June 21, 2008

One day I was standing outside Café Mariposa and I was talking to my friends and this guy that I do not know, but that I think used to work with my friend kept asking us all if we wanted to go somewhere to get a drink and NOBODY wanted to, and everyone kept rejecting him. Then he came up to me and asked me and I said “No.” And then he was like, “Hey, maybe if we go to the Goldroom we will get mugged by a bunch of Mexicans” (or something along those lines) and I was like “what?” and he replied “You know, blah blah blah” (this is when I stopped listening to him because I was sure he must be stupid). Then I thought, this would be great material for my blog! So I said “hey, would you mind repeating what you just said so I can record it with my camera?” and he answered “Why, are you offended?!” and I said “No, now I am just annoyed.” Because I was very annoyed.

Now, if I was a resident of Echo Park, I would punch this guy. But since I was only a temporary resident, I didn’t. I hate people like this; people that A) assume a particular bar or restaurant or any place is full of one particular RACE of people, B) assume this that everyone part of this particular will do the same thing. He assumed everyone in the Goldroom was Mexican, which may be possible, but is certainly not a guarantee. This just shows he is completely ignorant to the ethnic makeup of Echo Park. I have no idea what “Mexican” means anymore because as far as I knew, “Mexican” refers to people from Mexico, and I can guarantee you many of those people are not from Mexico. (I have a really confused notion of race and ethnicity and nationality as I don’t really understand what any of those words mean. I am considered ‘Mexican’ but I don’t know a soul from Mexico, I have only been to Mexico on service trips and for vacation, and no one in my immediate family speak Spanish, hardly anyone in my extended family speaks Spanish. I share some Mexican traditions, but they are actually the watered-down traditions of other American-born people that may or may not be brown and may or may not be from Mexico—mainly eating tamales during Christmas time, having family barbeques in the summer, having big weddings where everyone gets drunk, sometimes off Patrón, sometimes off tequila and often off margaritas, oh and I think I remember having a piñata or too at my birthday parties, but other than that, there isn’t anything my family does that is really all that different from our other American-born neighbors that are white. Actually, most of my family has a very light skin, so even our skin color isn’t that different. I think race and ethnicity is mostly just a way for people to frame other people as different from themselves when really we are all pretty much the same and pretty much different, but usually these facts are unrelated from being connected to any particular race. Many of this may seem ridiculous, and that is because, like I said, I am completely confused when it comes to these terms that are so loosely thrown around) . Many of those people he naively labels as “Mexican” are probably from all parts of the earth. Maybe, those people are mostly from South American and ‘Latin’ countries, and maybe not. I don’t know why any of this actually matters.

Okay and the main part that bugged me about this guy’s comments are that he not only assumed everyone in the Goldbar was of one ethnicity, and assumed everyone from that ethnicity would do the same thing, but he assumed that same thing was rob us. Now that is just silly.