Guest Post by Morbo
So who are all of these people who got whipped up into a frenzy by talk radio over immigration reform and bombarded the Senate with messages, terrifying the members of that body into submission?
The Washington Post profiled some of them recently. Turns out they are (big surprise) xenophobes who cannot grasp that the ground beneath them is shifting in a seismic way. The story, datelined Gainesville, Ga., begins:
Stephanie Usrey strode up to her local Wal-Mart store the other morning with the steely look of a boxer about to step into the ring.
A stay-at-home mother of two, Usrey has dreaded shopping at this particular branch ever since a Friday afternoon about five years ago, when she said she suddenly noticed she was the only non-Latino customer.
“That was the first time I looked around and said, ‘Man, I didn’t realize how many Mexicans there were here,'” Usrey, 39, recalled. “And they don’t seem to feel any discomfort when they’re, like, six inches from your face and talking to each other in their language, either. I just felt very encroached upon. . . . It was like an instant feeling of ‘I’m in the minority, and if we don’t get control over this, pretty soon all of America will be outnumbered.'”
Another man complained that Latinos had moved into his neighborhood and turned it into “a slum.” One dared to jump into a community swimming pool wearing cut-off jeans.
I don’t know what’s worse – that people hold openly racist views like this or that they will tell them to a large-circulation newspaper with absolutely no shame.
So why are increasing numbers of Latinos living in Gainesville anyway? Here’s the rub: They came for jobs in some chicken-processing plants that the locals will not deign to work in. I’m sure the people of Gainesville like their chicken. Somebody has to prepare the birds for them.
Reading the story, I could not help but think it was 1955 all over again: Back then, the ruling white elite wanted Africans Americans around to do their manual labor, but they certainly did not want to have to live near them, send their children to schools with them or mix with them in public places.
But lest the Yankees get to feeling superior, I should note that The New York Times ran a very similar story on this topic just a few weeks ago, That paper profiled Latino-fearing families in Michigan put into a state of frenzy by toxic talk radio.
It’s not enough just to complain about these people and their hopelessly out-of-touch views and xenophobia. We need a solution, and I think I have it. Someone in Gainesville should invent a transporter, like they have on “Star Trek.” The Latinos could beam in every day and go about making life better for the whites in town by processing their chicken, cleaning their homes, mowing their lawns, tending to their children and maintaining their pools. At the end of the day, they could beam back to Mexico or whatever country they are from.
Either that or the people in Gainesville could just learn to live with the fact that the workers they have come to rely on perhaps aspire to something better than modern-day serfdom.