What’s your color?
When my family arrived from Cuba in 1963, someone referred to us as “olive-skinned people”, something I had never heard before. I recalled looking at myself and wondering where that idea came from because my family is Caucasian or white and we don’t look olive at all.
As time went by, that word seems to have disappeared because I have not heard it in a long time, but Americans have hooked on distinctions by race or color something that I find very annoying.
American Indians are red-skinned, Asians are yellow, and if they have black skin, they are African-Americans – even if there are no Africans in their ancestry and come from a Latin American country.
A common phrase these days is “brown and black” suggesting that it covers all minorities, so I guess that now I’m brown, not olive. One day, someone told me that I am very light for a Cuban. Are we supposed to look in any particular way or color? Lucky for her that I forgive ignorance.
Have you noticed that most people are confused about race and nationality? What got me thinking about this and later inspired to write about it, was a comment on Fox News from Sean Duffy who is married to Rachael Campos Duffy, co-host of a weekend morning show. He said one can find happiness in an interracial marriage like theirs. Rachael’s parents are Mexicans and she is white just like him.
If he was referring to her Mexican ancestry, that’s not her race. I wonder what she writes on the census data.
Open the State House!
Can you believe that the Massachusetts State House remains the only state capitol building in the nation that’s still off-limits to the public? Outside the State House, a sign reads “closed to the public until further notice.”
Our legislators running Beacon Hill are milking the COVID-19 pandemic for every last drop. House Speaker Ron Mariano claimed in an interview over the weekend that his “concern” is “public safety.”
It reminds me of what the Lawrence city council is trying to do with zoom meetings.
Yet these same Democratic leaders who are “concerned” about safety aren’t remotely concerned about it when they’re holding maskless gatherings.
For them, pandemic restrictions have been a godsend. They never much cared for transparency anyways.
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