Oh yeah, we're so racist/this post contains a dangling modifier

I met a guy in a bar in Cuernavaca who officially bestowed upon me Mexican citizenship.  By the power vested in him by alcohol, I suppose.  He told me three things kept him from going to the United States: racism, capitalism, and George Bush.  One down, two to go.

Some indigenous girls in Mexico once asked me why there is racism in the United States.  I stammered around awkwardly about fear and suspicion of other.

"Are you racist?" they asked.  I told them sure, everyone's a little bit racist.  "We're not," they all agreed.  "There's no racism in Mexico."  Awkward.

Take a stroll around Mexico and ask people about racism, and you'll find that it's true: there's no racism.  I mean, you'll be called "guero" as you walk by (or "negro" if you're black, "chino" if you're any kind of Asian, and so forth).  Oh, and you can only get into clubs if you have light skin.  And all of the actors are pretty much white.  And "indio," the word for American Indian, is a degrading thing to call someone.  And if your baby has light skin your friends tell you you're "improving the race."  Come to think of it, I think I've heard Mexico called a "pigmentocracy."  But other than that, there's no racism.

Note: I hella think there's racism in the US, but it tends to be the subtler, more systematic, insidious kind of racism.  The kind where we flip shit over language, overt stereotyping, and even using light/dark as synonyms for good/evil (no, really, this is the new thing), but then we drop an incinerator in a black neighborhood and call it a day.

Anyway, being one of these politically correct North Americans, imagine my reaction when I saw this on the Daily Show:

That's "for more security."  It's an ad from a Swiss political party that wants to get tough on foreigners committing crimes, and I think it's a very insightful look on how race plays no part whatsoever in immigration issues.  Right, Dobbs?  Article here.  And no, I don't know why this one is in French.


By the way, the tangentially related story during which this was shown is at least six times as infuriating as that ad.

If you've decided that the Swiss are a bit ridiculous, you haven't seen anything yet.  I found this while researching this story.  Cheers.

Parking lot connections

This is my first official Scribble Theology post!  If you're missing what I'm talking about, please note that I changed the title of this blog.

I took a guy's space in the CVS parking lot today.  He was sixty-something, drove a red pickup truck, and wore a black hat with pins on it (I didn't look closely, but it made me suspect that he's a veteran).  He hovered in front of me for a minute, perhaps expecting I would sense that I was in his place and move, then parked next to me.

"I was going to take that spot," he told me as he hopped out of his truck.

"Yeah, I saw that," I said, putting my mittens in my pockets.  "And I said to myself, 'I'm going to take this guy's spot.'"  Not the first time I used humor in questionable circumstances, but at least this time nobody was pointing a gun at me.

I'm not sure he got it, because he told me it was okay.  He showed me the space in which he usually parks--a handicap space occupied by a car with no handicap tag--then told me he was here to pick something up for his wife.  I didn't catch the name of it, but the pharmacist directed him to the "oral hygiene" section.

I am always puzzled by strangers who share with me these details about their lives.  Elderly ones, particularly.  Someone my age wouldn't have told me those things, and if he did, I would have thought "nobody cares where you usually park, and you look like a moron in that hoodie."  But somehow, from the post-middle-aged, these things are interesting.  Maybe it's because they are foreign to me, and I'm more interested in the thoughts that underlie what they say.  Why did this man choose to tell me about his usual parking space and his oral hygiene-challenged wife?

Humans long for connection with others--humans of all ages.  I don't think this man was under the impression these bits of his life were of crucial importance to me or anyone else, but perhaps he's learned over the course of his life not to be afraid to reach out and connect, even to a stranger in the parking lot whom he will likely never see again.

I'm not encouraging you to share with me the state of your partner's oral hygiene.  But perhaps we should all stop and ask how often we miss the opportunity to connect, thinking that it is somehow better to offer nothing than to offer something that might not be interesting.

Start a blog.

Actions to eliminate hypocrisy

I found myself thinking condescending thoughts about others who had Google ads on their personal Blogspot or Xanga pages.  This condescension was obviously unearned, since my blog had not one but two advertising sections.  Right, because with five followers I'm going to be able to write full time and live off advertising revenue.  So starting today, and running until I am highly famous and measure my unique visitors in the hundreds of thousands, you won't be seeing ads on this blog.

The link to Red & Shoulders doesn't count, since it's my site.