Ignorance

I get really frustrated with the ignorance I encounter almost daily. Not stupidity, like the jackasses who approach the traffic circle's YIELD sign and stop, that's a whole different issue. I mean ignorance in the truest sense of the word.
For example, when a certain acquaintance of mine continuously comments negatively about "them Mexicans" or "those illegals" or "Mexican immigrants" and completely demoralizes Mexicans as a whole, even though I've told her time and again that I am in fact Mexican.
That's ignorance.
I recently read the comments section following an article in a online science journal about how 32 new planets have been identified, outside of our galaxy, in which someone went on a tangent about how these "stupid scientist expect us to believe that they've actually found planets so that we'll sink more money into their research projects, when most of us are smart enough to know that if there were more planets, we'd of found them by now."
Again, I cite ignorance.
Not to mention the Medicare recipients who showed up at Town Hall meetings all up in arms, shouting "The government needs to keep their hands off my health care!"
I mean, wow, really? I hate to be Mrs. Obvious, but hello?!

Beyond all of that ignorance, and believe me, I know that is a mountain already, lies something even more troubling to me; The ignorance exhibited by the children coming out of the school system here in my home state of Tennessee.
Looking at my state's report card, I see that the graduation rate is below 90% for the last 5 years. It has actually hovered just barely above 80%.
That is truly sad. I wonder why people here are so quick to drop out of school while other states have maintained a 96 -98% graduation rate? Have we made it too easy for kids to give up on education? There should definitely be stiffer repercussions for dropping out of school early.
Even if they don't drop out, the education that they do receive while in the school systems here is definitely lacking.
The Wifester and I were playing Taboo with some people one night, the other couple drew the card with Anne Frank. The one person went through everything one could possibly imagine to use to describe Anne Frank, without using the forbidden words. The buzzer finally rang and I stole the point. After the round was finished, the person who couldn't guess Ann Frank looked to her partner and said, "Oh my god! Did all that stuff really happen to that woman?"
I was flabbergasted. I could not imagine that a grown adult could have made it through the school system without knowing who Anne Frank was. It wasn't even a matter of having blanked out for a moment, she had no clue. She said over and over agian, "I've NEVER heard of her, I'm sorry." And she did graduate...and even attended college for a period of time.
Amazing.
I got a phone call from a business acquaintance the other day. She was aghast over some comments she had received on a discussion thread on Facebook because she had made a comment in support of President Obama. Someone hand called her a communist bitch and told her that she needed to leave the country. My only consolation for her was to again cite ignorance. It seems that the offending party was of the mindset that anyone who was not in agreement with his train of thought was not deserving of living in America.
"Get out of my country!" Ignorance.
The thing is, if we are graduating people who don't know about Anne Frank, and if those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, what then is in store for us in the coming years?
If we are so intolerant of other cultures who are different from our own, and if we've forgotten that the only true Americans were all but totally annihilated by most of our ancestors, and to this day still live in the ghettos we call reservations, what then will happen in the coming years to other races... To our own, which ever it may be?
It seems even those of us who have read Anne Frank's diary and seen the play and studied the history of Germany and the Nazis and Hitler...even those among us have exhibited true ignorance when it comes to the cumulative, adverse effects of intolerance and bigotry.
Why else would we be fighting for equal rights still today? Why else would the false, but ever present idea that Barack Obama was a Muslim have been such an issue? Why else would my own marriage be denied?

When, I wonder, will it stop?

One of these things is not like the others

I never quite felt like I fit in.
I was the light skinned, light haired, gringo in a family of dark skinned, dark haired, obviously Hispanic people. Me? You never really could tell quite what I was. I remember once in high school, in art class, a kid named Jarrod asked me "What's your momma look like?"
I showed him a photo and he exclaimed with disgust and dismay " I didn't know your momma was a (insert the "N" word here)!"
I was appalled. Not that he thought my mom was black, I could care less about color. I was appalled that had my mom been black, he felt it was OK to say something like that to me. And I was appalled that someone thought that it was less than normal for my mom to be anything other than white. Because I was a part of her. I was also a little bit of something other than white and that meant that what he felt in that initial reaction, he also felt toward me. It was strange and awkward for me to realize that there really was such a thing as prejudice toward me and my heritage. Even if it was misplaced racism, due to a miscalculated ethnicity.

My other gripe with racism and my mixed ethnicity is that being so white washed as I am, so often most people don't even realize that I come from such a background. They see me and just think that I'm another white, country girl, from Nashville. They hear my accent, and think it's perfectly safe to go right ahead and start saying things to me like how they just can't stand living in that apartment complex with all those Mexicans, or how the Mexicans are taking over, or the best one...someone said to me how he'd come across a Mexican while traveling," and you know, they all carry knives in their socks, and they'll cut you quick!" That was just last year...and he was the brother of an acquaintance. I can't hold against her what her brother said to me, but it does make it an uncomfortable situation now.

When I worked at the nursing home, my patient's family members would talk to me because their moms and dads and spouses could no longer speak. They often didn't realize my heritage either. I would get comments like " Those damned Mexicans at the McDonald's always screw up my order. I guess it's because they don't talk American."
Or once, I heard "I'm so glad momma has you taking care of her. She would just die if they sent one of those foreigners in here."

I never really knew how to react to those things. My mom never prepared me for it. She was always telling me to mark my ethnicity as white on forms because it would be easier. I never understood that. I always felt like marking white and not also marking hispanic was somehow lying about who I was.
I felt like it was a disservice.
I think my mother was a little bit ashamed of her heritage, and I think that's such a shame.
I remember once, just after high school, my friend said to me, Fortune Cookies, you should be PROUD of your ethnicity! Look at your skin and look at mine. Yours is so dark and pretty. You have family that lives in another country and speaks another language. That's SOOOO cool. All my family is right here. They're all white, and they all speak English. How dull is that?"
And that's when it occurred to me. I had this whole other part of me that I had been practically ignoring up until that point. It was right there in my face, yet I didn't see it.
How does that happen?

Later, I thought I felt out of place because I was a young budding lesbian growing up in an uber Christian, anti-gay, southern home.
Then I thought it was because I was an artist, being raised amid a family of athletes.
Still more introversion led me to believe that perhaps I felt out of place because I was always a pacifist, a hippie, and a liberal, in a family of ultra conservative, Rush Limbaugh worshiping Republicans.
Now I think it was a combination of all of those things that made me feel so out of place.

I'll be happy for the day when race doesn't matter to anyone anymore. When gender doesn't matter, and sexual orientation doesn't matter. All those prejudices stem from hate, and hate begets hate.

John Lennon was so right on. Can you imagine...