The Things We Are Not Supposed to Talk About

A good friend of mine told me today about how one of her granddaughters recently got beaten up by a fellow student for:

1. singing a "black song."

2. responding to a question by said student about whether or not she wanted to be black by saying that she actually wanted to be Latina.

3. admitting that she was in actuality an Arab.

Needless to say, none of these reasons deserved punishment but that's what the poor girl got anyway. And unfortunately, such incidents are not rare. According to my friend, the girl's older half-brother got similar treatment from bullies when he was younger even though he was half-black. For that matter, so did the girl's biracial mother.

And sadly enough, the student responsible did not apologize until several days afterward -- and even then the grandmother suspected that the bully's true motive for apologizing was not genuine regret but a desire to avoid prosecution for a hate crime.

I could go on to say more but then again it should not matter what else I could say. The fact is that the little girl was bullied and I can't help feeling very angry about it. It should not matter if the girl responsible was white. It should not matter if she was black. It should not matter if she was Arab or Latina or Asian or anything else. A bully is a bully is a bully is a bully is a bully and anyone who tells you different is probably either a potential bully or an enabler of bullies.

I know that is fashionable in some sections of modern society to pretend differently but I prefer not to think that way. After all, when a former co-worker told me about how her younger sister had once been bullied by Mexicans, my first reaction was not, "Yeah, you Anglo girls deserved that." It was "My God, how would I feel if something like that happened to my sister!"

I also know that it is fashionable to rationalize the desire to not talk about such incidents on the grounds that such talk will only encourage people to get the wrong idea about certain minorities. This is an understandable sentiment but unfortunately, it is also a bit shortsighted if for no other reason that most of the victims of such bullies are themselves minorities. And even if they were white, the same attitude would still be shortsighted. After all, few white people -- especially white liberals -- would be flattered by the idea that there is absolutely no difference between them and the average white bully. Yet this is very often the type of assumption that white liberals are expected to make in regard to nonwhite bullies: that there is no difference between, say, the Mexican who beats up on little kids and the Mexican who does not beat up on little kids. And even if such assumptions could be "proved" to be just, the fact still remains that most people -- regardless of race-- resent like hell the idea that it's okay for people to beat them up.

In any event, this is not a recent problem. Some of my older Mexican-American cousins used to complain about the bullying they experienced in Detroit schools back when they were young. And I somehow doubt that they were the only ones who experienced such problems.

For that matter, I don't kid myself that any one ethnic group has a monopoly on school bullies. But I also don't kid myself that any ethnic group is immune to the temptation to bully.

As for the notion that we just should not talk about it:

1. The one thing we should have learned in the 1960s is that major social problems don't just go away because certain people don't want to talk about them.

2. Said problems are likely to affect people's behavior and attitudes whether we talk about them or not. So it is not very helpful to society to just pretend such problems don't exist.

3. Just because you don't want to talk about certain problems doesn't mean that people are going to stop talking about them. They just won't talk about them to you. And that attitude, needless to say, can come back to haunt you.

Apparently I'm Puerto Rican Now

At least that's the impression I got from a Hispanic customer at my current place of employment yesterday when she asked me if I were Puerto Rican.

I'm not, of course, but apparently to her eyes, I looked like one. Needless to say, that's hardly the worst thing that could be said about me. Nor is it the first time I've been mistaken for a member of a different ethnic group other than the one I'm in. (Of course, as an ethnic half and half (half-Polish, half Mexican), I'm technically not a member of one ethnic group but still.)

At any rate, when I was growing up, I used to obsess about the fact that I didn't look more like my Mexican-American relatives. Apparently that's still true but at least I'm being mistaken for actual Hispanics now. So that's a good thing, right?

Movie Quote of the Week

All my mother does is work. That's how you get to be Spanish.
--Elizabeth Peña, Lone Star (1996)

Movie Quote of the Week

You belong to the people who taught you the world and my heart... my heart is Mexican.
--Yareli Arizmendi, A Day Without a Mexican (2004)

TV Quote of the Week

Aw! We're going to spice you up so much you're going to forget you're white.
--Ana Ortiz, Ugly Betty, "Hello Goodbye"

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Room 222: "I Love You Charlie, I Love You Abby"

Apparently I spoke too soon when I described the title character of the "El Genio" episode and his girlfriend as the only Hispanics on this series. During the last five minutes of this episode, one of the title characters of this episode was called by the name "Charles Moreno" -- and Moreno, of course, is a popular Spanish surname. Which, of course, means Charlie was Hispanic -- although not necessarily Mexican.*

Whether or not it was intentional from the writer's point-of-view that the audience saw the character in question as Hispanic seems doubtful. After all, the character was rarely described as being Hispanic the same way the title character of "El Genio" was. Nor was he given any of the conventional "Hispanic" traits that sloppy TV writers like to give to Hispanic characters. (For example, bad accents, frequent use of Spanglish, etc.) Nor was his impending marriage to what seemed to be a rather WASPy white non-Hispanic girl seen as being especially controversial. I would like to give the writer the benefit of a doubt and assume that this was the way he chose to make up for the more contrived elements of the "El Genio" episode but alas, there was no commentary on this episode so I guess I will never know for sure.

Anyway, the main concern shown during the episode concerning Charlie and his would-be bride Abby was more about their age than their ethnicity -- and the closest the episode came to a conventional ethnic joke lay in the fact that tacos were served at Charlie's impromptu bachelor party. Mr. Dixon and his girlfriend Ms. McIntyre were greatly concerned about Charlie and Abby's plans to get married at the end of the school year -- but the first attempt they made to get them to change their minds only resulted in Charlie and Abby moving up the date of their elopement. It was not until after the above-mentioned bachelor party and Abby's bachelorette party that Dixon and MacIntyre found a way to convince the young couple they were not ready to get married yet -- and even then it was a close call.

So the idea of a Hispanic character on a TV show dealing with issues which were not necessarily ethnic issues would seem to be a good thing, right? Even if I find myself preferring the way such issues were handled on old I Love Lucy episodes.

* Contrary to popular belief, Hispanic is not a political euphemism for "Mexican" and can be used to describe almost anyone with Spanish-speaking ancestors. Of course, since it is often considered a political term, it is not always used that way but it should be.

Hey, I Remember This Show: I Love Lucy

Hey, who didn't watch this show growing up? True, most of us are way too young to remember seeing it in prime time but it always seemed to be around in reruns. And I remember being particularly obsessed with it because the Desi Arnaz character reminded me so much of my father. (No, my father wasn't Cuban nor did he sing for a living but otherwise, he had a lot in common personalitywise with Mr. Arnaz.)

Anyway, I suspect poor Desi might never have gotten as many laughs on this show as his co-star Lucille Ball. However, after Arnaz built up Desilu Studios (the studio he started with Ms. Ball) into a major power in the TV business, he undoubtedly laughed all the way to the bank.

Random Thoughts


Cool! Miss Michigan aka Rima Fakih won the Miss U.S.A. contest. I guess our national image of beauty is changing. Plus it doesn't hurt that she hails from my home state.

I guess it's a good thing I don't have a burning desire to see the Grand Canyon this year because even if I could afford to travel, there would be no way short of a dire family emergency I would be caught dead going to Arizona. And it's not like I have relatives in Arizona anyway.

I used to find it frustrating enough that so many liberals are ignoring the drug-related violence occurring in Mexico right now but at least they're not using it as an excuse to tell anti-Mexican jokes like the good folks at Big Hollywood. And no, I don't really care whether or not site editor John Nolte has a Mexican wife, a Mexican niece, a posse of Mexican friends or a long-standing relationship with the President of Mexico. The minute he started allowing anti-Mexican jokes on his site, I stopped taking his political arguments seriously.

Where's Red Adair now that we need him? I'm quite sure he would have found a way to cap that oil leak even if he was more a specialist in oil fires.

If BP's handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil leak is supposed to be an example of the superior way the British handle things, it's not working.

Oh no. Parks and Recreation is going on hiatus. That means I'll have to rely on old Office reruns and bad Hollywood movies to get my weekly Rashida Jones fix.

A Thanksgiving Movie That Actually Isn't a Turkey

I've gotten so used to cringing and rolling my eyes at most of Hollywood's attempts at multicultural storytelling -- Spanglish, for example -- that I found it quite refreshing to come across an American movie with a multiracial cast that is actually quite entertaining. Unfortunately, the film in question -- the 2000 release What's Cooking? -- has the type of title that suggests that it is not a serious movie but some sort of wacky screwball comedy chockful of eccentric stereotypes. To be fair, the movie has more than a few elements -- a unfaithful Latino father, an Asian-American gangsta wannabe, etc. -- that border upon the stereotypical. But it also deals with these elements in such a believable way that I never quite found myself wanting to roll my eyes at the pretentiousness of the film's dialogue like I did with Bulworth and Crash.

The film concerns four different families -- one Jewish, one Vietnamese, one Mexican-American and one African-American -- whose members come together in Los Angeles to celebrate Thanksgiving in their own unique fashion. Each family has their own set of unique problems. Each family, nevertheless, tries to resolve its problems with a minimum of fuss, only to find that it does not necessarily always work out that way. Though various family members are continually crossing paths with members of the other families, it is not until the end that the film points out once and for all just how close to one another these four different families actually are.

It's been implied by one of the reviewers on IMDB that this film's view of L.A.'s racial politics seemed more inspired by wishful thinking than reality. And one could argue that at times the film is a bit too hopeful about its view of human nature. For example, the Vietnamese family is shown raising a fuss about a visit the daughter receives from her white American boyfriend while she is working in the family video store -- yet later on the movie suggests that a visit from a son's Mexican-American girlfriend would meet with a happier reception. In another episode, the son of an African-American political aide is shown throwing paint at his father's employer. But when the same son shows up for Thanksgiving dinner and is seen by one of the father's white co-workers, the co-worker -- who witnessed the paint throwing -- seems remarkably low-key about this revelation.

Yet every time the movie got to the point when I found myself anticipating Paul Haggis-style melodramatics, the movie would surprise me by going in a different direction. Much of the melodrama in the Vietnamese household, for example, had the potential to turn into a bad episode of All-American Girl but then we're given a rather quiet scene between the Americanized daughter and her Vietnamese-speaking grandmother in which the grandmother actually proves more sympathetic to the daughter's problems than one would expect. The melodrama in the African-American household in which the political aide's stressed-out wife is attempting to deal with various family problems while at the same time trying to keep her conservative mother-in-law happy could have very easily turned into the stuff of bad sitcoms -- but the film does not go that route. Ditto the melodramas in the Latino and the Jewish households.

The result is not the type of film that will appeal to every type of moviegoer -- but it is certainly the type of holiday movie that deserves to be remembered for far more than its less-than-memorable title. And you do not even have to be Californian to like it.

Things You Aren't Supposed to Mention If You're a White Non-Hispanic

1. The relative who is a drug addict.
2. The relative who is an alcoholic.
3. The relative who is a hidden alcoholic.
4. The relative who is a deadbeat dad.
5. The relative who is an adulterer.
6. The relative who conceived a child out of wedlock.
7. The relative who had an abortion.
8. The relative who arranged an abortion.
9. The relative who is an ex-con.
10. The relative who married outside of his or her religion.
11. The relative who married outside of his or her race.
12. The relative who is a wife beater.
13. The relative who is a drug dealer.
14. The relative who is a bisexual.
15. The relative who is a closet homosexual.
16. The relative who is an uncloseted homosexual.
17. The relative who is an ex-stripper.
18. The relative who is currently employed as a stripper.
19. The relative who is an ex-prostitute.
20. The relative who is currently employed as -- you get the idea.

Book of the Week (Libro de la Semana)




I just started reading Stephanie Elizondo Griest's 2008 book Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlines this week and so far it is pretty good. Of course, the plot -- a young American woman of bicultural descent decides to travel to Mexico, the land of her maternal ancestors, in order to get in touch with her roots -- seems almost tailor-made for a Hispanic half and half like me, but we'll see.

I am curious about the author's previous book, Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana. Perhaps I'll feature that in a future post.

Things You Aren't Supposed to Mention If You're a Mexican-American

1. Your relative who is a convict.
2. Your relative who is a cop.
3. Your relative who is a narcotics detective.
4. Your relative who is an illegal alien.
5. Your relative who is a naturalized citizen.
6. Your relative who was a migrant worker.
7. Your relative who went to see a curandero.
8. Your relative who got healed by a curandero.
9. Your relative who lives in a bad neighborhood.
10. Your relative who lives in a good neighborhood.
11. Your relative who is a homosexual.
12. Your relative who conceived a child out of wedlock.
13. Your relative who married a second cousin.
14. Your relative who married a first cousin.
15. Your relative who married a non-Catholic.
16. Your relative who married a non-white (especially if the spouse in question is not Hispanic).
17. Your relative who married a fellow Hispanic.
18. Your relative who used to be on welfare, especially if he or she is no longer on welfare and owes his or her departure from the welfare state more to familia than gobierno.
19. Your relative who killed his own son.
20. Your relative who saved his mother's life at the cost of his own life by stepping in front of his father's gun.

Of course, the one thing you should always realize is that most people don't really want to hear about Mexican-Americans in the first place.

After all, it's not like they ever do anything important.

“Nesisto Ayuda”

In other words, help wanted. A term I saw on a recent sign posted at a restaurant at which I dine quite regularly.

Apparently the employer in question -- Hispanic, natch -- wasn't even bothering to accept applications from English-speaking applicants. I'm not quite sure whether I should consider this shameless ethnocentrism or poetic justice.

And, yes, I know the first word should be “necesito.” But that's not the way the signwriter spelled it.

La Vida en la Biblioteca

Heh. Irony.

All the Anglo kids I had seen act up in the local library and yet it was a quiet little black girl who provoked the one complaint I had seen an adult library patron register about a kid's behavior.

Her offense: sitting quietly on a chair with a book and a backpack, waiting patiently for her mother to finish her work on the library' s computer system.

Apparently, another patron -- i.e., an Anglo patron -- thought this behavior should be discouraged. So he complained to the librarian. The librarian had a conversation with the mother, the mother got upset and left with her little girl, and the patron who had complained took over the computer that the black woman had been using.

In the meantime, I could not help but remember all the white kids who had talked quite loudly in this area without receiving one complaint from the other patrons.

Sitting quietly in a library. Apparently that had become the type of behavior to be discouraged.

Unless, of course, you choose to believe that there was another reason for this incident...

“Even Old New York Was Once New Amsterdam...”

According to an article in the New York Times, New York City is losing black and white residents and gaining Latino and Asian residents.

What does this mean for the future? I don't know.

We've been getting members of the Nueva York diaspora down here in Texas for years. My first American girlfriend was a former resident of Nueva York. One of my favorite college English teachers was a former resident of Nueva York. And one of my ex-co-workers at my present job was a former resident of Nueva York.

In short, gente have been leaving Nueva York for years. So what's so new this time?