A fresh new voice!

A Face for Arizona

By John Mayo (D., DeSoto County)

Mississippi House of Representatives

July 28, 2010

My wife’s nephew is a blond, blue eyed Hispanic-American.  His Mother, Agnes’s sister and from no place more Mississippi than Lambert, was married to a Hispanic gentleman.  All of their children are American-Hispanics. 

Agnes’s nephew married a Hispanic girl and they have three children.  All—children, mother, father, grandfather, grandmother-- are legal.

He was recently offered a promotion with the company he works for that would require him to move to Arizona.  He turned it down for fear his wife and children would be harassed in Arizona.

I suppose we’re going to face several bills of a similar nature here in Mississippi.  My mother was first generation German-American.  My first wife was second generation Italian-American.  I have a varied background of Irish, German, French, and American Indian.  My children are half-Italian from their mother and then mixed up from mine.

You know, if I am driving, stopped for speeding or had an accident,  I wouldn’t mind being asked for some form of identification IF, IF, IF I did not have a driver’s license.  That is a reasonable and proper request of law enforcement.

But, I would take it as an affront, an indignity, and un-American if I were stopped and asked for my ID because I looked Irish, German, French and American Indian.  Or my children because they looked Italian and Heinz 57.

I recall in Vietnam we would stop people and ask for their ID's.  It was a war, but heck, most of the people we stopped were too old to shoot a weapon let alone carry one.  We would tie them up and hold them for an indeterminate amount of time in a holding corral outside the perimeter.  I cannot imagine the indignity they must have felt.  But, for Vietnam that was normal.

God forbid if you were Jewish and without your papers or without wearing the Star of David.  Off to the concentration camps.

This is the United States of America....not Vietnam nor WW II Germany.

I cannot begin to imagine what a person of olive-skinned color must feel like walking the streets of Arizona or perhaps Mississippi in the near future.  And, let’s face it, no one of German, Scandinavian, Norwegian, or Redneck descent is going to be stopped for suspicion of being undocumented.

And, I wonder just how long local police will hold Miss Ellie because she left her driver's license or any other ID in her other purse until Brother Tom from the First Baptist Church comes to identify her?

We had better think this through before we act.  Are we going to detain every olive-skinned person along with Miss Ellie for not carrying an ID?  Or, are we letting Miss Ellie by with a "get out of jail free" card and holding Jose until the feds come to get him?