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I overheard a couple of custodians talking today. They’re older White guys, pretty nice and very accomodating. We were all in the lounge and looking at the newspaper while they ate lunch.
 
One went on and on about how there was a murder every weekend at this one location. It was always Mexicans and Indians. They used to throw them in the ditch but now they put the bodies in the parking lot.
 
A murder every weekend, huh? They both agreed you were taking your life in your hands if you went near that place.
 
Now, believe me, I’ll check with the police department on how many murders we have in the town. Fifty-two and all in the same location seems a trifle high, even if we are the 4th or the 11th fastest growing town in the U.S., next to THE fastest growing town. There is a reservation not far from the site and the center of the town, near this site, is heavily Hispanic.
 
There were other comments interspersed, about how on certain corners crowded with men you wouldn’t find anyone who could speak English. This was delivered in a way as to suggest there was a connection between the murders and not speaking English, only that wouldn’t apply to the Indians.
 
However, I was not about to point out the lack of connection. All this talk serves to preserve the status of “us”, the White guys who would never let that happen in “our” neighborhoods. Defense of the neighborhood, defense of our way of life, defense of our country and our faith, all go hand in hand. And it’s these dangerous outsiders who we have to watch, not the wealthy White guys running for office who are steadily encroaching on middle-class incomes with their investment and insurance schemes. No, it’s those dark-skinned people we “don’t understand” b/c they speak another language, hanging around on street corners when upright White Americans are at work.
 
This is how the crap is spread. There are, at last count, about 20 faculty members I could count on to eat that crap up. This would then encourage them to vote for any politician who trumpeted his intention to “get tough” on immigration (image of scowling dark-skinned short men led off in handcuffs by big, burly White officers – whew, got ’em). Why would we want the federal government to extend aid to reservations when all those Indians do is drink and kill each other. How do we know that? Well, these guys I was talking to ………
 
I have a friend whose mother migrated from a South Dakota farm to Kansas City around 1920. Her first and most vivid memory was of being warned about the street cars. Black men rode those street cars and would like nothing better than to rape and murder a young White girl like her. She had never seen a Black person before and it took her over forty years to overcome an almost hysterical fear of Black people. So this s*** works.

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