Guidelines about what threads are appropriate on the Individual Politics Board (user search)
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  Guidelines about what threads are appropriate on the Individual Politics Board (search mode)
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Author Topic: Guidelines about what threads are appropriate on the Individual Politics Board  (Read 43282 times)
Luis Gonzalez
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« on: January 14, 2015, 10:35:34 PM »
« edited: January 14, 2015, 10:37:15 PM by Luis Gonzalez »

Could a thread on this work:

What do you think would be the hardest on you, and which do you think would be the easiest on you? Being a different sexuality than you are now, being a different race than you are now, or being a different gender than you are now?

(Basically a different way to get people to reflect on what's currently worse in American society... racism, sexism, or homophobia)

I see nothing beyond the pale as to that kind of thread.  It is not asking about the merits of a group as to which having a negative opinion would raise issues, but rather a personal question about how one might navigate having been dealt a different deck of cards than one was in fact dealt.

OK...

I can address that.

I was born a normal white kid in Cuba, the grandchild of Euro immigrants (Spaniards).

I migrated to the US in 1968, and apparently something happened on the flight over because once we landed, we weren't allowed to mark the "Caucasian" box in the immigration forms. I'm not quite sure what we were called, but we were no longer Caucasian. I recall correcting someone who asked me if I was Mexican a couple of years later (they saw my last name), and his response was basically "Cuban Mexican, Puerto Rican Mexican, Mexican Mexican... what difference does it make?"

That was rough.

Then in 1973, Richard Nixon invented Hispanics and suddenly I'd been transferred. I was now a member of an ethnicity that didn't exist at the time of my birth. It was (as best as I can explain) ethnic conscription. Cubans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans... one big happy opinion pollster group. As an additional benefit, I had a whole new box to check off on the census forms.

Everything went along fine for years, and I sort of got used to my status, then one day George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin and VOILA! White Hispanics were born, and I'd been transferred again.  

I'm training my kids to be white as most descendants of Europeans seem to claim that they are, and to enunciate their last name the same way that people from the UP pronounce it (that's as Caucasian as one can get) and maybe people will see them and think "you're too white and too tall to be a Mexican of any nationality", and the generations of my descendants will just be...

Well, maybe by then we'll stop the silliness and decide to just be people.
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