Stereotypes? What Stereotypes?

Heh. My late father's oldest sister regularly sends me E-mails and communicates via the same medium with her relatives in Mexico. My late father -- who was born in Mexico -- took pride in not only writing computer programs that were often too complex for his colleagues to duplicate, but also inspiring one of my Mexican-American cousins in Detroit to go into the computer business. At least two of my Mexican-American cousins have been experimenting with Facebook, one of my Mexican-American nephews already has a blog there, and more than a few of my past supervisors in my current job as a computer operator have had Spanish surnames.

Yet for a long time, the media promoted the notion that the use of computers was not a Hispanic thing. Indeed, prior to 21st century shows like American Family and Ugly Betty, the only recognition that we can use computers came from a mention in an old X-Men comic book written back in the 1980s which showed a Hispanic schoolchild doing homework on a home computer. And even that example couldn't help undermining its credibility by having the child's relatives refer to each other as "us Latinos" -- instead of, say, "us Mexicans" or "us Puerto Ricans" or even "us Americans" like most of the real-life Hispanics I know do.

Why does this matter? Because one of the biggest lies told about Hispanics during the recent immigrant crisis was that we don't assimilate. Not only that, but for many years, we were considered too dumb to work with computers, so much so that when my late father started his first job in a computer library, the only other Hispanics he saw there were janitors. And quite often when he applied for such jobs, he was pressured to pass for "white" or "Italian" on the grounds that a mere Mexican couldn't possibly be smart enough to work with such technology.

Today the same routine persists. Hispanics are regularly presented to be maids and gardeners and other subordinate characters in the movies and TV shows of so-called "liberal" Hollywood but rarely as professional types. And those few exceptions to the rule that do exist are rarely seen to represent true Hispanics.

True, the situation is not as bad as it was in my father's youth and certainly not as bad as it was in my grandparents' time. Unlike my grandparents, neither I nor my darker-skinned relatives have to worry about being barred from certain restaurants or movie theatres or schools or swimming pools. And I'm not blind to the fact that so many of us have entered the middle class is a good thing.

But the fact that my generation of Latinos has more freedom than previous generations does not mean we live in a perfect country nor that such freedom is incapable of being reversed. A famous American once said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance and it saddens me that a mere "hyphenated American" like myself seems to be more familiar with those words than many a so-called "real American." But it also gives me an obligation to not only speak out on the behalf of my freedom but on behalf of the freedom of other Americans, both Hispanic and otherwise.

Do I say all this because I'm politically correct?

No. I say this because I'm an American. Though I'd like to think I'd be just as vocal about my rights if I lived in my father's native Mexico.