Russell Brand: "When I was poor and I complained ..."

[Cleita]

47. Back in my salad days, minorities were always pictured as shiftless

and lazy, always going around with hat in one hand and the other hand stretched out for begging. Yet simple observation would prove otherwise. Working in the fields alongside the braceros, the Americans could not match the productivity of Mexican workers. Traveling on the trains with the African Americans working on the Pullmans, they did everything and they did it well working long hours between destinations and they did it with a smile.

The immigrant Chinese family worked long hours in their small business, laundries and restaurants to get ahead. None of the immigrant workers were looking for a handout. All of them were poor until some of them were able to achieve the American dream for their children. Later in life, working in the restaurant industry and at a large university, I saw the industriousness of the workers there who were born poor and trying to better themselves.

Yet, just recently I was on a date with a man who told me that affirmative action African Americans at his government job they had been forced to hire didn't do any work and when they did they were incompetent. I suddenly got a headache and told him, I didn't think we were on the same page so I wouldn't be seeing him again. His parting words to me were that it was okay because he knew plenty of Mexican women who liked to fuck because they didn't work very hard at getting jobs.

And now I hear all the time that the homeless panhandling are in business and actually go home to fancy houses in late model cars they park a few blocks away. I shake my head at some of the meanness I encounter from people who are well off and who go to church on Sunday.