Hispanic Fanatic

Being an American is a lot more difficult than it should be. That’s especially perplexing when one realizes that we live in the greatest country in the…

Sorry, I dissolved into a maniacal laughing fit before I could finish that last sentence. I’m sure it was just a coincidence.

In any case, I recently wrote about how exhausting it is to be Latino or Black in the USA. To complete my trilogy of terror, I will focus on White people. After all, if White people are having issues, the country is really in a downward spiral.

Perhaps you’ve heard that studies show that White people are more prone to “deaths of despair.” Research has shown that White people are “dying at unprecedented rates—killing themselves, quickly or slowly—from drugs, alcohol and suicide, causes of death shown to be spiking for this demographic.”

This ghoulish trend is most prevalent in rural areas—you know, those wholesome places that constitute the “real America,” and where nothing bad ever happens.

Except in reality, New York City is “a lot safer than small-town America.” But we’ll ignore that inconvenient fact for now.

It’s important to note that “midlife mortality is still significantly lower for White Americans than for Black and Native Americans.” But the fact is that White people are dying off faster and in more gruesome ways than they used to.

Overall, it is statistically, culturally, socially, and politically better to be White than any other ethnicity in America. That will likely remain true for the foreseeable future.

But White people are struggling more, and this is a key reason why racism is on the rise. It is a factor in the weird craving of many White people for the 1950s, when they or their parents were unquestionably in charge and looking forward to a limitless future. 

White people who are suffering, and there are many of them, often work for a solution within themselves, their community, or their government. But many others are content to blame ethnic minorities, immigrants, gay people, trans people (the latest boogeyman), urban “elites” or really anyone who is different or who isn’t in their exact predicament. 

In that way, their problems become all of our problems.

Last week, I focused on the latest statistics, trends, and calamities regarding Latinos. This was an obvious topic. After all, just check out the name of this website. 

But now we will continue this series by focusing on our ethnic minority brethren, African Americans. Here’s some positive news about Black Americans that you may have missed:

The wage gap between Black and White workers has shrunk over the past five years. It is “still enormous,” according to economists, but the discrepancy has undergone “a pretty meaningful reversal.”

Hey, that’s good, right? Well, I’m glad you’re happy with that little nugget of mildly upbeat news.

Because everything else kind of sucks for Black people.

I’m not just talking about systemic racism (which is, you know, a real thing). Nor am I talking about the perennially bleak stats that show how poorly Black Americans are doing. Hey, I’m not even talking about the overt racism that the Trump years provoked and that still festers over American life.

All that horrible shit is a given.

I’m talking about confirmation that “Black homeowners are having to ‘whitewash’ their homes or conceal their race to get a higher appraisal.”

I’m referring to the fact that “people of color in the US face heightened risks of harm from climate-induced disasters,” and that “Black people are 40% more likely … to live in areas with the highest projected increases in mortality rates due to changes in extreme temperatures.”

There is also the news that Black neighborhoods are increasingly becoming surveillance states (I mean, even more than the surveillance state that most of us live in). And don’t forget that the U.S. maternal mortality has “more than doubled since 1999, and most deaths were among Black women.”

Finally, as if trigger-happy cops and angry Karens aren’t enough to make Black people fear for their lives, many studies indicate that those “stand your ground” laws — which conservatives absolutely love — are linked to “rising deaths and racist violence.”

OK, this is getting pretty grim. Surely, the protests of 2020 and the societal changes that arose from that are poised to have an impact soon, right?

Well, to the surprise of pretty much no one, America’s enthusiasm to address racial injustice, while still higher than it was a couple of decades ago, has cooled recently.

For example, many diversity, equity and inclusion leaders who were “hired in waves to help companies achieve an ethnically balanced workforce after George Floyd’s murder in 2020, are being phased out, leaving experts in the field concerned that corporations’ talk of affecting change was just empty words.”

I know we’re all shocked that corporations are even capable of empty words. I mean, they just seem so sincere and concerned with our well-being otherwise.

Schools are not faring much better. We are all too aware of Florida’s efforts to ensure that racism is never discussed, but perhaps you didn’t know that nationwide, White Americans “are just as likely to favor as to oppose a ban on teaching Advanced Placement courses in African American studies in public schools.” In other words, White people are divided over whether schoolkids should even hear the words “Jim Crow.”

So it appears that we have to put our faith in technology to improve the situation. Hey, what about artificial intelligence? It’s really cool for creating images like this one:

Unfortunately, researchers believe that “AI has embedded our cultural biases and threatens to perpetuate discriminatory human behavior.”

So once again, this is all very bleak. It apparently sucks to be either Latino or Black.

But just wait, because in my next post, I will explain how being White in America isn’t so great either. 

Yeah, that’s a cliffhanger.

It’s time for our semi-annual look at the state of Latinos in America. Actually, this is not a regular feature, because I don’t write regular features. But it’s either this or try to catch up on the latest Trump travesty, attempt to decipher once again what Republicans mean by “woke,” or analyze the latest celebrity breakup.

Trust me, this is a much better option. 

So what news?

First, my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will now offer its first bachelor’s degree dedicated solely to Chicano and Latino studies. This means that “Hispanic students will be able to get a degree in the study of their collective history and culture.”

Yes, it’s about time, and good news from my home state. When I went to UW-Madison, I was one of about 200 Latino students on a campus of 40,000. This degree would have been a great option for me, although I likely would have stuck with my BA in journalism, because otherwise I would not be able to bring you fast-breaking news stories like the following:

“For the first time in modern American history, most white people live in mixed-race neighborhoods” which “marks a tectonic shift from just a generation ago.”

This is not so much good news for Latinos as much as it is good news because of Latinos. You see, diverse neighborhoods, which are beneficial for society, “have expanded from urban cores into suburbs that once were colored by a steady stream of White flight from inner cities.” And the main reason is that “a soaring Hispanic population powered the diversification.”

You’re welcome, America.

Racially mixed neighborhoods “are increasing the most in the suburbs” and introduce “new groups of often left-leaning voters into typically conservative White-dominated enclaves.”

And speaking of voters, and Hispanics, please note that researchers believe that “young Latino voters will be vital to the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.”

That’s also good news, because there is no way that Latinos, so long demonized by the Republican Party, would ever vote GOP.

Um, wait. A recent poll implies that many Hispanic voters are “drifting toward the GOP.”

Apparently, many Latinos, especially older Hispanic men, “preferred the way Trump handled the economy when he was in office to Biden’s performance so far.” I guess they really like that economic collapse and the fact that Trump left office with fewer jobs than when he started, the worst presidential job record since the Great Depression. 

The poll also showed that Latinos often line up with the GOP on “issues ranging from the funding of police departments to the ‘greatness of America’ to the continued use of fossil fuels.” This just goes to show that you can punch people around, blame them for every problem, and even threaten to kick them out of the country, and many of them will say, “I’m going to ignore all that because gay people make me uncomfortable.”

Hell, even Republican Latinos in Congress struggle to keep their GOP colleagues from going full-on xenophobic. So do these old Latino male voters really think the Republican Party is going to give a damn about them?

Sorry, this post started as a compendium of good news but quickly morphed into a list of travesties. So let’s end on a high note.

OK, here’s something:

“While the face of the opioid crisis has predominantly been considered white and rural, overdose deaths among Latinos have skyrocketed in recent years,” nearly tripling over the last decade.

Damn, forget I said anything. Bad news has carried the day.

Better luck next week.