I know I already posted today. I know I should be working. I know a lot of things. Like how not happy I am with the Chicago Tribune today.
"Although booming immigrant populations increase the need for schools and social services, Sylvia Puente, director of the University of Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies in Chicago, said their value to the economy is often overlooked."We are increasingly dependent on low-wage labor," she said. "Installing drywall and your restaurant tab would cost much more without them."
ARE YOU FRICKING KIDDING ME??????? This in an article about the growing population of Latinos in Chicago. I mean, fine, it's a newsworthy story. But now really, who in their right mind...oh wait. I live in CHICAGO, I forgot. That's how it is.
"We have a lot more coming," said Juany Garza, who this year was elected Aurora's first Mexican alderman. "People who are here are bringing more people, their close families."Demographers say the rapid growth of Hispanics, combined with lower birth and higher death rates among an aging white populace, is propelling the metropolitan area toward becoming a region where minorities are the majority.
"I don't see anything that will stop it," said Kenneth Johnson, a demographer at Loyola University Chicago.
Stop the presses, folks, and grab your guns. We took this land from dem dere Injuns and we shore as hell ain't gonna let no one else take it from us!
Grrrr. I say. Arggh. Anyway, I am not sure if this link will work, but if you care, you can cut and paste and read for yourself. How do I fight this type of battle? So subtle, yet blaring. But I bet a great number of folks who read this article today didn't see anything wrong with those quotes. It just sounds soooo bad to me. Who wrote this crap? Who edited it? Who was copy-edited it?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0508110205aug11,1,67511.story
6 comments:
It was an unbelievable read! All minorities are not just low-age labor! I need to write about that... And another disturbing and unspoken notion is that it seems there is an idea that to be "America" it has to be a majority "white" or the favorite new term "non-Hispanic white." My main problem with that is that it drops the word Hispanic into any refernce to race/ethnicity,
thus increasing the growing fear. Ick!
did you see A Day Without Mexicans? it had the same disturbing premise -- without people from Latin America you won't your lawns will become unruly, etc. And then they kept using terms like Latino and Mexican interchangeably - even though they had an entire segment on how frustrating that is.
Kari
I am not the most morally upstanding person, nor am I politcally correct all the time, but this is one of several phenomena that I latched on to as a reason not to go into newspapers. Remember the Monica Lewinsky 'scandal'? I would have quit rather than be assigned to write that story. You would think Chicago Tribune had more sense than that....
Leslie
"'I don't see anything that will stop it,' said Kenneth Johnson, a demographer at Loyola University Chicago."
Oh my Gosh! It's a epidemic!
Go to high ground! Take only what you can carry!
You thought "War of the Worlds" was scary.
"Installing drywall and your restaurant tab would cost much more without them."
Really! . . . You're really OK with having those words printed in a newspaper. "Installing drywall?"
Come on Sylvia, you can do better that that. You're the Director for the Institute for Latino Studies, for god's sake!
Oh well . . . I hear Iceland nice this time of year.
My brother said the article is like a tribute to white xenophobia, paranoia and ignorance. I 'gree, 100%.
Leslie
hmmmm... so that "here they all come" demographer works at the university closest to my house... in a neighborhood that appears to be very well integrated, but in the eyes of some neighbors has experienced its share of unfair whitewashing in recent years... i wonder if he lives down the street from me on "professor's row?" kari
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