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For much of that time—in letters, newspapers, books, and speeches—many white people commonly described enslaved African Americans as shiftless or lazy, disrespectful or “uppity,” and ignorant.

But when the Mexicans started coming from southern states with larger Indigenous populations, my relatives saw them as shiftless flojos — lazy people — who weren’t like our Mexicans.

"Think of the Goof as a composite of an everlasting optimist, a gullible Good Samaritan, a half-wit, a shiftless, good-natured colored boy, and a hick," Babbitt told his staff in 1934.

Throughout American history, some people, whether simply down on their luck or different from the majority, have been stereotyped as immoral, lazy, shiftless — in short, undeserving.

Elaine is not some shiftless next-door neighbor whom you can attack with impunity, some member of a competing tribe who must be dispatched with dispatch.