Por Que no hablo?

November 15th, 2009

Editors,

Russian, Vietnamese, Japanese, Hungarians, Irish, English, Italian, Ethiopian, French, Belgium, Greek, and every other emigrant group that has come to America has learned the common language and actively striven to be adopted into the American family – save one. Why must one group consider themselves better than all the others? Why must I walk the streets of the city in which I was born, in my own country and feel as if I am walking through the trashed alleys of Juarez or Ensenada? Why must I feel like an alien in my own country?
Are they, as a culture, too ignorant and stupid to learn a new language? Do they not wish to become Americans, as our ancestors did? Do they just want to suckle at the tit without buying the American cow? Do they think they are better, or more entitled than our grandfathers and grandmothers were? What is the reason that one group feels they don’t need to pass the same rights of passage every other immigrant group has?

And furthermore, why do we say nothing? Why do we encourage this separation, this segregation, and this sense of entitlement? I am an American, and I shouldn’t feel like a foreigner in my own home town! Hablamos Ingles in Los Estados Unidos! And if you can’t read this, volver a Mexico!

Charles Byrne