All Latin tonight
The “all black tonight” misunderstanding that I wrote about recently reminded me of another incident that happened a couple years back. I was with the same friend and we decided to stop into a club that we had never been in before. The bouncer was a middle-aged white woman. Conversation went something like:
Her: You know it’s Latin night?
Us: (Thinking maybe it was some special event) No… Does that mean we can’t go in?
Her: Oh no, you can go in.
Us: Is there an extra cover?
Her: No, there’s no cover.
Us: (Confused) OK… thanks…
OK so we didn’t actually talk in unison. That would be a little weird. I just can’t remember who said what.
We walked into the club and sure enough it was all Latin-American people and Latin-American music. OK so we stood out a bit, but still - the only apparent reason she told us it was Latin Night was because she saw two white boys and thought “I’d better warn these guys”.
They had a big screen playing funny clips of stuff. So we mostly watched the TV and the people salsa dancing, had a drink, and left. Got to my car and there were no hubcaps on it.
What?! I’m just saying I have aluminum alloy wheels and I don’t have hubcaps. What did you think I meant? Some people can be so racist!
This is unrelated, but I’m reminded of this kid from high school. I went to a junior/senior high school so it was 7th through 12th grade. I was a senior at the time. I got to lunch one day and there was this little 7th grade Latino kid sitting with my friends. He spoke English fine and everything so I think he grew up here but his parents were from Puerto Rico. BTW, I grew up in a small upstate NY town… not a lot of minorities there.
A tangent to a tangent: I was talking to someone once who asked about my hometown “not a lot of black people there huh?”. I gave a little fake chuckle because I thought he was just making a comment (albeit strange) on the lack of diversity in upstate NY. So I said “no” and before I could continue, he said, with a straight face, “good”. It was a little uncomfortable after that.
Anyway, I assumed the others knew this kid but after asking around, I don’t think anyone did. He was just sitting there and wouldn’t move when we showed up. We’d tell him to get lost because who wants some random 7th grader sitting at your table? But he’d just ignore us and stick around anyway, and none of us really cared so he just became part of our table. I guess he didn’t have friends and just felt cool hanging out with seniors - but someone should have told this guy we were the uncool senior table. His name was Paco. We’d still tell him to move all the time if he was in our seat but we weren’t mean about it. It was more of a playful thing. He knew we didn’t mind him being there, as long as we had a spot to sit.
Anyway I bring all this up because Paco wasn’t his real name. We just called him Paco and he seemed fine with that. There was some kid named Paco on 3-2-1 Contact, which we all used to watch when we were younger, and that’s where we got the name. I realize now that was a little culturally-insensitive. That would be like calling an Indian kid Apu. We didn’t mean anything by it, but it still wasn’t cool. I wonder where Paco is now. And what his real name is.
October 15th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
Mmmm, the name Paco makes me think Taco. And the word Taco makes me hungry for uh, Tacos. And associating Taco with the name Paco is not at all racist, because Tacos are from Mexico, not Puerto Rico. Der.