[Magdalen] Related to "Yet Another Case of Race Abuse"

[M J [Mike] Logsdon]

>>>Yesterday I was in the local grocery store. There were several groups of
young Hispanic men also there (in bunches) buying their weekly groceries
and chattering away in Spanish about it. I think they probably work at one
of the local poultry processing plants. Anyway, I noticed a man about my
age who was also shopping, who wouldn't go down any aisle if he saw the
Hispanic guys in it. Meanwhile, I just went on down, knowing exactly what
would happen, and of course it did. If the young men were spread out in the
aisle, they just made a path like the Red Sea parting and smiled. "Señora,"
they said, and I smiled and nodded and went on through. It got to be funny
after awhile. I knew what that man didn't......that these young men had
mothers and grandmothers back in their countries who had most likely
brought them up right and who would likely pop them upside the head if they
weren't polite to their elders. I hoped the man noticed, but I don't know
if he did. What I do know is that ignorance + fear = hate.<<<

The bishop who trained me for ORC ordination was a Mexican fellow born and raised in Minnesota in the 1940s-50s.  He would always claim he was raised by Germans.  Anyway.  We would be out and about quite a bit here in Salinas before he moved away in '04, mostly restaurants.  Salinas, remember, is 75% Hispanic.  9 times out of 10, I'd get smilingly noted and deferred to (wearing or not wearing my clerics), he only occasionally (never wore clerics).  One Sunday (minus clerics) in our favorite Mexican restaurant, late morning right after it'd opened, and the Morning After a travelling (from Mexico) futbol team had, ahem, partied there, I came back to our table from the restroom and described a scene I simply will not describe here.  (Please, use your imagination, and have a barf bag in hand when doing so.)  I indicated to our standard, old-school waitress how unfit for human use the restroom was, and apparently I did so with a certain look on my face (disdain?), because a lady who previously was in no hurry to do anything other than take our order, and even then when the time seemed right to her, was all of a sudden running down the aisle with a bucket and mop (a shovel would have been more appropriate, actually).  I looked at the bishop and asked what the hell that was all about (meaning the hustle to rectify).  He just started belly-laughing to the point he could hardly breathe, and when he could he said, plainly and simply, with tears running down his face, -- "You're WHITE!"