General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I Wouldn't Have Believed Things Like This Do Happen...Until I Witnessed It Myself. [View all]knitter4democracy
(14,350 posts)When I was in college, another Spanish told me of the time his Spanish conversation class went on a field trip to the store to practice speaking to each other in that setting. They weren't to use any English at all, and it was all going well until he and his partner overheard a couple nearby start ranting and raving about all those horrible Mexicans coming and taking their jobs and worse. He said that, when it got into seriously racist territory, he quietly walked over, explained that they were from the local college's Spanish department and were native English speakers (and so understood every word they said), and then walked away without even looking back.
I've heard stuff said around people speaking Spanish at the grocery store, and since I'm a Spanish teacher, I usually hear the other side of the conversation, too, and people know when others are ripping on them. We really need to do everything we can to deal with this issue.