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This post over at Sadly,No!, linking to this in the Washington Post has left me desperately wanting to choke a bitch:
Stephanie Usrey strode up to her local Wal-Mart store the other morning with the steely look of a boxer about to step into the ring.
A stay-at-home mother of two, Usrey has dreaded shopping at this particular branch ever since a Friday afternoon about five years ago, when she said she suddenly noticed she was the only non-Latino customer.
“That was the first time I looked around and said, ‘Man, I didn’t realize how many Mexicans there were here,’ ” Usrey, 39, recalled. “And they don’t seem to feel any discomfort when they’re, like, six inches from your face and talking to each other in their language, either. I just felt very encroached upon. . . . It was like an instant feeling of ‘I’m in the minority, and if we don’t get control over this, pretty soon all of America will be outnumbered.’”
OH NOES! Her delicate white ears were assaulted by the sounds of another language! Oh the humanity! But seriously this is the fundamental basis for racism, the desperate, desperate fear that one who's been in a majority all their life and enjoyed all of its privileges, would suddenly find themselves in a minority. The horror that someday they might be able to treat you the way you have treated them.
And the most astonishing bit is that if you asked Ms. Usrey whether she was a racist or not she'd undoubtedly deny it indignantly. The stupidity, fear and myopic world view these people have strikes me as both unutterably sad and at the same time infuriating.
Stephanie Usrey strode up to her local Wal-Mart store the other morning with the steely look of a boxer about to step into the ring.
A stay-at-home mother of two, Usrey has dreaded shopping at this particular branch ever since a Friday afternoon about five years ago, when she said she suddenly noticed she was the only non-Latino customer.
“That was the first time I looked around and said, ‘Man, I didn’t realize how many Mexicans there were here,’ ” Usrey, 39, recalled. “And they don’t seem to feel any discomfort when they’re, like, six inches from your face and talking to each other in their language, either. I just felt very encroached upon. . . . It was like an instant feeling of ‘I’m in the minority, and if we don’t get control over this, pretty soon all of America will be outnumbered.’”
OH NOES! Her delicate white ears were assaulted by the sounds of another language! Oh the humanity! But seriously this is the fundamental basis for racism, the desperate, desperate fear that one who's been in a majority all their life and enjoyed all of its privileges, would suddenly find themselves in a minority. The horror that someday they might be able to treat you the way you have treated them.
And the most astonishing bit is that if you asked Ms. Usrey whether she was a racist or not she'd undoubtedly deny it indignantly. The stupidity, fear and myopic world view these people have strikes me as both unutterably sad and at the same time infuriating.
