(PNS reporting from HOUSTON) María Solis is tired. Specifically, she’s tired of everybody suddenly caring about what she thinks — about anything at all.
Ever since the election and subsequent media obsession with the “Latino voter,” her life has changed dramatically.
“It’s getting to be a bit much,” she told PNS in a Skype interview Thursday night. “I mean, now everyone is all considerate of my feelings about things. I keep getting asked what my thoughts on immigration reform or gun control are — I’ve had enough!”
Solis, mother of four-year-old fraternal twins Santino and Elise, misses the days when people would crack racist jokes in front of her and her Mexican-born mother as though they didn’t exist.
Now, says the Bellaire homeowner, her ability to live a normal life as one of this country’s minorities has been altered so dramatically that she’s practically afraid to leave the house.
“If I step outside my house, all of a sudden my neighbor Joe is like, ‘Hola María, ¿cómo estás?’ in his horrible high school Spanish. What happened to that Romney-Ryan sign he had? I don’t even know, I just wish he would go back to giving me dirty looks and sparing me his forced cordiality,” she said.
What’s the worst part for Solis?
Before, she was an invisible minority; now she’s a very visible one. She’s gone from being one type of ostracized to another:
I just wish people would go back to pretending like I only existed to clean their house.
