thing about them..

Anthony Otero said...

Jeri,

We dolive in a land of contradiction as well. Most of the time people are not aware fo these contradictions because they are not aware of their own history.

Jeri said...

well said anthony- my family didnt really appreciate when i would tell them the real thanksgiving story, but its true- i think maybe people dont want to accept the contradictions, after all, ignorance is bliss

.. its people like you who need to keep informing people of our contradictions!

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails