Cultural Exchange?
It is staggering to me that I've been here for less than a month, it feels like I should've gone through four abonos (monthly metro passes) right now. While the first week or so was an absolutely whirlwind and I spent most of the time waiting for it to calm down, now I feel almost completely settled in and comfortable. I especially love my job, and am so glad that I decided to pick primary school. Kids with Spanish accents should be sent to the carcel, because they slay me every day with how adorable they are. It's been a challenge trying to convince them that I only speak English, especially when they will run up to me and say "PUEDOUSARELBANO???" with a desperate look of panic on their faces. I've taken to just responding "Yes, you can go to the bathroom" in English, and none of them have caught on that I can understand everything Spanish that comes out of their little mouths.
Today I've been in a bizarre mood all day. I was reading the news and came across some AP articles about an African American woman in West Virginia who was held hostage and brutally tortured by an extremely white trash and KKKesque family. It was chilling, and at this point, the police still trying to determine whether or not it was a hate crime. They say that the family were just warped people and that even though the woman recalled them saying several racial slurs to her, they didn't have enough evidence to make it a hate crime or not. The whole situation is absolutely atrocious whatever label they choose to use. On a human level, acts like that should never be committed.
Anyway, it got me thinking about America and not just the level of racism and xenophobia but also the extremes that people go to in order to prove this hatred. I know that other parts of the world are shrouded in much more violence, but America is so belligerently intoxicated on imperialist ideals that people go to great lengths to state their "superiority." I've noticed that there is a high level of racism in Spain, as well, mostly toward immigrants (especially Northern African and South American immigrants) and gypsies. These people are basically written off as a Cortez in Spanish society: rushing in to pillage the land to fulfill their own needs. Spaniards are very territorial and since the open immigration policy is still relatively new, they are skeptical on the whole “other cultures” thing.
I got a ride home from a cab driver a few weeks ago who asked me where I was from (I told him to guess and he said “You are a California girl?”). When I said the United States he quickly jumped in claiming that he loved the US and their policies. I asked him which policies particularly, and he said that he was in great support of the death penalty. He thought that Americans were visionaries because they realized that the rehabilitation of criminals is impossible, and you are better off just ridding them from society. I told him that the death penalty was still highly controversial and unavailable in most states, but he said that he is waiting for the day when it will be brought to Spain to punish all of the criminals.
He then continued on in a diatribe about how most of the crimes in Spain are committed by immigrants who come in with nothing (no money, no education, no job) and steal from what the Spanish have built in order to make a life. I assume that these are the people that he wants to use the death penalty for, no? But really, the majority of crime in Spain is simply petty crime (wallet theft, purse stealing, etc.), nothing that would ever warrant the electric chair. Also, I’m of the belief that it is NOT impossible for criminals to be rehabilitated. Well, some criminals, I suppose. Premeditated murder, serial killings/ rape, these are all unforgivable, however, probably 50% of the time a crime is committed it performed by a person who is not of their right mental state, who needs to commit the crime by necessity or fear, or engaged in a moment in which their passion supercedes rationality. In these cases, rehabilitation is certainly possible, and if not then certainly life in prison will suffice.
In the case of hate crimes, these will never disappear fully because at the moment we are under the wing of a societal rehabilitation, which may go on until the human race is extinct. This past weekend, a friend and I were debating the origins of languages and how a collaborative group decides that any certain grunt will from here on out represent “spoon” or shoe.” Similarly, I often wonder where paradigms of racism came from, and who decided that “white is right” and the rest of the “minorities” (which represent the majority of the world, by the way) were inferior.
Maybe I’ll have to go back and ask that cab driver, who seems to have his own opinions of how the demographics of a country should be comprised. As I was getting out of the cab, he told me
“By the way, I wouldn’t mind if the immigrants coming to Spain were like you and had an education” (and looked like California girls, I inferred).
“Perhaps a gentrifying Diaspora is in order, then?” (I wanted to ask him, but didn’t)
I think that this has been my heaviest journal entry to date.
Today I've been in a bizarre mood all day. I was reading the news and came across some AP articles about an African American woman in West Virginia who was held hostage and brutally tortured by an extremely white trash and KKKesque family. It was chilling, and at this point, the police still trying to determine whether or not it was a hate crime. They say that the family were just warped people and that even though the woman recalled them saying several racial slurs to her, they didn't have enough evidence to make it a hate crime or not. The whole situation is absolutely atrocious whatever label they choose to use. On a human level, acts like that should never be committed.
Anyway, it got me thinking about America and not just the level of racism and xenophobia but also the extremes that people go to in order to prove this hatred. I know that other parts of the world are shrouded in much more violence, but America is so belligerently intoxicated on imperialist ideals that people go to great lengths to state their "superiority." I've noticed that there is a high level of racism in Spain, as well, mostly toward immigrants (especially Northern African and South American immigrants) and gypsies. These people are basically written off as a Cortez in Spanish society: rushing in to pillage the land to fulfill their own needs. Spaniards are very territorial and since the open immigration policy is still relatively new, they are skeptical on the whole “other cultures” thing.
I got a ride home from a cab driver a few weeks ago who asked me where I was from (I told him to guess and he said “You are a California girl?”). When I said the United States he quickly jumped in claiming that he loved the US and their policies. I asked him which policies particularly, and he said that he was in great support of the death penalty. He thought that Americans were visionaries because they realized that the rehabilitation of criminals is impossible, and you are better off just ridding them from society. I told him that the death penalty was still highly controversial and unavailable in most states, but he said that he is waiting for the day when it will be brought to Spain to punish all of the criminals.
He then continued on in a diatribe about how most of the crimes in Spain are committed by immigrants who come in with nothing (no money, no education, no job) and steal from what the Spanish have built in order to make a life. I assume that these are the people that he wants to use the death penalty for, no? But really, the majority of crime in Spain is simply petty crime (wallet theft, purse stealing, etc.), nothing that would ever warrant the electric chair. Also, I’m of the belief that it is NOT impossible for criminals to be rehabilitated. Well, some criminals, I suppose. Premeditated murder, serial killings/ rape, these are all unforgivable, however, probably 50% of the time a crime is committed it performed by a person who is not of their right mental state, who needs to commit the crime by necessity or fear, or engaged in a moment in which their passion supercedes rationality. In these cases, rehabilitation is certainly possible, and if not then certainly life in prison will suffice.
In the case of hate crimes, these will never disappear fully because at the moment we are under the wing of a societal rehabilitation, which may go on until the human race is extinct. This past weekend, a friend and I were debating the origins of languages and how a collaborative group decides that any certain grunt will from here on out represent “spoon” or shoe.” Similarly, I often wonder where paradigms of racism came from, and who decided that “white is right” and the rest of the “minorities” (which represent the majority of the world, by the way) were inferior.
Maybe I’ll have to go back and ask that cab driver, who seems to have his own opinions of how the demographics of a country should be comprised. As I was getting out of the cab, he told me
“By the way, I wouldn’t mind if the immigrants coming to Spain were like you and had an education” (and looked like California girls, I inferred).
“Perhaps a gentrifying Diaspora is in order, then?” (I wanted to ask him, but didn’t)
I think that this has been my heaviest journal entry to date.