One guy on the radio, to his credit, mentioned that if you're gonna be racist and stupid, try not to be even more stupid by confusing your ethnicities. The "raghead" taxi drivers a previous xenophobic caller was racistly ranting about were actually Indian. And no doubt Hindu or Sikh as well. Groups who, true, have also been known to be fanatical, but usually against the Moslem fanatics that brought about the WTC destruction. Said maligned taxi drivers, had they been on the planes in question, would no doubt have put up a heck of a fight with their Islamic enemies.
Another lady, a self-confessed Heinz 57, and whose own ethnic origins were no doubt obscured by bad Ellis Island bookkeeping, was bemoaning how all the "ragheads" were taking over the convenience stores and dry cleaning places. Um. Taking over? It's not like the recent immigrants held a gun to the old "white" proprietors' heads and forced them to turn over their 7-11's. These businesses were bought and paid for in the good old American entrepreneurial way and kept afloat by another sadly fading American virtue: Hard work. Does it ever occur to people like this lady that the reason you see "foreigners" running establishments like convenience stores and low budget motels and dry cleaning places is because in order to eek out a living, you have to work eighteen hours a day, sometimes live in the building, and forego the evening news and the hot tub for a few years while you get your business going on a marginally profitable basis? Most white folks (if I may insert my own little racist generalization here) are too damn lazy and self-indulgent to make that kind of sacrifice. The Asian couple I know at the Mom-and-Pop store on the corner have hired any number of white folk that eventually up and quit on 'em (often filching a parting bag of snickers) cause the hours were bad and the work was hard. I feel for the Asian owners. Imagine what it would be like to work at such a place AND endure the occasional "raghead" racism of the prototypical chicken and jo cramming redneck. This couple, by the way, have scrimped and saved even more and sent their son to Annapolis. Where, need I say, he proudly works at defending his parents' adopted country.
To the Heinz 57 lady. I assume when you say "raghead" you mean someone wearing a turban, though I suppose it's possible your sunburned neck of the woods is peopled by redheaded folks named Ann and Andy. But at what point did you miss the observation that there are a lot of East Indian and Asian and Lithuanian and Russian immigrants slaving away in the poorly paid service industries? Maybe it's not a turban thing at all. Maybe you're admiringly referring to the fact that these people have to towel a lot of sweat off their brow. Yeah right.
It's natural, I guess, to fear the strange and unknown. And also natural, I guess, in a tragedy of this magnitude, to want to focus one's feelings of anger on those responsible. But let's make sure it's those responsible. Not just someone who happens to look like them. What if we had wiped out everyone that looked like Timothy McVeigh?
Who'd eat all the jo's?
