While I was unaware of the discrimination that permeated the fabric of our society, in my early childhood, we were sheltered by the neighborhoods that we lived in. Everyone was like us. I knew it existed at a young age, maybe because of my love of reading. I knew that I was not considered equal to the white man. I knew that they were the bosses and we were the laborers. I noticed it when I was with my grandparents and their family picking cotton, and we were ordered to pick cotton right after days of heavy rain. Our feet would sink into the mud. I rebelled and refused to pick cotton; my uncle got a cotton branch and started beating me with it. I would have still been being beaten, but my mother begged me to please pick cotton.
The location of the cotton field was in Driscoll, Texas, which was known for its discrimination against Mexican Americans.
I certainly saw it when our high school band stopped at a restaurant and refused to serve the Black band members. We all got up and left after ordering.
I left home for college at a young age, and my first serious girlfriend was white. I remember her father telling us that we had to think about the children that would be half-breeds.
I remember my college professor telling me that he did not know that Mexicans were smart.
I remember the police officer in Houston who pointed a gun at my head because he thought I looked like someone else.
I remember many things, and the movie.”Six Triple Eight,” brought back some of those thoughts when they were on the train, and one of the actresses stated that she was told that she had failed the test. I was also told that I failed the Marines Officers Exam when I took it to get into the program where they paid for one’s college. I know I did not fail that test. But what can one do?
The movie is about the courage and abuse that people who were not white had to accept in this country because they were not white in a country of white people.
If only for a moment, if one can place themselves in the shoes of those women, maybe, just maybe, you will get to walk an inch in their shoes.