Dangerous Tea Party — Positive, Intuitive, Creative Musings from Brilliant Minds

Though there's a bit of a pejorative nature to the term, I am, at heart, an information junkie. One of my biggest assets, however, is my ability to extrapolate and integrate information from the myriad sources that serve as my teachers, and in turn, teach others. As it is in the collective, rather than in isolation, that we grow, I invite others to communicate their ideas and experiences here, as well, so we can each grow and improve our thoughts – and beings.

Monday, September 18, 2006

Consanguinity and common bonds

7/28/06

I was working to complete the editing for my friend and client, Maggie Hunts. She has a fabulous book called It's a Sweet Life Now: A Guide to Living Well and Happy with Diabetes. My vegetarian sister quietly knocked on my door, and asked me if I’d be willing to go over to the local Mexican food store, El Rancho Market, to get some carnitas — barbecued pork — because the meat she’s put into the stew she’s cooking for me and my mom is "coming out in hard, ugly little chunks."

"What do you mean?" I asked her.

"I mean, if I ate meat, I wouldn’t eat this," she said, nonplussed.

So off I went to El Rancho Market, stepping for a few minutes out of my regular day-to-day lily-white life into another world.

The fact is, this world should not be alien to me, being half Mexicana myself — but it is. My mother’s parents were from Mexico, and Spanish was her first language. My father, though white as a ghost/sheet/snow and of Irish and Italian ethnicity, spoke Spanish fluently. You would think some of that should have filtered down to my sister and me, right? But no, not really. In spite of my dad’s continued protestations for my entire life that I should learn to speak Spanish fluently because it would make me much more marketable. Hello? Who had the ideal opportunity to create two darling little bilingual daughters but, for reasons we will never know, chose not to?

At the tender age of 39, I presently speak enough Spanish to direct someone in New York City to the green subway line . . . or to sell someone a ticket to a ballgame at Chase Field. That’s pretty much the range of my foreign language skills. When I set the car radio to one of the myriad Spanish-language stations for my mom, I understand a lot of the individual words, but it’s challenging for me to infer substantive meaning, and I certainly could not carry my side of a conversation with anything resembling fluency.

I grew up identifying myself as both white and Hispanic, because that is who I am. I rub elbows with the Mexican side of my family at the occasional reunion, or when they drop in for visit on their way to Rocky Point. I enjoy tamales and other Mexican foods perhaps more than most because I grew up eating them regularly. I even make a mean Spanish Rice dish for the occasional potluck I attend.

I honor and revere the December 12 feast day of La Virgen de Guadalupe, particularly because my mother’s oldest sister shared her name. I enjoy some Latin music and love the bright colors of the art of Central and Latin America. But in everyday reality, I live and work and play and am immersed in the white culture. Although I am more familiar than most with life inside the Hispanic world, I am only a fleeting visitor there. I do not really belong.

Standing in line as I waited to order my carnitas, I looked on at a scene that might have been a snapshot straight out of a real Mexican village.

People — families with and without children, singles, groups of men — strewn about picnic tables painted bright green with red and black swirls. Sixteen slow-moving ceiling fans, each fin with its own ancillary tail of green, yellow, and pink crepe paper strips. Mountain upon mountain of produce. Dark hair and olive skin, almost to a person, the exception being two senior-aged white couples who might have been vacationing, two white men apparently married to the Hispanic women they accompanied, and one absolutely miserable looking 60+ white woman standing in front of the store, perhaps waiting for a taxi after arriving at the wrong store. (That would be an understandable mistake, as this location of El Rancho Market was once a K-Mart.)

Surrounded by dark-skinned Latin people, my thoughts invariably turned to the red-hot issue of the day: stemming the tide of illegal immigration into the U.S., particularly into our border state. As the immigration debate rages, I daily find myself sympathizing and empathizing with the plight of the immigrants, many of whom come here because, in their eyes, it is a matter of survival. The arguments on both sides of the issue are wide, and each has valid concerns. But the problem for me is the racism that invariably creeps into these conversations. I believe that most people don’t deliberately set out to be bigoted or hateful. Quite simply, prejudice is easily defendable when you’re scared, the world around you is changing rapidly, and you feel powerless to combat the changes. However, when all is said and done, we are talking about human beings . . . people with whom I share a common bond. Consanguinity. Literally, with common blood.

So why is the experience of visiting El Rancho Market so foreign to me? And if it feels awkward and a bit uncomfortable for me — I who am more familiar than most with the Spanish language, as well as Mexican music, food, culture, and beliefs — how could I ever expect that it would be easy for those completely apart from this aspect of my heritage to understand and embrace it?

I recently heard Dr. Mark Gopin, an expert on the Middle East crisis, offer a marvelous, actionable idea, when asked what one person can do to help end the seemingly endless conflicts that spring up as a result of our differences of beliefs and opinions. To paraphrase, he said we must immerse ourselves in the viewpoints of the "other side," so much so that they are no longer other from us. So much so that we actually can begin to understand that other’s position, or at least become desensitized to their position so that it no longer riles us and rankles us and causes us to get our backs up and raise our fists in anger.

Such a simple answer, yet so powerful. And one very few of us ever reach for. We love our opinions, and we remain entrenched in them. Ask my friends and family — I am chief among the critics.

But as I stood at El Rancho Market today, observing the people who ventured out to spend their Sunday listening to the impeccably groomed mariachis in their cream-colored suits with big brass buttons or the payaso flaco (skinny clown) who undulated to loud Latin music while weaving balloons into marvelous shapes, I was reminded that I, too, must continue to immerse myself in the experience of the other.

For me, others include men, vegetarians, nonreaders, non-Americans, technophobes, non-English speakers, Republicans, parents, bird owners, boat owners, scientists, mathematicians, marathoners, trendy dressers, hip-hop lovers, graffiti artists, addicts, homeless, gays and lesbians, atheists, creationists, people with 9-5 jobs.

Truly, each of us is connected to every other person on this planet via our humanity. And the only way we can ensure the continuation of our species is by recognizing our differences and celebrating our common bonds. When you think about it, we really do have the power to break down intolerance, but we are going to have to do it one person at a time.

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