Hispanics in Northwest Arkansas

1580 Words4 Pages

Hispanics in Northwest Arkansas

Imagine having to leave your hometown, where you have lived all of your life, in search of another job. You do not want to move, but at the same time you want to provide food and a decent lifestyle for you and your family. News arrives that an abundance of jobs are available in another part of the country. Hoping for the best, you pack your bags and head for employment. Your kids are saddened about the situation, but they understand the need for relocation. During the travel to the new area, you and your family begin to get excited about living in a different place, even though everyone regrets leaving friends and family behind.

Once you arrive, however, your optimism turns into a living nightmare. Your daughter comes home from elementary school crying because somebody called her a “wetback”. Then your son comes home from middle school with a black eye because he was jumped by a group of white guys who said they did not like “spics”. This not only horrifies you as a parent but astonishes you at the same time, because you come from a diverse place in which your siblings were not told racial slurs or woefully stereotyped as illegal aliens. You can not stop thinking about your kids’ first day at school, but you know you must pull yourself together and go to work.

This is just one example of the many terrible experiences Hispanic families have to deal with when arriving in northwest Arkansas. Why are these people made so unwelcome? This is a question many people seem to have a hard time answering, because the bottom line is that racism still exist in our community and many people do not choose to recognize it as a significant problem. These people search for excuses like, “They ...

... middle of paper ...

...spanic origin.” Since two years has passed since that broadcast, I can assure you that the figure is greater than that by now. I know a lot of people were raised to hate other races, but it would be so much better for everyone if people would rid themselves of their ignorance and wake up to reality. I am afraid the situation is only going to get worse if we do not, because diversity in this area is inevitable. The old saying, “If you can’t beat um’, then you might as well join um’,” should be considered, because Hispanic people are growing in number and are thus becoming more and more reluctant to be persuaded to leave. The racists are fighting a battle that they can not win, and who likes to fight all of the time anyway? Life would be so much better for whites, Hispanics, and all other races if we could all just learn to accept each other and our differences.

Open Document