Look, I’ll try to explain what I mean, with a couple of caveats. First, everything I’m going to say here only applies the the discussion of race within the context of the United States. The concepts of “white” and “racial privilege” within the context of other regions/continents/countries is something I’m not really capable of speaking on, so that sets the realm of discourse for the moment. Second, considering that I don’t know your own ethnicity or your location, I can’t really know what it means when you say that “around here it wouldn’t be [racist],” so I can’t really offer any commentary on the cultural divide, and even if I did know, chances are I wouldn’t be able to comment on it. So, with those two points out of the way, let me clarify why I found 1) your story idea surrounding the Latino to be racist in the context of American society, 2) why the redneck example isn’t analogous at all to the Latino example, and 3) why racism has no bearing on your own personal ethnicity.
1) Alright, here’s the initial problem I had with your idea. You take a “mighty Latino manager” and turn him into an “immigrant day laborer” with no education or ability to comprehend the English language or American society. Let’s start out with some of the systemic assumptions common Americans make when they encounter a Latino. Often, they are assumed to be undocumented immigrants from Mexico who snuck past the border in order to steal American jobs. It is assumed that they do not speak English, that they are interested in marrying Americans in order to gain citizenship, or will likely plant an “anchor baby” in order to avoid deportation. It is assumed that they are fundamentally immoral people, willing to lie cheat and steal in order to access American society, by taking social security numbers, refusing to pay taxes, lying to police officers, stealing private property, etc. This is, in the minds of many white Americans, simply who Latinos are.
So, in your story, through the American lens, what you are doing is taking a Latino man, who in spite of the systemic biases and barriers set up against him because of his race, has managed to climb into an area of society which is generally “reserved” for privileged white men, and forcefully shoving him out of that position, and turning him into the stereotypical “place” which the american racial system has reserved for him–a lowly, uneducated Latino immigrant, working a shit job no real American would want to work. You have taken a person who could have been a fully fleshed out character and turned him into a walking stereotype.
You say that “[i]f he had to be transformed to be like that its because its not normal for latinos to be an uneducated laborer and its a erroneous assumption.” You actually have it exactly backwards. In the American system of race, it is normal for the Latino to be the uneducated laborer, and abnormal for the Latino to be the manager. The act of transforming him from the latter to the former is an act of “putting him in his place,” the fundamental act which the Amercian racial system attempts to do–restrict access to avenues of power, and limit people of marginalized populations to a small selection of jobs which are “suited” for them. That is why it is racist–if you still don’t understand, then you really need to read a bit more about American Racism.
2) Your first counter argument to my claim that your story idea was racist was that the redneck TF was a) analogous to the Latino TF in form and structure, and b) not racist, and so therefore the Latino TF isn’t racist either, due to their analogous format. In fact, the two TF’s aren’t analogous at all–and that is why your counter argument fails.
Rednecks are not a racial category, although viewing them outside of the American system, it might at first glance appear to be a racial category, on the grounds that rednecks are usually depicted as being white. However, rednecks are actually a socioeconomic class, not a racial one. Being a redneck has less to do with what race you are, and more to do with your cultural upbringing and access to wealth.
That said, the stereotypical redneck is a racist white guy, right? So if all rednecks are portrayed as white, even if the class is socioeconomic, there has to be some racial component as well, it would seem. However, this is missing the point of the analogy. Within the American system, to be white at all means having access to a wide range of opportunities and privileges which are not available to people of color. Rednecks and non-rednecks alike have access to these privileges which no Latino would be able to access. Thus, turning the Latino manager into an illegal immigrant is an act of kicking someone out of the areas of the society reserved for white people–while the act of turning a lawyer into a redneck farmhand does nothing to erase his racial privilege. However, it certainly does remove much of his economic privilege–so the argument could definitely be made that the redneck TF is classist–but it certainly is not racist.
The two classes then aren’t at all analogous. Rednecks are an economic class of depressed, and generally “ignorant” white folk who are generally regarded as a bit of a joke while still having access to the privileges of being white in America, while illegal immigrants are completely excluded and demonized by that same system. The two changes are not at all analogous–the Latino TF is racist; the redneck TF is classist.
3) Your own race has nothing to do with your capacity to be a racist. The fact that you aren’t white doesn’t prevent you from adopting and agreeing with the American system and it’s racial categories. A black man can have the exact same thoughts about illegal immigrants as a white man, and both of them would be racists. To say otherwise, would be to say that all white people would have to be racists, by virtue of the fact that some white people are racists.
Racism also isn’t automatically triggered simply because two individuals are of different ethnicity. Studies have been done which have found African-American children to be fundamentally biased against their own skin color–by the age of five or six, they have already been trained by the American racial system to view white people as inherently beautiful, and common black features as ugly. These children are, in a basic sense, internalizing the white racial view that black people are to be valued less than white people. It’s totally fucked up. So you, a non-white person writing a story about rednecks? No, that would not be racist. At most it would be classist. However, a Latino writing about a Latino manager being forcefully turned into an immigrant day laborer? Unless he intends it to be satire, it’s still racist.
Hope that clarifies some things for you.
Bracken's Corner 