Poems are a reflection of the society and more often than not, poets take up the general rhetoric in the public and put it in a poem that people can read and enjoy while at the same time reflecting on how this rhetoric affects them. The fear of losing jobs to immigrants has for a long time plagued citizens not just in America but also in countries like South Africa where, in the extreme cases, immigrants have been maimed and killed. It is this fear and hatred of foreigners that is commonly referred to as xenophobia.
The poem so Mexicans are taking your jobs by Jimmy, is one such poem that seeks to highlight the common narrative in the united states. In the poem, he poses pertinent questions, al beit sarcastically on what they “Americans” mean when they claim that Mexicans are stealing their jobs. He wonders, do they come up with guns and demand that you give up their jobs to them? Jimmy uses a language so simple that we cannot help but laugh at our stupidity for laying such ridiculous claims. He does not labour the reader much by trying to hide his claims in complex metaphors that the reader must decipher.
O yes? Do they come on horses with rifles and say, Ese, gringo, gimme your job?” (Teaching for change 14)
Do they sneak into town at night, and as you’re walking home with a whore, do they mug you, a knife at your throat, saying, I want your job. The poem laughs at the ignorance and self righteousness of the Americans who place blame on everyone but themselves. Even the fat leaders who the people have put in power, Americans and Mexicans alike, with the hope that they will take care of them, provide them with the basic care like other governments do for their citizens have betrayed them. Instead; an asthmatic leader crawls turtle heavy, leaning on an assistant, and from a nest of wrinkles on his face, a tongue paddles through flashing waves of lightbulbs, of cameramen, rasping “They’re taking our jobs away.” (Teaching for change 14)
In the recent past, we have witnessed a presidential candidate coming out blatantly to express his disgust with immigrants in general and Mexicans in particular on how they are taking our jobs and how a wall should be built along the Mexican border to keep these ‘job stealers’ out. A lot of so called democrats have come out to criticize him in an equally blatant manner, dubbing him a bigot whose ascension to the highest seat will have detrimental effects on racial relations. However, this poem raises questions that forces us all to reflect and perhaps stop being so quick to judge Donald Trump and his likeminded counterparts. Jimmy succeeds in showing us that bigotry is not only manifested when we refuse the immigrants entry into our country but even in our common rhetoric. How do we regard them when they come to our country, the land of opportunity, with the hope of bettering their lives? The truth of the matter is, they do not wield guns and force us to give them our jobs, on the contrary, we seek them out and give them jobs that we, Americans, the elite, the high and mighty would not, for the lives of us consider even doing. The truth is, we, the Americans, are a lazy entitled bunch that would rather collect unemployment checks, shamelessly, I must add, than hold a blue collar job.
We, the Americans, are so quick to blame our woes on the foreigners that we have managed to blind ourselves from the real issues that ail our country. We do not see anything wrong with ‘white farmers shooting blacks and browns whose ribs I see jutting out and starving children’ or ‘the poor marching for a little work and white farmers selling out to clean-suited farmers living in New York who’ve never been on a farm, don’t know the look of a hoof or the smell of a woman’s body bending all day long in fields. Rather than place their focus on trivialities of who has taken whose job, Americans should take care of the black and brown children who are being killed by bigots. But, we are Americans, we like to pass the buck to anyone but ourselves, we are not racist, it is the Mexicans who are thieves, stealing jobs from us. Never mind it is a job that an educated American will not dream of holding but it is ours anyway. So let them die, the Mexicans and their children alike so we do not have to deal with their job stealing descendants in the future. And with their death, their annihilation, Americans think their problems will die with them.
The poem is laced with undertones of the need to accept one another by setting aside our racial differences. While it is true that Mexicans do come to America to seek for jobs, it is in a bid to better their lives. After all, we boast ourselves as the land of opportunity. America is big enough for all of us. In any case, most of the present day Americans are immigrants themselves with only the Red Indians as the Aboriginals. When the Mexicans come to our country, we give them the vacant positions to hold, the positions that Americans have not been able to fill. Why cant we accept them and let them complement us? The theme of social acceptance is echoed in the poem Singapore by Mary Oliver.
In her poem, Mary narrates the heart wrenching story of a woman who does the dirty job of cleaning ashtrays in the airport’s toilet bowl. The woman bends over the toilet bowl doing what most people would shun away as dirty and disgusting. In fact, as the poet is confronted by this scene, her stomach chuns in disgust and she has to reach into her pocket to assure herself that she is better off because she has an option. Her ticket assures her that she can always flee. But something happens that melts her heart. The bent over misery of a woman turns to look at her, standing there, wondering how a woman can do such a dehumanizing chore, and she is beautiful. The fact that she is a human being makes her beautiful. Never mind the kind of dehumanizing work she is doing. The darkness that clouded the persona’s eyes, the lens of misery she was looking at the woman through falls and right there, she is humbled beyond words. The dirt, the misery and the class distinction that separated the two falls off and she is able to see the woman for who she really is: A human being, deserving of respect and recognition.
This poem, like every other poem, and as aforementioned, is a reflection of the larger cultural setting. The poet gives us a glimpse of how she has been socialized to regard and treat those who are seen as performing the less desirable jobs. That she is a grown up tells us that this is certainly not the first time she has met a janitor. How she has regarded them in all these years is highlighted in the second stanza of the poem ‘Disgust argued in my stomach and I felt, in my pocket, for my ticket.’( Mary Oliver 3). Although the poem is titled Singapore indicating that the setting was in that particular place, we have all met janitors who according to us, the elites, do the disgusting jobs. The reaction of the woman who acts as a silent observer in the poem is no different from the kind of reaction most of us give confronted with the same kind of a person.
Our culture has taught us to cringe with disgust when we see a cleaner, a homeless person or even a mad man. We have been taught not to look at them as human beings but the mad man and the janitor. The poet indicates to us that every job is important because we must all earn a living. When we understand that we are all human, trying hard to survive and make a living, the jobs we hold will not matter because, in the end, we are all human. No different from each other and when we shed the darkness of judging one another by the jobs we hold, by our education levels, by the colour of our skin, then and only then shall we be truly liberated as the human race.
Works cited
Teaching for change Latino Hispanic Heritage 2007 Accessed at https://iamthelizardqueen.wordpress.com/2007/04/05/jimmy-santiago-baca-so-mexicans-are-taking-jobs-from-americans/
Singapore by author Mary Oliver." 123HelpMe.com. Accessed 23 Feb 2016 at <http://www.123HelpMe.com/view.asp?id=97267>.
