Witnessing

by Donna Schoenkopf

Here is a letter to the editor of our local newspaper that I wrote recently.

To the Editor:

I am concerned about the anti-Latino sentiment here in Oklahoma. It is unAmerican and unChristian. I can't do anything about Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, Rush Limbaugh, or the rest of the anti-Latino media, but I can ask you, my neighbors, to put yourself in their (Latinos) place.

In fact, we Oklahomans WERE in their place during Dust Bowl times. We were reviled, looked down on, paid the lowest wages for the hardest work in the fields, and had guards turn us “Okies” back from California's borders because of how “undesirable” we were.

How soon we forget.

Oklahoma has the most stringent, draconian law on the books regarding undocumented residents.

On a cab ride from the airport to Oklahoma City a while back, the cab driver pointed out that we were in a “bad” part of town. He said we should never get out of our car here, that there were “Mexicans” in the area and that they would rob us and slit our throats.

This, I am sorry to report, is a common sentiment.

If I use a single Spanish word I am asked why I don’t use English. (This is one of my pet peeves. Our language is composed of words from every ethnic group. In fact, we live in Pottawatomie County, in the State of Oklahoma, and in Shawnee and Tecumseh, all Native American words.)

I get hate e-mails about how “they” are ruining our economy, our school system, our medical system, our culture. These e-mails are full of false “facts” and downright cruelty.

I’ve had years of working with, and in, the Latino community, and as a group they are hard-working, God-fearing, good people, who want to provide for their families and are willing to go to great lengths to do it. Rather than sucking the money out of our economy, they support it in many ways, including providing a huge cushion in Social Security.

Making fun of their language, their music, their style, their culture, shows fear of “other,” much like what people did to the “Okies” when they went to California.

By the way, Latinos have been on the North American continent LONG before the Europeans came. They were here first, my friends.

Por favor, no mas palabras odios con respecto a Latinos.

Donna Schoenkopf
Tecumseh

The phone rang the morning it ran in the Opinion section of the local newspaper.

It was my brilliant and funny ex-husband. (He gave me my progressive politics, but, as he says, he created a monster.)

He has coffee every morning with his buddies, almost all of whom are diametrically opposed to his political leanings. They have arguments. Sometimes it gets so intense that he has to cool it for a while. I imagine it’s like sitting around the cracker barrel in the old general store back in the day.

Discussions like those sharpen the mind and hone the philosophy.

He sounded a little concerned that I should step out in public and insult folks about being racist. He agrees, of course, with what I say, but probably not in the manner and forum in which I say it.

This, after all, is the Land of Nice.

He said my letter was a topic of conversation at coffee this morning and one of his buddies said he wasn’t a racist and as long as Mexicans were here legally he had no problem with them.

He and I had a long, wandering conversation, ending with semi-agreement on how to deal with racism.

I hung up and went about my business, trying to figure out how to hang the blinds over my west sliding glass doors. (The heat is INTENSE in the late afternoon.) I poured the screws and plastic thingies on the couch to look at them and consider my options.

The phone rang again.

“Hello?”

“Is this Donna Schoenkopf who wrote the letter in today’s paper?”

“Yes?”

I was prepared for a death threat or a harangue or a “Go back to Russia!” speech.

But no.

It was the sweetest, dearest, kindliest phone call I have ever gotten from a stranger.

She called to tell me how grateful she was for my letter. She said she had been dealing with this new racism for a while and that she taught, every three weeks, a Sunday School class at her church.

“They are the new people to pick on, after the blacks,” she said.

And then, her voice catching slightly, she said that she was about to cry because she had such deep feelings about it and she had been thinking about this very subject for a long time.

She said that the Bible tells us that the land doesn’t belong to people, it belongs to God. And that when people declare that other people cannot be there, it makes her heart hurt.

I told her that Jesus’ parable about the Good Samaritan was what made the dehumanizing of Latinos egregious to me.

We talked for a long time. I thanked her for making my day and felt very honored that she had called me.

I was deeply touched. I didn’t tell her that I am an atheist now, but wasn’t always. I love the teachings of the Church. They have been my education in ethics. Except for the sex part and the hierarchical part. And, oh yeah, the God part. But brotherly love is the foundation of what is good about the Church and, consequently, me.

I respect people’s religion. I truly enjoy the Jehovah’s Witness ladies and the Mormons and the Buddhists and the Presbyterians. It’s just that God is ... gone. For me.

Well, this was all pretty emotional for me and I decided to walk to the mailbox to pick up my mail.

When I got back there was a message on my machine.

“Hello, this is Bill Brown (I’ll call him). I read your article in the paper and wanted to talk to you about it. You have some statements that I don’t agree with. I’ll call you later. You sound pretty young. You must be at work.”

That was intriguing.

But I forgot about it and went about my daily business.

About an hour ago the phone rang again.

“Hello?”

“Hello, is this Donna?”

“Yes?”

“This is Bill Brown. I called earlier.”

“Oh, yes! I’m so honored that you called. That you thought enough about it to call, good or bad.”

A long conversation ensued. He went to school at USC in the 50s, just down the street from where I taught in inner-city Los Angeles. He ended up as a principal in Huntington Park, a place I know well, having a dear friend, Esme, who lives there. He told me all about his life and that he was 74 and that he was surprised I was such a nice person and he did have differences with me about Lou Dobbs et al, but oh well.

He said he’d like to meet me sometime, but that he lived in GEORGIA!

I was flabbergasted.

I told him, sincerely, that the thing I loved most of all was talking politics and religion, forbidden subjects, and that I LOVED conversations with folks with whom I disagreed, and that I love having friends who make me think and that I have never dissolved a friendship over politics. OR religion.

I pride myself on that. Not that I’m all that open-minded. I am convinced I am right. But if you only talk to people who agree with you, it gets pretty bland, pretty fast.

It was an interesting day. My kind of day.

Three very different people connected today, each concerned about the world and each convinced they were right.

We spoke truth to each other.

We witnessed.

Amen.

And I never got my blinds hung.

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