Hispanic Fanatic

One of the wonders of modern society is how even minor controversies can snowball into intense political and sociological debates where, apparently, the future of the country hangs in the balance. Really, even Halloween costumes are enough to create verbal fisticuffs.

That’s why I’m not surprised that the 2010 census has people tossing around accusations of nefarious intentions, with counteraccusations of idiocy flying back. The fear and hatred of this tedious government exercise has a long history.  And with the loathing of the current administration so potent among right-wingers, it’s no wonder that the tinfoil-hat crowd insists that filing out the form will somehow end up with you in a government-run gulag.

But I expected the neocons to get upset over the census. What surprised me is that some Latino groups have joined people like noted nutjob Congresswoman Michele Bachmann in calling for a boycott.

The thinking among some Hispanic organizations is that skipping the census is a great way to protest the lack of immigration reform. The Rev. Miguel Rivera, head of the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders, says that his group has talked 2.5 million Hispanics into refusing to be counted. Rivera hopes that some states will lose representation in Congress due to the undercounting. He believes that “If politicians don’t see the need for immigration reform, then we don’t need those politicians anyway.”

I can’t be the only one who sees the ineffectiveness of this take-my-ball-and-go-home approach. The census only reapportions congressional delegation. It doesn’t add or eliminate anything. So I don’t see how giving, say, Kansas more votes at the expense of California is going to speed up immigration reform. If anything, this strategy increases the odds of a spectacular backfire.

Then there are those who don’t necessarily want to boycott the census, just alter it beyond recognition. A Republican-sponsored proposal calls for a freeze on Census Bureau funds if it doesn’t reprint its forms to ask respondents if they are citizens. I, for one, can’t imagine who they are targeting or attempting to intimidate with such a question.

We’ll ignore the fact that the party of fiscal responsibility is demanding that the government throw away the 400 million forms that have already been printed and start over, at no small expense. Instead, let me point out that presidential administrations of both parties have repeatedly agreed to count everybody, not just citizens. It’s pretty much settled law.

I’m also wondering about those conservatives who supposedly want government off our collective backs, and think it’s unconstitutional for the census to ask how many bathrooms you have. But it is ok for the bureau to throw in a last-second intrusive question designed specifically to frighten people. I see; it all makes sense now.

In the interest of full disclosure, let me admit that I was once one of those dreaded Census workers (it was a temp job on my summer break from college). I spent three months going door to door in the most wretched parts of my hometown, asking bored or annoyed residents how many people lived in their crumbling shanty of an apartment.

It was a pretty miserable experience, but it paid better than fast food. At no point did I swell with pride that I was helping continue the vital work of Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, etc. Neither did I worry if I was assisting the government with its final preparations for the mass arrest of citizens. It was all rather dull.

I miss those days.

No sooner did I celebrate a timely focus on Latino issues (see my previous post) than a couple of developments erupted this week to let me know Hispanics have not quite earned full acknowledgement of such oddball concepts as civil rights and basic dignity.

First, in New Mexico, a hotel owner informed his Hispanic workers that, henceforth, their names weren’t their own. He demanded that, while working, they Anglicize such travesties as Juan by changing it to John, and the like. The owner, Larry Whitten, justified his order by claiming that English-speaking guests would be thrown when confronted with a real tongue-twister like Rosa.

Whitten further demanded that workers not speak Spanish in his presence. He said that he was concerned that they might be saying bad things about him. I can’t imagine what negative phrases the workers would say about the guy – certainly nothing like “Can you believe this prick is making us change our names?”

Whitten’s demands have sparked an outrage in New Mexico. To help him out of the situation, I have a suggestion: If Whitten is concerned about Latino names being cumbersome for the guests, why not call all the help the same thing? After all, they have no right to pick their own names, so one might as well do away with all pretense of individuality or dignity.

Just have all the women answer to the phrase “Hey, chica!” Yes, I know it still contains a vile Spanish word, but most guests can handle the extremely tricky pronunciation. As for the men, just call them all “boy.” It’s true that this word traditionally has been a demeaning term for black males, but I’m sure they won’t mind if somebody else borrows it.

There, now Whitten’s problem is solved.

The second development came out of Dallas. We all know that Texas has a huge Latino population (including Cousin #2). But apparently, the cops there are among the many Americans who think it is a crime to speak any language other than English. And I mean that literally.

Over the past few years, the Dallas police have ticketed about forty drivers for not speaking English. Needless to say, it is not illegal to speak Spanish, at least not yet, and the Dallas police chief has apologized for his troopers’ attempts to test people’s language proficiency.

That apology puts the cops one step ahead of the hotel owner. But neither story is a reason to celebrate.

Not too often do I encounter multiple Latino-centric stories just days apart. But this bonanza of attention occurred this week. The reason is not happenstance, or a strange cosmic alignment, or even the majority culture’s abrupt realization that Hispanics aren’t going away anytime soon.

No, it’s because Soledad O’Brien has a book to push. The CNN correspondent has talked her parent company into rolling out the “Latino in America” series as part of her media campaign. The series has been going for awhile, but it hit its full stride this week, garnering a couple of banner stories on their website.

Now, I don’t know much about O’Brien. I watch as little television news as possible, because I can feel my IQ points dropping whenever anchors introduce more screaming heads to discuss politics. As such, I’m not qualified to to question O’Brien’s motives. But it’s clear that Latinos are getting a tiny spotlight only because it’s convenient for a major corporation, which is distasteful, or at best, a cynic’s delight.

However, I’m going along with this ploy because some of their stories are actually pretty interesting. Rest assured that I’m not selling out. Oh, you’ll know when that happens, and it’s going to be sweet! But I digress…

In the here and now, I just want to point out that the CNN series gives updates on a couple of stories that I discussed in the previous months. There is more on the killing of Luis Ramirez, an immigrant bludgeoned to death in the street in Pennsylvania.

We hear about how Hispanics are the present and future of the Catholic Church, as if I hadn’t mentioned this fact months ago. Of course, CNN neglects to mention that this future may be short-lived as younger generations become less religious, but I’m sure that will be covered at some other point.

In addition, a few of CNN’s articles intrigued me enough that I may write separate posts about them in the coming weeks. I will refrain from going on, however, about the silliest article in the series. Under the bizarre headline “Americans More Familiar with Latinos,” we discover that “a new poll indicates that two-thirds of those surveyed now say they have at least some contact with Latinos.”

This makes me wonder about the one-third of Americans who have no contact with Hispanics, as well as ponder if we’ll see headlines proclaiming that Americans have finally accepted black people. Perhaps that will be in CNN’s next series.

First thing this morning, I noticed this intimidating fellow staring at me from my computer screen:

Of course, it’s the infamous “illegal alien” costume that got many immigrant-rights groups up in arms. For those who didn’t get enough of the strained attempt at humor, there’s also this version:

Yes, they’re undeniably offensive, and Hispanic groups are correct to call out the merchants on selling them. I doubt anything similarly offensive to Africa Americans would pass the gatekeepers at Target, Walgreens, or Amazon, all of whom briefly sold the items.

Still, let’s leave the backlash over the costumes at a firm but diplomatic rebuke. The costume makers were clearly attempting a play on words rather than making an outright derogatory political statement. And those words, “illegal alien,” actually went out around the time that Genesis recorded that cheesy song (what was that all about, by the way?). These days, “illegal immigrant” is used more often, or “undocumented worker” if you prefer to be sensitive, or any number of racial slurs if you prefer not to be.

In fact, getting apocalyptic about such things only gives ammunition to minutemen wannabes. Those are the guys who scream about everybody being hypersensitive and that freedom of speech is being suppressed and that, while we’re at it, nobody speaks English anymore. Let them look foolish, rather than indulging in an argument over something so trivial.

In fact, we can consider this a brief skirmish that’s already been won. Merchants have realized that it’s unwise to needlessly piss off potential customers just to appeal to a bunch of xenophobic frat boys. Perhaps this is another example of the growing power of Latinos to exercise some economic and political muscle. And maybe it shows that the establishment is ready to acknowledge that Hispanics are, you know, human beings, more or less.

With that settled, let’s put the controversy behind us and try to recapture the spirit of Halloween. Let’s stick with outfits that are completely appropriate for the holiday and that we can all agree form the basis of good wholesome fun.

That’s right – slutty nurse costumes for everybody!

Hey, thanks Zeus, for commenting on my post “If Only His Name Leant Itself to Some Obvious Joke.” Your opinion that “without Catholicism, there is no Hispanic culture,” is certainly one of the more… interesting comments that I’ve received. As you can imagine, I don’t agree. In fact, I find the idea terrifying. But let’s move on.

As I’ve mentioned before, my rants can also be found on the Huffington Post and TC Daily Planet. Those outlets have editors who read my stuff, inexplicably liked it, and agreed to run pieces from time to time. I remain grateful to them.

Well, I’ve also recently started contributing to All Voices, which to be blunt, doesn’t have the same standards. There are no well-trained editors acting as gatekeepers. In fact, anyone can write for them. You could claim to be a talking cat, and they would take you.

However, the site is popular and may even pay well if I get enough fans to follow me (take this as a hint). So I’ve decided to gamble and put my name on the site. It seems like All Voices will either be the next frontier of citizen journalism, or it will turn into a scattershot clearinghouse for the shrill and deranged. I’ll do my best to tilt that scale in one direction.

This blog will still be my main outlet. I’ll send pieces that are more political to the Huffington Post, where hordes of angry leftists will be eager to pounce on me if I misspell “Napolitano.”

I’ll send pieces that are more news-centric to All Voices, where from the looks of things, hordes of angry rightists will lash out at me if I don’t push for the immediate deportation of myself.

So it looks like it will be a fun time.

Let me shout out “thanks” to Pipil DC and Christina for their comments on my last post.

Here’s another quick article about a news story you have missed. It seems that in Arizona, the “Toughest Sheriff in America” has overstepped his bounds.

The man with this unimaginative nickname (one that seems self-generated) is Joe Arpaio, who is the law in Maricopa County – and don’t you forget it. The sheriff has earned some attention for himself by going after illegal immigrants.

Arpaio had been working with the Department of Homeland Security to enforce federal immigration laws. Unfortunately, it seems that the sheriff wasn’t just detaining illegals. He was allegedly rounding up Latinos in general. As such, Homeland Security is trying to limit his power to arrest people for the crime of being brown.

The sheriff denies that he’s profiling. He says, “We do not go on street corners and grab people that look like they’re from another country.”

But the ACLU counters that “He’s unconstitutionally acted to racially profile many persons in the community, persons who appear or are Latino” so that he can “appeal to his anti-immigration base.”

Now, we all know (because I’ve heard it on talk radio) that the ACLU won’t rest until illegal immigrants are given the keys to our houses and allowed to sleep with our wives. So maybe the sheriff is just being hounded by liberal atheist flag-burners?

But then there is the Goldwater Institute, a libertarian group that has denounced the sheriff’s actions and said that his department “falls seriously short of fulfilling its mission.” The Goldwater Institute, not exactly known for being a hangout for hippies, says that Arpaio has “diverted resources away from basic law-enforcement functions to highly publicized immigration sweeps, which are ineffective in policing illegal immigration.”

It’s at times like this that I’m grateful for old-school conservatives, who are still likely to get peeved when civil liberties are trampled. Social conservatives and neocons, of course, are different, in that they are first people to dismiss Constitutional rights as too cumbersome for our modern world. The contradiction between these definitions of “conservative” is far too complicated and depressing to address in this post.

Suffice to say, when you’re in Arizona, keep an eye out for Sheriff Joe. He may be arresting people based on the color of their skin. He may be ignoring real crime and sidestepping the law. And he may be shirking his duty in order to get cozy with xenophobic nuts.

But he’s a tough guy, you know.

I’m still not back to a 100% focus on the blog… actually, I doubt I ever had that level of commitment. But you get my point. I’m coming out of mega-distraction mode now that our move to California is complete and the last box has been unpacked. All I need to do now is address that pesky question of how I’m going to bring in money…

Don’t worry, I’m not turning this into one of those pathetic “please support my blog” pledge drives where I ask for donations. But I am going to cop out on the updates a few more times and issue short posts about news items until I can devote proper energy to being insightful, or least fanatical.

So that’s why I’m just going to pass along this information, courtesy of CNN: “Openly gay Latino public figures… are rare.”

Yes, that’s pretty fast-breaking stuff. To be fair, the gist of CNN’s article is that the virulent homophobia prevalent in Hispanic culture may be dying out.

I wrote about this a few months ago, when Proposition 8 passed here in California. As I pointed out then, much of the support for denying gays their basic civil rights came from Latinos. That’s because homosexuality doesn’t fit easily within a Catholic-dominated culture that invented machismo.

Still, gay Hispanics have always seemed to find some way to subtly express themselves:

In any case, CNN claims that straight Latinos are finally catching on and becoming ever so tolerant. The article points out that “El Diario La Prensa, one of the oldest and largest Spanish-language newspapers in the U.S., recently endorsed the rights of same-sex couples to marry.” And it goes on to say that “while harassment in schools for Latino gay students remains high… these students have more support than in past generations.”

So maybe someday it won’t just be white, upper-class teens with hip parents who get to come out. Maybe the tortured, conflicted Pedros of America will finally be able to explain to their parents why they’d rather design a spring ensemble than work on the low-rider.

Of course, the CNN article loses credibility for me because they laud Perez Hilton as a role model. I mean, what could be more ridiculous that praising a blogger?

First off, let me thank Carola for her comment on my last post.

As for the latest around here, I finally got around to reading “Freakonomics,” the bestseller from a few years ago. Like everyone else who read the book, I’m amazed at the bizarre factoids and surprising conclusions that it supplies. And it’s also convinced me never to buy a swimming pool for my backyard…

In any case, one of the sections in “Freakonomics” looks at a study done on that forgotten game show “The Weakest Link,” which is best known for supplying a short-lived catchphrase that I will refrain from repeating.

The “Freakonomics” authors were curious if data would uncover hidden racial prejudice or sexism among the contestants on the show. Their conclusion was that blacks and women were not discriminated against. They write, in a burst of set-you-up optimism, that “perhaps… discrimination was practically eradicated during the twentieth century, like polio.”

Wouldn’t that be most cool? Racism eradicated – with game shows like “The Weakest Link” serving as a mass-media, pop-culture Salk vaccine! How nifty keen is that?

Well, as you may have predicted, the story doesn’t end there. The authors point out that “the ‘Weakest Link’ voting data do indicate two kinds of contestants who are consistently discriminated against: the elderly and Hispanics.”

Somehow I knew this case study would end badly for us.

What the authors are saying is that my grandmother would have been eliminated from the show before the announcer finished his intro.

So why are Latinos and the elderly picked on? Well, the authors conclude that “all but the most insensitive people take pains to at least appear fair-minded, at least in public,” and that discrimination still pops up when aimed at “other groups that society doesn’t protect as well.”

In other words, white people will go out of their way to avoid looking like they’re picking on black people. But when it comes to, say, Hispanics, all bets are off.

The authors even pinpoint the form of bigotry aimed at Latinos. They say that “Hispanics suffer information-based discrimination,” which is when someone “believes that another type of person has poor skills, and acts accordingly.” The authors note that “other contestants seem to view the Hispanics as poor players, even when they are not.”

The prejudice against the elderly, in contrast, is “taste-based discrimination,” which is when someone “prefers to not interact with a particular type of other person.”

So the good news is that many Americans don’t get skived out at Hispanics the same way they do at, for example, old people. It’s just that they automatically think that we’re really, really stupid.

Well, that makes me feel better.

Regardless, the “Freakonomics” study creates a conundrum. It assumes that Latinos are a group that “society doesn’t protect as well.” This confuses me this because I have been told, repeatedly, that we live in a post-race society. Ergo, even the slightest suggestion that people are treated differently – or that some groups receive more societal protection or favoritism than others – is a roundhouse left to the legacy of MLK. At least, this is what I’ve heard from my conservative friends.

Another issue that the study raises is whether the parsing of bigotry is even possible or relevant. If we categorize prejudice, can we combat it more effectively? Or is it all just shop talk for academics?

Assuming that discrimination comes in different flavors, can we tackle it with more education? After all, the majority culture is not creeped out by Latinos (as opposed to the universal disgust aimed at those icky old people), which implies that this type of prejudice is more analytical than emotional. As such, can we convince others that we’re not total morons, or is it a doomed enterprise, because minds are already made up? And isn’t the very attempt to persuade the majority culture of our worth a degrading endeavor?

Obviously, I don’t know the answer to these questions. Maybe I’m not smart enough. But I do know that, henceforth, I’ll do my best to avoid verifying the majority culture’s perceptions of Latinos. I will take great pains to not appear like a total ignoramus.

From now on, I vow to be all, like, intellectual… and stuff… yup.

When my wife and I relocated to the West Coast, the moving company that we hired sent a middle-aged white man to perform the estimate and sell us on his organization. He wore a tie and laughed a lot, even when nothing was particularly funny.

The actual movers were four Latinos. They did not wear ties.

The chief of the crew spoke perfect English, but his three assistants communicated with each other in a dialect so thick (deep Central America is my guess) that I barely recognized it as Spanish.

Although they had the far more important (and substantially more grueling, miserable, and labor-intensive) job, their take-home pay could not have approached that of the laughing man in the tie, despite our cash tip and the Coke Zeroes that we supplied to them.

At one point, they carried boxes piled high, Sherpa style, with the weight pressing on their spines. They seemed embarrassed to ask for water, and went about their jobs with a focus that I’ve rarely witnessed in the white-collar world.

Now, I certainly don’t want to get into the whole plight-of-the-proletariat aesthetic. Nor do I want to glamorize their hardscrabble existence in some kind of Steinbeckian ode to the nobility of the working class. For all I know, they’re assholes.

In truth, as movers, they kind of sucked. They were hours late both picking up our stuff and dropping it off at our new place. I can only presume that they are afflicted with Hispanic time (that’s the subject of a whole other post).

More disturbing, there was enough damage to our stuff that we had to file a claim for reimbursement. The scratches, dents, and outright destruction that they wrought upon our possessions were, I believe, direct consequences of the Latino work ethic (I’ll explain what I mean by that in yet another post later).

In any case, my original point is that in an ideal society, these exhausting and humbling jobs would be performed by teenagers of all social classes – kids who are at the height of their physical powers and can arguably be said to be “building character” (although I despise that term). Such jobs would not be done by tired guys just trying to eke by, with little hope of ever going further in life. These men are not going to take anything away from the experience except muscle aches.

Will their children follow in their footsteps and sign on for a lifetime of backbreaking manual labor? Or will they take advantage of their parents’ decision to come to America, and someday be the ones to sit back, negotiate with customers, and laugh and laugh?