The Good, the Bad, the Insidious Racist
I had lunch with a racist yesterday.
Not on purpose of course. I have found some of her remarks to cause my ears to prick up, feeling something untoward before. Yesterday I decided it is racism.
I happened to be leaving for lunch at the same time as a coworker, Jn, so invited her to join me. She said, she and D were going for salad and I could join them. So I tagged along. It came up that DD and Jn’s child love Dora the Explorer. D said she DOES, NOT, LIKE, DORA.
Jn said she really likes that it teaches her child Spanish, and wishes she had the opportunity to learn Spanish too.
D said that is her problem with it. Why should we have to learn to speak Spanish, when they are coming to our country. They should learn to speak English and should not be accomodated.
I have no problem with teaching immigrants to speak English. I am put off by the nasty attitude of D, the disgust in her voice, as though somehow “those people,” who speak a language other than English as their first language are beneath her, and parasitic.
I am of course, a child of legal immigrants. This makes me sympathetic to the difficulty that is encountered by most people in learning a new language. My family most definately speaks English – and French, and Japanese, and Spanish, and Italian, and American Sign, and Thai.
I find trash speaking any tongue disdainful, and that includes D.
