Earlier this morning, I was reading a New York Times article about a woman chess champion. There was a part where the article suggests that no one considered her intelligent because she was a woman. That reminded me that as a “Mexican” looking American, people who looked like me would not have been considered smart in the America I grew up in. In the late 1970s, I decided to take some business classes at the University of Houston. I took macro and microeconomics classes and earned A’s in both. While taking the second class, I ran into the professor who taught those classes. I remember his words well, “I didn’t know Mexicans were smart.”
It was not the only time that the way I looked affected how I was treated. The parents of a white girl that I dated in the early 1970s often would make sure that they told us that even if we managed to stay together, how would our “Mutt” children be affected? Or the police officer that stopped me and my finance at night because someone reported that a “Mesican” had hit a car. I guess I was the first “Mesican” the officer encountered. He made me stand in the rain and cold while he ran my driver’s license.
There are rules for people who look like me and Elie Mystal and people like Trump and Paxton.
.
Our ancestor created the concept of Zero when Europeans were still living in the dark ages.
