Today I heard a story that involves some confusing racism. I’m not sure how to classify someone who seems to have contempt for their own heritage. Not like the psychological angry at the world but like the Dave Chappell “Black White Supremacist”. Just the kind of contradiction that makes you scratch your head.

This guy is from Mexico and came over the border as a child. He learned English and worked his way to a supervisor position in construction. He apparently hates anyone who shares that same background because in the construction field a large part of his crew is comprised of Mexicans who don’t yet speak English. I would think that someone with that background would be really helpful to brothers of the same struggle. I would be wrong.

As the liaison between the workers and the English speaking world this gentleman assigned whatever vocabulary words he wanted to everyday jobs and objects.

 

The workers dig building footings and pour concrete. He has them convinced that shovels are called “computers”.

These poor guys are going home to their families and telling them they work with computers. They are sending money back home and these family members are thinking of a charmed life in the tech industry. I wonder if he calls them something like doctor.

I can hear them talking on the jobsite.

“Hey Doc, come quick and bring your computer.”

 

It should be much less funny but it has become a running joke. With the record snowfalls in New York I had a friend suggest that the demand for computers was on the rise.

I wish I could say that’s where it stops but his attitude has spread to the younger generation in his family that were born in America. The word is he has a niece who is an English-elitist who refuses to learn to speak the Spanish of her roots. One day he approached her and asked her if she knew Spanish. She rolled her eyes.

He asked her, “Hablas espanol?”

She replied like a snarky American teenager, “I don’t speak that taco-taco shit.”

Somebody needs to hand that bitchy tween a computer. Is this a thing? Do people overcome odds and then look down on others who didn’t do as well?

So in case you were thinking that your children are unappreciative of all that you have done for them, at least they aren’t like this family. You’re welcome.

Underdaddy to the rescue.