Monday, March 26, 2012

A Texas mayor, a mural and a Mexican stereotype - CNN.com

A Texas mayor, a mural and a Mexican stereotype - CNN.com: ...So how ironic that what we are talking about is a proposed artistic re-creation in his city that would depict, among other things, a Mexican sleeping against a wall.

Oh, him again. That popular and yet offensive image: a Mexican in a big sombrero asleep against a wall or, more often, under a cactus. He's the Mexican-American community's Charlie Chan, our cigar store Indian, our black Sambo.

He personifies and perpetuates the wrongheaded idea that the reason Mexico lost half its territory in the land grab known as the U.S.-Mexican War and the reason that Mexican-Americans have been mistreated and discriminated against in the century and a half since then is, well, because they were inattentive, passive, asleep.