From CNN: A pizza joint in Dallas received death threats and hate mail since it catered to its office, I mean, allowed customers to pay in pesos. One email stated, "This is the United States of America and not the United States of Mexico." According to the business, 60% of its customers are hispanic. So far pesos payment accounts for 10% of the sales.
This seems to be very peculiar, especially because of the location. When I lived in New York, no one cared whether or not customers paid for their goods in American or Canadian currency. Most of the sales clerks knew the currency exchange rate, customers would pay, and then receive any change in U.S. currency.
In Texas, the story is quite different. While some of the outcry is over "illegal immigration" this does not make sense. Either the business is doing an excellent job of attractive new customers on a consistent basis or the business caters to illegals that have an unlimited supply of pesos. Both of these seem unlikely. I do not want to speculate, though I fear I know, what this really suggests.
Criticism of this business plan seems as ridiculous as towns that make either English or Spanish the official language of a given subdivision.
In both issues, it seems to make an "other" out of a group. Worse, one strategy in the immigration debate is to characterize any non-white as non-American. You can only be "American" if speak English and look "American."
Maybe, if more laws like this pass, we should make a requirement that Americans should speak and write correctly. Isn't that the next logical step?
3 comments:
On the road to B/CS, near Hearne, there's a liquor store with a big sign out front that reads "American Owned." My response is always, "yes, I assumed it was." But there's something beneath the surface of that sign, a voice (with a bit of a drawl, of course) that says the same thing you suggest in your post: "I'm white, and I speak English." It's a not-so-subtle way of calling Americans of non-Anglo-European descent non-Americans. Cloaking racism in patriotism is so clever, so Texas, and so Republican.
I saw a similar sign in Houston this weekend. It is somewhere on I-10, east of the city. It is for a hotel.
Of course, where does catering to an audience or a consumer cross the line? I am not sure where the bounday is. I seem to be fine with the pizza for pesos arrangement; yet, when someone turns the table, it makes me think twice about the business.
Is it the imblance of power?
Is it that in the second example, the hotel asks people to conform to that culture while in the Pizza example it provides multiple cultures to coexist without a problem?
Is it that when one seems to deny one group by favoring another (American versus foreigners), then who is to say that the owner will not exclude another group? You can fill in any group here: favor whites over blacks, protestants over catholics, Longhorns over Cornhuskers. (The slippery slope).
You are correct with the cloak: there seems to be something behind the veil that makes me uncomfortable.
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