Informal Letter
Dear Mary,
How´s everything going in New York? I haven´t heard from you in a while and I was wondering how life was treating you. Unlike you, I´m still here, in Mississippi; the place where time and justice seem to be stuck. However, I have dived myself in an amazing personal project. I started investigating the terrible and mistreated life of afro American house helps working at our houses. I´ve been hanging out with them, listening to what they have to tell, and taking detailed notes about everything they said. You may find it hard to believe. But things here don´t work the way they do over there.
To start with, they told me about the terrible daily discrimination they suffer. How they run their lives in constant fear of being attacked by surprise by one of those infamous clans that terrorizes them. They send their kids to school scare to death that they may not come back home. Every time they say goodbye to each other, might be the last one.
Making a living is another problem. Since the day they are born they are taught how to serve us, white people, the differences between us and them; the line that separates and puts us in a higher and superior position. They start working usually when they are 14 or 15, and from then on they dedicate their entire lives to unknown families, while somebody else raised their own children. They are not allowed into universities, so they never had the chance to receive a proper education or chance of aiming higher than what is stablished. Therefore, their working options are extremely low as they are scares due to their lack of training; being able just to afford non-profitable jobs such as housekeeping.
They give it all to us, and all we give them is prejudice and discrimination. They know all our secrets, problems, insights, weaknesses, the ways we don´t want anyone to see us; but they never use them against us. How we hide or real-selves or deny our own relatives.
Although you may find it hard to believe, all this is true. I´m sure you might be amazed about how different and mislead things are here in the south. There are even stories about families that leave their maids in their death wills as if they were some kind of object of their property.
I really hope you can join my starting and anonymous fight against this.
Hope to hear from you soon,
How´s everything going in New York? I haven´t heard from you in a while and I was wondering how life was treating you. Unlike you, I´m still here, in Mississippi; the place where time and justice seem to be stuck. However, I have dived myself in an amazing personal project. I started investigating the terrible and mistreated life of afro American house helps working at our houses. I´ve been hanging out with them, listening to what they have to tell, and taking detailed notes about everything they said. You may find it hard to believe. But things here don´t work the way they do over there.
To start with, they told me about the terrible daily discrimination they suffer. How they run their lives in constant fear of being attacked by surprise by one of those infamous clans that terrorizes them. They send their kids to school scare to death that they may not come back home. Every time they say goodbye to each other, might be the last one.
Making a living is another problem. Since the day they are born they are taught how to serve us, white people, the differences between us and them; the line that separates and puts us in a higher and superior position. They start working usually when they are 14 or 15, and from then on they dedicate their entire lives to unknown families, while somebody else raised their own children. They are not allowed into universities, so they never had the chance to receive a proper education or chance of aiming higher than what is stablished. Therefore, their working options are extremely low as they are scares due to their lack of training; being able just to afford non-profitable jobs such as housekeeping.
They give it all to us, and all we give them is prejudice and discrimination. They know all our secrets, problems, insights, weaknesses, the ways we don´t want anyone to see us; but they never use them against us. How we hide or real-selves or deny our own relatives.
Although you may find it hard to believe, all this is true. I´m sure you might be amazed about how different and mislead things are here in the south. There are even stories about families that leave their maids in their death wills as if they were some kind of object of their property.
I really hope you can join my starting and anonymous fight against this.
Hope to hear from you soon,
Skeeter
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