What’s Worse Than Lazy Racism?

You know what I think is worse than racism? Lazy racism. That’s the kind of racism that you just kind of adhere to because — because. I mean, I don’t think there’s ever really a good reason for racism, since the idea of race is totally a man-made idea and doesn’t objectively exist in the scientific sense. But still.

Georgia’s State Senator Renee Unterman falls into this category.

In this video, she launches a tirade against how her wonderful home of Gwinnett County, Georgia used to be just 40,000 strong. When she went from being a nurse to mayor to county commissioner to state senator and her county grew such that now there’s almost 1 million people there and more than 100 languages in a local school, she’s sad to say that her home is about ruined and people are moving away. And who’s to blame? Who else — the “illegals.”

• Over 100 different languages in an elementary school
• Overcrowded hospital ER (the same hospital where she went as a kid)
• Increases in crime

I mean, I’m not state senator, but aren’t these just, like, the kinds of problems that occur when a county grows from a population of 40,000 to almost a million? Forgive me for not seeing the racist logic here, but I’m not sure that you can’t logically conclude that “illegals” are wholly responsible for all, or any, of these problems.

To my inferior Mexican brain, the problem seems to be there’s just a heck of a lot more people than they used to be.

Not to mention the fact that there are only 68 languages in Mexico (a country she mentions by name in her speech), so if there are more than 100 languages in that school, they can’t all be from Mexico…making her not racist? More racist? I’m not sure, as I said, this is what I like to call lazy racism and doesn’t make much sense to me.

But then again, isn’t racism is always lazy? Trying to logically argue that any particular problem is attributable to an entire group in particular makes about as much sense as those arguments I had with my brother when I was a kid: “He hit me!” “She was touching me!” “No I wasn’t!” Perhaps if Unterman spent more energy thinking her arguments out in the first place, she wouldn’t have to spend 10 minutes defending them as not racist.

Follow Sara Inés Calderón on Twitter @SaraChicaD