Hispanic Fanatic

I’ve mentioned before that one of my vices is alcohol, specifically wine. And yes, people in wine shops are not always delighted to see me.

In any case, I’ve also mentioned that my wife and I like to go wine-tasting, which is about as “boogee” (as Cousin #1 would say) as it gets. I mean, it’s not exactly keeping it real in the barrio to say things like, “The tannins on this zinfandel give way to notes of chocolate.”

But as I‘ve also stated, a person can get drive himself insane by measuring every decision or preference against the ever-shifting and amorphous concept of “authenticity.”

So I’m not going to apologize for the fact that we like zipping through the California countryside and sampling the vineyards’ vino.

When we first started doing this, my wife and I were among the few Gen Xers who showed up in the tasting room. Lately, however, we’ve noticed that more people are our age. Perhaps it is a truism that individuals develop more sophisticated palates and upscale tastes as they get older. Or maybe my peers have realized how depressing keggers are when you’re pushing forty.

Regardless, I’ve also noticed that I’m no longer the sole Latino at such functions. In the past, the only Hispanics I ever saw were the laborers in the fields. Indeed, this agricultural industry is one of the top employers of Latinos, and several Hispanics have worked their way up to management or even ownership positions — something highly rare in corporate America.

In the tasting room, however, it’s still been mostly white people — at least until lately. So what should I make, if anything, of the observation that more Latinos are joining me in swirling around a glass of syrah?

It’s probably nothing more profound than the fact that, even in these horrific economic times, the demographic shift underway in America continues. And it won’t be long before every aspect of upscale U.S. culture — from country clubs to executive boardrooms — gets an ethnic makeover. It is inevitable.

However, it also means that whenever Hollywood gets around to remaking Sideways (every movie get remade, sooner or later), they will probably replace Paul Giamatti with someone who is, shall we say, a little swarthier.

It came from outer space.

Well, not really, but that’s what a lot of people think.

The chupacabra, as you may know, is a Latin American legend. He (it?) is a vampire-like creature that attacks animals (primarily goats) and sucks their blood and/or internal organs out. He’s one scary badass.

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One of my favorite words is “internecine.” Of course, I don’t admire the concept (i.e., hostility or conflict within a group). I just like the sound of its syllables clanging together.

In any case, “internecine” describes the situation whenever ethnic minorities beat up on each other. It’s most famous application is “black-on-black violence.”

I have yet to hear about brown-on-brown violence, but perhaps it is only a matter of time. For example, a few months ago in Staten Island, a Mexican immigrant became one of the borough’s recent victims of a hate crime.

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Whatever happened to the controversy over bilingual education? I don’t mean that the topic has gone away or been resolved.

However, with all the hysteria over immigration and assimilation and undocumented Latinos stealing our jobs… well, it just seems like the debate over the best way to educate immigrant children with poor English skills has been rendered quaint.

Perhaps this is because English-immersion appears to be the de facto winner. Teaching immigrant kids in their native language seems to be a 1970s concept — like gun control and no-nuke rallies — that failed to accomplish much.

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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.

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Previously, I’ve written about the ironclad grasp of family in Latino culture. Once again, I’m not arguing that Scandinavians and Belgians and Koreans don’t love their families. I’m just asserting that Hispanics often prioritize family to a level that majority-culture America may find extreme.

After all, the whole idea of sending grandma to the old folks’ home when she gets to be inconvenient is not a Latino tradition. Similarly, it wasn’t Hispanic politicians who hijacked the term “family values” to justify why they hated certain groups of people (although many Latinos were only too happy to adopt that definition after the fact; but that’s another post).

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With hope, this is the last post I will write about the Great Recession. Like every American, I cannot say goodbye and good riddance quickly enough to this horrific period of economic malaise.

By the way, is the word “malaise” ever used in any context other than economic? But I digress.

The past few years have been, to use sophisticated analytical terms, a total financial clusterfuck. And yes, Latinos were hit harder than most.

I’ve written before about the sky-high unemployment rate among Hispanics and plummeting rates of remittances to Latin America and general economic depression in the Hispanic community. To put a capstone on these stats, the National Hispana Leadership Institute released a study showing how sucky it is to be Latino right now, particularly if you’re older. The study was undertaken with AARP, so it looked at Latinos age forty-five or older.

What they found was that Hispanics in this age group were twice as likely to lose their jobs as the general population was. Latinos were also more likely to suffer a decrease in earnings. In addition, almost half of Hispanics had trouble paying for the bare essentials, and over one-third cut back on basic medications. Finally, about twenty percent lost their health insurance (I’m sure the rates are much lower among Tea Baggers).

With stats like that, it would be understandable if we Hispanics curled up in a corner, sucking our thumbs and trying vainly to think happy thoughts. But we’re talking about people who routinely ditch old lives for a shot at a better future.

So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that Latinos have shown resiliency during this nightmarish time. The report points out that Hispanics were more likely than the general population to look for new jobs, to seek advanced training, and to work toward keeping their skills up to date.

Most interestingly, Hispanics were twice as likely as the general population to start their own businesses. Yes, even in a disastrous era, Latinos were among the first to take a chance on making things better.

I can’t say that happy endings are in store for all those Hispanics who got through this mess. But again, I hope that I never have to return to the topic of how terrible things once were.

I’ve written before about the demographic change taking place in America. Specifically, ethnic minorities, led by Latinos, are reproducing at a faster pace than white Americans are. As such, in the near future, the United States will be a minority-majority country.

This has caused much teeth gnashing and wailing among overt racists, of course. But many other people who deny prejudice or ethnic animosity have also expressed their concern. Their deep-seeded fear, masked as logical concern, is that Latino teenagers have the highest dropout rate of any ethnic group. As such, they’re afraid that at some point, a legion of uneducated Hispanics will take over the nation and send us into an abyss.

Their solution – let’s try to kick out as many Latinos as we can now – is bigoted of course. But more than that, it’s impractical. No matter what they do, white people will one day be, if not minorities themselves, no more than a plurality.

One would think, therefore, that instead of simply bemoaning the fact that too many Hispanic teens aren’t finishing school, the majority culture would strive to make sure that the largest subgroup of younger Americans will be better educated.

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Hispanics are used to being insulted and denigrated. After all, there are a wide variety of colorful slurs and cultural putdowns from which the bigot can choose.

However, “lazy” has never seemed to stick. When it is applied to us, it seems to tumble out in an almost haphazard way. It’s as if the racist doesn’t really believe it, and is just hurling epithets that sound good. After all, how can Latinos be lazy if they’re working hard to invade America and then steal everybody’s job? That sounds like quite a strenuous chore to me.

The stereotype of the shiftless Latino pinnacled back in the days when welfare cheats were the biggest boogieman that white America had to face. Even then, it was scarier to paint African Americans as lazy. That imagery still resonates with true haters. After all, Hispanics don’t have a Stepin Fetchit as cultural shorthand.

In recent years, the claim that Hispanics are lazy has been further diminished. The cliché of the sweaty Latino knocking himself out to install your roof or finish your garden or clean your hotel room has come to the fore.

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I’m so horribly, terribly angry about how the U.S. team was robbed in their World Cup match against… who was it again? Um, I’m going to guess… Canada? No, it was Belgium, right?

Never mind, I can’t carry on this charade anymore. The truth is that I could not care less about the World Cup. I’ve never been a soccer fan, and that doesn’t change whenever this mega-event comes around.

But saying that I’m indifferent to soccer is likely to provoke judgment and scorn, which is a complete 180 from a generation ago, when only freaks and outcasts acknowledged an interest in the sport. This is because in the multicultural, global-village world in which we now live, many Americans are eager to prove their international bona fides.

As such, dismissing soccer is like saying you don’t like sushi, or have never seen a French movie. The person who has enjoyed those things may smirk and say, “How very American of you” and dismiss you as a parochial ignoramus.

Of course, many Americans really are parochial ignoramuses, but that’s another post.

In any case, the World Cup carries an extra burden for American Hispanics. After all, soccer is ridiculously popular in Latin America. Furthermore, the World Cup is a time for immigrants and their first-generation offspring to bond and root for the mother country.

However, I just can’t get into it – not because I think soccer is stupid or boring. Indeed, I will watch the whole damn series rather than sit through five minutes of a golf tournament. But the sport has never resonated with me, which puts me on the defensive.

For the record, I’m not big on basketball either, although I thought it was nice that my local Lakers won. Well, I did think it was good news, until I saw how certain people celebrated downtown.

Yes, it was a good old-fashioned LA sports riot. Fortunately, no one was killed, and the destruction and number of injuries were not as bad as some other outbreaks of this type.

Still, the violence brought out the worst elements in American culture, and I’m not just talking about the thugs who took to the streets. Internet commentary is blistering with accusations of illegal immigrants torching LA and Hispanics on welfare who look for any reason to riot and wetbacks running around out of control and… well, you get the picture.

A few hoodlums pounce on an opportunity to wreck havoc, and many Americans are only too happy to paint it as an essential trait of all Hispanics. I suppose I should point out that riots happen all over the world over sporting events. For example, when the Celtics won the championship recently, a similar scene occurred.

It doesn’t look like many Hispanics were involved in that one, but I’m sure we got blamed.

There was even rioting in Montreal over a recent hockey game. Think about that: the most polite people in the world freaked out over a sporting event! And nary a Latino was to be found on the scene.

Yes, the way Americans (and apparently, Canadians) celebrate their team’s victories is depressing. Perhaps I need to reassess this soccer thing. Maybe I should get into this more civilized display of athletic competition.

Hey, maybe I’ll root for Scotland. I hear that they don’t have any hooligan fans.