Here’s a “Hispanic Type”
*I read this heartfelt post last week. It’s a relatively small incident in a relatively small neighborhood in Rhode Island. Whenever I see people flag dog-whistle prejudice I’ll do my best to amplify their voice. After you read the piece, come back and read THIS – it’s a follow-up about the community’s less than warm response. You may want to send Samantha a note, to let her know she’s not alone. VL
By Samantha L. Hines, My Three Sons
My son, a four-year-old Hispanic type, woke up this morning around 5:30 AM.
He walked his Hispanic type self downstairs, gave me a huge hug, and asked if he could watch Sesame Street.
Later, he and his brother, who happens not to be aHispanic type, had toast and bananas and a little milk for breakfast.
My Hispanic type son then went off to preschool, where he worked on his shapes and letters. His current favorite is the rectangle, and he’s trying hard to master the letter “s.” He’s going to Kindergarten in the fall and is very excited.
I picked him up at 2:15 PM, got another huge hug, and brought my Hispanic type son home, where I opened an email notification from Nextdoor, an online social network forum whose mission it is to “[build] stronger and safer neighborhoods.”
In response to a neighbor who had left his/her car door unlocked and discovered $50 and a GPS missing the next day, one of my neighbors wrote: “I saw two Hispanic types the other day staring into cars but they were not doing anything illegal so [I] did not call [the] cops.”
One of my neighbors authored this . . . a neighbor who, in ten years, when my son, a beautiful soul who happens to be of Mexican ancestry and who happens to be her neighbor, is walking down the street, might see him, might watch him, may even disdainfully term him a “Hispanic type”—to herself, to a friend, in a public forum. At the very least she is a neighbor who wrote words my son may one day read, words that have the power to hurt and to divide.
Newport Buzz, a local online news source, sardonically quipped in the comment thread that “you have to watch out for those Hispanic types,” but the moderator of Nextdoor removed it—not the comment that is racially offensive but the one that pointed out that fact.
The purported mission of Nextdoor is to build stronger neighborhoods, and tonight ours fell very, very short.
This article was originally published in My Three Sons.
Samantha lives with her family in Newport, RI, and is a high school English teacher (twenty-four years and running). In the last several years, she has had published several articles in Adoptive Families magazine; and her blog, “My Three Sons” was named by Adoptive Families as one of the Top Twenty Adoption Blogs on the internet and has been “Freshly Pressed” by WordPress. She has published articles in ADDitude magazine and is the author of the column “Different Drummer” on ADDitude.com. She is also featured on the sites Families in the Loop and The Creative Mama. You may email Samantha at Samanddon@hotmail.com.
[Photo courtesy of Samantha Hines]
