Things White People Don’t Like

Those who know me personally know that I don’t wear my ethnicity on my sleeve. Regardless of my actual appearance, I speak English without the typical hint of a Spanish accent. Even in the context of California in the 21st century, this is enough to throw off even the most culturally astute person. “Do you speak Spanish?” is a typical question I get from people who are meeting me for the first time. I have thus gotten used to being able to assert my bi-culturalness in the face of the doubts of first impressions. Indeed, in spite of a cultural snobbery that I have been very careful in cultivating, the barrio kid comes out in very inopportune moments. (AG once had to explain to me at a table what a “charger” was.) And in spite of having been able to maneuveur through white society quite well, there are still things I don’t get, and things that I know that, in order to like or understand them, you just have to be Mexican.

Here are three that I have found so far:

 1. Mexican music: White people are incapable of liking Mexican music. While it is not uncommon to see some white kid from the suburbs bumping some rap music from his car, or a bunch of college co-eds going out salsa dancing, you will never see a bunch of white people dancing the quebradita or blasting the latest Intocable hit (complete with accordion and yells at opportune moments) from their phat ride. That is because Mexican music (banda, norteña, etc.) is really just Spanish country music pumped up on bad taste-steroids. I give you exhibit A:

Notice that no white person would ever take music like this seriously. It’s not that it is aesthetically inferior per se. Some of it can be quite lyrical, clever, and catchy. But if you didn’t grow up with it, it is cheesy to say the least. My father, the stereotypical tejano, hates this music. On his side, I am a fifth generation American, and I know that this stuff is almost embarrassing as an artform. But for some reason, even though I know I shouldn’t, I still listen to it. So I have concluded that it must be something genetic: only Mexicans are vaccinated against the lameness radiation that this music emanates. This is useful to keep in mind if you ever want to get rid of a group of white people. Have you ever seen a group of white people in a kitchen or construction site where Mexican music is being played? If they go by, it’s in a real hurry, as if they were fleeing a fire or a decaying dead body. So there is no doubt about it. White people will listen to some Celia Cruz or Tito Puente. It might even get them some much needed coolness points. But they are staying away from the Vicente Fernandez or Ramon Ayala. Neta.

2. Eating certain animals or parts of an animal (this excludes certain ethic groups and the South): One of the most Mexican events I have attended in recent memory was my cousin’s wedding. Like all the upstanding members of my family, he found himself a good Mexican girl to marry. Their wedding had the holy trinity of Mexican-American music at it: mariachis, a banda, and a DJ playing hip-hop music. But guess what the main course was? Birria. That’s right, goat meat. And it was really good. But would white people serve goat meat at a wedding? Probably not.

And of course, there are parts of an animal that white people just won’t eat. I had a friend from Guadalajara who told me that if you want any parts of the animal that white people wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole in your taco (tongue, brains, eyeball, etc.) you have to get to the Mexican taco stand early or you’ll be out of luck. At my house, the typical strong dish of a Sunday brunch (my my….”brunch”. That sounds so white) is menudo, which, for the less than culinary literate, is a spicy stew made with hominy and tripe. It’s spicy. It’s slimy. It’s chewy. And it’s really good at curing a hangover. But I don’t know if a white person could eat it. I didn’t like it growing up, and while I can scarf down a bowl now without much effort, I have to admit that it is an acquired taste.

3. Too many people in a house/car: We have all heard the jokes about Mexicans being piled in twenty to a car in a subcompact. The problem with this stereotype is that it’s absolutely true. White people have a sense of “enough is enough”. Mexicans don’t know how to say “no”. They can defy space, they can stretch resources, they can fit one more person in a closet, no problem….

Growing up living in my grandmother’s house, it seemed like every week a new “relative” showed up. “It’s your uncle,” was the typical introduction, which in my family of 73 distant aunts and uncles on one side alone, was sort of like saying, “he’s a carbon-based life form” or “he’s a biped”. They would always come, stay for a while, and move on. It took me some time as a youth to realize that white people would not board nor ask to be boarded by relatives that had not seen them in ten years. White people just aren’t like that.

It’s not that white people are less charitable. It’s just that they would prefer charity from a distance in the comfort of their own semi-empty homes. If someone you haven’t seen in a long time shows up to bunk down with you, you might ask some basic questions that never occur to Mexicans to ask such as, “Are you sure you have no other place to stay?”, “Can you pay me rent?” or “Are you a pervert/ axe murderer/ going to steal all my stuff while I’m sleeping?” Maybe Mexicans just have a protective force field that protects them from such misfortunes.  If we do, I at least didn’t get the memo. To this day, I think the greatest luxury in life is using a bathroom that I don’t have to share with eight other nearly perfect strangers.

Other minor things also come to mind:

1. Having a grandmother that kind of creeps you out with her scary religious art that gave you nightmares as a child and her strange remedies that border on witchcraft.

2. Having verbal quirks when you speak English such as saying, “I know, hah?” and “Estoooooopid!”

3. Having friends/relatives who are in jail or in a gang, etc.

…but that can be for another day.

I’ll start posting serious stuff again tomorrow. Sorry for wasting your time.