I Am A Gringo

This might surprise you, but building Swollen Thumb Entertainment doesn’t bring in a lot of money for me.  It certainly doesn’t pay the bills.  Suffice to say, I am forced to work at a “regular” job until I can get my business on its feet.  However, I am not a big believer in having a “regular” job.  This is why I work at a Mexican Restaurant…  and I am not Mexican.

Being a white guy (Irish and Scottish blood), I often get a lot of weird looks at the restaurant.  Every once in a while someone actually musters up the courage to ask me about it.  I get comments such as “What part of Mexico are you from?” and “Having you as a waiter kind of takes away from the experience”.  Usually, I just laugh it off, but it honestly bothers me how many people harbor such racist thoughts, even if they don’t realize that these thoughts are racist.

Why do people around here expect to only see Mexicans in a Mexican restaurant?  After all, who cares who’s serving you the food as long as it tastes how it’s supposed to?  And as a matter of fact… Newsflash!  Not all of the people in most Mexican restaurants are “Mexican” anyway.  A lot of the people who work in those restaurants are from Puerto Rico, Cuba, Panama, South America, Guatemala, etc.

What If…?

Look at it this way.  What if some other ethnic group started a restaurant and only hired people that had the same color of skin as them?  Would you patronize an all white restaurant?  An all black restaurant?  And what if it was “expected” that these restaurants had racist hiring policies?  Would you ridicule the black waiter who worked at the fancy “white” restaurant?  Would you make fun of the white boy who waited tables at the “black” soul food restaurant?

If you can honestly answer yes to these questions, then I’m sure that you can acknowledge that you have some racist thoughts.  I only say that as a matter of fact, not as an insult.  But if you believe that somebody should be able to work with people of other cultures and ethnicities, then you SHOULD be able to see the racism and hypocrisy in what I deal with.

Listen, I’m not saying that it’s racist to wonder how or why a white guy is working at a Mexican restaurant.  It’s only natural to question it when somebody breaks a social stigma.  What IS racist is the belief that only people of a certain ethnicity should be allowed to work at certain places.

Simply put… if you believe that white people shouldn’t be allowed to work at Mexican restaurants, then you are racist.

Both Sides Of The Equation

I’ve heard that it’s normal for people of all colors to work at Mexican restaurants in other parts of the country.  The key difference is that I work in a small, closed-minded community.  People, both white and latino, are more likely to be openly racist.  And believe me, I’ve talked to people of both ethnicities who didn’t think that I should be working there.

From the white perspective, perhaps they think that I should work a “normal” job, such as sitting in a damn cubicle all day, getting fat and complacent.  Maybe part of the reason that they eat at ethnic restaurants is so that they can satisfy their own racist need to be served by people of color?  Perhaps having a white person there hampers their racist fantasy, and they resent me for that?

Or there’s the Latino perspective.  After all, most Mexicans work very hard for their money… much harder than the majority of white Americans.  Point blank, it is MUCH easier for a white person to find work in America than a Latino.  So in order to find work, Latinos are usually forced to look for either construction jobs or restaurant jobs.  So not only do they have a hard time finding work in the first place, now they have to compete with gringos in order to work at restaurants claiming to be Mexican?

Listen, I understand completely.  In this politically correct, liberal society, it is very easy to side with the Latino perspective.  However, doing so is ignoring the very simple fact that it is still a RACIST perspective, claiming that I shouldn’t be allowed to work somewhere that I WANT to work because of my skin color.

Sacrificing Rights

We, as a society, can not sacrifice the rights of one race over another.  The fact of the matter is that I am white… and I am damn proud of it.  I am not ashamed of my ethnicity, and I do not feel guilty about it.  I do not consider myself to be genetically inferior to anyone of ANY other color, and vice versa.  I believe that we should all be judged as individuals, not based upon our genetics.

I have had friends who were black, white, latin, and native American.  I enjoy sampling the cultures of various peoples, because I feel that it makes me a more well rounded person.  And I have chosen to work at a Mexican restaurant because I have never worked with very many people outside of my own culture before.  I believe that this also helps to make me a more well rounded person.

I enjoy my job and the challenges that it brings.  I am happy with my work, and my supervisors and co-workers seem to be happy with it as well.  If you have some kind of problem with that, then I seriously think that you should take a good long look in the mirror.  If, deep down, you still believe in segregation in the workplace, then, at the very least, admit it to yourself… and while you’re at it… you can keep your racist ass out of restaurants than are ran by people that look differently than you.