TERRITORIAL INSTINCTS

I watched on YouTube with great shame as "John" Quiñones, host of ABC’s “What would you do?” discussed with various people their reaction to a bakery clerk refusing to sell anything to  women dresses in Burka in insulted her. The clerk was an actor as was the bakery client.  The remark by one of the clients who accepted what the clerk was saying as the proper thing to do and remarked, “All rag head should go back where they came from”. It reminded me of one of my favorite stories.

One of the people in long line of people in a place of business was talking on the mobile phone. A tough looking John Wayne type standing behind him reached out and pushed him roughly on the shoulder, and said in a loud voice so all could hear, ”Why don’t you learn to talk English or go back to Mexico or where ever you came from?” Intimidated the phone talker answered in a barely audible voice, “I was talking Navajo”.

How can it be that so many people, there was a great majority in that bakery that said nothing, six or seven agreed and added insults along with the clerk and only one or two defended the Burka wearing patron. In addition, I notice that those few who defended the customer became emotional, even tearful, when they did. I have no idea of the psychology of all of this but it seems that we, some of us, as Americans are so narrow minded we lack in rational judgment. We jump to conclusions. For example, one of the most heard phrases was that people who looked different in the eyes of the observer could not be American. I think of this in terms of the so-called “birthers” and President Obama. A person like Donald Trump, whom this country has been so good to, would be a champion of such a movement. A black man cannot be an American; he has to born somewhere else.

The ugly truth seems to be this feeling is somehow innate and one of the political parties have taken it up and actually promoted it. Perhaps, this is a result of having a brilliant president who is a very effective liberal, which creates a situation where the opposing party feels they have to create, that is, make up, disparaging differences where there is none. Some of us have dug deep, deep into our bestial minds and found territorial instincts. Why is it so telling that all people consider a person who is half-white and half-black as being black? All people, not just white people but all people. Isn’t this splitting hairs? How can a certain kind of cloth over the head of a woman make her un-American or speaking language you do not understand reason enough for you to want to expel someone from “our” country? Isn’t it time for the big guy in the cowboy hat to wake up and realize the Navajos were here first.  

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