I am not the new white
*Classism among U.S. Latinos? You bet. VL
By David Gayton, The Dily Californian (4 minute read)
A few weeks back, while walking through downtown Santa Barbara with a good friend, I witnessed an unsettling interaction between a homeless man and a young man. Walking past the pair, both my friend and I heard the young man exhort the older homeless man to get a job “like the rest of us Mexicans.”
“What an asshole!” my friend exclaimed and went back to give money to the homeless man. As he did so, I watched the young man proudly walk away into one those bourgeois Santa Barbara restaurants.
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While I can’t positively assert why this young man felt compelled to say this to a homeless man, I can say one thing with certainty. It was clear that he intended for everyone to hear him.
When I tried to explain to my friend what had just happened, I told him to look around. We were walking through the “nicer” part of Santa Barbara . . . READ MORE
David Gayton writes about modifying social change through identifying uncritical behavior within cultural politics from the perspective of a gay Chicano United States Marine Corps veteran.
[Photo by Kat Northern Lights Man/Flickr]