Arizona Rant #1 by Jennifer Michelle Ortega, NYC

What the hell is this country coming to? I never in my life thought I
would say those words, perhaps because the shit beam of injustice
wasn’t on me. Or it hasn’t been for a long time and I filed it away
in my busy little head. The Arizona bill SB-1070 is insulting. Not
only is it insulting, it really doesn’t do any good to turn citizens
against one another with suspicion. I recently was in a restaurant;
I looked around and saw a lot of people who didn’t look like me. I
thought to myself “do all these people think I’m an illegal
immigrant?” As I looked at them, thinking what they “might” think of
me, that’s when it hit me how insidious the Arizona Immigration law
is. I think people who don’t look like me, may think I’m an illegal
immigrant because I am obviously of Mexican decent (though my
relatives have been in Texas for eons). Then I in return think
they’re racist. All these thoughts race inside my head and makes me
grumpy, resentful not only at myself because of my inner thoughts
conversation I’ve had in my head, but because my thoughts went there
in the first place; and all due to a law passed in Arizona that I had
no control over. I have no idea what the people in the restaurant
were thinking; no words, or glances were ever exchanged between anyone
and myself.
Fear of others judgment can really screw with my head and it makes me
feel unworthy, unequal, and like a second-class citizen in a country,
I’m indigenous to.