"They're crowding us out."
Overheard a conversation that reflects the fears of a right-winger who is seeing his favorite gym being overrun by minorities. He appeared to be the patriarch at the table and sat with a couple in their forties or fifty. Probably, the woman was his daughter.
First, he boasted that FoxNews was number one in viewers, followed by CNN and everyone else was running in the low numbers. I tuned out of the conversation so I could enjoy my meal, but my ears perked up when the woman responded, "It's the Liberals." When I tuned back in, the conversation had changed to the topic of the gym. "They're crowding us out. You should see them. Fifty of them will come in at one time."
"Well," the woman said sheepishly, "Not that many, really."
"It's hard to get to our machines, and they're rude," he insisted.
"No, they're not rude. I find them to be very nice, actually," she replied. There was a bit of nervousness in her voice as if she figured out that the person sitting at the next table happened to be Latina.
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I've seen this resistance to newcomers before. It's very common, but also, tiring and childish for them to think that excluding minorities from a civic organization is even a viable notion. This is a conflict between two worlds that are merging together, and it is one where those who have lived in a privileged society for so long, will never adapt to it. What I hope they will figure out sooner than later, is that no one cares anymore what they think, because there is no longer room for closed societies.
More importantly, if it really is a capitalist society, then they have to know that the more people who join the organization, the better the balance sheet for the private corporation. Isn't that what they claim this country is all about?
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the older I get.
