JE#4: El Paso, 文化, esquizofrenia, and exactly 5.0 Indians

El Paso undergoes a cultural schizophrenia because of a contemporary denial of its history. Many students mentioned (including El Paso natives) that they have never heard of Carmelita Torres. What she did is so freaking revolutionary! And, oh my God(dess!), no one has even heard of her!! When we read about Texas history, all we can seem to remember is 'remember the Alamo'  (er sumthin like dat), but never do we hear about the Chinese citizens that lived there. Nor does our Americanized history recognize anything other than a negative connotations of Mexicans there. But there is so much to uncover.

The Chinese Exclusion Act forbade any more immigration from China into the United States for a cool minute (a reaaaaally loooooooong minute). And it perpetuated the extreme racism that Chinese experienced in El Paso. 

I mean, we don't want anymore chinamen coming in, why are we going to treat these ones right? Ummm, that sounds mean, let's not include that in American History... Oh and weren't there Mexicans in El Paso (pronounced Ewwll Pah!-sow) too or something?? Didn't we make them go through some disinfection plants or something? Yeah, but that sounds real Nazi-ish, let's not remember that through our History Books. ('REMEMBER THE ALAMO REMEMBER THE ALAMO REMEMBER THE ALAMOOOOO' whispers a ghost somewhere in the back of the American Unconscious). (Somewhere in this lost historical world there are cemetaries of burnt corpses. Accidents happen, move on). OK OK OK, so now let's look at what we got for El Paso history... ... ... hmmmmm, white people came in because it is our Manifest Destiny. :') This brings a tear to my eye :') :') :') :')

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:'D

But, El Paso cannot see its real history with these tears getting in the way! Who's Carmelita Torres? What Chinese? What Mexicans? What Blacks? We counted, I swear to God, and there's only like, 5 Indians there!

The 2 images that struck out to me the most were p. 205's Dr. H. A. Magruder's "I Don't Work For Negroes" advertisement. Nobody ever speaks about the doctors who happily refused to work for blacks. At least they were honest about it back then, unlike nowadays. (Did y'all hear about today's Affirmative Action Bake Sale?? If it wasn't for the cultural schizophrenia of White America, this sign would of made a fine decoration for this campus' entrance!) I also enjoyed p. 210-211's image of the boy on the burro that was given a hat to wear by the photographer to make the image authentic for Whitey. Someone might look at this image nowadays and think it's a pretty image of El Paso's inclusion of Mexicans after the Treaty. Ohhhhh the cultural schizophrenia! How it erases important aspects of our POC history. How easily we have forgotten all this. How sad. How humiliating. I wish more people can remember this. But, because of the horrid whitewashing of our collective history, it's probably not going to happen anytime soon. But if we're not going to remember the Chinese Exclusion Act, or the other modes of rampant racism, or just about anything that is not nice and white

at least卐 remember the Zyklon B 卐