Fear and Loathing in Hotchkiss
By Wayne Hare
A few weeks ago, High Country News writer Paolo Bacigalupi wrote about the racist, assassination oriented jokes circulating around a small restaurant in Hotchkiss, Colorado. Told by grade schoolers and repeated by so-called adults.
Q: What’s Barack Obama’s new Chinese name? A: Coon Soon Die.
Q: Why are they tearing up the Rose Garden at the White House? A: To put in a watermelon patch.
They go on from there. Pretty funny I guess. Ha ha. You get the picture. Mr. Bacigalupi, whose daughter is half white and half Indian, was justifiably disgusted. He was concerned about the racism in this small corner of America that he seems to love and that he calls home. But it’s deeper than that. Way deeper. Yes, prejudice exists. It always will. There’s just something about us humans that we have to look down on others and form instant judgments to feel better about ourselves. I’m not immune. I have a quick judgment when I see smokers, or folks driving Hummers. Then I realize that the problem is entirely with me, not with them. But I’m not immune and my pre-judging surfaced for an ugly moment. But the harm is not in hurt feelings. The harm is not in insensitivity. I for one do not need you to like me. I don’t need you to be sensitive to me. Because it’s not about me, it’s about us. The expression of prejudice and racism do not even make a person mean spirited. I’m willing to bet that the two joke-telling waitresses at the restaurant are nice folks. They’d likely treat me with genuine kindness and respect. I’d guess that they’d come to my aid in a time of trouble and offer what assistance they could. They probably didn’t think about how hurtful those jokes might be to certain other children. If they paused for even a moment, they’d recall that some parts of childhood are pretty painful, and that we all carry a certain remembrance of that into our adulthood – and they would do nothing, I am sure, to perpetuate pain on children. Those kinds of jokes aren’t funny, and merely display a certain amount of good old-fashioned ignorance. But still…in the adult world, what harm are they?
I can tell you what harm they are. Instead of bringing us together, they separate us, keep us apart, keep us from focusing on and fixing our very real problems. We all know that in the final analysis, the government can’t really fix these huge problems that we face…the greed and selfishness that has gotten us to where we find ourselves as a nation. In the end, it’s us…ordinary, everyday Americans that will have to work hard, sacrifice a lot, and focus on our higher values in order to fix our problems. We’ve always had problems, and ultimately it’s always been us that fixed them. Always.
Us! Ordinary, everyday Americans. Kind of makes you wonder who Sarah Palin thought she was excluding when she addressed a crowd in North Carolina with, “It’s good to be here in the real America.” Kind of an alienating statement, wasn’t it? Kind of makes you wonder just exactly where she thought the real America was or who real Americans are. It’s us. America has always been “an improbable experiment” where all men, and women, are created equal – and remain equal until we earn otherwise. We’ve always been diverse: Urban, rural, wealthy, poor, dark skinned and pink, religious or not, adventurous and sedentary, strange names or common. Wherever you go in America, from the ghettos of Baltimore to the gated communities of Telluride, like it or not, you’re in the real America.
We can be better than this. We can coach our children to be better than this. And if we are going to address these monumental problems and their deep root causes, we need to be better than this. In this wildly diverse country, prejudice has never served us well. So, instead of being a follower of all that comes your way – especially followers of grade schoolers – it’s past time to grow up and be leaders…or at least followers of only that which we know is right. The jokes that divide us aren’t funny anymore. You don’t need to examine and act on what I wrote here. Just examine and act on what you already know. With a minimum of reflection, I trust that we all know the difference. Maybe you won’t feel superior, but you’ll be superior.