Member-only story
I am fluent in Spanish, currently working also in Brazilian Portuguese as well as English and my ancestry is Irish American. When I was younger, I looked hispanic. In fact, one Columbian said to me, when I was in Ecuador, that if I kept my mouth shut no one would ever know I was not native to that Andean Republic.
This gives me a perspective on racism that many people do not see. I know what it is like to be treated poorly because I appear to be from south of the border. Workers treated me abusively when I was a customer at a local franchise of a nationally known muffler chain. I mean one in particular was absolutely nasty. I was yelled at, mocked, laughed at and they all felt they could get away with it because, I assume, they thought I was a Latino. I was a college student, my car was a cheap Datsun B210 with an Ecuador sticker on the windshield, behind the rear view mirror. In 1991, it cost me less than $1000 and it needed a muffler. I suppose they might have suspected it was a failed low rider.
Years later, I was with a group of Puerto Ricans—in my own home town in suburban Boston—and we stopped at a local restaurant chain. Again the service to us specifically was less than optimal to say the least.
Supposedly educated and ‘liberal-minded’ people tell me that Latinos are uneducated and naïve.
