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Noviembre 28, 2004
International Grocery Shopping
Grocery shopping has never been high on my list of favorite activities. Every week or so I take the four-minute drive over to Shopper’s Food, mainly because it does not require one of those member cards, which makes me uncomfortable how the store can track your purchases.
What I like most about my shopping trip is the environment that typifies the current demographics of Northern Virginia. Immigrants have settled the immediate area, and not just the usual Latin-American. It's a "It's a Small World" under one roof.
Up and down the cereal aisle, you try and guess the language being spoken. Parents talk to their grade-school age children in their native language, and the children answer back in English (much like my brothers and I did growing up in Western Kansas).
Even trying to guess from what country the Latin American immigrants come from can be a hard challenge, even though some accents are obvious, like Argentine. Sometimes an Universitario (Peru) or Chivas (Mexico) futbol jersey provides a helpful hint.
The atmosphere for immigrants is much more welcoming for them because not only are the customers relatively-new immigrants, but so are the cashiers, stockers, and managers. From the most recent trip to the grocery store, I noticed Latin-Americans, African muslims, Middle eastern muslims, Southeast Asians, Russians, Pakistani or Indian, and Sudanese (my guesses).
This is now what the United States is to me. A place that attracts people from all over the world, with such diverse life’s stories and gives them the opportunity to start somewhere and move forward.
Posted by eduardo at Noviembre 28, 2004 07:10 PM
Comments
Amen. It sure it.
Posted by: Miguel Centellas at Noviembre 28, 2004 08:50 PM
I second that Amen. But, it is always a great experience to take a drive, once in a while, outside Northern Virginia. You don't have to get too far. Places like Middleburg, Winchester or if you cross into West Virginia, Petersburg, one can realize the US is still a white country with very big urban concentrations of multi-cultural areas. Another way of realizing that multi-cultural areas are just small areas in the vast US territory is to turn your radio while driving down or up the coast. As soon as you get out of the metropolitan area, it's all country music.
Granted I am not saying multi-cultural areas are insignificant. After all, there are around 30 million Latinos, another 30 million African Americans and another couple of millions of people from other coultures. But, there are still around 160 million white folks, whom are the majority and as such, they have the most say in the US.
Now, what is the relevance of all this? Absolutely nothing, I was just thinking that while the US is by definition an immigrant country (for some people, heaven), it is far from being a true "melting pot" or "salad" or however you want it to be called.
Posted by: MB at Noviembre 29, 2004 06:09 AM
Yeah, I was up in Maine a couple of weeks ago and it was eerie not seeing anybody but Caucasians. I don't think I could live anywhere in the U.S. that wasn't mixed racially and ethnically, but that's just me.
Posted by: eduardo at Noviembre 29, 2004 02:03 PM
It is definitely an adventure. I lived for about one year in a really small town in northern Germany. I was the only one with dark hair and dark eyes in the town. At the beginning I felt like an alien. But, I tell you, after a while, one gets used to. After sixs months I felt like a star. Being recognized all over. Learning German helped a lot.
But, to tell you the truth, I think it helped being light skinned. I cannot imagine how an African person would have felt.
Posted by: MB at Noviembre 29, 2004 03:30 PM