Your "Daily" Dose

In my recent post, I suggested that categorical labels like “Hispanic” or “Latino” homogenize the cultural heritages of people with ancestral roots in Latin America.  It is an idea I have written about before, most notably here and here. 

No sooner had I published my post on Monday evening, when I was treated to this wonderful piece on “The Daily Show” in which Al Madrigal interviews people from different Latino backgrounds about the heterogeneity among Latino populations.  (Who knew Chileans love mayonnaise so much?!?)

I have to admit my envy over how the visual image can accomplish better what the written word at times struggles to do, but I am happy with how this piece demonstrates what I have been saying for years.

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. 

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose or Don't Hate the Player, Hate the Game

I strongly believe that race pervades many aspects of how our society and laws are constructed. I believe that the law and our society favor people with fair skin (White/Caucasian/European). I believe that killing is wrong. I also believe that George Zimmerman broke no laws, and legally deserves to be a free man. In the last few moments before Zimmerman pulled the trigger that discharged a bullet that ended an unarmed 17 year-old's life, based on what I have read and seen, I think he legitimately felt that it was a question of his life or Trayvon's. Zimmerman's injuries support this view. I feel profound sadness and anger for Trayvon Martin's family, for black people, and for those who have a similar moral belief system as my own that renounces physical violence or discrimination based on physical characteristics, gender, sex, or sexuality. But the law worked as it was intended, and the legal system, specifically the jury in the case against Zimmerman, made the right decision based on the evidence and the law. They did so even with a judge who was trying to tip the balance against Zimmerman. Ta-nehesi Coates of the Atlantic provides a cold and critical look that articulates the legal fairness of the trial here:

"It is painful to say this: Trayvon Martin is not a miscarriage of American justice, but American justice itself. This is not our system malfunctioning. It is our system working as intended. To expect our juries, our schools, our police to single-handedly correct for this, is to look at the final play in the final minute of the final quarter and wonder why we couldn't come back from twenty-four down."

An editorial in the Chicago Tribune, makes a similar case for the legal correctness of the jury's decision, although in a less pointed way. I think it is important for those who are demonstrating to be clear about what they are reacting to. A case about an individual going free and another one laying dead is not really what this should be about at all. This certainly was not the first such instance, nor will it be the last. The problem is that of an entire society actively and tacitly agreeing that one entire group of people is less human than another. How we can fix that, I am not quite sure, but marches and protests will be fleeting and will soon be forgotten.

"Despicable" Film Portrayals of Latinos

Last Friday my family and I went to see Despicable Me 2 on its opening weekend. We were not alone and the theater was pretty full on a late Friday afternoon. Impressively, the film earned $82.5 million that weekend, more than any other film currently out. Having a 4-year-old and a 6-year-old has allowed me to enjoy animated films again without guilt. Savvy film producers of kids’ films have always included inside jokes for adults, making the films even more enjoyable. It’s too bad, though, that those filmmakers are still not savvy about Latinos and how to tap into that rapidly growing market. Rather than offering a pleasant escape as Monsters University had done for me the week before (and being a college professor I really loved that film’s attention to the details of university life), I came away feeling annoyed.

*******SPOILER ALERT*******

A few people have already written about the representation of Latinos in this film (here, here, and here). To summarize briefly, the main character, Gru, is enlisted to find a super-villain with plans to take over the world with a serum that makes individuals indestructible. Gru goes undercover as a mall shop-owner, as the agency that employs him has intelligence that the villain is operating from there. There are a number of suspects, but Gru singles out a Mexican restaurant owner, Eduardo, who is Mexican himself. Eduardo fulfills many stereotypes with an overwrought Spanish accent (voiced by Peruvian-American Benjamin Bratt; a second choice when Al Pacino pulled out after already voicing the character), a tattoo of the Mexican flag on his chest (which did illicit a giggle from me when he revealed it), and a pet rooster that guards his business. These tropes alone are not the worst of it.

Gru remembers from his own days as a villain that Eduardo resembles El Macho, whose claim to fame was riding sharks and wearing a lucha libre mask as he wreaked havoc. While in stealth pursuit of Eduardo, Gru’s adopted tween daughter Margo develops a crush on Eduardo’s son Antonio who hangs out at the mall. Strangely, he has an accent thicker than his father’s that only vaguely sounds Spanish, and he seems to have a precocious sexuality as he woos Margo. Gru and his daughters end up attending an after-hours party where they dance salsa, don a chip sombrero holding guacamole, and find out that Eduardo is in fact El Macho and that his son is a lout as he dumps Margo for another girl.

Taken together, this seems like a laundry list of stereotypes that were poorly thought out, creating thin characters. Granted that this is a kids film, but the filmmakers already made the quick turn toward making the Latino characters the bad guys. The least they could have done was make them interesting and non-offensive bad guys (in terms of cultural stereotypes).

I was already primed for this negative reaction as there were three more animated films in the previews that all had Latino characters and all relied on similar simplistic representations, which could easily be seen in the few minute clips from each. “Planes,” the companion trilogy to “Cars,” which has its first installment this summer, has a plane named Chupacabra, who much like Antonio in Despicable Me 2, delivers his laughs because of his hyper-sexual Latin lover character. In “Turbo,” a snail who develops the ability to race at Indy car speeds, gets connected with a Latino boy, whose father owns a taco truck (sigh). Finally, "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2," revives its Latino character, Manny, a short,  mustachioed, sidekick, who serves only as comic relief (and is also voiced by Benjamin Bratt-sell out much?), and whose big line in the sequel is to notice an (evil) taco supreme that attempts to eat the main characters.

The opinion research firm Latino Decisions recently found that across many categories and types of media, a majority of those polled believes that Latinos are portrayed negatively in the media. They found that 71% of people see Latinos portrayed as criminals sometimes or very often in media and film. So, it is not so surprising that Despicable Me 2 would resort to that stereotype. In my opinion, it would be better to not be portrayed at all than to be portrayed with tired, negative characterizations.

As a small post-script, I still have hope for Latino portrayals in the media. I have not seen this show on Hulu yet, but NPR gave a very positive review for “East Los High.” It follows the drama of teen life in the overwhelming Latino East Los Angeles. NPR gave it really high marks not only on its quality, but also on its cultural sensitivity. One of the co-creators, Carlos Portugal stated he had some pretty simple guidelines for his writers: “no gardeners, no gang members and no maids.” He continued, "my hope is that people from East L.A. get to see themselves in the show portrayed as diverse human beings and not the typical Latino stereotypes we see in TV and films."  Thank goodness. I look forward to watching and will be writing about it soon.