I start my day alone. I have a cat but her love is conditional. Sans hunger or boredom, I don't exist to her unless I am in her way. She is a cat, so that is her way. Cats and humans inhabit the same realm purely by chance and sometimes we get along well enough to live together, though I suspect it is largely a choice made by the smartest of the species to lessen their burden and prolong their lives. In essence, I get up to an empty house. I cook dinner alone. I eat alone, unless a cat and turtle staring at my food counts as being with someone. I get ready for work alone and I leave the house alone. When I get to work, I am motioned through the COVID checkpoint, hand signals only. The Somali at the computer uses hand signals to communicate because speaking to me could cause major problems. I clock in alone, retrieve my equipment alone, change for work alone, and I work alone. I can go days without anyone saying a word to me. If it wasn't for my phone and the internet connection on it, there could be weeks between interaction with another human being.
I've taken a look around me and found that this is just normal life for a large number of people in my community. Well, at least I'm not "alone" in this. It's a shitty thing to say, but when you know someone else feels the same as you it is a comfort. When I say the word community one might assume that I am talking about the city, county or state that I live in. I am not. I am speaking about the silent minority who live and work in your community, though you won't notice us outside a moment of anger or giving a curious (or hateful) look at someone who looks different than you. I didn't know how to describe the way I lived until I became an adult. As I got older and political division strategy changed course (again) from pro-war/anti-war to race politics, it has become clearer and clearer to me how deeply rooted racism is in American culture. It is not just north american culture. The entire continent is infested with bigotry based on one thing alone.
SKIN COLOR
Throughout my workday I largely remain silent. Though I have wireless earbuds under my earmuffs, I don't always have music or audio playing. Most often I am using them as a buffer to keep the negativity at bay. It pains me less to create my own existence than to live in the hellish racial nightmare created by American politicians and a people too stupid to ignore the divisionary tactics and enjoy their lives. The damage caused by a string of words, uttered one time by any popular politician, can have an effect that lasts generations and sows death and destruction on many levels. To illustrate my point I will tell you just a little of what I have experienced within the last two weeks, as that is all I can do.
I WAS EATING MY PEAR WHEN...
The initial trouble started with what I genuinely thought was an attempt by management to show me how to use the company app to set up direct deposit. I didn't realize it until now, but it was an opportunity to inquire about my ethnicity. "You speak Spanish?" is innocent sounding enough, though suspicious given the culture and norms of the country I live in. I know that what comes after that is, "where did you learn Spanish?" The emphasis being on the word, where. But as I am easy going, I didn't lie, per say, and said I only spoke a little. Fast forward a few weeks and it again became a question of where I was from. I didn't answer that because I never answer that question when asked by Americans. I have learned the hard way that it is only asked to gain intel and confirm suspicions that I am on a mission (sent by the ghost of Fidel Castro) to overthrow the US Government, ban guns, enslave women and live off welfare (while avoiding taxes.) This all comes to a head, because by a stroke of bad luck I was severely injured on the job, requiring that I be placed on light duty. Light duty is in the laundromat, where people have altogether too much time on their hands: the home of all the company gossip and the headquarters of the Clique. The very first night there, a manager met me and told me what my job duties were: "sit here, get better, and don't do anything. You can leave early if you want, just let me know before you head out." Well, I didn't leave early. As a reward I was able to see the oncoming tidal wave of racism coming, though I underestimated the severity of the situation.
THE CATALYST
What brought the inquiry about whether or not I spoke Spanish from a month ago into the forefront? Why did this catapult out of control? Because of one incident. I was in the breakroom, eating, and a woman approached me and asked me "Eres Cubano? Nunca he visto a un Cubano en Wisconsin." She said it with a slight Cuban accent, which was explained in the short conversation we had in the next few minutes. She is Mexican and married to a Cuban. At that moment, I didn't notice it, but my coworkers had heard me speak Spanish and witnessed what was not just a few words I would have learned in high school. This apparently became a big problem. The entire time I have worked in this place, face masks were required as a precaution for Covid-19, and my mask is a Cuban flag, though most here do not know any flag outside their own. I have seen dozens of American, Norweigian and Swedish flags on masks, more overtly than mine. My mask was never mentioned until that moment. I noticed that the days following the conversation with the señora, where I would always get a nod as my coworkers passed me to go down to the factory, that they didn't acknowledge me at all. On break, when I sat down some of them moved or turned their chairs to face a different direction. That was a very clear and familiar thing, so I moved as well. The cafeteria at work is segregated into three territories. On the upper right corner sits whites, in the lower left sits Africans, in the upper left sits the latinos, and anywhere else, the temporary employees. It is a large cafeteria, and there is a lot of space between the groups. The employees who mingle and converse with other races are outcasts and will sometimes enter the groups to talk but will leave shortly after and don't stay to eat their meal. This is done subconsciously to show the others they aren't a threat, that they aren't spying, and to minimize the hostility shown by the race that doesn't want them mingling with the ones they are talking to. But there is also the American dynamic that the black americans will not under any circumstances eat with the africans, though they will occasionally walk past each other and give a greeting. It is like being in prison. You may at times be cordial, you may do business, but you may not openly be friends.
The first three quarters of the night went smoothly. Nothing happened, as if I would have known otherwise, being on Percocet. People arrived, grunted and pointed at which uniform size they needed, and for the most part, got what they needed. But at 5 am, when the Percocet had long since worn off and I was fully coherent, SHE arrived. She works the fist shift, is white, blonde, entitled and extremely mentally ill. There is no problem she won't have with anyone, as I was about to find out. She couldn't see me when she arrived, as I was behind a large group of people who decided to come and raid the supplies and take three of everything so that nobody else had the basic safety equipment required to be employed in this factory. As I sat on the stool, as ordered by management, and pushed rainsuits at grunting coworkers, I heard a loud, shrill voice say the one thing I am completely accustomed to and not at all surprised to hear: "black Cuban."
"They put a Cuban ni...a black Cuban in here on light duty. He is never where he is supposed to be and he doesn't listen. He pretends that he only speaks Spanish but they all do that. I had to tell him what to do so he didn't keep running off. I'll keep him busy. I don't know why you get someone to help you. I'm here all day by myself and I never get anyone to help me."
This is the exact quote. I remember it word for word because it had actually been a few months since I heard someone say something overtly racist about me as I no longer answer phone calls from my daughters when they are with their grandmother (who will shout racist things the moment she notices they are on the phone with me.) I did not respond and chose at that moment to take up the manager on his offer and I left work early.
I will give credit where it is due, and when I say the reaction the rest of the Clique had to her blatant racism was genuine outrage and profanities, it is not a joke. She was immediately reduced to tears and I could hear her whimpering excuses as I walked out the door. I will also give them credit for not stepping up and taking it further and leaving me to suffer the eventual consequences alone. They encountered what they knew was an extreme wrong and let it slide, past the profanity. They watched what happened to me and did nothing, when just ONE PERSON stepping in is what saved me in the end.
I worked the rest of the week without incident. SHE was not there, as she took her vacation days to escape the heat. Everything was fine until Monday when SHE returned. Monday night I came into work and was immediately shouted at and told that I was "loitering" in the laundromat, where I was assigned and doing what I was told, and that I was to work on the elevator, pushing buttons for people. A supervisor took me to an elevator that was located in the freezer. There was a white woman who also was placed on light duty, and while told me that she was to work with me, they waited for me to go down to the freezer and put her in the laundromat. This caught everyone's attention. Lots of people came by to make that comment to me. The message they were giving me was very clear. Still I said nothing. I was down there several hours when they sent that female down to retrieve me and tell me to clean the breakrooms. I then was involuntarily included in a one sided conversation with this female about how she knew a Cuban who was born here but was deported to Cuba, who was a rapist (allegedly,) that she's glad he's gone even though they deported a US Citizen from the US, and that all Cubans are "tempermental" I asked her how she knew that and she said that because Carmello was (allegedly) a rapist and mean to her, that is why she knows that. Again, I am used to that, so she didn't accidentally fall from the third floor balcony and I kept working, though I sped it up until I was done early and I found a way to misinterpret my job orders and occupied the space at the bottom of the other elevator, where the two Guatemalans work and there is a Mexican supervisor. This is where I remain as of now because there is safety in numbers.
Some would say I should report it to HR. Why would I do that? At the minimum I'll get fired. What already happened was that I was brought in front of nearly the entire company and accused of being insane by a white manager who loudly proclaimed that I can't be Cuban because I'm not brown enough, that the Mexicans are darker than me (which isn't true, they come in all colors as we all do. The woman who married the Cuban is very white and he is blonde and white whereas I am a shade of yellow) and that she isn't racist because her husband is black and I'm just a "fool." I was accused of bringing up my ethnicity after she tried to verbally deprive me of it while saying dozens of racist things and using her husband's skin color as justification, though she was the one who brought it up. I am used to this conversation so I did what I always do and I controlled my outward and inner reactions to what is going on to the point where I simply stopped speaking and only stared at her until she got uncomfortable and kicked me out of the cafeteria.
Until you've experienced this, you can never understand what it feels like. To have this happen on a regular basis is "normal."
To put it into perspective, I hear something blatantly racist about africans every day. The usual MO is to take one grain of truth and stretch it to justify hateful rhetoric, no matter how rediculous that truth is. It can even be a fictional TV character, as it is with the movie Scarface and the I Love Lucy TV series. The ends always justify the means. To illustrate this point and the hipocrisy in their very souls, they congregate together without wearing their masks and repeat the words "scamdemic" and cluck like chickens about all vaccines being fake while blaming the africans for the pandemic because they also refuse to distance or wear masks, ignoring the fact that the recent immigrants have received every vaccine in existence prior to entry. Oh, and they accuse the africans of being unvaccinated.
The current political mantra states that racism only occurs in one specific situation and to one specific skin color. Even if witnessed against any other group, it is collectively ignored as it always has been. Were I to report it, that makes me dangerous. There is nothing more dangerous than a tempermental Cuban male. I would be gunned down by police before I could get to my vehicle and leave, regardless of what I did or didn't do. If I do not remain silent and do nothing I leave other Cubans behind, without me, to suffer. If I do remain silent there is still a chance that I will one day be killed when someone is upset at what I did or didn't do, regardless of whether or not I am even aware of their existence.
There is a difference between latinos asking where you are from and when gringos do it. The difference is that they are finding out more about YOU, while the gringos are often looking for a problem. When latinos ask they are finding out if you are from their country, because we also self-segregate by country (not to extremes,) as there is strength in numbers. Mexicans protect Mexicans. Guatemalans protect Guatemalans. Cubans protect Cubans.
Puerto Ricans protect Puerto Ricans. Dominicans protect Dominicans. The exception is if there is only a few from one country, or even one, and the large group from another doesn't absorb that person into their ranks, the nationalities with lesser numbers will band together as one group. This gives us legitimacy with the other large group and the tension between strangers is broken and friendships/alliances form. The Africans do exactly the same, and that is for one reason alone. Americans, while they will band together with black and asian americans, judge you solely on skin color. They created commonly used words like "latino" and "hispanic" to replace our actual ethnicities, which for me is Mestizo because for some reason they cannot comprehend a world where race is not defined by a very specific skin color. With the same hatred that inspires them to judge all shades of black as black, they separate the latino community by shades of black, brown and yellow, and use that as a tool to discriminate against certain tones during certain political phases. This is not unique to Americans alone, but it has been mastered by them. When being talked about, you will be described by skin color ("the black guy") where any white person will be described by their name or by pointing at them. This is different than latinos using terms such as negro/moreno/blanco because we are a sea of color and mixing races is common and hardly thought about, and families often have children that come out in different shades. It is a very common thing in the Carribean for a couple to have children of varying colors. Coming to the US, we experience extremely varying realities, though in the end, if we stick around for a few decades, we all experience the multiple levels of racism.
This is extremely fucked up that we have to do this but if we do not, we will be singled out, attacked and fired. What happened to me is an example of the moment that they assumed I was alone here and an easy target.
Now let's get down to the stupidity of racial profiling. Again, this is all from my personal experience.
The most common things I have heard pertaining to Cubans, in order of frequency is:
#1. All Cubans are black/brown. (They also say this about Mexicans.)
Also in order of frequency...
"You can't be Cuban. You aren't black."
"But...you're not brown"
"So you're part black? That's why you have big feet."
"black indians"
#2 "Say hello to my little friend!"
Immediately after they shout this and imitate firing an M203 grenade launcher at Bolivians, I am asked about cocaine because apparently I am a drug lord.
#3 Cubans are "tempermental."
Just like the genocidal maniacs that destroyed a thousand unique ancient cultures on their way to mine gold that was never actually there.
#4 "Heeeey Lucy I'm hooome"
In stark contrast to your assertation that all Cubans are black/brown, you will often say this and then laugh, the fact that that Desi wasn't black or brown completely escaping you.
Here's a somewhat "new" thing I've heard:
"I hope the plane doesn't get hijacked. Those Cubans loved to hijack and bomb planes in the 1960s."
This statement is made because a racist moron assumed that Sikhs are Muslim and committed an act of terror against a Sikh temple in my state and now Muslims are off limits again. GW Bush vs Islam is actually a convenient thing for racists because it draws attention away from the US government funded terrorists who landed in Havana in the 1980s and 1990s and machine gunned crowds of European tourists on the beaches and blew up hotels. So in addition to being a drug lord, tempermental and black, I am also a 1960s hijacker.
For the record: I didn't know what SHE even looked like until this morning when she made a point to exit her workstation to order me to put my rainsuit in a particular bin as I left. It landed on the floor instead. She should be thankful it didn't get stuffed up her ass. And still, I have never spoken a word to her.
Think about how great it would be (not only for those of us who live as ants under the magnifying glass, but for those who are always immersed in xenophobic paranoia) if we were all just people who live and work together. What if you could drop that paranoia and just live? I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about what you've done to me.
I don't want anyone to tell me how sorry they are, I don't want you to tell me it shouldn't happen. I don't want you to say anything. I just want to live my life without having to look over my shoulder or segregate myself because of my ethnicity. Let me fucking breathe!
Ignore me.
Just an Asian American passing through.
Oh yes. I remember. They called you a 🍌
Depending on context, it can be offensive.
Hijole amigo, great read. Don't worry the race war is coming lol 😆
I can't even day drink. These fuckers won't let me buy pepsi to go with my rum...
Trump lost and everyone's showing their true colors on both sides.
Latin America is more troubled compared to Spain or Portugal. The US and Canada are more troubled than Britain, the US in particular. According to dark skinned people (dark enough to not to look like people of entirely Northern European ancestry) in Britain, the racism they encounter is much more subtle than in North America.
The way people self-segregate based on appearance is very persistent.
What on Earth could the "Cubans are black stereotype" be based on? One look at the Cuban government should convince anyone that this cannot be the case. The best known Cuban is Fidel Castro who looks Spanish as he must be by genetic heritage for the most part, I guess.
I think it's based on stupidity and ignorance.
For example, @davidpakman is Argentinian American. He looks pale enough to pass for a Scandinavian. Unlike North America, South America is pretty narrow in the temperate latitudes where the many of the Northern European immigrants settled but there's enough space there for millions of people.
It's because they're possibly retarded. I don't know either. A lot of Mexicans call us "black indians" but I think that's just an awkward joke. It's always made me laugh but for some reason they tell the whites what they said and it morphs into something weird.
Ignorance is a serious problem in the US. Good basic education can make such a big difference. Seems that being anti-intellectual is some sort of a badge of honor in much of the States.
In fact, I think so many Americans are acting like retards these days that it is beginning to threaten the stability of the country, which would put the current global security architecture and world economy in jeopardy. The trumps of the world will always be trumps. But who I'm worried about is all the tens of millions of people who lap up their shit. It would be unfair or inaccurate to compare Trump to Hitler. Trump is just a regular conman and not a genocidal maniac. Both lie/lied at a similar frequency but at least Hitler spoke in full and grammatically correct and congruent sentences like an adult. It's extremely embarrassing to elect someone like Trump for president. For a nation to do that it is as if an individual pulled their pants down and proceeded to defecate on high street in broad daylight.
The longer the internal shit show in the US continues, the more the rest of the world will turn away from the US as it will become clearer that the country has abandoned its role as a responsible world leader.
If you think Trump was bad, wait until KKK member Joe Biden starts talking. Every president we've had since Clinton has been a blatant racist and they're are all sequentially worse than the next.
As I wrote, Trump is not the crux of the problem. It's the voters who believe the disinformation out there that this type of politician makes full use of.
This is what I mean. The average person has zero media literacy. He/she will believe whatever fits his/her preconceived notions.
Joe Biden is not a KKK member. He gave an eulogy at Robert Byrd's funeral who was a member of KKK a very long time ago and was a long-time congressman. Biden was vice president at the time. Many other prominent politicians, including president Obama spoke at the funeral.
Joe Biden does not engage in inciting hatred towards racial minorities in the US.
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-byrd-eulogy-biden-kkk-grand-idUSKBN26S2EE
In fact, developments in media and the proliferation of social media use is beginning to make me doubt whether peer-to-peer mass communication through social media can even be a net positive. Most people are idiots driven by emotion, lacking critical thinking skills and prone to mass hysteria making them ripe to be exploited by cynical populists.
The United States is probably the worst country in this regard in the entire developed world.
Well, I am the racial jungle he speaks about and apparently my kids are just as bright as white kids.
There's nothing wrong with you. You're just living in an environment where this sort of low quality information is so prevalent that you'd have to double check everything.