A little slack
While commuting to my job back in the early 1980s, I happened to sit next to a woman who scowled when she heard two Hmong women speaking their native language and started railing about all the “Vietnamese” immigrants who lived in crowded apartments and were on welfare and “refused” to learn English.
I suggested that they should be given a little slack, seeing that they had arrived only months before.
She sniffed, “They could find jobs if they wanted to. There are plenty of jobs out there, even for people who don’t speak English. Why, when my grandfather came over from Sweden, he had a job within 24 hours of arriving in Minneapolis.”
I asked what kind of a job he had found.
“Mucking out stalls in a livery stable,” she said proudly. “I don’t see why some of those Vietnamese couldn’t do that.”
Mar 2nd, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Racist older folks never seem to have a connection with reality. Blame it on the mind slowly rotting or from pent up anger or ?
Mar 3rd, 2009 at 7:59 am
II think it’s not so much a rotting as a rigidity of the mind, much like hardening of the arteries. But, yes, it’s part of the aging process. But deep-seated fear-based anger and a poor education seem to aggravate the condition. Don’t be too hard on these folk, Jeremy. Without them, we wouldn’t have a viable two-party system.
Mar 4th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
Stupid ignorance. No doubt they have never traveled, to realize that the world is not made up of Caucasians. Of course this person is not well read, to know that the Hmong fought for our country, and they are here not because they choose to, but because if they stayed they would have been killed for helping the Americans.
I am ashamed to say I’m an American when people act in this fashion.
I just arrived from a remote fishing village in the Yucatan. These people were happy, friendly, and warm towards us.
Shame on you!
Mar 16th, 2009 at 9:59 am
You’re all stupid hippies.
Why be sympathetic to those who do not work? It’s not the responsibly the taxpayers to support the lazy.
Mar 26th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Ryan, Ryan, Ryan..unless your response was supposed to be a sarcastic juxiposition, you are actually typifying and reinforcing the very characteristics that the hippies are reacting to. Silly boy, you’ve proven their point.
Jan 7th, 2010 at 2:31 am
Nice article found your site searching in google I think you could have taken a more neutral view.