Day Labor in Virginia and Literacy Crisis On Listerv

Interesting story on NPR this morning about the community of Herndon, Virginia, debating the funding of a day-labor center that some there feel is encouraging illegal immigration. Local right-wing radio, apparently, buzzes with callers complaining about how "unsightly" are the people of color who gather to wait for work at the center. One critic of the worker center, concerned about the aesthetic effect of the center, comments, "It's time for all nationalities to learn to live like Americans. This means learn how to speak English, learn how to have good hygiene, and learn how to use appliances correctly in your homes." Same old xenophobia from the right...same thing said of Italians and Greeks and Poles a century ago (they're dirty, don't share our values, and will pollute the democratic ideals of the U.S., bla, bla, bla).

Striking how much of the criticism of this worker center is about how people of color look, which is, I guess, different. And by extension abhorrent.

Meantime, on a national e-mail listerv for teachers of writing, there rages intense discussion over all that the new Tommy Lee reality show reveals about the illiteracy of college students. They don't read, apparently. Smart criticism of the conversation has already gone on. Of course the issue is not that college students don't read--it's that they don't read the stuff that English teachers want them to read. They're not taking part in the cultures that English teachers most value.

What's the connection between these two stories? Aesthetics and belletrism, of course. Day laborers and Tommy Lee's television sidekicks lack what a community deems to be of high cultural value, whether that deficit involves standing around outside being brown-skinned, or not knowing how to use an appliance properly (where does that notion even come from?), or not speaking the "right" way, or not reading the right books, or choosing to listen to Motley Crue, or whatever. Both are also cases of a community expressing fear and loathing for that which is different. Yikes, they're brown. Oh jeepers, they're dirty. HELP ME...they're getting their news from blogs and yahoo instead of home delivery of the NYTimes. Ohmygod they haven't read as many "good" novels as me. It's about homogenization and the desire to make everyone the same, to obliterate class differences.