The ‘new black’.



It’s comparable to fashion, huh? Mexicans are this year’s black. Just like grey is sometimes the ‘new black’ in fall. Where does this position black people on the skin-color hierarchy? And why is it so important to place a group at the bottom of the pole?

All of this led me to think about some of the asinine comments I have heard in the few years that I have lived in... let’s just call it Frogtown.

One evening, as I was leaving my Spanish language class, a student (also enrolled in this course) made comments to a group of us. She talked about how she couldn’t stand how ‘those Mexicans’ would leer at her as she entered the local super center.
She was not unattractive. I would say, however, that she would find easy work in the line of a Reba McIntire look-alike.
Apparently she was only taking the course because the school required it of her. Why she felt that those Mexicans were always leering at her... I do not claim to know. Maybe those Mexicans mistook her for Reba?

In yet another class, I learned from several students that the birth place of man was Greece. Wow. I was under the impression that the birth place of man was the Fertile Crescent in Africa. How shocked I was to find that we, being white folk, were from Greece and Greece alone! Oh blasted history books; how they have deceived!

You see, one gentleman was kind enough to point out, in the safety of the predominately white classroom, that his skin "ain’t that dark"... which led him to the conclusion that he could not possibly have any connections, whatever, to Africa.

You can imagine his confusion when the class instructor corrected his misconception. Who's cursing the history books now?

In the end I say, with little authority, but much heart, that before you part your stupid little teeth to say something about a group of people, of which you obviously know nothing, that you pause for a moment. Pause and wonder, not briefly, as to the birth place of your assumptions.
I imagine you will not find those roots in Greece, either.