ONE MUST NOT TALK ABOUT THEM

There was a group of two Puerto Ricans, one African-American couple, and myself, in the ship’a elevator. We were all on route back to NYC. A Puerto Rican man in the group with a rather loud and unpleasant sound in his voice kept talking about the music that was being played in the lobby of the ship. He found it sad and wanted to hear some salsa. His companions laughed as he kept making sarcastic remarks. I had previoulsy seen the two Americans also talking loud with some people by the bar at the pool. And they were very much into their loud ebonics. At the elevator, the Americans were not happy with this man's monologue; continuously looked at each other, smiled and made facial gestures showing their disgust. It was obvious they were not enjoying the man’s high speech in Puerto Rican’s Spanish nor his lecture on music; or was it another form of “racism”, expressed by gringos (I should not use such a pejorative term, black or white) who cannot speak anything else but American English..... No, perhaps not. Once must not talk about them.