Getting back to normal after a long holiday break now, and it might be a tough day. Here's more for you, the reader, to enjoy (maybe). Besides, you need something to take your mind off the fact that Christmas will be here too, too fast to let you be as ready as you want to be.
If you are a more observant reader of items appearing on this blog, you will see that I have been making some additions as we go along on this blogospheric path. I think knowledge of your culture is something good, as well as knowing of the culture of others, but sometimes it can be downright boring if done haphazardly, So, to handle both things, I have added a link in the sidebar, "Who Would Have Thought It," that takes you to "Ask A Mexican." Keep reading.
Over the past couple of years, I have read Gustavo Arrellano's column and have heard him on the radio talking about Mexicans. "What's so special about that?" you might ask, "People are always talking about Mexicans?" Not much special, at first, but it's the type of information and views about that ethnic group so near and dear to so many of us, and to others, or maybe just "so near,' you know, "the Mexicans." You might even be one yourself. "Who Me?" you ask now. Well, were you born here in the U.S.? Born down south? How about your parents, grandparents? Neither, but you are married to one, (or would be if he asked) or Maybe Prop. 8's involved here to keep you single for now? It's all "close enough" for most purposes. Just consider that it is, so now we can move on.
To get right down to the point, Arrellano's column is called, "Ask a Mexican," and he gives answers to the questions that may have lingered in your mind yourself but really didn't think much to find out more. To some he might be considered "threatening," as representing "them," that growing "minority group." To others, he might be viewed as spreading racist views in looking for the simple all-purpose answers to some complex questions about people (Mexicans). Read a little of his columns and you will get the idea.
I think he's got some interesting opinions with some actual information to base them on and most of the time it's either humorous or just plain funny, as well. And one other thing- he doesn't lump all Latinos as "Mexicans," which, no doubt most of you "Mexicans" know what I mean. "A Mexican hit my car," or "The Mexicans like those kinds of jobs," are convenient things to say when the truth is that it could be other Latinos, Salvadorenos, Guatemalans, even Cubans, and so on. "Mexicans" just carries the right "punch" and nothing else sounds right for that phrasing.
Nothing really substitutes for the word "Mexicans" when you're throwing out those epithets and accusations; try making the substitutions yourself. You may be technically accurate in such re-phrasing in identifying the ethnic group but it somehow does not roll off the tongue so smoothly and does not pack that crisp verbal impact that you get with "Mexicans."
O.K., enough "diversity" talk for now on this page. Read more, go to "Ask A Mexican's" columns in the "Who Would Have Thought It" sidebar links and consider that you didn't even have to study much to learn some things about culture. L.A. WEEKLY carries his column now, as does the original paper, the O.C. WEEKLY. And remember, just in case you are not clear on this session's discussion, this topic is within the "lighter side of life" things included in this blog.
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