A Cankerous Racism

I went to the big posh department store in town today to buy kitchenwares, as we are moving back to Canada in 2 months and we have a largely unfurnished home to set up when we get there. I bought dishes, glasses, a kitchen scale, and various and sundry items. The total amount was not huge by Canadian standards, but sizeable enough. The big issue, however, was that they were taking forever to wrap and pack everything, and I had to pick Joffre up from school. So, off I went, and when I got Joffre, he was miserable and obviously in no shape to be at the store. I took him home instead.

So, I gave the Visa receipt to Sonia and told her to go to the store and pick the stuff up. I said, "the home phone number is on their copy of the Visa receipt, along with my signature and my passport number, so they can call me if they need to." Twenty minutes later, she came back empty-handed, saying they wouldn't give her the stuff because she didn't have the itemized till receipt. I told her, well, I didn't have the till receipt either; they must have stuck it in one of the bags. I asked why they hadn't checked the bags, or called me, and she said that they were rude to her and wouldn't even look at her. They just kept telling her she needed a document she didn't have.

I got on the phone, called the store, and told them that I wanted my housekeeper to pick up the stuff since I was at home with my kids. That they already had the phone number and could call if they needed to. They asked for a description of her and her name, and said it was fine. So, off she went - this time with a weepy, shoeless Joffre in tow, since he refused to be separated from her - and about forty-five minutes later she and the cabbie returned with the stuff. What a saga at the Saga.

I was incensed, of course. Had the people at the store taken the time to listen to Sonia, they would have understood what she was there for, and could have called me, found the till receipt - which they had kept accidentally - and released the stuff. Apologists, including my Spanish teacher and Sonia herself, will tell you that the store was just being careful, protecting me from potential theft. The fact is, however, that even considering the unlikely possibility that a thief might find or steal a credit card receipt and from this know that unclaimed kitchenwares were awaiting pickup at a certain register in the store, had I gone in with the exact same document asking for my stuff, I would have received all kinds of attention. Even if they had been unable to give me my things, with the document I had, they would have been courteous and apologetic, rather than dismissive and condescending.

You may say that the discrimination at work here is economic, rather than racial per se. After all, it's obvious to the clerks at Saga that Sonia can't likely afford much in the store, and therefore has no buying power. So there's no benefit to them in being polite to her. If they are rude to me, however, they know that I may choose to spend my considerable discretionary income elsewhere, and they will have lost a valuable customer. But in fact, these two concepts are inextricable. The people in Peru, almost without exception, who can't afford to shop in the fancy stores and malls, are more indigenous in appearance, and poorer in dress. They are shorter, darker, and less fashionable than the Peruvian elite. There is an internal racism against indigenous people, which is unlike the racism one sees in Canada against our own First Nations people, in that Peru experienced a much higher rate of intermarriage than North America did, and so there are countless degrees of Spanish-ness or indigenous-ness here. As poisonous as racism is in Canada, it is doubly so in a country where the richest, whitest people discriminate against the second-whitest, and so on, down the line, till you arrive at the poorest and most purely indigenous. It results in a very small "ruling class" who are characterized by snobbishness and exclusive behaviour, which leads them to turn inward economically and socially. Every other class in a minutely-divided social layer cake behaves the same way. Thus, nepotism and back-scratching divisiveness and isolation are the rule rather than the exception, and the economy as a whole does not improve or develop, because the majority of the nation's population are deliberately kept poor and disenfranchised, and don't see any way to organize and improve their lot.

Of course, there is also the fact that in spite of being disadvantaged and having the odds pitted against them, many lower-class Peruvians are in fact improving their economic lot and, thus, their buying power, at a rate that far outstrips their rise in social status. The parents of one of Joffre's friends at school, for instance, speak excellent English and are engineers, skilled workers, doing well financially, but are very indigenous-looking and continue to wear clothing and hairstyles that set them apart from your average Peruvian mover and shaker. These people, although they don't look it, are in fact powerful potential clients for any business in town. Sonia, too, is doing far better than she was a year ago, and even then she was doing better than she had been earlier in life. All of Sonia and her husband's children are going to university or technical college, even though their father is a truck driver and their mother a housekeeper with little post-secondary education. Both of them have come through very rough times, and are now doing reasonably well and getting better everyday. So the truth of the matter is that the stuck-up clerk at Saga may well be damaging business by ignoring Sonia. Maybe she can't afford to shop there much now, but who knows whether she will be able to in a few years? The company might find that it pays, long-term, to treat all people as potential customers, regardless of their appearance.

Maybe that's still too much to hope for, in this society. I do think, however, that for Peru to advance, economic realities and a general commitment to the economic improvement of all people, in all classes, will have to win out over old prejudices and false senses of entitlement and gentility.