Exclusionary Threats in a Pennsylvania Sports Bar
D, G, and I were enjoying our beers and having a conversation at a sports bar in a college town in Pennsylvania. D and I are from Costa Rica, G from the Dominican Republic. Naturally, we were speaking in Spanish. D is a lean, wiry triathlete. He is brown-sugar skinned and at that time cropped his black hair very short with clippers. I have a lighter skin tone but was tanned that summer, and I had slightly curled, dirty blond hair then. G is black-coffee-with-a-drop-of-milk skinned. He wore his black hair in thick, free curls. He is one of the kindest, most joyful persons I know, with a soft manner and an easy smile about him.
As we talked, I noticed there was a small group of ROTC students from the university in a table near us drinking some pitchers of beer. All of them were white and had their hair cropped very short, like D, but dirty blond or brown. They had a sports-jock, military air about them. I just noticed but paid no mind to it. We continued our conversation.
When we were finishing our beers, G got up to go to the restroom. D and I asked for the bill and continued talking. We were engrossed and did not notice that G took a while to return. We had already paid the bill when he arrived, in haste. He had a worried look about him and just said, with urgency in his voice and his facial expression: "Let's go."
D and I grasped the urgency, got up, and left right away. As we walked away from the bar, G explained. When he went to the bathroom, some of the military guys from the other table followed him into it. They cornered him in the bathroom and started harassing him, asking him where he was from and what he was doing there. Why did he speak Spanish rather than English? Didn't he know he was in "America"? Then they became threatening: "Get the fuck out. We don't want you here. Go back to where you came from."
G did not argue. He had a sensible mind and a cool temper. He also had a lovely wife, a caring, Anglo-American woman from Pennsylvania, waiting for him at home. So he walked away.
Of the three of us, I had lived in the United States the longest. I had experienced other tense confrontations before, charged with threat, in Arkansas and Pennsylvania. But my mind was not as reasonable and my temper not as cool as G's. (I write about some of those experiences in my book, Loving Immigrants in America.)
I admired his prudence and sensibleness in walking away and shrugging off those guys' violent, exclusionary threats - exclusionary in the sense of McKenna and Pratt.
Responding reasonably and sensibly to exclusionary aggression is very difficult. Later I will write about my ethical recommendation for responding sensibly. But let me stay on track now and continue by discussing pluralism as a philosophical alternative to exclusionary and assimilationist attitudes towards difference.
As we talked, I noticed there was a small group of ROTC students from the university in a table near us drinking some pitchers of beer. All of them were white and had their hair cropped very short, like D, but dirty blond or brown. They had a sports-jock, military air about them. I just noticed but paid no mind to it. We continued our conversation.
When we were finishing our beers, G got up to go to the restroom. D and I asked for the bill and continued talking. We were engrossed and did not notice that G took a while to return. We had already paid the bill when he arrived, in haste. He had a worried look about him and just said, with urgency in his voice and his facial expression: "Let's go."
D and I grasped the urgency, got up, and left right away. As we walked away from the bar, G explained. When he went to the bathroom, some of the military guys from the other table followed him into it. They cornered him in the bathroom and started harassing him, asking him where he was from and what he was doing there. Why did he speak Spanish rather than English? Didn't he know he was in "America"? Then they became threatening: "Get the fuck out. We don't want you here. Go back to where you came from."
G did not argue. He had a sensible mind and a cool temper. He also had a lovely wife, a caring, Anglo-American woman from Pennsylvania, waiting for him at home. So he walked away.
Of the three of us, I had lived in the United States the longest. I had experienced other tense confrontations before, charged with threat, in Arkansas and Pennsylvania. But my mind was not as reasonable and my temper not as cool as G's. (I write about some of those experiences in my book, Loving Immigrants in America.)
I admired his prudence and sensibleness in walking away and shrugging off those guys' violent, exclusionary threats - exclusionary in the sense of McKenna and Pratt.
Responding reasonably and sensibly to exclusionary aggression is very difficult. Later I will write about my ethical recommendation for responding sensibly. But let me stay on track now and continue by discussing pluralism as a philosophical alternative to exclusionary and assimilationist attitudes towards difference.
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