“NOAH CUM-PRENN-DOE”
The elderly white man sat across the booth from his wife in
the chicken joint where I was eating too. They were discussing the U.S. Supreme
Court’s recent decision to rescind elements of Arizona’s controversial SB 1070
law.
“So you see,” he told her, “I think it’s a terrible shame
that Obama’s getting rid of this Arizona law. Why won’t they let the police
just do their job?”
His wife nodded her head. I paused mid-bite and looked up over
my chicken sandwich. I could sense a xenophobic rant brewing, could smell it
like the cheap coffee that was brewing behind the counter. I felt my appetite
slowly drain out of me. Other customers pretended not to hear the man.
He continued, his face growing noticeably redder. “It’s
like, if an officer stops someone and tells them, ‘I need to see your license
and registration’, and the person just sits there and goes, ‘uh, no comprendo, no comprendo,’ then the
officer knows he’s got a problem on his hands.”
As the elderly customer repeated the Spanish phrase—which he
pronounced more like, “noah cum-prenn-doe”—he
waved his hands in cartoonish fashion and raised his eyebrows comically. The
man’s wife giggled at his impersonation, fiddling with her box of chicken
nuggets.
“I mean, if they can’t speak English,” he continued, “they
have no business being in this country. So if a police officer is trying to
talk to the person, and they just keep saying, ‘noah cum-prenn-doe’, well then you know they’re not supposed to be
here. It’s time to call up I.C.E. and have them come deport the person. What’s
so complicated about that?”
I leaned back against the hard plastic seat and looked up at
the ceiling. I considered saying something. But where to start?
I wasn’t surprised that he seemed ignorant of the details of
the Supreme Court’s decision. After all, while they did shoot down three of the
law’s provisions, they upheld the most controversial one—the “show me your
papers” clause, which allows police to stop “suspected immigrants” [read:
Latinos] and demand their documents. The clause which makes Latinos in Arizona,
de facto, “guilty until proven innocent” of being undocumented immigrants. Even
though Latino U.S. citizens greatly outnumber undocumented immigrants in
Arizona, and many of the state’s Latino families have lived there for several
generations.
But it didn’t surprise me that the man would take a
“glass-is-half-empty” approach to the Supreme Court’s ruling. After all, I
would venture to guess that even if the “Arizona Law” had been upheld in its
entirety, not even that would be enough to make the old fellow happy.
I wasn’t surprised, either, by his comment about the “police
not being able to do their job”—that he was ignorant of what the police’s job
is in the first place. Many people, after all, seem to assume that the police
are supposed to act as immigration agents—but this isn’t the case. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement is a completely different government agency from the
police. I.C.E. prosecutes violations of immigration law (a civil, not criminal,
offense); the municipal, state and federal police prosecute violations of
criminal law.
This is the way law enforcement works in any nation on
earth. Nobody is trying to keep the police from doing their job. In fact, in
areas like Joe Arpaio’s Maricopa County where police have been pushed into
enforcing immigration law, the rates of rape, murder and other violent crimes
have gone up—precisely because the police aren’t able to do their job as effectively.
It is not the police’s job to check people’s immigration status in the first
place—any more than it is their job to put out fires, deliver people’s mail,
process tax returns, or make Social Security payments to people like the
elderly man at the chicken sandwich joint.
But it didn’t surprise me that this man was ignorant of the
way his government works.
What surprised me was that he was so ignorant of himself. Of
his own roots. Of the roots of all Americans of European descent. Being a white
American myself, I was surprised that this man seemed completely unaware of
where his own ancestors came from. The fact is, nearly all first generation
immigrants have come here knowing little to no English. Just like my own
great-grandparents who gave me the Schmidt name, this man’s ancestors likely didn’t
know English when they came here. If a police officer had stopped them, they
would have responded with some other version of “no comprendo”:
“Ich kann nicht
verstehen.”
“Ní thuigim.”
“Я не понимаю.”
“Nie rozumiem.”
“Ikh farshtey nisht.”
To equate ignorance of English with undocumented status is
ludicrous. It makes little sense, if you really are speaking in terms of “legal
versus illegal immigration”.
But it makes much more sense if you’re speaking in terms of
what demographics, what sorts of people, you believe “have no business being
here”.
I’m sure the man at the chicken sandwich joint would have insisted, if I’d
asked him, that he “was only against illegal immigration”. But his own words
betrayed him. Through the comments he made, he stepped in line with past
generations of xenophobes and immigrant bashers throughout American history.
The sort of “native born” folk who, in centuries past, would have overheard his
ancestors speaking a European language and said:
“They have no business being here.”
“This country’s not for people like them.”
“This is an invasion.”
As I heard the man rail against today’s immigrants, I also
lamented my own ignorance of my great-grandparents’ lives. I regretted having
never had the chance to meet them as an adult and talk with them about their
own immigrant experience. Had they ever had a negative encounter with an
“English only” American? I doubt it—after all, they spent most of their lives
in an ethnic enclave, living among other German-speaking folks from Russia. By
the time my grandfather and his siblings were grown, they had learned English
in the public school system. (This puts the Schmidts well behind the curve, in
comparison with today’s immigrants. Modern-day immigrants from Latin America
and elsewhere are learning English at rates much faster than past generations.)
I had finally geared up to say something to the man—but
someone else beat me to it. As I started to rise from my seat, a young customer
had already approached the elderly man. “Listen, sir,” he told the nativist.
“If you don’t want to sympathize with people who come from a different
background, if you want to look down on them because they weren’t born here
like you, that’s your problem. But keep your voice down. I don’t need to hear
your intolerant rant while I’m eating. Nobody should have to.”
Short. Precise. To the point.
The old man sheepishly looked down at his waffle fries.
I thanked this young interloper for speaking up, and told
the old man, “He’s absolutely right. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
* * * *
I don’t think either of us changed the xenophobe’s opinion.
If anything, he probably became more entrenched in his views. As he and his
wife left, murmuring under his breath, he was likely complaining to her about
how “intolerant” today’s young people are, because we don’t tolerate
intolerance.
I don’t think we made him think about his roots, or his own
European ancestors, or the mistreatment that some of them doubtless suffered. I
don’t think he pondered the fact that past generations of Americans probably
thought some of his ancestors “had no business being here” because of their
language and customs.
But that’s not why you speak up in a Chic-Fil-A when someone
is going on a “noah-cum-prenn-doe”
rant. You speak up because this is the present day. You speak up because now,
in the 21st century, this should not be a nation where someone is
intimidated and treated like a lesser person because of how they look and talk.
You speak up because that’s not the kind of country we want to live in.
And you speak up—I spoke up—because while I may be powerless
to keep police from racially profiling someone in Arizona, I can at least stop
one man from publicly mocking people of another culture.
It’s a start.
David
Schmidt is a
freelance writer and multi-lingual translator in San Diego, CA. He is a
volunteer at World Relief Garden Grove, proponent of immigrants' rights and
fair trade, and works with worker-owned coops in Mexico to help them develop
alternative, fair sources of income. He can be contacted at
davidschmidt2003@hotmail.com
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