Jason Saenz

As white-looking men sometimes we don’t realize we’re being hurtful, or prejudice, or racist towards someone because we didn’t grow up having that prejudice thrown at us. We don’t know how it feels. We can’t empathize.

But as a mixed raced kid I got to feel racism second-hand and it hurt. Unfortunately, it was when I was unintentionally racist towards my own father.

When I was 8 or 9, my father (a Bolivian man) told me a story about how years ago a mean women called him a “mexi-head”.  As a silly 8-year-old kid all I could think about was how funny I thought the word “Mexi-head” was. Like a fun, Mexican candy or something. I didn’t realize how much that incident hurt my dad.

So, the next week I thought it would be funny if I yelled “Mexi-head” to my father after my junior league basketball game… across a gymnasium filled with people.

The look he gave me is something I’ll never forget. First it was anger, that someone was yelling a racial slur at him, in public, in front of people he knew. But then it turn to sadness, as he realized it was his own son yelling this at him.

And even though I meant to say it as a joke, and obviously wasn’t racist towards my own father, the damage was done.  I hadn’t realized how hurtful words can be, until I hurt my own father with them.

So to the people who excused Trump’s vile language during this campaign, I say, you made a grave mistake. You can’t say hurtful things to people and then say you were “only joking” (Trump’s #1 defense, BTW). You can’t let hate spit from your lips and then tell people it was only in good fun. Hurtful words turn to hurtful actions. We are already seeing the violence his words have inspired.

I suspect most Trump voters don’t have a Latino, homosexual, or Muslim in their group of friends. If they did, they would see how  Trump’s words affected those people. They would see the sadness in their friends eyes and realize it’s not okay to say such things… especially from a man who will be President.