Talent More Important than Looks? Not if You're Latina

“Naya Rivera Sizzles On Rolling Stone Flip Cover Featuring The Latin Hot List 2013” blared the headline on the Huffington Post’s "Latino Voices" section, followed by the lead “Naya Rivera is hot - if you had any doubts just check out the latest issue of Rolling Stone.”  Both the Rolling Stone cover story and the HuffPost’s coverage of it seem aimed at celebrating Rivera’s success borne from her singing talents.  Unfortunately, neither accomplishes this and it is bad for Hispanic and Latino women.


For those unfamiliar with her, Rivera is one of the many stars of the Fox network's dramedy/musical “Glee,” which centers on the lives of current and former members of a high school glee club.  Rivera portrays Santana, a former cheerleader, glee club member, mean girl starting her post-high school life in New York City with other former classmates.  Rivera’s success on “Glee” has enabled her to start the musical recording career that Rolling Stone seems to want to discuss.

Yet, the talent most on display that HuffPost celebrates is Rivera’s ability to dress scantily and pose provocatively, noting, “The 26-year-old strikes a seductive pose as the queen of Rolling Stone’s Latin Hot List…”

Image from Rolling Stone
available at
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/naya-rivera-leads-rolling-stones-latin-hot-list-2013-20131106

This is sad state of affairs for Hispanic and Latino female artists, one that does not seemed to have improved much during the past 30 to 40 years.  Linda Ronstadt, for example, famously has complained about her portrayal on the cover of Time magazine in 1977.  Ronstadt was the most famous and the highest paid woman in rock-and-roll during the 1970s, yet the Time cover seemed concerned only with the seductive image Ronstadt could project under the headline “Torchy Rock.”

Time, 28 February 1977
available at
http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19770228,00.html

That the music and magazine industries have done little to in the way of celebrating Hispanic and Latino female artists for their talents instead of their looks is shameful.  That these industry’s business structures compel women to think they need to use their looks to attract attention to their careers is equally so.  It has been over 30 years since Ronstadt's appearance on the cover of time.  Will it take still another 30 years before the conditions change?

Missing the Target?

Everybody is not the same.  That statement may surprise some people, but the fact is different groups of people occasionally dress certain ways, eat particular foods, communicate in certain ways, and generally behave in ways different from one another.  The idea that our differences make us stronger is at the heart of our national identity.  “E Pluribus Unum.”  From many, one.  A danger emerges, however, when one group maintains a belief about another that may or may not fully reflect the realities of the situation.  This is called a stereotype, and it is part of a recently-filed discrimination lawsuit against Target stores.

As reported in the Courthouse News Service, three former Target employees are suing the superstore chain claiming they endured harassment and discrimination, and were fired in retaliation for complaining about it.  One exhibit in the lawsuit is a memo Target allegedly sent to its distribution warehouse managers, entitled “Organizational Effectiveness, Employee and Labor Relations Multi-Cultural Tips.”  Some of the tips regarding Hispanic employees, which several media outlets reported, stated:

“a. Food: not everyone eats tacos and burritos;

b. Music: not everyone dances to salsa;

c. Dress: not everyone wears a sombrero;

d. Mexicans (lower education level, some may be undocumented);

e. Cubans (Political refugees, legal status, higher education level); and

f. They may say 'OK, OK' and pretend to understand, when they do not, just to save face."

On their face, these tips seem inappropriate if not racist.  It seems to me, however, to be a misguided attempt to avoid something of a double-edged sword.  I imagine the struggled thought process in Target’s Human Resources Department in developing these tips went something like this:

Step 1/ Target recognizes cultural diversity among its workforce.

Step 2/ Target desires increased cultural awareness and sensitivity among those managing its workforce.

Step 3/ One way to increase cultural awareness and sensitivity is to dispel existing negative stereotypes.

Step 4/ In order to dispel existing stereotypes, we must first identify what those negative stereotypes are and then acknowledge that they exist.

Step 5/ After we identify negative stereotypes and acknowledge they exist, we must show how they are wrong.

Image by Lalo Alcaraz, July 11, 2013, copyright 2013
Available at http://www.gocomics.com/laloalcaraz/2013/07/11

By stating that not all individuals dress similarly or eat the same foods, Target seems to acknowledge diversity within a particular ethnic group.  Indeed, it would have been patently racist had the document read “All Hispanics wear sombreros and eat tacos.”  Further, by identifying individual groups who compose the category “Hispanic,” the company seems to want to heighten its managers’ awareness that, point in fact, all Hispanics are not the same.  I have suggested before that homogenizing categories like “Hispanic” or “Latino” obviate the rich cultural heritages of people with ancestral roots in Latin American countries.  The Target memo at the very least seems to acknowledge the diversity of those cultural heritages.

Some readers may think, “But who would need to be told so explicitly that these existing stereotypes and generalities are wrong?”  My answer is, “You would be surprised.”  I imagine a large number of people maintain ignorant misconceptions of Hispanics and Latinos in the United States.  Some individuals undoubtedly are willful and racist, but I believe that the majority are just uninformed or under-informed, due largely to a limited or lack of exposure to people from Hispanic and Latino backgrounds.  Two of the several personal experiences confronting people’s ignorance I have had over years illustrate this point.  The first was in 1983 at the start of my high school freshman year Spanish I class.  The conversation with the student seated behind me went something like this:

STUDENT: So this class should be pretty easy for you, huh?

ME: Why do you say that?

STUDENT: Well, your last name is Alvarez, isn’t it?

ME: So what?

STUDENT: Well, you’re Mexican.  This is in your blood so it should come easy for you.

Fast forward about 20 years later, when I am attending a house party of a fellow graduate student who has displayed, not prominently but not inconspicuously, an over-sized novelty sombrero.  That conversation went something like this:

ME: What’s with the sombrero?

HOST: What do you mean?

ME: It might be kind of racist.

HOST: Do you think so?  I got it at "Chi Chi’s" [Mexican restaurant chain]

My point here is not to say whether or not Target discriminated against in employees by composing and distributing the memo in question.  It also is not to say whether or not the managerial tips were discriminatory.  All of that is for the courts to decide.  Rather, my point is to ask, “Why do these stereotypes exist and even prevail?”  To cry “Racism” in answer to this question is a too simplistic knee-jerk reaction.  Such an answer is not likely to result in any open-minded engagement or mind-opening dialog across cultures; which I think should be the goal in our multicultural, E Pluribus Unum society. 

A Woman’s Work is Never Done When a Latino Man is Standing on Top of Her

As a graduate student in New York City I worked on a multi-year research project that sought to find out more about how recent immigrants in the United States raised very young children. The goal of the project was to see how young children of immigrants develop and get ready for school and life in the U.S. more generally, given that many immigrants, and Latinos in particular, find themselves at the lower levels of the socioeconomic ladder as they move from childhood to adulthood.

As part of my work I visited two families who were originally from Mexico every two months for three years. I spent time with them in their homes, ate meals with them, played with their children in the park, and went on errands with them as they parented. I watched the kids grow from infants to toddlers to preschoolers. Given that mothers take on the majority of the childrearing in most cultures, especially Mexican culture, most of the focus was on them and their childrearing beliefs and practices.

Each time I visited I had a pre-defined agenda of topics to discuss, such as the experience of migrating, education, and struggles with learning English. On one occasion I had the task of discussing what life was like for a female immigrant, how the roles of women were different in the U.S. and Mexico, and how their ideas of what it meant to be a woman had changed since their move. I vividly remember the large grin that appeared on one mother’s face as she discussed her work life in the United States. She worked as a waitress in a Mexican restaurant making a very good wage. She said that apart from the money, one of the most satisfying parts of her job was to go into the kitchen and give the patrons’ orders to the cooks, who were all men. She delighted in teasing them for doing “women’s work” and for her ability to “order them around.” She said that it was empowering to be able to earn a good wage, but also to have some freedom and authority that she may not have had if she were in Mexico. This type of liberation among Latina immigrant women has been documented in a few research studies, and changing gender roles are a somewhat unintended consequence of migration. I think that for Latinas, these transformations are especially pronounced given the male-dominated, macho culture in which many of them were reared.

The other side of this gender coin is that men must sometimes re-adjust to their new status as dishwashers, cooks, or launderers-positions that they would probably hesitate to share with men in their home country.  Men have devised a number of “civilized” ways to maintain their privileged status as this completely un-ironic scorecard from the nineteen-fifties shows; it grades woman on how well they perform their roles and behave toward their men. When the upper hand that men have is threatened, they sometimes resort to less civilized coping mechanisms such as drinking. The trump card that men hold, given their biological advantages of size and strength, is to physically impose their dominance through violence, an issue that many Latinas face, especially immigrant Latinas. Shockingly, well over half of immigrant women experience physical or sexual abuse in their lives.

Among the most vulnerable immigrant Latinas are those who are undocumented or who are in the process of becoming legal residents with the help of their citizen husbands. Immigrant women without legal status or who are dependent on a partner to achieve legal residency can easily find themselves at the mercy of the whims of their male spouses. The risk of losing access to legal status by ending an abusive, violent relationship could lead women to stay in situations that are harmful or life-threatening. Further, undocumented women may be hesitant to report abuse to police out of fear of being deported or detained indefinitely in prison-like conditions. Deportation and detention can lead to separations from family members and loved ones, especially young dependent children.

Thankfully, in 1994 Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act, which aimed to provide resources to all women residing in the U.S. with the goal of dealing with violence and abuse through treatment and prevention. There are progressive and libertarian concerns that some provisions of the Act, which call for harsh punishment of male offenders and invasive monitoring, infringe on liberties and are more punitive than restorative. Critics also contend that the law paints too broad a brush stroke that portrays most men as potential abusers. Perhaps this is true, but when one in three adult women in the U.S. report having been victims of sexual abuse, such laws don’t seem that unreasonable.

Notwithstanding these criticisms, the law was reauthorized in 2000 and again in 2005. In 2000 provisions were added to protect immigrant and undocumented women from the pitfalls of reporting abuse that I mentioned above. It gave any migrant women who reported abuse temporary legal status while in the country, so they did not have to fear being deported or detained for coming out of the shadows. In some cases, immigrant women received a U-Visa, which even provided a path toward residency for these women. Some have claimed that women will take advantage of this law by faking abuse in order to receive legal status, although they must still prove the abuse through the courts; it seems a little far fetched that one could feign abuse well enough to pass that standard.

In 2011, the law was up for reauthorization, however, congress failed to pass it a couple of times, with one of the most contentious pieces being the provision of services to undocumented immigrants. Part of the failure to reauthorize may have been political gamesmanship during an election year. Conservative Republicans likely did not want to appear to be supporting more government spending, especially on non-citizens. However, with the presidential loss, Republicans have been rethinking their political strategy, especially when it comes to immigrants and Latinos, the latter group who many believe was and will be decisive in elections to come. That is probably why after the election that the senate overwhelming approved the reauthorization of the law with a vote of 78-22.

The biggest piece of note in this vote, which is connected to Latino and immigrant issues, is that the only two Republican Latino senators voted against the reauthorization of the law. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida are considered the new hotshots of the party that will lead them to victory by garnering the Latino vote. Again, however, we see that simply having a Spanish surname is not enough. If the Republicans ever expect to gain inroads with Latinos, they can’t rely on old macho ideology, but they must also remember that our Latina mothers, sisters, and daughters deserve some respect, too.