As of late, I've let myself become irritated by things that don't generally get me that pumped up. I was raised on tolerance, not acceptance. I believe that we should let others live their lives and we ours. I don't have to understand why people do the things they do. I certainly don't have to agree with it. I just have to respect that it's their right to do them. If it's not going to cause harm why should it matter right?

I really thought that we had come a long long way in our way of looking at things as a people. I figured that since my hometown is so racially diverse that others must be much the same way......Wrong!! Well evidently that's wrong. More and more people as of late are wanting to come out in defense of the poor minorities....Who exactly are these minorities we hear about? Mexican, Italian, Russian, Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, or maybe Korean.

I'm half Italian. My great grandparents came over on the boat and my grand parents were born here in the states. They were treated like dirt, as were most immigrants. They were looked at as less than real people in many cases. They didn't care, they went about their business and built something they could be proud of. They got together with other people that understood their language and they formed a little community and took to farming. Then they learned the language of the land and taught their children (my grandparents). They never let them forget where they came from though. They never let them forget what that country gave them before they came here. My grandparents taught my mom english at 5 years old because they didn't want her to have to struggle in school. Turns out that it wasn't a too uncommon occurance around here at the time. There were many Italian immigrants doing the same thing. Mom doesn't remember much Italian anymore, but she does remember how proud her parents were to see that she was able to communicate in English.

I see the same thing happening with Spanish. Many families realize that it's a head start to get their children speaking English. They speak it more often than their parents did when they first got here. The grandchildren are pretty much adapted to American life by the time they get to school in most cases that I see. Now of course there are some people that don't think they should have to learn the language, or the customs, and to them I say fine but don't expect too much sympathy from me. If I was to move to another country my first order of business would be to learn the language of the land so I could communicate.

As I ramble on about this I realize that is not my real point though. The real point of all this is pretty simple. It doesn't matter if you came from Cuba, or Portugal, or China, or Japan. That has no bearing on you as a person. You still have hopes, dreams, ambitions, goals, and you can still be happy or sad and yes you can still get your feelings hurt. So why is it that people want to judge any of us on our skin tone, or on our accent? Why the hell does it matter if I say yellow instead of hello? In my community I hear the word Si as much as yes. I understand it, it's not a big deal. I also understand that Buenos Dias or Buenos Tardes is easy enough to respond to just like hello or good afternoon. That has become part of our culture in California.

I am more irritated by the need for us to guage everything by what race somebody is. I am a human...Not Black, not Hispanic, not Mediterranean. HUMAN...We are the same, but as my son has pointed out to me some of us have a better tan. Let's try and get to know somebody before we pass judgement on them. Let's try and have some dialogue before we automatically assume somebody means us harm.

The census has really shown me how little we have learned in 234 years as a country. We holler and gripe about equality and then we want to split up the people so we can see if there is yet another way to divide up the pie and show that one group or another gets less. My town is 30% "white" and 61% "hispanic". Does that mean a whole lot? Not to me it doesn't. It means that we have better Mexican food than a lot of other communitites that's for sure. It also means that I get the chance to learn a little something about Mexican culture that I might not know, and it also means that somebody else might get to learn a little something about an italian culture that they didn't know.

Let's try talking to each other before we start judging each other by our last names and skin tone. Let's watch our kids playing with other kids from different backgrounds with no more expectations than to have a playmate for the afternoon. Maybe we could learn how to finally treat each other with some level of respect.

Black, White, Brown, Yellow...Why does it matter at all?