My father calls me periodically to give me little facts and information. Sometimes I am busy and he leaves voicemail with whatever he intended on saying. One day recently he called to let me know that he heard that Arizona had the highest per capita Latino population (although I am sure he said Hispanic, which incorrectly means that their heritage is from Spain, but I digress). I didn't bother to verify his claim, because I was too busy being annoyed with his next thought.
"Why Arizona? What can they do there? I would have thought California, or even Washington because of the large agricultural industry," he said.
I am glad I wasn't able to take this call because it likely would have ended in a fight. I might have said something like, "Do you suppose it is because that used to be part of Mexico? Maybe it is because we used to be the immigrants there, not the Latinos."
With all this talk of immigration reform this has been running through my head. The whole idea of integration, us vs. them, and what langauge we/they should be using. Seems to me that we didn't bother to learn their language when we came here. As usual, I dropped the ball in saying that. Then someone went and said it much better than I would have.
Posted by kerewin at May 26, 2006 08:40 AMI can so relate, sad to say. My dad and I are so politically/ life perspective far apart it's scary.
But then again, if we, the next generation have opened our minds-- maybe it's a harbinger of good things to come?
Posted by: Elizabeth at May 31, 2006 05:38 AM