X is for Xenophobia

xenophobia
n : an irrational fear of foreigners or strangers

I have a very personal dislike of this irrational fear and it's destructive results.

The first time a child encounters this is when it moves out into the wider world controlled by parents within their own home. As they step out the door with the child in hand, they are taking it into a foreign world. This happens in modern democracies, ancient feudal societies, and even within the so- called communal societies.

My personal story.

I felt this fear of strangers on the part of a society for the first time when my kindergarten teacher refused to let me ride a full sized, stuffed pinto horse, ever. This was when every other child in the room had ridden it at least three times over the year in which we had been given this award. I alone was singled out for this humiliation.

Not much later, just before school was out for the year, my first grade teacher was talking to the second grade teacher as I sat across from her, and I can remember exactly what was said. "Well, you get her next year, pointing at me." She wasn't smiling. I felt afraid of her. I was well behaved, quiet, and already was reading fourth grade books. I could add, subtract, multiply and divide. My father taught me at home. My sin, in their eyes, was I appeared to be what Los Angeles county feared the most, a mixed race child, something that all the "white" class feared, like some sort of future demon. Unfortunately for me, they made an assumption that my father was Mexican, and they could easily see that my mother was "white". This stigma followed me all the way through the Los Angeles School District and didn't abate when we moved inland to the schools of San Bernardino County. I can't tell you how humiliating it was to have an irrational fear rule my life, and my school experience, and my destiny. There was no reason behind it but fear, xenophobia, because my name was French and they were too ignorant to break away from the stereotyping and "profiling"long enough to see that they were wrong. Happily, when I came back from Ohio with my mother at the end of summer, we moved away, and I didn't go to that particular grade school anymore.

If this had been before World War II instead of after, I would have been forced to attend a school to which all the segregated "Mexican" and Black children were sent. It was a law that had been passed, in the county, but which was repealed sometime after the war. That law, though repealed, still followed children whose names where considered Spanish surnames, and the African America children, through the rest of their education and limited severely their opportunities. If you want to know what America was like in the Forties and Fifties, I'll tell you. If you were not wanted, it was brutal and xenophobic. Many of my fellow outcasts acted out and fell into gang patterns because of the brick wall they ran into from all white school boards and administrations who were afraid to lose power or to share it with a growing demographic of Californians who had been there since before any "whites" showed up for the gold rush. Old Spanish families were treated just as badly. I think me experiences have made me the person I am, though they could have made me into what many became, broken and discontented under achievers who passed this on to their own children.

That's my personal experience with XENOPHOBIA, well, part of it anyway but this is long enough.