Reply #147: Terms of un-endearment

[sharonking21]

I call them undocumented workers in order to avoid the highly loaded illegal alien terminology that seems to place all the blame on them rather than on our own economic and political system.

I call them undocumented workers because, having come from a background that ranged at times from working class to impoverished (depending upon whether or not my father could get work) myself, I know how much it hurts when, say, the middle-class people I know here in Texas bandy words about such as "white trash" or "trailer trash" or even the less charged but still vastly condescending "lower class."

I call them undocumented workers because I always think of Hector, someone I knew who was an undocumented worker working for a contract firm as a janitor, and how much the term illegal alien, while undoubtedly a coldly accurate term, hurt his feelings.

And, yes, you do sound a bit confrontational. Basically I'm on your side and I am trying to provoke conversations within the Democratic Party that might remind people that we have forgotten our roots.