Cheapest of Cheap Shots

Heard downtown yesterday that I have been branded a racist on Facebook. Copious thanks to my defenders anyway. Everybody, including the editor of the Cascade Pioneer, needs to consider my objections in light of the fate of the American Middle Class, which has steadily dwindled until now most of the developed world is better off.  

The reasons can’t all be listed here, so check out http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com for 44 indicators of Mid-class demise. Even the places we once shopped—Sears and Penny’s—are downsizing. I criticize dollar stores and their shabby Chinese-made merchandize going great guns and filling up our landfills. So I suppose that makes me a racist against the Chinese and American bizmen.

Whatever.

I spent almost 5 years in Germany and considered immigrating to that country. I know what would happen if you walked into a German government office and didn’t conduct your business in Deutsch: they would laugh right out. Call up any U.S. government office and you will get the “dos” option, Spanish. I spoke it on the street when I lived in Mexico City for three months. If being outraged that Mexicans are here for years without learning English, makes me a racist, then I guess I am a racist.

If having adopted a protective attitude toward my own culture and its institutions like the library and objecting to misuse of them, makes me a racist in spite of the fact that I am respectful and sympathetic to Mexicans, (been there, done the immigrant thing) then again I am guilty as charged—a racist.

Perhaps because we, White European Americans, displaced the Native American culture that was here, we don’t think it is there is anything wrong with another culture destroying what we have. Perhaps anything beyond our sacred cows—football and rock & roll--doesn’t count as culture. Critical Eye begs to differ that questioning these things in public makes me a racist. Perhaps it just makes people who won't, cowards.