la-negra-barbuda:

i have so many feelings about people’s rebuttals to kelly osbourne’s racist bullshit. people are saying things like my abuelita scrubbed toilets and now i’m a surgeon, but this has nothing to do with being a surgeon, truthfully. yes, as latinxs, we are capable of any occupation and that should not be questioned. though, it is stressful work, there is nothing disgraceful about cleaning toilets, or jobs described as “menial labor,” and no one should be dehumanized and stereotyped for doing it. the problems with those jobs lie with the employers (people like kelly osbourne and trump) who prey on the desperation of struggling, marginalized folks.

for the better part of 2007, i was cleaning people’s toilets AND cooking their meals AND cleaning their carpets AND watching their children and elders AND any other things they could think to ask me. they would dock me for stupid shit like, there was still a single cobweb strand behind the toilet in the third floor bathroom. which i wouldn’t have seen because i needed glasses, that i could afford on $50/week. i walked 8 miles to and from work, sometimes with some cleaning supplies in hand, because transportation would have cost too much. it was a job, i was able to eat. my employers were shit. i was and am still a human worthy of respect, regardless of my occupation and level of education.

the fact that kelly osbourne thinks that latinxs are the only people cleaning trump’s toilets is dehumanizing because she sees the job as menial labor not fit for the hands of some shitty white man. the problem is that she thinks it’s okay for people to be paid terrible wages for a job that no one else wants to do, and that she thinks she knows exactly who those people are. the problem is that we, as latinxs, as marginalized folks, as migrant workers, we too view these jobs as undesirable even if our padres and abuelitos are doing them right now. we’re wasting breath telling kelly osbourne and other uninformed white folks that we can be surgeons too, when we shouldn’t be exalting the humanity (and worthiness of respect) of a surgeon above that of a house cleaner. we should also be criticizing those shitty employers who barely pay wages and treat us and our relatives like shit.

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    Not to mention that if it weren’t for the hard work of our parents and grandparents, we wouldn’t have been able to...
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