I am very anti-racist, but I must admit that I have known and even respected some racist indivisuals. Even my own father was racist. He would always talk about people behind their back, and it angered me. So, I humbled him by telling him I am homosexual. Now, he is quiet, because he realizes that he is not perfect himself.

Thank you for such a wonderful post. It takes people who are willing to speak out and stand up to change the world.

I think what I meant when I was originally writing the post two years ago is that “I assume that there’s a greater chance that I will be verbally sexually harrassed on the street by Mexican-American men, or that the women I am with will be verbally sexually harrassed on the street by Mexican-American men, than by Anglo men.”

Partially, this is because I’m overweight, and so I’ve tended to get more aggressive attention from non-white men. Partially, it’s also the culture of where I live: in my experience, anglo men in the silicon valley tend to be less verbally sexually aggressive than anglo men in, say, NYC, where I’m more likely to be approached by white or non-white men than by either group in the silicon valley.

However, the fact that I would condense verbal sexual harrassment to sexism in general is itself probably an illustration of chrys’s point.

Which is important, as people living in the dominant culture, such as Anglo Americans, tend to get their stereotypes from immigrants, and then apply them to people still living in the culture the immigrants came from (god, this is hard to express accurately).

Also, Seth: sexism is as big a part of Anglo culture as Hispanic, it’s just expressed in slightly different ways. Because Anglos tend to see their own culture as “normal”, though, they are able to see Hispanic sexism more easily and, because it’s different, they classify it as “worse” and “more.”

To me, there is a diference between Mexican Immigrants living in the U.S. and Mexicans who live in Mexico. I hardly ever see people treat them as the two different groups that they are. Though sexism is a definite trait of hispanic culture, it is exagerated through stereotipes and a large groups of immigrants in the U.S. who unfortunately for the most part do a terible job of representing our culture.

Did you know that Women in Mexico were allowed to vote sooner than women in the U.S.?
Did you also know that women in Mexico do not automatically take on their husbands last name?

I enjoyed your post though. I always get upset when people in Mexico generalize in their so called opinions about Americans and the U.S.

Regards.

On a forum far, far away, I commented on the racism I thought was present in an article in the local paper, and people jumped all over me for it - demanding proof of the author’s racism, wanting to know where I got off making such vicious accusations, etc. I explained myself (twice), but people just willfully misunderstood me. And I know that this is nothing (nothing!!) compared to what POC experience in the real world (as opposed to the internet world).
It is not an insight at all to say that white people blindly hold on to our priviledge, but it is disappointing.

I think the notion of a completely coherent/ logically valid belief system is a myth and is anti-human.