When I was growing up in Tampa in a Cuban immigrant household and community, I was brought up to believe that Latins were inherently superior to Anglos. We called them Crackers, which is a generic, non-pejorative term for native Floridians of Anglo-Saxon or Celtic descent (the Cubans saw no difference whatsoever between the two). It's what the Crackers called themselves.

I, of course, knew better. I went to school with Crackers, lots of my friends were Crackers, and I was welcome in their homes and knew their families. I was born and raised there and educated in English, and my appearance could pass for Cracker. I knew they were somewhat different from us, but not necessarily better, and I even preferred certain aspects of their culture to ours.

But the common wisdom at home would not hear it, and I learned to keep my mouth shut. After all, I was told, wasn't it obvious Crackers were lazy, drunks, had poor personal hygiene, beat their wives and abused their kids? They had no respect for the law, learning and education, and could not be trusted or hold down a job. They were racist and ignorant, and had a mean streak a mile wide in them.

We Cubans, after all, believed strongly in personal advancement, education and the work ethic. We were working class, but we struggled to better ourselves. They lived like animals, and settled for it, and the ones with money were even worse, they were insufferable snobs. And none of them even spoke their own language properly, much less bothered to learn ours. My favorite ethnic slur: "Cracker food is bland, their music barbaric, and their religion ridiculous." And the really bad ones had hair on their teeth. ("...un Craca de pelo en los dientes"). Of course, in those days, and in our social circles, the Crackers we were most likely to meet were also working class, and often rural and poor Southerners.

I exaggerate a bit for emphasis, but not much. My parents were both born and raised in the States, spoke good English, and functioned perfectly well in the US, but they thought of themselves as Cubans. They conceded some of the Cracker's were "nice people", but complained that even the best of them were a cold and reserved lot, who swallowed their emotions and were often bitter and melancholy and unhappy. They also tended to be physically stiff and awkward, and had bad complexions, although they could certainly not be blamed for that.

Racism is a funny thing. And of course, the South of the 50s had its own lessons to teach me about that. I was taught the Jim Crow system was hideously cruel and unjust, but I could see that Cuban racism against blacks, although not as vicious or obvious, was still there and practically invisible to its practitioners. I personally am convinced people are all the same genetically, and a baby from any culture, brought up in another, would be anthropologically or psychologically indistinguishable from his adopted parents. But there are differences between cultures, and they are profound and subtle at the same time. Denying that would be just as mistaken and dangerous as bigotry.