In these two chapters there were a lot of issues brought up concerning the hygiene of different races and how that was used as an excuse to deem them less than human. The strange thing about the accusations thrown at Mexican and Japanese people were that a lot of the causes were because of the lack of hygiene provided in the work place and/or they couldn’t afford it because of a new piece of legislation. It almost seemed like the people from the city of Los Angeles at the time were trying to make their perception of those people a fact. The more striking thing to me was the parallels that existed at the time in LA and the recent story concerning the old trailer park.
In the story about the trailer parks the city of San Diego imposed legislation that increased the amount of money people had to pay to live in the trailer park. In chapter 1 of a place called home the city of L.A charges more money to Japanese people who opened up Laundromats (those who were fortunate enough) as an attempt to drive them out of the area, similar to what San Diego did to the people living in the trailer park. The Mexicans that worked the rail road were labeled as dirty, but they lacked the proper facilities to clean themselves. But once they did get showers they took a shower every day. What astounded me the most about the comparison I made was how the groups in power in both of these stories will label unfortunate events as another group’s own fault when they were the ones that caused it.
No comments:
Post a Comment