Choose Life: No More "Little" El Paso

As I was at a bus stop with some people I travel with regularly, another person was talking about another bus stop experience with someone else.  It was snowing in Las Cruces and my Hispanic friend was telling us a story.  He was at another bus stop with "a African-American, Neg.., black guy," as he said, and he had become covered in snow.  My friend said to him, "You're white now."  He apparently laughed and said, "Noooooo!" while laughing.  Yet, somehow, I was not offended.  The other people standing around us were all also not offended.  As a culture, we have become too serious.  In fact, everyone at the bus stop laughed at what he said because it was completely believable.  Yet, for as long as I can remember, El Paso seemed to be held captive by race.

When discussing minorities, I usually get in trouble for this statement: Everyone is a minority.  This is something I have always known because everyone in my family was a minority.  Before I knew that I was English, German, Irish, Scottish, Spanish, and American, I had blue eyes.  Everyone in my family origin had blue eyes except my mother.  Her eyes are hazel.  Our blue eyed minority was the majority, or so my science teacher taught us when we talked about genetics in middle school.  I wasn't ever teased about my blue eyes until someone needed to point out that Hitler liked blue eyed blonde haired people, so I had obviously been engineered that way because we were Lutherans at the time.  There were more kids in school in El Paso around me that hated their own eyes because they were brown like all of the other kids.  Like most El Pasoans, I went to a predominantly Hispanic school for most of my education.  In fact, my university education has been the same experience until I started at Liberty.  I don't remember a point in time when the majority of my classmates were not Hispanic.

I pray that one day El Paso realizes that being Hispanic is not a problem that people seem to think that it is.  I find to be incredibly frustrating that instead of being responsible for themselves and the work that they do that they say that "it's because this is a Hispanic culture to me."  They say it to me as though I don't know what shoddy work is or that I'm not an El Pasoan.  At some point, when I moved to Minnesota, I realized for the first time that I didn't fit in with the rest of the very white Norwegians there that I didn't fit in because, and I remember specifically that I thought, "I'm the wrong color."  The reason that people were speaking to me the way that they were was because they thought I was a white person.  When I wasn't in a bilingual community, I didn't know how to live.  I had lived on military posts in Europe and was always around more than one language before my family moved back to El Paso just before the 5th grade.  I don't remember race when I lived on post.  I remember Army guys and Girl Scouts.  Everyone had a uniform.

One of the things that I am more than painfully aware of about El Paso is that people like to compare it to other cities for a few reasons:  1) It's a Hispanic culture, so people can be sexist, misogynistic, bigoted, and overly capitalistic, 2)  people want to get away with being lazy, 3) illiterate and uneducated, 4) blame emotion or the heat, and 5) are indifferent to their surroundings.  People are people.  If someone can get away with doing whatever he or she wants, that person will.  I'm tired of people telling me why El Paso can't do something.  Usually, this comes to me in the form of something called "small El Paso mentality."  It is shown in the following two statements:  1) El Paso isn't New York, so bigotry is okay and 2) El Paso isn't San Francisco, so people don't have to let GLBT people have decent salaried positions unless they are will to essentially sell themselves as the post child for how inclusive the company really is.  I've been told over and over again, "Well, it's not New Mexico.  This is Texas" which is fairly demeaning since El Paso county is the historically democratic county in Texas.  People who do that are trying to get away with doing whatever they want.  Geographic discrimination is actually illegal.  Being an El Pasoan doesn't make me unenlightened, incapable of working properly, inhumane, or in need of special accommodations to accomplish tasks.

It's not the culture.  It's people's perception of what it is.  Lazy is lazy regardless of where a person is.  I was reading earlier about passive-aggressivity and what astonished me was how many employers and religious leaders I had had in the past five years who are incredibly passive-aggressive because they won't make a decision, will wait years to make one, or that they will intentionally target and sabotage an employee or member of the laity who is more talented that they are.  If you don't care, don't lead.

I accidentally found these passages this week.  "Take care of yourself, have a good time, and make the most of whatever God job you have for as long as God gives you life.  And that's about it.  That's the human lot.  Yes, we should make the most of what God gives, both the bounty and the capacity to enjoy it, accepting what's given and delighting in the work.  It's God's gift!  God deals out joy in the present, the now" (Ecclesiastes 5:18-20)  It really is okay to enjoy our lives.  It seems that people don't think that they have been given the ability to enjoy life.  When at least, Abrahamic believers have been given it as a gift.  El Pasoans should embrace ourselves joyously.

No, we are not New York, San Francisco, Denver, the Twin Cities or even Juarez.  We are not less than the others. There's only one on the border.  We are strong, smart, and capable of doing well.  We are able to serve one another and not tear each other down.  We are able to live well and be at peace.  We are El Paso!

L'Chaim!