One man's take on his culture's stereotypes

Galician proverb: Xente nova e leña verde, todo é fume. (Young people and green firewood, all is smoke)

One man's take on his culture's stereotypes

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Dear Mexican: I’m a civil rights lawyer. I sue the San Diego Minutemen.Whenever the Minutemen are accused of being racist they always say something like, “I’m part-Hispanic,” or they’ll note that some of their members are Mexican.This last claim is actually true.Some of the most zealous Minutemen are actually Mexican-Americans.I’m 100 percent Irish.I don’t understand why the Mexican members of the Minutemen can associate themselves with a group that is so obviously racist. Can you explain? -Mick Who Likes Spics

Dear Mick: Gracias for legally sparring with the vilest section of the Minuteman movement, but you gotta give us Mexis some credit. Just like micks became some of the most racist, corrupt pogue mahones in America, Mexicans can also hate their recently arrived brethren – it’s called assimilation, and it’s inevitable in this country for even the dumbest mojado. And just like micks can be stupid, so can Mexicans. For instance, a recent Arizona State University study showed that 81 percent of registered Latino voters in the Copper State oppose its anti-immigrant SB 1070 bill – the overwhelming majority of la raza, but that still leaves 19 percent of Arizonan wabs supporting a measure that would have them kicked across the Sonoran Desert in a heartbeat.

The supermarket in my predominantly Mexican neighborhood has an astonishingly large inventory of douches on the shelves of the personal-care aisle. It’s easily ten times the stock of what the market carries in a more-Anglo neighborhood a couple of miles away. What gives with the douche fixation? -La Gringa

Dear Gabacha: Tú sabes – backward, warped views of human anatomy influenced by culture and religion. The 2006 study, “Vaginal Douches and Other Feminine Hygiene Products: Women’s Practices and Perceptions of Product Safety,” published in Maternal and Child Health Journal, found 15 percent of Hispanic (there’s that word again!) women douche, compared with 9.1 percent of gabachas. The same journal published another study in 2008, “Vaginal Douching Among Latina Immigrants,” which tracked the same douching rates for mexicanas. Almost all the science shows that douching is about as healthy for a woman’s panocha as Tapatío, so Gringa: por favor educate your Mexi hermanas about the risks.