One of the many benefits I have enjoyed as a three-and-a-half year columnist for the Daily Cougar is the many relationships I have developed with people who have written me in response to my columns - both pro and con.
The responses have been immensely diverse and interesting, and all make good conversation in a bar to the background of some Latin jazz or Mexican blues. I have appreciated all of the comments and always make an effort to save each and every one of them.
However, since I started writing, I repeatedly receive the "conservative minority" letter, in which different persons (mainly Anglos) attempt to counter my moderate, progressive views with arguments made by conservative minorities.
Some even go to the point of giving me a collection of certain conservative minority texts or book lists to investigate.
Consider this fellow citizen who wrote me at the beginning of the semester:
"Russell, Being that I'm a white male, and you would probably call me a racist if I said what Ezola (Foster) says, I thought I'd let you hear it from her! You are actually more racist than most white people. How does it feel being what you accuse us of being? I think you will grow out of it if you quit letting the minorities that have so little belief in themselves and their racest (sic) abilities do your thinking for you!
God bless you ..."
At first I thought he had me confused with Fabian Vaksman. But the next week, another person wrote:
"Russ, I must say that I enjoy some of your articles but only the ones where you talk about your own people. You should stick to that subject because it seems as if you know a lot of them. When you talk about other folks it seems like you're full of hate and rage. Russ, I think if you want to write about white folks and God Fearing conservative Americans, read some articles by this fellow Hispanic guy. He sees the world in a more rational matter. Look at them when you have time. Jesus loves you ..." (Get this ... the conservative "Hispanic" guy's last name was Contreras.)
With all due respect, the two above probably meant well and probably truly believe in their conservative, WASP indoctrination. Yet, their arguments at times get old for me, especially when I am constantly told to read Linda Chaves' Out of the Barrio and Richard Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory. These are books I've been told to buy more than a hundred times despite the fact that they are sitting on my bookshelf. I also get a subscription to National Minority Politics magazine, a conservative publication.
It seems as if these conservative critics believe that if some of us progressive minorities see another minority spouting off conservative ideologies, we will go off and hide in the barrio, admitting to ourselves that our beliefs are totally off track.
Maybe they hope they can show some of us what conservative minorities are saying so other minorities can see what they should be saying. (This is better known as the "If they can believe this, so can you" method.)
If I was invested in these assumptions, I myself could counter by pulling out an inundate of white progressives like a Michael Lind or a Matthew Rothchild and say, "Right back at you babe."
I could put together my own reading list of white academics invested in contemporary African-American and Chicano discourse and say, "now read this, hombre." But the dialogue would go nowhere.
Instead, I am more motivated to construct an opinion that counters these conservative behaviorists who believe that racism, sexism and homophobia do not exist in our society.
I am more galvanized to bring to light, as other minority and white progressives do, inequalities in the distribution of wealth, joblessness in the barrio, problems in housing and health care, crime, self-hatred, oppression, self inflicted violence, untold stories of the marginalized, why I believe tortillas and beans are more American than apple pie, and reasons I prefer Latin Parties to Frontier Fiesta.
I admit, I am not special. This is not something unique and groundbreaking. My opinions are just another portion of the American reality.
They are mine (sometime shared by others) and are designed to provoke thoughts and laughs. They are forged (sorry to borrow this conservative cliche) by myself, letting no one else, do the thinking for me.
Contreras is a
senior history and English major.