Ignorance Infects Our Web
Education can better our community; enabling an effective municipal respect for others. Moreover, understanding past historical events enhance our intellectual progress for our future; making for a safer and functioning civilization. Why am I bringing these arguments to light? While browsing the web, I found a blogged poem about Mexican immigration, called “So Mexicans are Taking Jobs from Americans” by Jimmy Baca. The work was created in 1977 but was blogged by an anonymous person known as, The Lizard Queen.
Being that I am Mexican American, I found interest in reading this piece. The poem was satiric; using analogies that critiqued how our government and society view Mexicans. “O Yes? Do they come on horses with rifles, and say, Ese gringo, gimmee your job,” as phrases in the poem. Obliviously, Baca was humorously critiquing how people view Mexican immigrants; allowing the reader to imagine a cowboy and Indian western stand-off. Nonetheless, I found this piece interesting, however, some did not. The poem did establish an unfortunate fan base.
The poem is poking-fun of immigration ideas, in an intellectual manner so that the readers can brain-storm from the manifested ideology on immigration and humanity. The comments below were but that; they were merely hostile arguments. Many were cursing or stating racist slurs. For instance, Alicia wrote, “I am so sick and tired of seeing these people you can’t go nowhere without them over population our schools are parks and of course our jobs. Something needs to be done about these people that continue to come.” This blog was flabbergasting. Her argument was attacking the rights of humanity and was dehumanizing towards Mexicans. She was addressing Mexicans as discomfort to society. Her hateful blog displayed backwards-thinking, meaning an old manifesto-destiny ideology) and raciest. Furthermore, it was unintelligently executed because of the amount of grammatical and factual errors. To irritate you more, she continued with; “FUCK OBAMA AND HIS ADMISTRATION WE NEED TO GET THEM DEMS OUT, I CANT IMAGINE THIS COUNTRY IN 5 YEARS FROM NOW. MORE SCREWED UP AND OF COURSE MORE MEXICAN TO TAKE MORE JOBS, I JUST LIKE TO KNOW WHATS GOING TO HAPPENED TO OUR AMERICAN CHILDREN THAT WILL BE LOOKING FOR A SUMMER JOB AT MICKI D AND BURGER KING THE MEXICAN WILL FOR SURE HAVE IT.” Alicia’s blog was graphic and displayed ignorance. Bigotry can be destroyed with education and the notion of accepting other cultures. Rather than showing fear towards cultures through hate, as she displayed.
As a young scholar, I have previously read Baca’s work, so I am aware of his ideologies’ but the blogger's below are obvious unaware of him, or ignore his metaphors. This notion of ignoring intellectual arguments and diplomatic conversations can destroy our community. People need to enhance their perspective of the world. Eliminating a singular view of cultures and accept all races. Moreover, Lizard Queen only posted Baca’s work. She did not create it. Nonetheless, people need to research or understand that the internet is a universal news feed. Everyone reads these blogs. Their words are infecting the future of how people perceive Americans.
Baca wrote, “They steal our jobs on horse’s… They’re taking our jobs away… The poor are marching for work… We are killing them. That’s what America should be saying.” These words by Baca powerfully and artistically address social issues. He wrote this in a activist manner to help our future progress. His avant-garde poem was no help, since it was written in 1977 and people of 2011 are leaving ignorant comments.
Mathew wrote, “I play like I’m on their side and let them believe I think what they are doing is ok with me and because of that one lie I get the truth from them… They hate us Americans and I’m more and more starting to hate them so the big fight is coming and when America starts to try to remove them or stop services to them like they did to the poor in this country you’re going to see all hell break out and the guns they are hiding will all come out and they will be pushed right in your face. Call me what you like… I’m not raciest in any manner I just see the truth. My Grandfather, Father, and brothers have fought and died for being sliced into pieces and given away by people who only want to get so filthy rich even god can’t touch them to yet another group who doesn’t care what they have to do to get what they want or how they have to do it to get it.” Mathew’s post was startling. His words screamed hate and for uncertain reasons. He argues he’s not racist but states “they know what they’re doing and they want to get rich off us and my family built this country.” He is acting as an owner of this soil. This troubled man does not understand our country is built on immigration. His ancestors came to America, just as my Mexican parents did. He is stereotyping cultures that are foreign to his realm of thinking. Mathew needs to develop knowledge to dissolve his hate. It is important to understand that ignorance can be defeated with knowledge and notion of welcoming new perspectives.
Source, so you can view these obscene comments too.
http://iamthelizardqueen.wordpress.com/2007/04/05/jimmy-santiago-baca-so-mexicans-are-taking-jobs-from-americans/
-Yenitza Munoz
posted by Editorial Staff | 7:30 PM
3 Comments:
I thought that your comments about racist bloggers were extremely insightful. I have found many bloggers to be racist while jumping from blog to blog on the internet. I appreciate your sincerity in defending various cultures
Hi there, Yenitza! I found this post via a track-back from the link you posted to my blog. I'm glad to see people calling out the racism in the comments thread below that post. I don't have a comments policy at my blog; people wander by or come across the poem through a Google search, and sometimes they decide to leave nasty comments like the ones you've highlighted, and I let them stand in the hope that people will come to the conclusions that you do: that the attitudes they display are ignorant and racist, and the only way to combat those attitudes is through education.
Sometimes I think that maybe that's too optimistic, and I should just delete those comments, but again, this post of yours illustrate that some good can come from them. Perhaps I ought to put up a statement that viewpoints expressed by commenters do not necessarily reflect those of the blogger, because the title of this post, "Racist Bloggers," makes it sound like the racism is coming from the top, from the blogger herself, rather than from random commenters.
Thank You for posting your blog on this subject. Unfortunately, I believe that racism is here to stay in America. Currency seems to be the religion here and the more that you have, the more corrupt and narrow minded you tend to be.
A clear microcosm of America to the world would be to look at our political system. The republicans seem to be more for seperating and selfishness. The independents and democrats seem to be more for change and inclusion. It is insane that the amount of money that you have determines whether or not you can run for office as opposed to being an honest person that represents what the majority of what the people want. Along with ignorance, greed also hurts the character of America.
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