Diverse City
Let’s agree that President Obama’s election was a step forward for people of color in America. However, two stories this last week frankly remind me how lucky I am to be white, speak English, and have a name most people know how to pronounce…well, maybe not that last one. I am privileged by “white privilege”-whether I asked to be or not.
Both of these stories come out of the Southwest, an area with large Latino populations, which surprises me. These areas have a high level of minority visibility, although the actions of a few white male residents make it look like the Civil Rights movement didn’t quite make it there.
The first occurred in Dallas: 46% Latino. A grandmother was cited for a lack of proficiency in English while driving her granddaughter to school, and although his superiors say it was the policeman’s rookie mistake, 38 similar citations have been written by Dallas PD in the last three years. Here’s the story:
I wish the last commentator would have actually answered this question: Does not speaking English make anyone less qualified to operate within American society? Sure, it might make it a bit more difficult, but in this case, the officer assumed that the woman was inept, speaking to her character and intelligence rather than her crime. And let’s be real, plenty of us have made illegal U-turns. We’re not better drivers because we speak English.
The second story absolutely disgusts me. It compromises the identity of the individuals involved. It shows us that business practices too often forget that they deal with actual people.
Source: CBS News
Hotel owner Larry Whitten moved to New Mexico with a mission: to revamp the failing Paragon Inn. Soon after, he asked Paragon employees to refrain from speaking Spanish at work, so that he could understand what they were saying. I understand the need to communicate with your employees, Larry, but it’s disappointing that you would ignore their culture, and their right to communicate freely with each other. Even more disappointing, and really unacceptable, is Whitten’s next business action. He asked many employees to Anglicize their names. “No more Martin (Mahr-TEEN). It was plain-old Martin. No more Marcos. Now it would be Mark.”
These stories are about ignorance, something I fear we all risk if we get too comfortable with the level of diversity within our communities. I simply ask, is it ever okay to think we’re diverse enough?
Here’s the link to that second story. Sorry I missed it.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/26/national/main5422261.shtml
You seemed to hit both of these issues right on the nose. I can’t really sum it up better. But I will make one comment about the CNN anchor (whatever his name), and one metacomment about CNN as Cheapskate News Network. First, as far as I know, there are no traffic signs that require you to know English. If you get a drivers’ license, you are trained to understand the red octagon means stop, and the rest of the signs pretty much follow the pattern of using color and shape to convey what they mean. Second, the Cheapskate News Network used a local news broadcast to do their reporting for them instead of actually sending an actual reporter to do some real work in the field. Of course, the budget for having the anchor gab with a reporter from the Dallas Morning News was almost nothing, so of course they were able to handle that. I give the Cheapskate News Network’s coverage of this very interesting story an F+ (the plus is because they didn’t go super-racist in the way that Fox News probably would have).
What? The street signs and the highway signs? Streets are proper nouns anyway, and everything else is absolutely visual, like Robbie said above. I’m sorry Don Lemon said that… I’m a fan of Don Lemon.
Anais, that second story IS absolutely disgusting. I mean, c’mon! And your last paragraph is spot-on perfect. We’ve both see remnants of these issues in the I.E. I’m sure.