My Racialized Comunity

My Racialized Community

Jason McMullen

ETH 125

Lashon Aron

September 30, 2007

Abstract

More often than none, it is said that people move to America for equal opportunity, freedom, and independence, but yet upon arrival, these concepts are thrown out the door and no longer stand as a reality. It almost seems as if racism is openly embraced just in more subtle ways than years ago. Many people carefully avoid overt expressions of prejudicial attitudes, but covertly continue to harbor a negative view of racial minorities. Racism remains a serious social problem and opinions are forced onto people in ways that sometimes go undetected by an individual, but sub-consciously cause the individual to form biased views and racist beliefs. Who or what forces these opinions onto others causing them to conform to society may never be discovered. In an interview with a friend and Hispanic leader within my community I had a chance to get to understand how racism and these prejudicial attitudes are still present in today's society just as it has been for the last 100 years.

Sergio Rodriguez is a pastor at a local Hispanic church and he also owns his own landscaping company. He has been in America for thirteen years and has made a good life for himself. It has not always been good though. He has faced many prejudices within the Hispanic community and from outside. When I asked Sergio why he wanted to come to America he said, "I came to America to make money for my familia in Mexico because it was too hard to make it there."

Sergio like many other Mexican immigrants came to America in search of a better life. They begin their journey out of Mexico with the use of Coyotes. These are paid individuals that help them to cross the border. Sergio described what it was like when he crossed the border:

"I left on the bus headed north from my home. It took two days of travel. All I had was a phone number and directions to stay at a rundown hotel near the border that we arrived at during the morning. I was very scared because the area was full of drugs and gangs. I even thought about going back home but I had sold everything to pay the Coyotes to get me to America. That evening I was moved from where I was at to a house while others arrived. We were told that we would walk across the border that night and that it would take about thirty minutes. It took all night. We had no water, food or flashlights as we made our way across the cold desert. I was even robbed at knife point. The bandit made off with 50 pesos which is about $5 American money. Once we were across the border we were put into box trucks so that no one could see us and brought to Atlanta, Georgia. It was hot and the trip took two days. We were not allowed to get out to even go to the bathroom. It was a very dangerous trip."

I then asked do the people of your community today look like you or are they different? Sergio replied:

"When I first came to America I could not speak any English so I stayed near my own kind [other Mexicans] until my English got better. Now there are a lot of people in my community where I live that are white, black and even some Asians. We all get along and some even attend church with me on Sundays, though I do not think they can understand. We may not look alike on the outside to each other but to the creator we are all the same. My landscaping crew is all Latinos and we all look very much alike even though there are two that are from South America."

The word "Hispanic" is used to group a large number of people of different ethnic backgrounds into one category. The truth of it is that there are many different cultures that this title includes. People from Puerto Rico, Mexico, Argentina and Cuba and other Latin Americans not only speak different forms of Spanish but also have different cultures, religions and even physical traits that separate them from one another (Understanding Race and Ethnicity, week 1). When you mention the word "Hispanic" in my community people automatically think Mexican and worse yet, that person is here illegally. This creates an attitude of prejudice feelings toward the entire Hispanic population and toward people like Sergio who has obtained legal residence here.

Sergio said:

"...it does not matter for many people if you have documents or not they still look at you like you are a trouble maker. Sometimes this makes you feel bad. You feel like-I don't like to say this-but like trash. Some people are friendly but many of them just consider all of us as Mexicans that are here to steal their jobs. We have to work at low paying jobs and a lot of times when the boss doesn't think that we understand he will cuss at us. This makes us very angry and many of us want to go home. We even experience prejudice attitudes within the Hispanic community especially if you have more of an education or speak better English than other Mexicans. It is like you are neither Mexican nor American."

In an article written by Ellen Spears titled Civil Rights, Immigration, and the Prospects for Justice Collaboration in Georgia she discusses attitudes present in some of the Georgia communities:

...once in the U.S., immigrant ethnicity is redefined, becoming "racialized" by color-conscious classification schemes and the racist reactions of dominant whites. Latinos in Georgia and elsewhere experience problems commonly understood in the U.S. as racial discrimination, such as racial profiling and barriers to full access to education, health services, political participation, and employment. Such discrimination is compounded by socioeconomic status, and often experienced more harshly by working class and low-income immigrants. In Dalton, for example, civic and business leaders promoted highly acclaimed exchanges with Mexico to build strong inter-group relations in the context of public education, yet white flight has taken place from the now majority Latino public schools. Latino agricultural workers in south Georgia have been harassed by local law enforcement (Spears, n.d.).