As we all know, there are few absolutes in life.
Yes, water freezes at thirty-two degrees, inertia affects all objects in motion, and the Chicago Cubs will find a way to lose. But most other things are open to exceptions and nuance.
To continue reading this post, please click here.
Well, that was close.
A couple of years ago, it looked like the United States was in real economic trouble. But now everything is great… yeah, just great… yup.
A couple of years ago, I had to a take a brief hiatus from the blog because I was recovering from eye surgery.
After my eye healed up, I foolishly thought that I would not have to worry about my vision until I was well into a bitter, memory-addled old age where everything on the body starts to go and I begin ranting about how kids today are disrespectful brats who don’t wear any damn clothes.
But that was before I found out that eye surgery weakens those orbs floating in your head. As such, your odds of suffering something as random and bizarre as say, a retinal detachment, greatly increase.
And so when I started seeing floaters and bright blue flashes, I figured that it was not God passing along visions and premonitions to me. It was indeed my retina detaching.
My surgeon says that I caught it in the nick of time. Apparently, I was about two days away from going permanently blind in one eye. If I were a traditional Latino guy who never went to the doctor, that would have happened.
But I seem to have gotten it fixed. It’s too soon to tell, but the prognosis is good.
In any case, my retinal detachment is the reason why the posts may become more irregular over the next few weeks. I’m hoping to maintain a regular schedule, but I can’t promise.
At the very least, my misbegotten retina has prevented me from attending local Latino happenings. For example, I was going to write a truly witty and insightful piece about the National Pork Board’s recent contest, where several Latino chefs got together to dazzle epicureans by showing off everything they can do with pig.
I was invited to cover this event, but I declined because I had a checkup scheduled. My doctor wanted to see how the retina was healing up, and we spent time reminiscing about how he stuck needles into my eye — good times.
So all I can tell you is that the post covering the contest would have been full of insights about the importance of food in Hispanic culture, and loaded with funny and/or poignant quotes from the winner, and layered with Seinfeldian jokes about how much Hispanics love pork. Oh, and there was going to be this truly amazing metaphor that would have singlehandedly gotten me shortlisted for the Pulitzer. Trust me, it was gong to be spectacular.
Instead, I missed it, and I’m stuck squinting at the computer.
Damn my eye.
It’s good to be bi.
Wait, let’s try that intro again. You’ll have to forgive me. I’m not sufficiently bilingual to be dazzling all the time and avoid slip-ups, malapropisms, and brain freezes. In fact, if I spoke Spanish better, I would be a lot more confident of fighting off Alzheimer’s as I get older.
At least that’s the conclusion of “neuroscience researchers [who] are increasingly coming to a consensus that bilingualism has many positive consequences for the brain.”
About a year ago, I wrote about the bizarre attempt by some Latino organizations to boycott the U.S. Census. As far as I know, this baffling protest never took off.
As a result, Census numbers continue to trickle in, and they offer the occasionally intriguing, often disturbing look at the state of Hispanics in America. Yes, we have fresh proof that Latinos are the fastest growing demographic, but come on; you know that one already.
But were you aware that Latinos are the most likely group to not have any health insurance (32.4 percent of all Hispanics)? Well, in that case, it’s a damn good thing I’m here to pass along these Census statistics to you, isn’t it?
Now, some of the numbers are more official than others. A few offer only a snapshot of 2010 or even 2009. But all of them are as accurate and precise as government bureaucracies can get.
The most alarming of these figures is the fact that more than a quarter of Latinos (25.4 percent) live in poverty. This compares to an overall poverty rate of 14.5 percent, and is more than double the rate for whites and Asians. But it’s still less than blacks and Native Americans (who “win” this category with a rate of 27.7 percent).
Put another way — and Census numbers are all about putting things another way — the median household income for Latinos was just 70 percent of that for whites. The lack of take-home pay is no doubt because Latinos have an unemployment rate of 12.9 percent, far higher than whites (8.7 percent) and Asian Americans (7.3 percent).
Those grotesque figures would be even more dismal if Puerto Rico, hit hard by the recession, was included in the analysis. Because it’s not a state, the island gets its own set of numbers — including the wacky stat that “massive emigration to the United States and the reduction in birth rate have caused a drop of 2.2% in the population of Puerto Rico.” Apparently, there’s a stampede of Puerto Ricans into the mainland, but that’s a whole other post.
Of course, numbers don’t tell the whole story. The Center for American Progress breaks down these figures by saying, “racial and ethnic differences have worsened or stayed the same during the recession and recovery.” These killjoys point out that unemployment and poverty rates rose for Hispanics, while health insurance coverage, retirement savings, and homeownership rates all fell.
In fact, the Center says that “Latino homeownership rates in 2010 … were again close to their levels in 2001 even though Latino homeownership rates had risen from 2000 to 2007.” But I’m going to call my bad on that one. I contributed to the statistics by buying a house in 2004 and selling it in 2009 (no, the bank didn’t foreclose on us).
In sum, the Census numbers “show widening gaps by race and ethnicity throughout the recession and recovery.” The best we can hope for is that the 2020 Census reveals more uplifting news — unless we boycott that one.
Here’s a quick thanks to Festina, Juan, Jenn, Millie, and the always amazing Ankhesen Mie for their recent comments on my posts. Also, thanks to Pete for commenting on my post about wine tasting… which reminds me.
As I’m sure you’ve heard, people who drink wine tend to be healthier than abstainers. This means that I am encroaching on invincibility, because in addition to my love of vino, I am most positively Hispanic.
Yes, on the heels of the Immigrant Paradox, we have the even more perplexing and intriguing Latino Paradox. It sounds all twisty and stuff, doesn’t it?
This term describes “the surprising health of Latinos in the United States” who “are less likely to have health insurance … go to doctors less often and receive less in the way of hospitalization or high-level care when they are sick. Yet they … have lower rates of heart disease, cancer and stroke.”
For some reason that doctors, researchers, and healthcare experts can’t explain, we Hispanics are generally healthier and tend to live longer than our white or black brothers and sisters. On a purely anecdotal level, I can back this up.
My grandmother is pushing ninety and suffers fewer physical ailments than some people half her age. Indeed, members of my family usually have long lives, as long as they don’t get shot (but that’s another topic).
So what is the basis for the Latino Paradox? Well, among the guesses are concepts that I’ve discussed before, such as the fact that “Latino culture is particularly family-oriented; there also are strong community and neighborhood networks.” In addition, we Hispanics “eat somewhat more healthfully, with higher consumption of fruits and vegetables” despite the fact that “white adults know more about nutrition than Latino adults.”
To really pile it on, the stats show that “pregnant Latino women are less likely to smoke, drink alcohol, use drugs or have sexually transmitted diseases than American women as a whole,” which probably explains our “lower infant mortality rates, and quite probably health later in life.”
Clearly, we Hispanics are one beneficial gene mutation away from becoming completely bulletproof.
But it’s not all good news. And as I’ve written before, getting Hispanics to have regular medical checkups can be a challenge. Furthermore, the researchers found that “although Latino children who immigrate to the U.S. with their parents have lower rates of obesity than their U.S.-born peers, their risk of obesity increases the longer they live here.”
In other words, the more time Hispanics spend in the United States, the more likely they are to become fat, sedentary, and artery-clogged Americans. The Latino Paradox holds that “acculturation to the American way of life may worsen the health of Latinos, especially when combined with lack of access to medical care.”
As such, the lesson of the Latino Paradox is obvious.
I hate to break it to certain political leaders, but if we really want to reduce the cost of healthcare, and help Americans of every race to live longer while we’re at it, it’s clear what we have to do:
Everybody has to become a little more Hispanic.
I’m not a stereotypical guy in at least one respect: When I’m sick, I go to the doctor.
There’s none of this macho “I’m only coughing up blood; it will go away” kind of denial for me. I want to know what’s wrong.
This trait may be rare among males, but it’s even less common among Latinos. We know, for example, that fewer Hispanics crowd into emergency rooms than other ethnicities, despite what you may have heard about ERs going bankrupt because of undocumented Latinos overrunning them.
Just to be clear, nobody should yell “Nazi” at people unless there are, you know, actual Nazis present.
I make this clarification not just because it’s the truth, but because so many people have had their sensibilities offended during the arduous debate over immigration.
Judging from reader comments to several of my posts, it is not illegal immigrants and their supporters who have been slandered. No, this coalition of liberals and minimum-wage workers — outnumbered by at least two to one in many opinion polls — are the aggressors.
Yes, the “Nazi” label has apparently been tossed at people who support laws such as SB 1070. Now, even if you’re in a privileged position of economic power and numerical supremacy, and the person yelling it is near society’s bottom rung, that’s got to sting (although it would be nice to acknowledge that dynamic).
For the sake of argument, let’s call it even, and forget about all the racial slurs and threatening vitriol aimed at illegal immigrants. We’ll also let it go that much of people’s defensiveness (“I am not a fascist!”) is just the attempt to counter-attack uncomfortable accusations of racism.
It’s impossible to measure how many individuals on each side are acting like lunatics and to what degree. So let’s just call it unsightly all around.
However, I would ask that if you send me hyperbolic emails detailing crazed behavior by illegal immigrants, as one person did, that you at least keep it timely.
You see, I recently received a forward about the Montebello flag-raising incident. If you don’t recall, some Latino teenagers in California got out of hand during a demonstration. They raised the Mexican flag, and hung the American flag beneath it, upside-down.
It’s certainly a striking image. Perhaps that’s why it’s still flying around the internet as proof of a Latino insurrection, despite the fact that it happened in 2006.
Now, it would seem to me that if nothing more egregious than raising a flag has happened in the last four years, then the Hispanic overthrow of our government is not quite the threat the right wing is presenting.
At the risk of becoming defensive myself, I’d like to bring up an image from a demonstration that resonated with me. Granted, the protest was about healthcare, not immigration, but it at least occurred within the last year or so.
You may have seen this gentleman, and others like him. They believed it was a good idea to carry assault rifles to venues where President Obama was speaking.
The response from conservatives was praise and the usual pontificating about Second Amendment rights.
So if we’re keeping track: A bunch of unruly teenagers come up with a tacky way to protest, and it becomes a horrifying sign of revolution. However, grown men show up with firearms in a clear attempt to terrify their political foes, and it is a sign of patriotism.
The kids were disciplined for their idiotic prank. The guys with guns, however, went about their lives just fine, with the biggest burden probably the hassle of digging through the fan mail they received.
I could also point out that many of those teens have been told, sometimes overtly, that they are subhumans who have no rights. This is contrast to the adults with guns, who tend to be at the top of the American pecking order. They should also be – and let me phrase this delicately – old enough to know better.
So by all means, if the emotional response of teenagers is more of a threat to you than the aggressive tactics of adults, make your case. The odds are, however, that you will lose that competition.
By now, you’ve seen what happened to our old friend Dora the Explorer. No, it’s not pretty.
According to my pals at the Huffington Post, the doctored images of Dora “reveal some Americans’ attitudes about race, immigrants, and where some of immigration reform debate may be headed.”
I’ve avoided commenting on the healthcare controversy too much because, first, it’s a massively complex issue that would require several posts to do justice. And second, I have no desire to spend time purging my inbox of illiterate screeds that insist I’m a socialist under Obama’s evil spell.
However, I do have to make a few points about the legislation that Congress is considering. Because my focus is on Hispanic culture, let me throw some information about Latinos’ healthcare at you.
Hispanics are younger than the general population, and therefore enjoy the health benefits that come with youth. Also, when compared to white people, we tend to have healthier hearts (yes, despite our infamous hot tempers) and are less likely to suffer a stroke.
However, these pluses must be balanced against the fact that we tend to be fatter, have a greater risk for diabetes, and are less likely to be fully immunized when compared to the majority culture.
Most interesting is that Latinos are the group most likely to be uninsured. A stunning 40 percent of Hispanics don’t have insurance, which no doubt accounts for a large chunk of the overall uninsured rate of 16 percent.
Of course, one reason for that is because the current system makes it difficult for immigrants to get insurance. And since we’re on that subject…
It’s telling that despite all the problems, controversies, conspiracy theories, and whacked-out distractions that accompany the healthcare debate, only one concept provoked a U.S. congressman to shatter decades of political etiquette and indulge in a childish outburst. You no doubt remember this magical moment:
What got Congressman Wilson so up in arms was Obama’s statement that illegal immigrants would not be covered under his plan. Now, it’s one thing to shout insults at the president on live television. It takes even more cojones when you’re wrong.
In fact, illegal immigrants are not covered under any public option. Nor would they be provided with vouchers to help them pay for insurance. The Senate version of the bill even prevents them from buying insurance on public exchanges.
So it seems pretty clear that they’re not covered, right? Well, what has Wilson supporters screaming that their man was right is that the House version of the bill does not specifically bar illegal immigrants from buying insurance with their own money at full cost.
Regardless of political ideology, it strains logic to say that this provision means that taxpayers will have to pay for illegal immigrants’ healthcare. Actually, it seems to me that it would be the other way around, in that illegal immigrants would pay full price and help lower the costs for everyone. But I’m not an economist, much less a right-wing one.
The only way to appease the nativist crowd is if illegal immigrants are not allowed to buy anything in this country with their own money. Their cash,incidentally, is usually earned by repairing your roof, picking your vegetables, and raising your kids. But that’s another story.
By the way, one late amendment would send the bill for illegal immigrants’ healthcare to their countries of origin, which is at least a creative (albeit farfetched) approach. I’m sure, however, that this idea will go nowhere.
In any case, we can have a legitimate discussion about how much all this costs, and if it’s the best way to address the problem, and how to address the healthcare of non-citizens. But we’re not having that discussion, because too many people are busy shouting “Communist!” and accusing Obama of setting up death panels while dishing out free healthcare to illegal immigrants.
In a decade or so, after all this is sorted out and the United States has some kind of public healthcare, we’ll be stumped over what all the screaming was about. That’s my hope, anyway.
