Hispanic Fanatic

A few years ago, I took one of those internet quizzes that pinpoints your real religion, based on your actual beliefs and not the lip service that you espouse. Like all internet quizzes, I’m sure it was of dubious validity and reliability, and it probably had a questionable theological basis on top of that.

Still, I couldn’t argue with the result, which said that I was, in reality, a Reform Jew. By the way, the religion of my childhood, Roman Catholicism, ranked around twenty-eighth or so on my personal scale, which sounded about right (but I’ll refrain from picking on Catholicism just now).

These days, I consider myself more of secular Buddhist agnostic. But the Jewish angle isn’t that far off.

I’m not sure why I relate to Judaism. It’s not like I had a lot of Jewish friends growing up. My neighborhood was primarily Hispanic (and therefore, incredibly Catholic) while my home state is overwhelmingly Midwestern white (mostly Protestant). So not a lot of Goldbergs and Silvermans appeared on the scene.

Perhaps I picked it up when I lived in New York City, where Jewish culture is everywhere. Within just a few years of arriving in NYC, I was ordering bagels with lox and talking about people’s chutzpah and obsessing about death. So maybe that’s why I came up Jewish on the test.

But I think there’s a larger issue. It seems that Hispanics and Jews have always gotten along pretty well. Perhaps both groups know what it’s like to pass for white, but not really. Maybe our mutual focus on family lines up nicely. Or perhaps we just admire each culture’s long history of suffering.

Regardless, I was intrigued to read about a group of Hasidim Jews in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood. A small but thriving population traces its ancestry to Spain and Latin America, and as such, members of this group consider themselves Hispanics.

Spare me your jokes about Juan Epstein, the NYC Puerto Rican Jew from “Welcome Back, Kotter.”

There’s a man in Crown Heights with a real-life cross-cultural headspinner of a name, Moshe Nunez, and he says that “There are a lot of Latin American Jews here…. Many non-Jewish Latinos are surprised to see Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn who speak Spanish and carry on their Hispanic traditions.”

I suppose that would be an attention-getting sight. But still, I’m not really shocked that some people would adopt both cultures. The overlap goes back decades.

For example, when my mother moved to America, back in the 1960s, her first job was helping out an old Jewish woman on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The woman was a Holocaust survivor, and she brought that horrific period to life for my mother by rolling up her sleeve and showing the number branded into her arm. This simple display provided quite the education for a young woman from Latin America.

The old woman was very kind to my mother, and she introduced her to the opera and nice restaurants and the finer things in life. According to my mother, the old woman was adamant that bigotry against any group was evil. She said that anyone who would discriminate against a Latino would bash Jews as well.

In the old woman’s mind, we’re all one and the same.

Like many people, I check out PostSecret weekly to see what kind of freaks, weirdoes, and social deviants are out there. For those of you who don’t know, PostSecret is a wildly successful website where people send in postcards detailing their dark secrets, obsessive thoughts, and big regrets.

The site is designed to bring us together, an online therapeutic effort to help people see that others share their fears and hopes. I’m sure it does that for many readers. But I imagine that for many others, it just provokes a voyeuristic “Wow, that guy is nuts” reaction.

Every now and then, I read a submission that resonates with me. For example, the following was in this week’s batch of new secrets:

I must admit that I’m annoyed. Sure, it’s offensive that somebody believes that a violent act is representative of Latino culture. And yes, it’s an odd and pathetic response for a victim to dwell on the mugger’s race (to the point of becoming “obsessed”).

But what really pisses me off is this: I’ve spent a lot of time writing about Latino culture, trying to express the nuances and intricacies of Hispanic thinking, when all I really had to do in order to get someone’s attention was to punch him and steal his wallet. That would have been substantially easier (and while we’re at, much more profitable).

So I’m sure you understand why I will refrain from any further efforts to publicize this blog via social media, google analytics, keywords, SEO marketing, word of mouth, or other techniques that are oh so inside-the-box thinking. I will also pay substantially less attention to quality writing and original insights, because that clearly doesn’t matter much.

Instead, you will find me wandering the alleys and badly lit streets of America, ready to pop someone on the head and then mention, while I’m counting their cash, that I’m Latino. That should get them good and interested in Hispanic culture.

By the way, one interesting thing about PostSecret is that the site doesn’t accept advertising. They’re actually a little smug about it. Of course, this blog has been ad-free from the beginning, so who could blame me if I finally wised up and added a couple of revenue enhancers? That’s just conjecture, of course, because any ads you see here will just be figments of your imagination…

Not too long ago, I wrote about the Empowerment Experiment. This social movement was started by African Americans who want to help black-owned business thrive. I asked whether Latinos should consider undertaking a similar project, or if it was all just racial politics.

Regardless, in that post, I wrote about how Latinos’ economic power lags behind that of African Americans. It’s not just that blacks do better than Hispanics statistically. It’s that black-owned businesses and entrepreneurs seem commonplace, while identifying Latinos in positions of authority is a little trickier.

For example, what is the largest Hispanic-owned business in the United States? Unless you work for it (or took a few minutes to google the question) you probably don’t know that, according to Hispanic Business.com, the biggest Latino-run organization is the Brightstar Corporation.

In addition to holding a spiffy, optimistic name, this company “is a solution provider and value-added distribution and manufacturing services company.” No, I don’t know what that Dilbert-inspired corporate doublespeak means either.

I was going to suggest that we all buy Brightstar products or employ Brightstar consultants or use Brightstar for all our networking/culinary/communications/porn-access/whatever needs. But like I said, I can’t tell what the company actually does. I just know that it’s big. For all I know, they manufacture toilet seats.

But isn’t it great to see that Latinos can create a mystifying corporate identity and spew business jargon that is just as vague and uninspiring as white America can? Yes, it’s a brand new day.

First, let me thank everyone who has commented on my recent posts. I’m extending a big shout out to Pipil, Jeremy, Emma, AnaRC, Bugys, Jose, and Macon D. Keep those cards and letters coming!

Second, at the risk of trying your patience, I have one more thought about my recent move to Los Angeles. As I wrote, the movers who took our stuff to California were Latino. I wrote about how they arrived late at every stage of the process, but I didn’t say why.

Well, the reason is simple: They were on Hispanic time. As such, they were incapable of being punctual.

It is a cultural trademark of Latinos that we run late, or flake on deadlines, or just wander in at some point during the party. I’ve heard many reasons for this. Perhaps it is the laidback culture of the siesta that carried over to America. Maybe we don’t sweat the small stuff, and therefore refuse to obsess about what the clock says. Or perhaps we’re prone to some kind of time-space dyslexia that causes us to proclaim, “It’s only two minutes away” when the destination is in another city.

All I know is that every clock in my mother’s house is set fast. I am not exaggerating. My mom claims that this forces her to pick up the pace, because it tricks into thinking that she’s even later than she actually is. It works to some degree, because she tends to run less behind schedule than she did in the past.

For example, when I was in high school (and before I got my drivers license), I racked up myriad detentions because I had to rely on my mom to get me there. Every morning we rushed out the door as if the starting time for school had been cruelly moved up without notice. I protested to my teachers that arriving late was out of my control, but they insisted that I was consistently tardy because of adolescent belligerence rather than cultural norm. Then I got slapped with another detention.

In my family, I developed a reputation for being the only one who is ever on time. Perhaps it’s because I’m half-white. More likely, I just got frustrated at everyone always being late and tried to make up for it singlehandedly. My efforts have served only to increase my blood pressure.

Look no further than the Christmas Eve celebrations at my mom’s house, which start promptly at 4:00… or 5:00… or 6:00… or whenever everyone shows up. But my family always arrives, and we have a great time. Being late is difficult when nobody has bothered to set a time to meet in the first place, but we manage it.

I know other cultures claim that they have this affliction. I’ve heard of Arab time and Greek time. I’m sure they’re telling the truth. But honestly, I doubt they’re much competition when it comes to the utter lack of temporal awareness. Hispanic time is another animal altogether.

Still, if we must have some cultural issue with punctuality, we should try to make it more interesting. If we were exactly forty-three minutes and nineteen seconds late for everything, then we’d have something quirky. Instead, we’re just the tardy ones.

But again, why are we so perpetually behind schedule? What possible reason can there be for the fact that we Latinos take time so frivolously?

Well, I have the answer, and I plan to go ahead and tell you. But I’m running a little late right now. So just give me a minute or two… five tops.

Don’t worry, I’ll catch up to you.

One of the amazing things about living in a city like Los Angeles is its sheer scope. I lived here for five years in the 1990s, and yet there are whole neighborhoods that I’m only seeing now that I’ve moved back.

Recently, I was running errands and, as usual in this town, driving from one part of the city to the other. I drove beneath an underpass that’s part of a labyrinthine alcove of freeways and bridges. All the concrete and cars blotted out the very sun (ok, that’s a little hyperbole, but not too much).

I had never been to this part of LA before, and my attention was fixed on reading street signs and searching for landmarks. Still, I couldn’t miss the encampment as I drove past it – no one could have.

There most of been a hundred of them, there beneath the intersection of multiple bridges. They were trabajadores, the immigrant workers who gather in places like that to beg, cajole, and hustle jobs.

Some of them were gathered around a pickup, shouting or gesturing in what I presumed was an attempt to communicate to the driver (their day’s potential employer) that they were the strongest and hardest-working of the lot. Others were sitting on the gravel, talking among themselves or playing some card game that was hidden to me. Others lay spread out with cowboy hats over their eyes, trying to catch a nap. At least one small group was cooking something on a portable-stove type thing.

I saw all this while stopped at the light. And then traffic surged forward, and I continued on my task.

As I drove away, I realized that I had never witnessed that before. Despite seeing trabajadores hard at work myriad times, and writing about them at length, I had never viewed the genesis of the process: a swarming in their shanty town where they jostle one another for the chance to labor for a pittance.

For some reason, I abruptly remembered when I lived in New York City, and I saw my first drug deal take place on the street (for the record, I was neither buyer nor seller; just a passing bystander). I had seen plenty of college kids buy pot, but this was different. It was what people really did when they wanted heroin or crack or the mythologized “hard drugs.” The transaction was much sloppier and less dramatic than television makes it out to be. Still, it was an authentic moment – not a fictionalized reference point.

It was like that when I saw the trabajadores. This was an authentic part of our culture, officially underground yet instantly recognizable to just about everyone. But like the drug deal, few people had actually seen it in the real world. We adopt images from movies and news stories, and assume that this counts as experience. But no editor or voiceover or carefully studied camera angle got between me and the crowd in the immigrant camp.

It was real. But of course, for me, it’s fodder. For the trabajadores, it’s their lives.

In the two years that I’ve been writing this blog (that’s right, we’re coming up on the anniversary), my biggest surprise has been the frequency with which I discuss immigration. Certainly, I thought that it would be a major topic. It’s difficult to discuss contemporary Latino culture without at least addressing it.

But I figured I would create a few posts pointing out some basics, such as the following:

• We demonize the undocumented
• We hypocritically profit from their labor
• We claim that race is not an issue
• We latch on to simplistic answers

I figured after that, I would only touch upon the subject now and then. However, crazy news keeps popping up regarding our love-hate (or at times, hate-hate) relationship with immigration. This is perplexing in a nation that was founded by immigrants and their offspring.

For example, it’s recently come out that more than one hundred illegal immigrants have died in federal detention centers over the past six years. More amazing is the fact that, according to the New York Times, the people in charge of these facilities “used their role as overseers to cover up evidence of mistreatment, deflect scrutiny by the news media, or prepare exculpatory public statements after gathering facts that pointed to substandard care or abuse.”

Basically, lots of noncitizens were being neglected, and perhaps even abused, in these centers. And the reaction of officials was to cover it up. I’m sure part of the reason for this hush-hush treatment is because immigrants are, you know, not really people.

This development comes at the same time that a recent report has assessed the economic impact of immigration reform. The report found that creating a pathway to legal status for the undocumented would pump $1.5 trillion into the economy over a decade. The report said that taking the opposite approach – that is, deporting everybody whose papers are not 100% in line – would cost the country $2.6 trillion over the same time frame.

Of course, we don’t make decisions based purely on dollar considerations (well, maybe Rupert Murdoch does). But these figures are a compelling argument.

Before we get to talk about citizenship and legality, however, perhaps we should make sure that people aren’t being killed in government-run institutions. Yes, that would be nice.

Once again, I’ve been far too lax about thanking people for commenting on my recent posts. So let me give a shout out to Stephanie, Louis, Emma, and Pipil for their contributions to the site. Now that my rudeness has been addressed, let’s take a look at my cynicism.

Despite my frequently cynical viewpoint and occasional outbursts of rage (always justified, I assure you), I consider myself a fairly optimistic person. But I’ve just found out that my positive attitude has made me a psychological minority within an ethnic minority.

This is because my fellow Latinos are a little down on the world right now, especially regarding how well we all get along with each other. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that “one year after the election of President Barack Obama, black optimism about America has surged, while Hispanics have become more skeptical about race relations.”

Basically, African Americans are still feeling pretty good about their place in society, while Latinos are, as the headline to the story puts it, “wary” about our status in this country. It doesn’t appear to just be self-loathing or paranoia, either.

Among the interesting tidbits in the poll is the finding that “Hispanics, not blacks, now are seen as the ethnic group facing the most discrimination. Twenty-three percent of all respondents say Hispanics are discriminated against ‘a lot,’ compared with eighteen percent for blacks, ten percent for whites and eight percent for Asians.”

So what do we take away from this finding, besides the facts that black Americans are on the upswing and that everybody loves Asians? Well, it would appear that the unwanted title of most feared ethnic group in America – long held by blacks – is being passed to Latinos.

Clearly, the relentless media attacks – and occasional overt violence – directed toward immigrants has taken a toll, even upon perceptions of Hispanics who are legal residents. Indeed, the article states that “there have been a number of recent attacks on Latinos that advocates say are hate crimes fueled by anti-immigration rhetoric.”

So it’s not just that blacks are feeling better about their status. They’re also perceived better by the majority culture.

It may be that whites are more likely these days to scowl at Latinos than to clutch their purses when an African American walks by. As a result, according to the poll, “Hispanics are less optimistic than other groups about interracial relations. When whites and blacks were asked how well their group gets along with Hispanics, more than seventy percent say ‘very’ or ‘pretty’ well. In contrast, only about fifty percent of Hispanics feel the same way.”

Of course, another reason for the current depression among Latinos is our sky-high unemployment rate. While the overall percentage of Americans without jobs stands at 10 percent, for Hispanics it’s an even more impressive 12.9 percent. That doesn’t lead to cheery feelings.

In essence, we Latinos have backslid. We are now more likely both to be out of work and to be discriminated against than just a few years ago. As such, cartwheels may not exactly be called for.

In the face of this dismal pessimism, however, I remain optimistic. Things will get better for both Latinos and for all Americans. I can’t give you a concrete reason for my feelings. I guess I’m just audacious about hope… or has someone used that phrase already?

I’ve written often about the difficulties of pinpointing exactly who is Latino and who is not. You’ll remember some of the familiar arguments (eg, Costa Ricans are Hispanic, Spaniards are not, Mexicans are Hispanic… unless they’re Chicanos who reject the label… wait…). In sum, it’s a messy process with no clear delineations.

In my most recent post, I mentioned that Sammy Sosa is Latino. Sosa is from the Dominican Republic, which is the only nation that shares a border with Haiti, one of several countries in the Caribbean that are not considered Hispanic.

When one thinks about it, this is rather arbitrary. Perhaps it is because Haiti has a French, rather than Spanish, cultural tradition. Or maybe there’s a racial element there.

In any case, the country’s non-Hispanic status was irrelevant to the cataclysmic earthquake that killed an estimated 100,000 people this week. Even before the disaster, the nation was the poorest in the Western Hemisphere. At this point, Haiti is so desperately miserable that one wonders if it would just be easier and more humane to ship the survivors to other countries and abandon that part of the island.

You don’t need me to urge you to donate to relief efforts. You will if you can or want to. Here are links to a few sites where you can make donations. Let’s hope that someday the country – indeed, no country – is so synonymous with human suffering.

I’m a big baseball fan, which I’ve mentioned before. As such, Mark McGwire’s admission this week that he was juicing is a depressing development, even if it’s the least surprising news since the observation that rain can get you wet.

McGwire will always be associated with his fellow power hitter (and probable steroid user) Sammy Sosa, who retired a few years ago. Like most pro athletes who hang it up, Sosa has more or less kept a low profile. Still, when he did pop up recently, it was in alarming fashion. Compare his complexion in the two photographs (try to ignore his wife’s cleavage):

Yes, the guy is several shades whiter. Sosa couldn’t just ignore the questions about his newfound albinism, so he claimed that he had undertaken a “skin-rejuvenation process” and exceeded the recommended dosage. Think of it as the movie “Soul Man” but in reverse.

However, many in the Hispanic and black communities don’t buy Sosa’s explanation, especially since he also started wearing green contact lenses. As such, the former Cubs great has been accused of trying to bleach his skin and make himself whiter, both figuratively and literally. He has, in essence, been labeled as a self-loathing Hispanic who has adopted the “colonizer mentality.”

Now, readers with naturally fair complexions may ask several questions. For example, what is a colonizer mentality? Also, why would a person want to appear whiter, especially if everyone knows that he’s actually dark-skinned? And finally, is the movie “Soul Man” available on Blu-Ray?

Well, I can answer some of these inquiries. First, the colonizer mentality refers to the fact that virtually all of Latin America, at some point in history, has been ruled by European or North American powers. These rulers – either by direct decree or social implication – told natives that fair-skinned people were better, smarter, hotter, and more respectable than the dark-skinned heathens. A person who has internalized this mentality will therefore do whatever he can to appear whiter, even if he comes out looking like a freak-show attraction.

Sosa is a native of the Dominican Republic, where people tend to be black (remember that Latinos can be of any race). According to the blogger Grio, “there is a profound and entrenched problem of racism and discrimination… against blacks within Dominican society.” This is the colonizer mentality in action.

So is Sosa guilty of caving in to this loathsome mindset? Or is he just a dumb jock who couldn’t follow medication instructions? Only Sosa knows, and he’s sticking to his original story.

Regardless, we can all be grateful that the colonizer mentality is just an issue in Latin America. In the United States, at least, we don’t judge people based on their skin color.

That could lead to problems.

As I’ve mentioned before, the one-two punch of getting downsized and moving across the country has forced me to rethink my career options. I’ve made a living as a business writer for awhile now, so other word-centric professions are a natural fit.

That’s why I’ve ended up bidding on freelance projects to write company blogs, handle social media, and the like. So far, I’ve landed little work – not because people disrespect my qualifications, but because of a sticking point with potential employers:

I’d like to make more than minimum wage.

Yes, back in the pre-recession days, freelance writers could make a decent living, with the best or most experienced rivaling lawyers on a per-hour basis. Now, the market is flooded with people who can fling words together, along with those who think they can, driving down wages to laughable levels.

A company posted an ad that said, seriously, they would pay one dollar ($1) for a writing-heavy assignment. And they had bidders (I was not among them; good luck to my competition on landing that plum gig).

So now there are even more similarities between me and the trabajadores who hustle for work. They too get paid less than they’re worth and have to deal with people who want scam them.

Those are already more similarities than I would like. If I start hanging out in Home Deport parking lots, flagging down passerby in the hopes of snagging an editing assignment, I will know that I’ve taken the connection too far.