Between You and Me, About Us and Them

You know what my problem is? I like everybody. I’m for everybody.

I had to stop a conversation with my 25-year-old neighbor, a graduate of cosmetology school, who works part-time at Target, already on her second child, with a husband whose arguments often overflow into the street and culminate in police visits. (Okay, apparently I don’t like every body.)

I stopped the conversation because she kept talking about ‘them’.

‘them’ who are ‘all here illegally’
‘them’ who can’t speak english
‘them’ who stand on the corner and don’t pay taxes when she has to jump through hoops to get aid that her child deserves.

I said we need to stop this conversation or we’ll get in an ugly argument because I don’t see ‘them’ in an inherited house like you. I don’t see ‘them’ driving a beemer like you. And I definitely don’t know that they are all here illegally, or that they all can’t speak English.

What I think is that the men on the corner, day laborers, are hard workers out doing whatever needs to be done, for less than fair pay, because they have families to feed. If standing on the corner waiting for work at someone’s else whim is “working the system”…then I am at a loss for words.

If a man is willing to leave his country for a country where he must stand and wait for unknown work on a daily basis, how bad must it have been, that this IS better.

Of course, when I said that “Mexicans were here before you and me, just look at the names where we live”…she didn’t say much. When she said their Spanish isn’t even the same Spanish spoken in Spain; I said that our English isn’t the same English of Great Britain.

And for the 2^nd recent conversation with an under-30-year-old unhappy with their progress in life thus far, I’ve offered that equalization will be closer when CEOs move out of their houses in Palo Alto and Atherton, CA. Until then, the head start has been too great. Reverse discrimination is a wet dream.