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In reply to the discussion: Dear White America: Its time to get the message [View all]theHandpuppet
(19,964 posts)I wasn't sure if my post was too clumsy to explain how I feel. But it really hits home for me. I am a gay woman, been with my SO for nearly 25 years. She is Hispanic and of Zapotec origins -- incredibly bright, talented, highly educated (multiple graduate degrees), exceptionally skilled for her high-tech job. One day, a few short years ago, she was sitting in the break room with her co-workers discussing vacation plans when her boss, overhearing the conversation, remarked to her, "So what will you be doing with your vacation? Picking fruit?" My SO related this to me when she got home from work that day. She pretty much shrugged it off but that horribly racist comment, supposedly intended as a "joke", still infuriates and depresses me to this day. I just can't get it out of my mind. In the moment she related just that one incident, I came to truly realize the kind of world she must navigate every day. A world in which she must wear an emotional and psychological suit of armor, a burden of weight I will never bear though I would take it from her shoulders and carry it for my life if I could.
I gotta go now... this is really getting me upset all over again.