Hate sweeps into your life in the form of a dollar-store cashier who speaks no English.
The search for raisins to accompany the box of oatmeal in my left hand forced the interaction. I walked up to her and asked, in a Michigan-drawl with a slanted smile “Can you point me towards the raisins?” Then that look, that immigrant-in-INS-headlights gaze of fear, as she snapped back at me. “No habla.”
I shook my head and raised a hand, the universal signal for “Don’t worry,” and walked away. I’m an adult. I’m capable of finding raisins.
My month in Miami has taught me two sociological lessons. One about Shame; the other, Hate. There was shame in her eyes when I asked for raisins. Worsened by my impatient dismissal, which implied that she had failed me. She felt shame because she understood me. She had ventured beyond the parameters of Little Cuba, into the English-speaking America. She empathized with my confusion.
But she also knew that I would walk away from our minor interaction cursing her failed attempts at adjusting, at becoming an American, at learning English, at making it easier for me.
Shame was Lesson One because she was right. I walked away assuming that I would be able to find a box of raisins, but I could not. I walked up and down the Dollar Store’s aisles, rummaging through Goya juice boxes, hunting between bags of dried prunes, cursing the careless inventory patterns, cursing the ignorant cashier more.
I could not find raisins because she didn’t speak English, my brain screamed.
Later, I knew: I had mistakenly cast the trappings of my failure at the feet of the foreigner. Raisins, jobs, location, crime, money, the matter of the it is insignificant, the cast of the blame is significant, truth be told.
The trouble with this line of logic is that I do not share it. I am an advocate for patience and tolerance. I cringe every time a white man delivers a sermon blaming minorities and the poor for the ills of this nation. Hate is what I feel towards people who propagate hate against foreigners to explain their own inferior self-concept, to explain their own failures.
But for all my logic and convivial spirit I hated that cashier more and more with every raisin-less aisle. If she had only learned English enough to be competent at her job I would never had realized my incompetence at finding raisins.
Hate sweeps into your life in the form of a dollar-store cashier who speaks no English.
Noticing my aimlessness, my failing, my hollow pursuit, the cashier sought a co-worker. This co-worker spoke a scintilla of English, but had a Chomskyian command of the language of comparison. I looked at her and said raisins while motioning in the direction of the oatmeal box still in my left hand, hoping that Cubans were familiar with our culinary pairings.
She nodded and walked me back to the prune aisle, where she pointed to a box of raisins. Boxes of raisins, actually.
I purchased my oatmeal and raisins, I paid in cash, I received the right denomination in return, I thanked her – Gracias. I was ashamed; Gracias left my lips with the timbre of a confessional. I walked back to my car the same open-minded, liberal, humanitarian I was when I walked into the Dollar Store. But for ten minutes courtesy and dignity left me, turning me into that which I hate.
I found hate over a box of raisins and for that I am ashamed.
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