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.

Is the Unexamined Life Worth Hiring?

The maxim “The unexamined life is not worth living,” usually is attributed to Socrates – the ancient Greek philosopher sentenced to death by Athenian leaders for corrupting the city-state’s youth with his teachings.  Socrates towers so high among the founders of Western thought that an entire method of inquiry has been named for him.  The Socratic Method probably can best be described as teaching by asking rather than by telling.  Questioning is at the heart of the maxim “The unexamined life is not worth living,” which compels each of us to question the quality of our individual existence while assessing the human condition and the state of the wider world.  Unfortunately, the essence of living a life worth living through inquiry and examination has eroded in current discussions about the role of education in our society.

You will note that Socrates advanced the idea that the unexamined life is not worth living; not that the unexamined life is denied admission to college or that the unexamined life is unemployable.  Yet, current “reforms” of education are characterized more and more by encroaching corporate influences shaping curricula, student assessments, and teacher evaluations and less and less by developing in students the skills needed to lead a life worth living.  Rather, the current agenda is what has come to be called “college and career readiness.”  (Pearson is the main corporate conglomerate pushing “college and career readiness” and stands to make a fortune by selling pre-packaged curricula and resource materials aligned to Common Core standards to complicit school districts and administrators eager to show what their students and teachers can do on standardized tests, but I digress.)  “College and career readiness” is narrow and wrong-headed because it sends the message that the only purpose for elementary and secondary education is future financial gain or future educational credentialing, which also is linked to future financial earning potential.

 

Socrates. Detail from Raphael's The School of Athens

It is for these reasons that I was pleasantly surprised when President Obama began discussing reforms for high school education during his State of the Union Address earlier this week.  I quickly was disappointed, however, when he reinforced the myopic view that the only purpose for secondary education is to put “our kids on a path to a good job.”  What does an education like this omit?  Love of reading?  Probably. Music appreciation?  Perhaps.  Physical education?  Judging by the nation’s adolescent obesity crisis; quite likely.

Developing the skills to lead a life worth living is a diminishing idea in higher education too.  During his State of the Union Address, President Obama announced the creation of the “College Scorecard that parents and students can use to compare schools based on a simple criteria - where you can get the most bang for your educational buck.”  Those simple criteria, however, have little to do with authentic learning or intellectual development.  Emphasizing the financial factors or economic outcomes of higher education will continue trends researcher and president emeritus of Columbia University-Teacher's College Arthur Levine identified last fall.  In an interview discussing his book, Generation on a Tightrope: A Portrait Of Today's College Student (co-written with Diane Dean), Levine noted,

We found that 23 percent of students were majoring in business, and only 7 percent wanted to.  We found that 16 percent were in medicine or health, and only 6 percent wanted to be.  We found that six percent of students were in the arts, but 11 percent wanted to be.  Students are choosing the areas in which there are jobs, whether they want to be in those areas or not.

Such a situation likely will negatively influence students’ views of their education and the lives it enables them to lead.  Yet, even if we capitulate that the aim of education is employability, existing educational structures probably will not develop the employees with the skills businesses need.  A 2010 examination into skills the future workforce would need to remain employable emphasized creative problem solving as the most desired skill for future employment.  Yet, creative problem solving is not promoted in the kinds of multiple-choice-test, only-one-correct-answer environments that American public schools have and are becoming.

Ultimately, emphasizing the employment options education creates or the financial implications of seeking education without first considering some fundamental questions – What’s worth knowing?  What are schools for?  What are the aims of education?  What is a life worth leading? – is misguided and not in keeping with the foundations of education.

Minority Academics and Blogging: Why It Should and Does Matter

The Internet is fascinating for several reasons.  For one, it instantaneously conveys information over vast distances.  For another, it becomes this seemingly endless trove of artifacts to be uncovered at a later time, revealing new thoughts or new ideas.

I experienced both of these aspects earlier this week when an organization I “like” on Facebook shared an article from the website of the British newspaper, The Guardian.  More accurately, the shared content was a blog post, bearing the headline “Academic blogging: minority scholars cannot afford to be silent.”  This post by Denise Horn originally was published in July 2012, but only now had come to my attention.

In her post, Horn describes a situation on the blog site hosted by The Chronicle of Higher Education from earlier that Spring, in which another blogger disparaged the academic integrity of recently-completed dissertations among the first cohort of graduate students in Northwestern University’s black studies doctoral program.  That blogger, Naomi Schaefer Riley, questioned the intellectual value of the new work based on “the sidebar [accompanying a news article about the students] explaining some of the dissertations.”  Based on this limited reading, Schaefer Riley called for the elimination of black studies programs.  The fury Schaefer Riley’s diatribe engendered led to her ultimate dismissal from The Chronicle.

Horn uses this event in her own post as a something of a wake-up call to think more deeply about herself as “an academic who blogs,” and more broadly about “minority academics who blog.”  That designation – a minority academic who blogs – resonated with me, to say the least.

When my friend and colleague, Prof. Frank Gaytán, and I started this blog last year, it was for the reasons described on our “About this Blog - FAQs” page – to discuss big ideas in big ways to a big audience from our particular points of view.  In doing so, we have strove to demonstrate the attitude and mindset Horn describes when she writes, “We [academic bloggers] invest a lot of time and effort into what we do.  For many of us, the care and attention we put into each of our blog posts reflects the attentiveness we have within our own research as a whole, and by extension reflects perhaps our training as scholars.”

Nevertheless, I do feel somewhat insecure at times in trying to engage big ideas in big ways with a big audience through this forum.  This mostly is due, I think, to aspects of higher education’s rewards systems.  Granted, I have some security through my tenure-track position, but that is a limited security given my rank as assistant professor.

Only recently I have begun to promote more my work on The Mexican Intellectual among other academics as a professionally-related creative endeavor, while being unsure if it will be perceived as a worthwhile pursuit or a quaint, but ultimately frivolous activity.  And yet, it is to some degree the nature of these higher educational structures that prompted our founding of this blog in the first place.  Fortunately, conversations are beginning at the graduate and professional levels of how to begin thinking about how to incorporate digital scholarship into tenure review processes.  After all, as Horn notes, “Blogging is, to an extent, different from journalism and from academic journals, but it still holds its own as a forum for ideas and for 'civil discourse' among academics."  "The emergence of many minority academic programs and departments," she continues, "is connected to a desire to make visible not just the work but also the culture of certain segments of the population that have been ignored, undervalued, oppressed.”

Admittedly, my graduate training was not in the kind of minority academic program or department Horn discusses; neither was Prof Gaytán’s.  We do, however, teach the courses we teach and conduct the kind of research and writing we do in order to make visible the previously invisible; to lift up the previously overlooked or undervalued.  And I do not think there is anything frivolous about that.

God Made a Mexican Migrant Farmer

Here is a little glimpse of what likely happened in many rural areas of Mexico throughout the financial boom years of the 2000s. Mexican immigrants, legal ones at least, of which there were are about 5.4 million, probably found themselves in construction and labor jobs, with steadier work and higher levels of pay than they had ever experienced previously in their lifetimes.  While many Americans were building expensive new homes and expanding their wealth, Mexican immigrant labor was a beneficiary of this prosperity.

One of the biggest points of pride for rural Mexicans working in the United States is to be able to triumphantly return to their hometowns with evidence that they have succeeded financially abroad. They come bearing thousands of dollars of gifts: flat screen televisions, washing machines, refrigerators, and the newest American styles. These are handed out with great fanfare. The expense of this grandiose gift giving is worth it, because it is an affirmation of one’s choices, and it offsets some of the brutally hard labor that had to be done in order to achieve this material gain.

These gifts were typically transported over land in a marathon driving session. The mode of transportation itself was the ultimate symbol of success and was one that was not given away. Being from areas that frequently lack paved roads, where farming and caring for livestock are still the way of life, hefty, work vehicles are highly valued. None is more valued than a pick up, and there are few automakers other than American ones that have mastered the engineering of a powerful utility vehicle. Even though he would be more likely to use the vehicle on the streets of Chicago or Los Angeles for transportation, rather than work, the symbolic power of the truck transcends borders. A large truck is not seen as a liability in any way, even for a Mexican-descent city dweller, rather it is a great figurative investment. A Dodge Ram such as this one would certainly satisfy the prestige, power, work, and transportation needs of a Mexican migrant.

I wrote a post at the end of last week asking readers to notice the presence, or lack thereof, of marketing to Latinos during the Super Bowl commercials. Except for a silly Taco Bell ad, there was little explicit focus on Latinos.

One commercial that was touted as one of the best overall was a sentimental piece produced by Dodge that hailed the American farmer. The ad touted repeatedly in its tagline that “God made a farmer.” Pictures of farmers served as the backdrop of the ominous and authoritative narration , played with a crackling, old tube radio style overlay. The words and voice were provided by the recording of a 1978 speech given by conservative radio broadcaster Paul Harvey, now deceased. It was no surprise that Dodge would be associated with the hard work of farming, given the affinity that rural Mexicans have for the vehicles, which I mentioned above.

What was surprising was that the portrait that the Dodge commercial displayed was an almost exclusively White one. Judging only from the faces, at best a couple of the 15  farmers whose pictures were shown were Latino. This is in spite of the fact that by varying estimates, between 50 and 70 percent of the farm work labor force is Latino. This is certainly an issue of the inaccurate representation of who farmers actually are. Others, notably Alexis Madrigal of the Atlantic, have already noted that it also downplays the day-to-day issues and injustices that Latino farmworkers face in terms of pay and working conditions. This video shows a farmworker recounting the appalling conditions a typical tomato picker must endure.

Dodge cannot be held entirely responsible for the conditions of farmworkers. They are an auto manufacturer that is trying to sell cars and make money and I fault them in no way for that.  What they missed is an amazing opportunity to do well and do good. Ironically, the great American Dodge Ram is manufactured in Mexico. Latinos have an affinity for pick up trucks. Latinos also have strong ties to farm working today and historically, whether it is parents and family members or they themselves. Dodge has made a previous bad attempt to reach out to Latinos by simply translating their ad and having Latino-looking actors. All of these deeper cultural connections, however, were missed opportunities for Dodge to reach out to a Latino market that it has already begun to tap into; unfortunately for them, they may have just undone some of that groundwork with their insensitive ad.

Latino Kindergartners Behave Well, But Can’t Read

I recently finished reading the book, “How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character,” by journalist Paul Tough. Tough provides an optimistic view of how a different kind of education might be the key in raising disadvantaged, urban, students of color out of poverty and into the middle class. He offers research from developmental psychology, the new area of positive psychology, economics, sociology, and education, to show that with a focus on students’ character and social skills, schools can overcome some of the cognitive and more traditional academic deficits that they carry as a burden. 

He does not discount that economic issues, poor institutional support, bad education policy, racism, and privilege conspire against urban minority youth, but his goal is to focus more on the pragmatic question of how to change lives in the face of the seemingly intractable forces of poverty and disadvantage. 

Not all of the research he presents is new, but it is powerful in its endurance; his ability to synthesize the vast literature into a cohesive argument is great. His argument is that character can be a stronger predictor of success in school than traditional measures of intelligence. Character includes, persistence, an ability to not be afraid of risk and failure and to learn from mistakes, the ability to delay gratification, to work hard, and being nice.

As I mentioned, psychologists have long known that these characteristics are associated with later success in life. One of the most famous examples of one of these characteristics is the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment, which examined delayed gratification and self-control among pre-school age children.  In the experiment, a child is placed alone in a room with a marshmallow in front of her. A researcher tells the child that she will return in a few minutes and that if the child does not eat the marshmallow until her return, she can have two marshmallows. Videos of children anxiously awaiting the return of the experimenter and deciding whether to take the route of instant gratification are pretty hilarious.

The amazing findings of this study are the long-term relationship between success and putting off some pleasure. Researchers followed up with children who were able to put off the reward and found that they were more likely to graduate from high school, hold a job, and go to college than kids who were not able to wait.

For many years, psychologists believed that these were inherited traits that could not be changed and that they went along with the inherited trait of intelligence. But Tough shows that recent research has disentangled the two and has also shown that these character strengths can be learned, even very late in life, even after receiving a lousy traditional inner-city education. He provides some hopeful case studies of young people in New York, Chicago and San Francisco, who do amazing things like become chess masters and win national championships, do well at elite liberal arts colleges, and who simply beat the odds of the status that they were born into. 

This book, while a pleasure to read, with some very strong points, is geared more toward the black-white binary of how we view education, poverty, and race issues in America.

Latinos present a unique conundrum in light of Tough’s thesis and the research that supports it. Latinos, because of the strong cultural values of respect (respeto), obedience in hierarchical familial relations (machismo; familismo), calmness (tranquilidad), and hard work (echarle ganas), embody the character attributes that should lead to success later in life. Studies of Mexican-American youth confirm that they have better social skills in the toddler and pre-school years than non-Latino children. Simply, they are much better behaved-they follow directions, are obedient, and quiet.

Part of the reason that Mexican-American children are so well behaved is because they spend much of their childhoods up to kindergarten with their mothers. Latina mothers are the least likely of all ethnic groups to send their kids to daycare or pre-school. Again, we see the strong cultural orientation toward family and close-knit need for trust (confianza) shapes the behavior of Latinos. Latina mothers in general believe it is bad parenting to send their kids to be cared for out of the home. This allows them to have tight control over their kids’ development, making them much stronger in terms of their social skills.

The downside is that Latino children miss out on the academic focus that many pre-schools have in today’s age. A landmark study done in the 1960’s examined the effects of pre-school on low-income children in Michigan. The Highscope Perry Pre-School Study, similar to the marshmallow study, looked at the long-range effects of enrollment in a high quality pre-school. The findings were similarly powerful and astounding, with lower incarceration rates, higher incomes, and higher IQ scores for those who attended the school. 

We see the effects of not attending pre-school in the pre-literacy skills of Latino kindergarteners. They show up to school not ready to read, the way their non-Latino peers who went to pre-school are prepared, showing up already knowing their letters and numbers. These academic gaps only widen as time goes on, and as my colleague René Luis Alvarez noted in a previous post, Latinos end up at a significant disadvantage in terms of their high school graduate rates.

The story for Latinos becomes bleaker when we see that even their social and behavioral advantages are not maintained once they spend more time in dysfunctional public schools.

Just this week a study was released showing that diagnosis of Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder is up among Latinos; this is a finding that reveals quite the opposite type of good social behavior that I described above. That being the case, it is not so surprising that we see Latino children like this 7-year-old who was handcuffed by the police for misbehaving in school. This is not to say the diagnoses are accurate or justified, nor was the inappropriate, overreaching response. Most likely the opposite is true, but where did the good social behavior that is found in the younger years go? 

So, Latinos, as usual, defy either-or solutions. The complexity and cultural heterogeneity of this group requires not only the focus on character, as Tough suggests, but a dedication to the maintenance of those social skills. Additionally, for a group that may have difficulties with English and has a parental generation with low levels of formal education, we can’t simply rely on good behavior and “ganas;” this is especially true because once in school, Latino children and youth quickly lose the social advantages they had, simply as a matter of survival in many urban public schools-especially true for boys, for whom it does not really pay off to be quiet, subservient, and respectful. Such a comprehensive approach that focuses on academics and social and cultural skills from a very young age is a tall order, but a necessary one given the youth and rapid growth of this group.