In Race and Ethnicity today, my professor showed us an old article from U.S. News and World Report entitled "Profile of Tomorrow's New Tomorrow." It was all about how in 2080, non-europeans were going to outnumber europeans in America.
It just REEKED of ethnocentric, the-end-is-coming, fear.
Take for instance the line that says:
"And within the next century, about 40 percent of the nation's workers will be immigrants who arrived in the U.S. after 1980 or their descendants."
[And yeah, yeah, it's been ten years since the article was written, and we've made movements for racial equality, but we're not there yet, so I'm still gonna rant about this.]
The thing is, my parents came in 1977. And I'm one of their descendants. I know that seems obvious and all, but I'm a smart mild-mannered college-educated twenty something, who doesn't get drunk off her ass, and likes graffiti art and blogs. Am I really all that threatening?
Because, hey, guess what, I'm not the only one like this? Oh yeah, just to let you know, there are THOUSANDS of people like me. We might be in your neighborhoods, attending your schools, dating your sons and daughters... and we're brown. Just to let you know.
'Is our migration to your great county really so scary?' -English, Alvin Lau
1 comment:
i love alvin lau and i love this post! even though my family's been here a couple hundred years, the ethnocentrism is still so thick you could cut it with a knife. hmm, guess you can't undo centuries of hatred with forty years of progress. do i smell a north park revolution brewing?
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