So, this summer I acquired a job at the Chicago Botanic Gardens, working in the cafés that are situated there, and I think that that was the first real experience I had being a minority.
For those who don't know, I am whiter than Conan O'Brian and, statistically, am in the"majority". Keep in mind, throughout this post, that the is merely a social construct. As my French teacher says, "Il y a une espèce: les humaines" (There is one species: human).
Typically, especially in service and manual labor, the workers seem to be overwhelmingly immigrants. Why? Think of it this way: if America started have some really big issues that we're affecting everyone and lots of us began migration to say, Canada, we probably would take whatever jobs we could get as well.
At the Botanic Gardens, the majority of people who landscape and work in the kitchen are Hispanic. I got to work in the back of the kitchen a couple weeks ago. I made jell-o and pudding cups and wrapped cookies. I love that kind of stuff, but I felt lonely. If I needed help, there was only one girl I could ask and she was pretty busy, and I could only ask her because everyone else were native Spanish speakers and I didn't want to assume that they automatically spoke perfect English.
Also, nobody was talking to me. I didn't speak Spanish and everybody else was laughing and chatting around me and I felt alone. I wished I had taken Spanish in school but I also realized that I was getting a sense of how it feels to be a minority. There's just this feeling of loneliness that comes from being separated from society based on your culture or the color of your skin.
I think that us in the "majority" often forget how it feels to be on the outside so noticeably. It's hard to imagine for us sometimes that racism exists because we never see it because, physically, we "fit in".
3 comments:
It must have felt really weird being in the minority at your work. I too, being Korean American, feel like a minority in many situations. At school, sometimes I am the only Asian in my classes, and I also feel alone. Other times though, I feel part of the majority when I am at church. I attend a Korean American church, and to be honest, I didn't even realize that in certain times of my life, I am part of the majority. I think it's important for people to understand and experience the perspective of the majority and the minority.
I also wonder about the ages of the people you worked with. I assume that you are one of the youngest, if not the youngest, employee there. I think that being younger can make one be the minority because the interaction between a teen and adult can be different to two adults.
I agree with Audrey because I think it is important to experience what it is like being a minority. It is hard. Trying to relate with people that are not like you is hard, especially when they don't speak the same language as you. Though no one likes being a minority, the more we can expose ourselves and get outside of the water we swim in, the more tolerant we can become.
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