Essential Estrogen

Suzie Eskelund, a 17-year-old from Manassas, Virginia, recently wrote a tongue-in-cheek letter to the editor in the Manassas Journal Messenger. I'm going to reprint it here (with a hat tip to Anti-BVBL) since it may be of interest to those who've been following my coverage of the Postville Immigration raids.

I am a 17-year-old caucasian girl who has lived in Manassas my whole life. I just want to say thank you for allowing the white, self-righteous and supremacist legal citizens of this fine, upstanding county to once again have the important jobs back, like fast food and construction. I know it has always been my dream to work the drive through at my neighborhood McDonald’s and now you have made that dream more possible. I am so proud to be a part of a city that is taking a stand against those pesky brown people. I was riding in the car with my Hawaiian friend when we got pulled over so the nice policeman could make sure she wasn’t an illegal Latina. I know that in my heart I couldn’t be more thankful for those new laws that you helped pass to racially profile everyone with dark skin. Gee, I don’t even know why I’m friends with her.

I know that no one who eats tacos and burritos can be a good person. I mean hey, I don’t want that new Chipotle on Liberia Avenue! These people just need to go back to Mexico and take their children. They deserve to starve, be in constant danger, and have a poor education.

After all, they were born in an inferior country! I don’t want any new customs in my life.

I want to be closed-minded and be surrounded by my pasty friends forever. Please get that diversity away from me!

Now people say that all Americans immigrated here. Well that may be true, but at least all of mine spoke English when they came here! Oh wait… except for my Danish, French, and German relatives. But no matter, at least it wasn’t Spanish. When I was in high school and I was trying to learn another language, I had the hardest time and struggled through all three years. I hardly remember any of that language, but who cares? Learning a second language may be really hard for anyone, but it doesn’t matter if your first language was English.

Now I look around my upper middle-class neighborhood and see that there are far fewer children for my neighbors to play with. But I rest assured knowing that when they play tag, they won’t get tagged by Latino cooties anymore.

Next, we should give them disease-infested blankets; it worked when we wanted to get rid of Native Americans.

Thank you once again for your efforts to cleanse our community,

SUZIE ESKELUND
Manassas

The paper ran this letter with the headline: "A sarcastic thanks for clearing our community." Although I think it would have been better served without the up-front warning of content, I'm still pleased they printed it.