Smart people giving a damn about important stuff.
Ferrett doesn't really need me to help him boost signal, but I'm doing it anyway: Keffy Kehrli on how society treats transsexuals. Keffy doesn't know me but we have several personal friends in common; I've been keeping loose tabs of him for several years since I saw him commenting on Jay Lake's blog and found out he's got a BA in Linguistics, as I do, but is much better at it than I am.
My friend Ben Tober on why you should oppose the new Arizona immigration law. Ben and I are at opposite ends of the political spectrum (he's a true conservative, while I practically bleed commie red). Here he makes a clear, well-stated statement of position I can get behind.
As a resident of Arizona this affects me. I'm from Texas; my mother originated in Bolivia. My recently deceased Abuelita naturalized in 1987. Her English was functional, heavily accented, and her understanding got worse as she deafened with age. My mother, for reasons of her own, has never naturalized; she has been a working, tax-paying, legal resident alien my whole life. She is well-educated and has a nativelike fluency in English. I am a born US citizen with functional Spanish; my father is a gringo who speaks several languages. (I even have a Birth Certificate from the State of Texas, that says "Birth Certificate" on it. I checked.).
There's a reason I'm hammering on the language aspect. Most of the commentary I've seen has focussed on the potential for harassment and profiling based on physical appearance--namely, brownness. But "looking illegal" encompasses not just skin tone but a whole lot of other social and cultural cues, of which primary language is a biggie. (Being brown while speaking Spanish and mowing a golf course is practically a trifecta.)
I am a White Girl--a green-eyed, pale-skinned brunette. (The photos in my icons are me, for reference.) I sound white too. I say y'all a lot and roundly abuse like-infixation. My Abuelita is--was--also pale, with green eyes. My mother is darker, more classically (or stereotypically) "hispanic-looking", with black (well, silver now) hair and brown eyes. My brother is darker like her. My mother's brother is colored like their mother, a White Guy with black hair. On the whole, we're not that unusual-looking for a South American family.
What this basically means is that we *probably* won't get hassled until we open our mouths. I can easily see a situation in which neither I nor my grandmother have "papers, please", because we aren't required to carry them since we're citizens, but in the company of my mother, speaking Spanish as we do within our family, could be subject to extra scrutiny. As specifically quoted by state Rep. John Kavanagh in today's Arizona Republic , "...our intention is to make Arizona a very uncomfortable place for them to be so they leave or never come here in the first place". Being questioned or detained if I haven't done anything wrong would be pretty uncomfortable. In the same breath he's "worried about legal immigrants and U.S. citizens also leaving." Rep. Kavanagh, you can't have your cake and eat it too. You cannot simultaneously make me feel wanted and unwanted. "We'll take the white skin, the college education, the high employability and oh yeah, the payroll taxes, but we don't want you speaking your mother's tongue recreationally where we can hear you (although your bilingualism sure helps us communicate with our immigrant employees so it's okay if you use it for work purposes); and while technically you do have the right of free association, we don't want a nice white girl like you living in certain neighborhoods, doing business with certain shop-owners, or attending your neighbors' barbeque." The groundskeeper I'm married to is of Norwegian extraction, so he's safe enough; but this new law has made it highly unlikely my mother will ever come to visit us: her tourist dollars will go elsewhere.
For those who think this scenario unlikely: I have in fact been called "your kind of people" for speaking Spanish in public; I will relate this story another time.
Thanks again to Keffy and to Ben for clearly stating what needed to be said.