The Washington Post has an interesting story on recent trends in interracial marriage in America — specifically, a decline in the rate of Hispanics and Asians marrying partners of other races in the past two decades: Immigrants’ Children Look Closer for Love.

Sociologists and demographers are just beginning to study how the children of recent immigrants will date and marry. Conventional wisdom has it that in the open-minded Obama era, they will begin choosing spouses of other ethnicities as the number of interracial marriages rises.

But scholars are coming across a surprising converse trend. According to U.S. Census data, the number of native- and foreign-born people marrying outside their race fell from 27 to 20 percent for Hispanics and 42 to 33 percent for Asians from 1990 to 2000.

Scholars suggest it’s all about the growing number of immigrants. It seems that the large immigrant population fundamentally changes the pool of potential partners for Asians and Hispanics. Thus, the second generation is more likely to marry people of their own ethnicity.

It’s not quite like it was before, when there were only two Asian kids in your school — you and this other boy/girl — and everyone thought you two should go together to the prom. Forced coupling. Now half the school is Asian, so it’s not such a big deal. Something like that.

One of the things we love the most about being Latina is being able to claim ties with a vast and varied group of people. Of course, that’s only cool once we kind of gloss over some of the historical aspects of how it that some of these people came to Latino in the first place. With that in mind, let’s take a look at a segment of Latinos often forgotten – Korean Mexicans:

They were the descendants of Koreans lured in 1905 by ship to plantations on the Yucatan Peninsula in southern Mexico. Instead of finding a better life, they were sold to plantation owners and forced to cultivate henequen, a plant whose tough fiber was used to make things like rope.

The Koreans and their descendants would come to be known as the Henequen, in part because they were so hardy and hard-working [Ed. note: Every last one? Really? That name wasn’t given to them because, like. They were forced to cultivate this stuff? No? Ok.]. They had fled a Korea that was under Japanese rule, and despite their struggle, they sent money back home, hoping to help their countrymen gain independence. But few ever saw their homeland again.

History is a funny, funny thing. The LA Times followed one group of Korean Mexicans as they explored their roots during a visit to Lynwood’s “Plaza Mexico:”

Plaza Mexico, which opened in 2002, was the vision of Donald Chae, a Korean American who grew up among Latinos and who has traveled throughout Mexico. Chae tells people that, “I don’t speak Spanish. I speak Mexican.”

“I am a Korean American Mexican,” he quips. “I’m still waiting for my pasaporte.”

The center was built with Mexican stone and boasted touches like a swap meet with a facade designed after the colonial-era governor’s mansion in Guadalajara and a shrine for the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Swap meet? We’re there.

Chae said that when he spoke to the young Korean Mexicans, he could tell they were surprised he spoke Spanish fluently. He in turn was struck by how strongly their identity was rooted.

“They’re real Mexicans,” Chae said. “They have a real Mexican way of talking. They use a lot of doble sentidos (double entendres). Mexicans use a lot of double meanings.”

But he said it was important that they learn about the other culture that informed their lives and those of their ancestors.

“When you don’t know your culture,” Chae said, “you get lost.”

There is also, as it so happens, a small group of Korean Mexicans who made their way to Cuba:

They are, technically, Latin Americans, not just in appearance [Ed. note: Sigh.] but in their way of thinking, culture, customs and language. A Cuba-Korea culture center was built in 1921 that taught Korean writing and history in an attempt to remind the descendants of their heritage. But lack of funding shuttered the center and now it’s hard to find a Henequen offspring who can speak the language.

About 800 descendants of Korean henequen farmers live around Havana, Matanzas and other areas of Cuba.

So, question: When can we stop the idea that Latino is a race and, instead, an inclusive (Well. Eventually.) and extremely varied cultural group?

Korean Mexicans learn more of their Asian roots on visit to Southern California [LA Times]
Five Generations On, Mexico’s Koreans Long for Home [From Stranger To Kin]

People who know me know that few things on this planet irk to the extent that PETA does. The tactics that PETA deploy to get their point across are dubious at best and some are downright deplorable. I wrote off PETA after a campaign they ran called “Animal Liberation” where they juxtaposed images of animals in captivity and images of the racial terror that people of African decent in this country faced including chattel slavery and lynching.

A few years prior they ran a series of ads that they had to publicly apologize for that juxtaposed farm animals and Holocaust victims. People of color and Jews have fought to be recognized as humans with dignity after centuries of being compared to animals and PETA has repeatedly disregarded those efforts. PETA has continuously trivialized the effects of racism on people of color and Jews by comparing it to the experience of farm animals.

Instead of talking about the ways that the food processing industry exploits and dehumanizes the people of color and im/migrants who work in plants, PETA chose instead to go the media publicity route and ask the US Border Patrol if they can advertise on the Wall.

WTF!?

According to the PETA blog this is how they rationalize their decision:

No matter what your stance is on the highly controversial U.S.-Mexican border fence project, everyone can agree that those who decide to come to the U.S. should be warned about the downside of our nation’s meat and milk consumption habits. PETA is warning immigrants that there’s much more to worry about than proper documentation. We’ve written a letter to the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection asking to buy space at each of the nine southwest border sectors for our new ad. Those considering entry will then read this message: “If the border patrol doesn’t get you, the chicken and burgers will. Go vegan” (or, in Spanish, “Si no te agarra la migra, te atraparan el pollo y las hamburguesas. Sé vegano”). By leaving behind a far healthier staple diet of vegetables and grains—like rice, beans, corn, peppers, and tortillas—Mexicans and other immigrants will likely find themselves fattening up on the fiberless, fatty, cholesterol-laden U.S. diet, which is linked to heart disease, various types of cancer, and strokes (our nation’s three biggest killers) as well as impotence (internationally recognized killer of the mood). PETA’s placement of these colorful ads would certainly offset some of the tax dollars that fund the fence. It’s a winning solution for the folks at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, immigrants, and farmed animals alike!

After a stunt like this I don’t know how anyone can still say that PETA is a social justice organization. How can they actually offer to help fund the construction of a border wall that is the epitome of American racism and hypocrisy? Obviously, PETA cares more about what im/migrants are eating than their safety or ability to cross in order to alleviate economic conditions in their home country. The fence is a sign of oppression and should not be treated as an advertising and marketing opportunity. Maybe next we can have Coors target the Latino/a im/migrant market with a billboard that proclaims “el cuerpo te la pide!”

I need to stop before I start foaming at the mouth. What do you all think?

via/VivirLatino

Related Discussion: Vegans of Color – WTF, Seriously. In the comments, Noemi provides a link to the PETA blog and advises people to look at what is being said. – LDP

Edited: If you are coming over here to represent PeTA and you do not critically engage with the issues of racism and sexism, your comment will not be approved. Ditto if you violate our comment moderation policy.

Bonus points – I will happily post a screed from a PeTA representative or supporter on my site, exactly as you present it IF, and only IF, you are able to explain why you continue to present these ideas in a way that can be interpreted as racist/sexist. A good place to start your deconstruction would be with Johanna and Royce’s essays over at VoC – Johanna wrote “Must Accessibility Mean Partaking in Other -Isms?,” Amalgamated wrote “Mutt, Mulatto, Mule” and Royce wrote on “Rights or Liberation” in reference to animals.

A friend of mine from college recently sent me a link to an AfterEllen.com article about the movie Bitch Slap coming out in December 2008. She asked me for my thoughts and here they are…

I think I might be the wrong person to ask.

Reason being I love gratuitous sex and violence in movies, within reason of course. I loved Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse movies. A woman with a gun for a leg killing military created zombies – count me in! Sexy ladies exacting revenge on a psychopathic-misogynistic-vehicular-homicide-loving Kurt Russell – more please! I loved these films so much that after returning them to Netflix I promptly ran out and purchased them, and then made all my friends watch the films with me repeatedly.

I know what you’re thinking that I’m a horrible queer feminist of color, right? Well, I’m going to have to respectfully disagree. And here’s why…

While I hate the way that closet racist and annoying hipster elitist try to use satire to reinforce their supposed superiority and avoid being called bigoted while doing it, I think satire when it’s done right, or at least when it’s read in a critical way, can be extremely subversive. Smart satire can often effectively challenge concepts of power, race, sex, and gender among other things.

There’s a famous example of effective satire that is brought up in Charles Ramirez Berg’s Latino Images in Film: Stereotypes, Subversion, Resistance, known as “stereotypical reversal.” Stereotypical reversal occurs when a movie plays on and invalidates a well-known stereotype by making the viewer confront their own prejudice and bias. The example that Ramirez Berg uses is from the film Flying Down to Rio, when Roger and Belinha are stranded on an island and a bare-chested black man emerges from the surrounding bushes and confronts the couple. Audiences are trained to expect a danger scenario given the location and the fact that the man is black, the viewer might wonder if this “native” is going to kidnap them or harm them in some other way. When the man steps away from the bush it becomes visible that the man is wearing golf slack and shoes, carrying a set of clubs, and when he opens his mouth has a British accent. Turns out they landed in Haiti right next to a country club and the gentleman was looking for a lost ball in the brush when they stumbled upon him. Everyone is made aware of their ignorance and as a result the stereotype is deconstructed.

Satire by its very nature is something that disarms you, most often through comedy or ridicule, and makes you take a hard look at yourself and your fears and biases. The ultimate purpose of satire is to bring about improvement by bringing ones flaws to the surface. So how do B-movies and neo-exploitation films bring about improvement? Well, often they don’t, or at least they don’t at first glance. We’re trained to be passive viewers, but if you’re willing to do the work as a viewer and think critically you’ll see that even the most seemly inane of movies like Death Proof are a comment on systems of power and hierarchy in American culture.

I think a really good recent example is Harold and Kumar. Although on the surface it’s your basic stoner buddy comedy, if you scratch below the surface its actually a very intelligent commentary on masculinity, race, sexuality, and leisure time in American culture. That is not to say that the film doesn’t have its problems, but I think there are moments in the film that are very smart and valuable

While, I can’t conclusively say whether Bitch Slap is a clever neo-exploitation or just stupid and offensive since it hasn’t come out yet, I’ll leave you with what the Co-writers and directors Eric Gruendemann and Rick Jacobson to say. They call Bitch Slap a “feminist, thinking-man’s” exploitation film with a mysterious female narrator who “comments periodically on the folly of humanity, the plight of the human condition and the vagaries of life and love through quoting the likes of Dostoevsky, T.S. Eliot, Sun Tzu and even Buddha.”

Sounds promising.

Check out the trailer and AfterEllen.com article for yourself and let me know what you think.

A little Mexico detour, because I’m wondering: Do news media outlets refer to the NAACP as “The Colored People” or the AJC as “The Jewish Committee”? No, they don’t. Yet while covering this month’s NCLR conference in San Diego many outlets including the L.A. Times, Washington Post, and other generally reputable sources like RealClearPolitics felt it okay to refer to NCLR as “La Raza.” This means that the mainstream press has adopted the semantics tricks of the right-wing propaganda machine to conflate together two very different things: NCLR — the largest and most middle-of-the-road, big-money-backed, non-partisan Hispanic (their word) advocacy organization in the United States, and the codeword for reconquista hallucinations advocated only by an extremely small, extremely fringe, and extremely irrelevant batch of Chicano nationalists.

Doing this plays directly into the ignorant fears of paranoid immigrant-bashers. The double-standard is unacceptable. Because there are real dangers of coding and bigotry at play here: look at what just happened in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. Another hate-fueled illegal immigrant lynching. Listen to the story at Free Speech Radio News. A week later, still no arrests.

We have opportunists like Lou Dobbs and the soft racism of politicians like Arnold Schwarzenegger to thank for laying the rhetorical groundwork for such a climate. It needs to stop. “La Raza,” once for all, is an historical term. Its use in the NCLR name merely reflects the period of the organization’s founding: the 1960s. (Does anyone in the NAACP even utter the words “colored people” anymore?) It’s a question ultimately of accuracy, as Carla Marrinuci blogs at SFGate.

On its end, NCLR generously takes the pains to answer its uninformed critics, but one needs only to look at the Mexican American Princes to understand just how “dangerous” are the ambitions of modern Latinos like the kind who gathered in San Diego last week to hear speeches by Barack Obama and John McCain.

* Above, Obama at the 2007 NCLR conference in Miami Beach.

Edited to Add:

Dear Racialicious,

I appreciate the posting and the discussion of my Intersections post on the media usage of “La Raza.” I think a couple things need to be clarified, though. I meant to point out that to the careless (or prejudicial) reader the words “La Raza” connote Chicano nationalism, not the group, National Council of La Raza. I know and understand that La Raza is a term to be proud of, a term that NCLR members and associates themselves use, a term that Mexican Americans of all backgrounds often use to mean “community,” “family,” “friends,” etc. What I am merely pointing out is that as the media uses it to refer to NCLR it conflates in the public eye a mainstream lobbying entity with an amorphous concept that causes all kinds of drama in the public landscape: see the raids, confrontations, demonstrations, killings of immigrants. I don’t have a solution, but I think we should all be thinking of one. Language is lived, after all.

Sincerely,
Daniel H.

“She needs to quit.”

That’s how the discussion got kicked off on One Drop Rule’s message board July 2nd. The person accused of needing to cease and desist was CNN reporter Soledad O’Brien who spent the past year working on a documentary for the cable news network entitled “Black In America” which airs this week. And the quitting in question was in regards to her black status.

“I have watched her with (African Americans) before and never once did she refer to (African Americans) in the first person, as in ‘I’ or ‘We’, or ‘we as a people’, etc. Maybe that’s just a journalism thing. But Tim Russert did identify as a Catholic when the Pope died, so?” wrote one commenter.

“Also, I have read at least one article … that says, rather Soledad says, that while her mother raised her/siblings to be just (African Americans), she sees herself as being bi-racial or mixed race. Now, she could just be saying that because she’s doing this show. Maybe on St. Paddy’s day, she said she was Irish.”

This attitude was sprinkled throughout many of the comments. At one point a few seemed to get an interview O’Brien gave to MyUrbanReport confused where she talked about her own upbringing as “black” and the story of a mixed couple she interviewed for the documentary who differed on whether to raise the children as biracial or black.

“Here you have a kid to me who is completely biracial,” O’Brien said in the interview. “They’re little children, but their dad doesn’t necessarily see that (they’re black.) … My mom and dad were like you’re black. That was just the way it was. The way they were very clear about it made me clear about it in my head.”

O’Brien has repeatedly in the past given accounts of her life as a black Latina. In a profile with the Irish Echo Online, she talks about her identity (her mother is Afro-Cuban and her father is Australian-Irish) and the struggles her parents went through as a mixed race couple back when it was still illegal in some places and some restaurants wouldn’t serve them.

O’Brien tends to treat her own ethnic mix with a light touch. She said that people laugh when they see her without makeup “because I have so many freckles that I look very Irish.” She also gently mocked the notion that her mixed-race background exposed her to unimaginable horrors.

“I have had people say, like, ‘Oh, so you were a tragic mulatto?’ Well, um, not exactly. I was just a middle-class girl growing up on Long Island.”

It isn’t possible, she contended, “to over-dramatize” what (her parents) went through … “They were doing stuff that for the time was very risky – socially risky and risky to their own physical safety. And they decided they were going to go ahead and get married and have six kids,” their daughter recalled.

While the board eventually clears up the confusion over what O’Brien said versus what the couple she interviewed said, there seemed to be a prevailing hostility towards the reporter for her alleged flip-flopping on her “black status.”

I’ve heard this on more than one occasion, but haven’t seen much from O’Brien to back this belief up considering she routinely plays up her black heritage over her Irish roots. After awhile I started to wonder if this hostility was over the fact that she was white enough to pass, but still ensconced herself in black issues and news stories (she’s a member of the National Association of Black Journalists). Were their “lying eyes” keeping them from recognizing her as a woman of color? Especially with her straight hair and nondescript accent, standard for any TV journalist?

Or was it because the belief that she was switching sides rang true in the subconscious of many blacks? That the thought of her being a racial opportunist, trading places when convenient was too good and malicious a story to pass for those grappling with their own degrees of racial self-loathing and schadenfreude.

After decades of the “one drop rule,” where blackness was based on the slightest amount of African heritage, it seemed odd to argue over a woman who openly embraces both sides of her family and talks candidly about being raised black, but also being biracial. It seemed odd to determine that this was some form of betrayal if she used the term multi-ethnic in reference to herself when she is, in fact, multi-ethnic.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama describes himself as a black man of mixed heritage and no one questions it, but Soledad O’Brien does it and it’s somehow contradictory. I have come to believe this is only because she looks white enough to pass and is married to a white man. These signifiers are used to strip her of her right to call herself a person of color. They are a way to reject her for having the gall to be born not looking black in an age where half-black people who don’t look black often choose to declare themselves otherwise.

The whole debate over O’Brien (and the misdirected, but true frustration over a black mother with white looking children who saw them, and felt the world saw them, as black) made me wonder if the rules had changed for some people. Was black really black anymore? In St. Louis we have a city license collector who looks as white as any white man, but possesses a southern drawl and a demeanor that is everything of a black man. Is that O’Brien’s crime? She doesn’t ooze blackness? Because I’m black, visibly black, and I don’t “ooze” blackness. But my race is not questioned because of that high visibility.

Is the problem that O’Brien isn’t seen as a “real” black woman? That she couldn’t have had endured a “real” black woman struggle because she is so light? Is this another variation of the “spectrum” warfare, the colorism that happens amongst black people? In a form of pre-rejection, where some blacks withholding their embrace of O’Brien because some lighter blacks rejected the darker in the past and present? To even the field a reversal must take place?

And if your mother is “black” as O’Brien considers herself, what are her children, who are blond haired and blue-eyed? Where does this fit when historically all it took was one Afro-Cuban grandmother to make you black? Does the rule no longer apply? Are their different rules for those who can “pass” and who can’t? And is that rule based on how black you look, if you can pass and if you are perceived as benefiting from your “whiteness?”

And how much of this is about ego — hers and ours? When a black person who could pass choses “us” I tend to look favorably on them. But is their endorsement an old lie based on outdated and outmoded beliefs? Can you be something other than black in America when you no longer look black in America?

I had a Great Great Aunt Josephine, and she, like many members of my father’s mother’s family were light enough to pass for white. Yet my great great aunt and her sisters and her nieces were vehement about their blackness. They would curse you out in an instant if you doubted who and what they were. They married the blackest men they could find. As did my father’s mother, explaining why the light-bright-and-almost-white lineage ended with him and his brothers.

Yet at the same time, when it benefited them, they didn’t exactly correct white people. My father is fond of telling a story where his Aunt Dinky, the only dark one out of his mother’s sisters, drove my father and his brothers to Kansas to see their great-grandmother who was in the hospital and dying. Aunt Dinky told the taxi driver what house to take her to and the cabbie said no colored people lived in that neighborhood, but she insisted he take her anyway. Then when she told him what hospital to take her to, he said no colored people went to that hospital, she still insisted that was the right place to go.

Once inside the woman at the front desk repeated the same tired song. There were no colored people at this hospital, but Aunt Dinky looked down the hall and there was Aunt Josephine and her sisters. She told the attendant she saw her family and kept going. When Aunt Dinky told her aunts that they had the folks in the hospital thinking they were white, Aunt Josephine shot her down. Why would they think that, she said while her mother lied sick in a bed, whiter than any white woman.

My Aunt Josephine would fight you if you told her she looked white. But she knew she did and she embraced blackness anyway. There were pluses to being that light, but she still dealt with racism and the wary looks of blacks who doubted her. What about today?

Can Soledad O’Brien embrace blackness while not looking black, not “sounding” black and not being married to a black man? Can she embrace it with blond, blue-eyed children? Have the rules of blackness changed, or are we still playing the same psychological mind games we’ve always played when it has come to race in America?

I often say in America you are what you look like.

But if you look white but call yourself black, what are you?

An interesting article made its way to me last week. “Coded Prejudice is a Cloaked Dagger,” from the Chicago Tribune:

Tomeika Broussard thought it was so absurd when she overheard her supervisor refer to her as a “reggin” that she just laughed. Then she realized it was the n-word spelled backward.

The only African-American in the small medical clinic in Los Gatos, Calif., Broussard said she was subjected to racial slurs almost daily. They were not the overt ones that most people would immediately recognize, but rather subtle, surreptitious code words that sometimes take a while to figure out.

“When ‘reggin’ came up, I’d never heard that word but I knew it was negative. So I had this kind of nervous, shocked laugh,” said Broussard, 31, who was awarded $44,000 in damages last year in a racial harassment lawsuit filed after she was fired from her job as a file clerk. “I didn’t know whether it was illegal, but I knew it was not OK. It was humiliating.”

Federal officials say they have seen an increase in harassment complaints involving coded words and images in the workplace. Whether it is geared toward racial groups, religious affiliations, sex or sexual orientation, code words have proliferated in recent years through the Internet, where Web sites provide forums for creating, discussing and spreading new words promoting intolerance.

I find it fascinating that most of the racism that the majority of people can identify as racist must be (1) blatantly obvious like carving “KKK” into someone’s yard and (2) must have a widely held history of being offensive, like the word nigger. However, even those appear to be up for debate these days.

In the meantime, racism has migrated into this weird “gotcha!” strategy where people use slurs and epithets either (1) openly, by claiming they are ironic, or (2) covertly, subbing an innocuous word for what they really want to say. Like Canadian.

And, unlike the last few code word stories that have been reported, it isn’t just white people in on this one:

As the country becomes more diverse, cases also have resulted from culture clashes between African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians, according to the EEOC.

For example, an assembly technician in San Jose, Calif., sued the company he worked for last year, claiming he was harassed by a Vietnamese co-worker who repeatedly played loud rap music with anti-black racial epithets. The lawsuit charged the co-worker also sang the lyrics within earshot of him.

In another case, a black employee was repeatedly called “Cornelius” in a reference to the ape character from the movie “Planet of the Apes.” Another case involved a man of Chinese and Italian ancestry who was taunted daily by his foreman, who referred to him as ” Bruce Lee.”

The article also gives an interesting overview of court cases based on code words:

Boss’ comments: In May 2006, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission settled a hostile work environment case against a Florida furniture store chain where a manager allegedly made racially and sexually offensive remarks to a black employee, referred to the African-Americans as “you people” and interracial couples as “Oreos” or “Zebras,” and disparaged the worker for marrying a Caucasian man.

American Indians targeted: In November 2004, the EEOC settled a case against an upstate New York computer parts manufacturer where American Indians employees were subjected to frequent name-calling, war whoops and other derogatory statements referring to being “on the warpath” and to scalping, alcohol abuse and living in tepees.

Insults, denied opportunities: In March 2007, MBNA America agreed to pay $147,000 to settle a Title VII lawsuit alleging discrimination and harassment based on race and national origin. According to the lawsuit, an Asian Indian employee was subjected to ethnic taunts, such as being called “dot-head” and “Osama bin Laden,” was assaulted by a co-worker with a learning disability who believed he was bin Laden’s brother, and was denied training and promotional opportunities afforded his white co-workers.

Marriage attacked: On April 1, 2008, the 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals in New York ruled in favor of a white basketball coach at Iona College who said he was criticized by a college vice president for marrying a black woman whom he called an “Aunt Jemima.”

Application labeled: On June 10, 2008, a Steeleville, Ill., home health-care agency settled an EEOC lawsuit charging that the agency denied an African-American woman a job and wrote “Black” across the top of her application.

(Thanks Aaminah!)

(Image Credit: CNN)

One thing that’s kind of irked us about the term “Latino” over the years is, beyond how its used to encompass such a wide range of people, is that it’s often used in mainstream media as a synonym for “Chicano,” specifically the cholo and chola subculture, which is a very insular, unique group. We find all the most superficial trappings of that group: Chola style, lowriders, art, literature slang like “firme” interesting enough and we definitely think Chicano culture has been an asset to the Latino community at large but, you know. It’s just not who all of us are.

So when “BrownPride.com” declares itself a site for “Firme Clothing and Latino Fashion,” we’re both all “This is awesome!” and “So we guess we’re not… Latina?” If we, like their model, were to ever step out wearing a tank top that said “Firme” and our hair in cornrows, we would systematically get punched in the face. Hell, we’d punch ourselves in the face. It’s both not what we’re comfortable with or a subculture that’s for us. We’re not allowed to participate, almost. We’re not much good at it, either. If we tried to make this model’s “Attitude Face,” we’d probably be advised to eat more roughage to clear that problem right up. Arugula, at that.

So while we love Chicano culture and chola style, we don’t love umbrella terms or being misrepresented. Not by mainstream media and certainly not by one another. Because, if you allow us to get a little Hallmarkesque on you for a quick second, being Latina is in our genes. Not our jeans.

A new study shows that Hispanic high schoolers are shooting up, getting drunk, having sex and offing themselves at a higher rate than their Black or White classmates. Because, again, Hispanics cannot be Black, White or Asian:

The study is the latest in a series of surveys of U.S. high school students every two years. The new report noted black and white students are reporting less sexual activity that in years past, but there was no decline among Hispanics. Experts have not been able to find a clear explanation for that.

High five! Oh, wait. That’s bad:

In addition, Hispanic students were more likely that either blacks or whites to attempt suicide, ride with a driver who had been drinking alcohol, or use cocaine, heroin or ecstasy.

Hispanics also most often drank alcohol on school property, were offered or sold illegal drugs, and occasionally skipped school because they feared for their safety.

The school environments many Hispanics face may differ considerably from what many blacks or whites encounter, noted Wechsler, director of the CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health.

“There’s tremendous segregation in our schools,” Wechsler said, in an interview with The Associated Press.

This news is all very troubling, to be sure, but we’re just so distracted by the question of who, exactly, these Hispanic teens are.

If they’re not Black and not White are they…. Mulattos? Mestizos? Do they not identify with a racial group as well as an ethnic group? Or did the survey just not allow for that? Where would a, for example, Black teenager of Dominican ancestry fall? Are her problems Black or Hispanic? Which interest groups will help her, which will decide she’s not their problem? Why is this just a “Hispanic” problem?

The odd thing about the word “nigger” for me is that as much debate as I’ve heard about the term, my exposure to it in adulthood is fairly limited. I grew up in the Chicago area in a mostly African American family, but a few of my black relatives, all transplants from the South, insisted on complaining about “no-good niggers” and such, despite the fact that I took issue with their use of the word.

Now, as a grown woman who lives far from family and far from the inner-city (the other place where I’ve often heard the word spoken), I’m most likely to hear “nigger” in a rap song or a film than I am in person. That’s why during a recent visit to a Target in an L.A. neighborhood where the upwardly mobile clientele likely dub the store “Tar-zhay,” I froze when I heard a voice cry out, “It’s over there, nigger!”

After stopping in my tracks, two things struck me: the voice belonged to a female and the female in question was probably not black. I looked around, trying to link the voice to a person and spot anyone else who had overheard, but the sleepwear/underwear section was totally empty. A moment later, though, the owner of the voice surfaced, along with a companion. Both were young, giggly Latinas. When I spotted the girls, I relaxed just a little, figuring that they meant no harm, that they were probably just high school students trying to be “down.” Still, I wanted to tell the girls that they shouldn’t address each other as “nigger.” Instead, I said nothing. Who am I to tell a stranger what she can or cannot say? It didn’t help matters that I had been raised to not make trouble, to mind my own business.

Then, one of the girls approached me to ask a question about bra sizes, and I still said nothing. Everything seemed to happen so quickly, and, as the scene unfolded, I found myself struggling to find the appropriate tack to take. Should I have lectured the girls about how offensive the term was? Should I have told them simply not to use the word in public? Or should I have asked them how they had come to use the word so casually and what the word represented to them? In the end, I remained silent and am now feeling more than a little guilty about being so slow on the uptake that I let a possible teachable moment slip by. My significant other asked me what it would have taken to get me to speak out, and I answered that I probably would have said something had young children or elderly black people been around.

More than a week after my encounter with the girls, I am flooded with questions. Had the two teens been black would I have even contemplated lecturing them, even though I disagree with the use of the word in such a fashion? I don’t belong to the ilk who believes that black people have a “right” to call each other “nigger,” but I know that I would not have had the same reaction had I seen two young black girls address each other as such. Would it have bothered me? Yes, but not enough for me to contemplate confronting them. On the flipside, had the two teens been white, my anger probably would have made me unhesitant to confront them.

In the aftermath of this encounter, I mostly wonder about authority. Do strangers have the authority to “correct” strangers when they’re saying something that’s outright offensive? And how do factors of age, gender, race, etc., factor into this authority?

In a recent interview with People magazine, retroacculturated Latina actress Eva Longoria recalled how, as the darkest of four sisters, she was constantly referred to as “La prieta faya” [sic], which then the magazine translates as “the ugly dark one.”

Either Mrs. Longoria’s family flunked Spanish in junior high (faya is not a real word; I want to believe she meant “fea”) or she actually said “fea” but People’s editors didn’t bother to have sister mag People en Español help with the spell check.

Either way, the whole thing looks very “faya” to me. And don’t get me started on the “dark ugly one” part. I will let that one for you to munch on.

Ay, ay, ay!

Interracial and interethnic dating has as much, if not more, to do with “Family Matters” as my own family. So, in order to try to describe the experience of being in an interethnic relationship, I have to first evaluate the culture popping up all around me. Grab some Cheez Puffs or chicharrones, put aside your distaste for cheesy, alliterative snack food references, and let’s get to this.

Should you ever feel inclined to Google “Interracial Dating,” as I do not do often on a Tuesday night, you’ll find a lot of dating sites aimed at hooking you up with someone of another race. Not information about interracial dating, not tirades against it, not advice, not thoughtful writing on the subject, but, rather, dating sites with names like “Salt and Pepper.” Discovering this made a little light blink on and off in my mind’s eye reading “Fetish! Fetish! Fetish!” I’ll admit to feeling conflicted about interracial dating as it relates to the fetishization of a group. Who am I to make the distinction between preference and prejudice? That concern always takes the form of a certain cringe I’m never without when thinking about the subject, but when I see evidence of people actively going out and searching for someone of another, specific race or ethnicity, well. That action toes the very fine line between personal preference and …and what, exactly?

This isn’t racism in the traditional sense of hating or fearing a group of people, but there does seem to be the impression that the fetishized group is somehow either aesthetically or sexually superior to other groups or that, taking that a step further, they are somehow subhuman, objectified, interchangeable receptacles for sex and attention. I don’t want to advocate the idea that there are different levels of racism, but this particular brand is so hurtful because it occurs so subtly and, for the most part, disguised as a compliment. When a man who is darker than me compliments me on the paleness of my skin, as I often encounter with Latino men, it insults and devalues both of us. I’m reduced to my body parts, and he buys into the idea that white skin is inherently beautiful. And I am left feeling disgusting. Utterly, completely disgusting. Because I am both a victim and a perpetuator of this ongoing war against people’s skin. Why don’t I find this man attractive? Is it his look? His attitude? His beliefs? Am I also guilty of fetishizing, of being racist? How am I implicated in all of this; what is the level of my culpability?

So, when I approach a subject like interracial or interethnic dating, I have to first question those who seek it out and the motives for why people enter into such couplings. People, as it turns out, like me. “Love! We’re in love!” is the simple answer coming from couples tightly clasping hands. But, you know. That’s just not good enough. Love means different things for different cultures, at different points in a historical timeline, for people of different ages.

Chemistry, then, makes sense to me. Pheromones and closeness and, in some cases, an open bar featuring really cold Vodka on a really warm night. Attraction makes sense to me, but, like love, it’s never simple and never exists in isolation from the culture we live in. TV commercials, catalogues, perfume ads, romantic comedies, heroes and heroines in coming-of-age novels – these have all had a part in coloring, literally and figuratively, my idea of what is attractive. And, although I am attracted to wit and personality and thoughtfulness, those are not things that will necessarily make me cross the line from friends to… half of a couple, clasping hands, yelling “Love! We’re in love!” despite my inability to intellectualize that impulse.

I have been asked whether I think that minorities, especially women, choose white partners once they have reached a certain level of success, monetarily and/or socially. To which I respond, “Sure. Maybe. Sometimes?” I think, however, that while this may prove true for some couples, a lot of interracial and interethnic couplings are more the result of being raised in, and thus being more comfortable with, a culture that is created by and caters to White Americans. In my own family, my two youngest aunts, one of whom was born in the U.S. and the other who moved here when she was a toddler, have both married Anglo men. And, true! They do happen to be very successful women, in terms of their careers. But they also happened to have grown up immersed in American culture, with American friends and American TV shows that presented a picture of what relationships should be like – an ideal that is different from the ideal my Cuban grandmothers and Spanish great-grandmothers were raised with.

Having grown up in Miami, I feel like I’ve been raised in – at least – two different worlds. As such, I’ve gotten to sample what I like and what I don’t care for in terms of relationships. I know that a lot of what I don’t particularly care for are qualities most often associated with machismo. While I understand this is a cultural construct and not something inherent in Latino men, it is ingrained in the Latino community in ways both subtle and explicit. It’s a concept that is nurtured and intensified in places like, say, Miami, where, more and more, people are expected to, and often do, behave according to socially mandated roles that I have always found ill-fitting. That particular identity, a Miami Latina as I had felt it had been defined for me, was not something I wanted.

So, I don’t find it terribly surprising or groundbreaking that I’m dating a White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant. We’ve grown up watching the same cartoons; we speak in the same highly complex code formed of song lyrics, movie references, web comic characters and internet memes. And we both like spicy chicken sandwiches. We have a common language and enough cultural touchstones between us to bind us together. You guys. It’s love.

My family, however, is a different story. It’s not that they are necessarily put off by my insistence (as they see it) on dating a non-Latino, it’s that they worry for me and that worry manifests itself in a way that makes me want to scream.

The funny (horrible) thing is, I would never have been able to predict their reactions to my boyfriend. But Americanness is seen as something so far removed from their own identity and experience, that they seem to fear I’m stepping into some void from which I’ll never return. When, in truth, this stepping across occurred the first time I watched, enraptured, as Mr. Rogers traded one sweater for another and tearfully joined Feivel, singing “Somewhere Out There” entirely by heart. I was already long gone. It wasn’t that I never felt Cuban or Latina, it was that I never knew what it meant to feel these things. I was into books and TV shows and oldies. Pop culture didn’t include salsa music or flan or Noche Buena dinners. These were part of my childhood narrative, sure, but they weren’t the guiding factors. I didn’t realize I was supposed to be Latina until I took a summer course in Spain and was promptly informed that I did not resemble or act like Jennifer Lopez. Seriously?

But back to my family. I was asked, half-jokingly why my uterus was not yet brimming over with future Cubans. I smiled demurely while inhaling two margaritas and a beer. “I’m practicing,” I slurred. My family, very kindly, ignored me. Then I was grilled about my boyfriend.

“Is he Cuban?”

“Nope.”

“But he’s Catholic?”

“Hiccup.”

A worried pause. I crammed one or seven nacho chips into my mouth.

“Is he…?”

“Mmmf?”

“The J word?”

The string of expletives that immediately swirled around my alcohol-soaked brain was decidedly Cuban.

But what can I do? I know my family loves me, completely and unequivocally, and have what they see as my best interests at heart, always. I know they care that my boyfriend and I are bonded together by common values. They want him to respect me, all of me, and that includes my Cuban family and my identity as a Cuban-American. I know the idea of racial or ethnic purity pales (God, whatever) in comparison to a common set of values and morals.

But.

Therein lies the disconnect. My values are complicated. They have much to do with my upbringing, sure. I would never deny that. But my upbringing has been shaped by more than being Cuban, than eating purée de malanga for dinner and being doused with Agua de Violetas after bath-time or being able to recognize a photo of Jose Marti before I could name the President of the United States. My upbringing is also the Mr. Clean jingle and The Ninja Turtles and Full House and the Babysitters Club series. And although these things may not be definitely American, they are definitely White, Upper-Middle Class America, no matter who consumes and enjoys them. They are, as it so happens, definitely me. And while I’m sure many Cuban-American boys in Miami and elsewhere carry around the same cultural reference guide, I haven’t met one. I met a guy who happens to be White, who happens to be Protestant and who happens to speak the same language I do. That’s just what happened in this particular episode.

Associate Editor Alex Alvarez takes a look at how nicknames among minorities work to keep a good gordita down and why you, shorty, shouldn’t take it anymore.

Words, in and of themselves, are without power. Their potency comes from the relationship between the speaker and the listener. As any woman who has walked by a construction site will tell you, “Hello beautiful” is different coming from a strange man whispering in your ear than from your mother. It’s through these relationships that words can becomes tools, bridges, weapons or any other sort of melodramatic metaphor you want to use. If relationships are defined by power —who has it, who doesn’t, who wants it and who is in the position to bestow it—language, then, is a means of both establishing power in relationships and also of demolishing and subverting it. A “thanks, beautiful” aimed right back at a strange man is surprisingly effective.

While writing my response a few weeks ago to an article in “San Francisco Weekly” that “roughly” and incorrectly translates the Spanish word “negro” to the English word “nigger,” I realized most of the Guanabee readership already understands the nuances that appear in, yes derogatory, but complicated Spanish-language labels. And the same could be said for other ethnic minorities, (or at least the pockets of them that are represented in popular culture and media), who use certain pet names and phrases wrought with prejudice, but excuse them with a flippant, “This is how we are. And, besides, we don’t mean any harm by it.”

But “this is how we are” is not an excuse. Why? Well. It’s not how I am. So it’s not how we are. Adaptation is possible. It just takes effort and exposure to different ways of thinking, even if I have to drill it into you during family holiday get-togethers. It is not enough for us to merely explain — and thus, on some level, excuse — the differences between Anglo and Latino, or Black and White, or any other minority versus majority as they relate to potentially hateful speech. Instead, let’s take a look at why these differences exist and what, exactly, they result in accomplishing, based on history and cultural context. What does a language say about the people who speak it? And vice-versa? Let’s find out! Hokay? Hokay.

But, um, first: A preface of sorts. It’s important I make it known that I don’t feel I’m qualified to write about slang and language as it pertains to anyone who is not Latino or Anglo. As I alluded to above, anything I would have to say about the experience of any other group would be merely observational and the result of a sort of clinical detachment. It’s not my experience. I can’t offer anything except, “Well, from what I observe… this seems to mean this. And isn’t that interesting?” But it is interesting. And it is important to discuss these observations. So, that said, do let’s continue:

Such A Colorful People, No?: Nicknames Based On Appearance

Many terms of endearment in Spanish are based on appearance. “Cute” little nicknames like morenita, negrita and güerita abound. The diminutive “ita,” as it’s used here, translates to “little,” therefore effectively rendering it’s object to be both small and, presumbably, a possession belonging to the speaker.

I’m specifically using the feminine because it’s more common. You do hear women refer to sons and lovers (Interesting, that.) as their “negrito lindo” or whatever, but they don’t usually make a habit of shouting these out from their lawn chairs at strangers. At the more overtly sexualized end of this particular spectrum, there are adjectives like “thick,” often used in the Latino-American and/or Black communities to describe a woman’s body admiringly, while simultaneously working to keep her objectified and, thus, manageable. By reducing a woman to parts, she is made to be a thing rather than a person. She is her sex and her body. And not much else. Of course, it is important to note that such nicknames are rarely ever explicitly used as the result of some sort of calculating thought process; the most damaging aspect of such nicknames are the fact that they have been so deeply entrenched in common vernacular that they have become largely unremarkable. However, with the prevalence of stereotypically White, upper-middle class families and customs depicted in popular culture and the melding of ethnic and racial groups in neighborhoods, schools and the workplace, many minority women who would otherwise have been raised in a very insular culture are exposed to different relationships between, say, bodies and language. And vice-versa. More and more Anglo women are exposed to the idea that “thick” is a compliment and allows women to break free from the slim body associated with high fashion, high culture and exclusivity. In reality, this is merely trading one set of handcuffs for another. In the end, regardless of the intent, it all adds up to misogyny and using language as a way of demonstrating superiority over the female body. Case in point: This helpful guide to defining “thickness.” [NSFW]

“Gordo/a,” “gordito/a,” “flaco/a” and “flaquito/a” are also quite common. Quite literally, they mean “(little) fatty” or “(little) skinny.” Take the Univision TV series “El Gordo y La Flaca,” (see figure below) starring Raul de Molina and Lily Estefan. It would be odd, I think, for English-speaking, Anglo audiences to wrap their heads around a show in which the hosts were referred to exclusively by their bodies. It does seem, cultural difference aside, like a less professional title than, say, “”The Today Show” or “Live with Regis and Kelly.” On a personal note, I cannot tell you how much I wished my parents would have called me “sweetie” or “pumpkin” instead of “my little fatty.” Kinda stings when you’re going through puberty. To have complained about this, of course, would make me seem like an “acomplejada,” or like I had a complex about my weight and appearance. Which would have been pretty much exactly on the money. Growing up, I had always noted the difference between my family’s lack of barriers and delineations when it came to discussing bodies, particularly women’s, and the unspoken barriers among Anglo families on TV. And perhaps the most frustrating aspect of all this is that my family member didn’t mean anything by it. They weren’t actively try to make me aware of my body. They loved their gordita, after all. But, growing up in an increasingly multi-cultural world, I was exposed to different ethnicities’ relationships to their and others’ bodies. And I would have really preferred that verbal distance between my body and the world around it. Acomplejada as that makes me.

Such physically-conscious nicknames reduce the object to nothing but a body and, while innocuous to some, they are wrought with (somewhat) unspoken criticism, even if only in the sense that it makes one aware of their weight and form each and every time one stops to think about their nickname. Particularly for females.

Fine-Ass Females And Who’s To Blame

Speaking of which: Have you noticed that there seems to be an inordinate amount of men, especially young Black and/or Latino men, who use “female” as their default term for a woman? Why use such a strangely formal-sounding moniker? Especially in a casual setting like, say, a Burger King parking lot where all you want to do is go home, eat some French fries and not have to ponder why some people believe shouting what a “fine-ass female” you are is a compliment. In this context, the use of “female” is used to verbally exacerbate the difference between the speaker and the object. “Female” takes on a more clinical tone, as with some object of interest that is being looked at and studied. Appropriate, then, that such a phrase would be deemed fit to murmur into a stranger’s ear, as if she were nothing but a curious vessel for one’s study and enjoyment.

In talking about this with Cindy, she mentioned her observation that you don’t find “female” used in older TV programming or song lyrics, but that it seemed to slip into popular use with the rise of certain genres of rap. Which would seem to make sense. It’s almost a cliché at this point to say that certain types of rap treat women like nothing but money-hungry and a sum of easily-accessible holes. But hearing the same criticism like a broken record does not, again, excuse the language and imagery used in these genres. But, point is: We know it’s there. The question, then, is why? What systems are in place that keep this degradation going, despite this knowledge? In “Misogyny, gangsta rap, and The Piano” bell hooks places the blame not on the music industry or musicians, but on dominant culture:

“The sexist, misogynist, patriarchal ways of thinking and behaving that are glorified in gangsta rap are a reflection of the prevailing values in our society, values created and sustained by white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. As the crudest and most brutal expression of sexism, misogynistic attitudes tend to be portrayed by the dominant culture as an expression of male deviance. In reality they are part of a sexist continuum, necessary for the maintenance of patriarchal social order. While patriarchy and sexism continue to be the political and cultural norm in our society, feminist movement has created a climate where crude expressions of male domination are called into question, especially if they are made by men in power. It is useful to think of misogyny as a field that must be labored in and maintained both to sustain patriarchy but also to serve as an ideological anti-feminist backlash. And what better group to labor on this “plantation” than young black men.”

She continues by saying that this does not lift the blame from young, Black men most often associated with gangsta rap, but that making it simply a “Black male thing” is neglecting the larger picture in favor of pointing fingers at an easily identifiable – and socially acceptable – scapegoat.

Which goes back to my main point in this feature: Those in power use language as a means of ensuring that those without it know it. Take the name “morenita,” for instance. It refers to a dark-skinned girl. Dark skin is not safe from being exoticized in Latino culture, and connotes a certain level of eroticism and sexual availability that is also experienced in Anglo and mainstream culture. As such, the term is both a positive in that it is asserting a level of attractiveness and desirability, and a negative, not only because it reduces its object, but because it is also entangled in the belief that to be darker is to belong to a mysterious and forbidden lower class and lower social and economic stratum. Even lighter-skinned poor people who work outdoors are exposed to the sun and are therefore tanner than those who get to sit inside playing cards and eating pastry crafted of guava and tears.

Sexy Morenitas And Güeritas Lindas: Why Aren’t You Pissed Off Yet?

There is also the issue of “reclaiming” derogatory terms. What troubles me is that a lot of what I observe among minority women who define themselves by using “morenita” or “caramel delight” or some such is that, well. I’m fairly sure it’s not usually the result of a thoughtful exploration of race and sexism. I think it’s the result of women either not being exposed to or not being interested in discussions on racism, xenophobia and sexism. At least, that’s what a sparkling, animated .gif on a MySpace page says to me. I see a lot of complacency among Latina and/or Black women, with a variety of factors playing into keeping them that way. Glamorization of the “video vixen” culture, lack of resources promoting feminism and equality among minority women, family, machismo… but it all, ultimately, comes down to language. If we are who we say we are, but who we say we are comes as a result of what we’re called, then well, it’s a difficult system to break out of. I admit I’m saddened that we’re not more saddened. And I’m enraged that we’re not more enraged.

The fact is, Spanish, as with any language, is colored by many factors about which one can learn, yet not fully understand unless one grows up with these factors as “an insider.” Factors like, say, race relations among Hispanics, which is further complicated by the different experiences with colonialism and slavery found among Latin American countries and Spain. Class differences, linked with race relations, are also reflected in language and change from place to place. Machismo, too, colors the “language of romance” with undercurrents of misogyny. Spanish is a language that contains many slurs and derogatory terms, both overt and subtle, that aim to keep those with less power down. But the fault is not squarely on the Spanish-speaking and/or Latino community. This extends to all groups that are disenfranchised or minorities. At some point, historical and cultural contexts cannot be used to excuse self-inflicted harm and misogyny, racism, xenophobia and homophobia within groups. The Black community, both Hispanic and not, is subject to the same “assault by language.” It’s a phenomenon that exists within these groups, but whose origins have a long and complicated history which, ultimately, comes down to the use of language as a means of oppression, implemented by those in power – more often that not, the White patriarchy.

The language we use influences the way we process and express ideas, but it also has an impact on how we mold the thinking of newer generations. The argument “Oh come on! We do it out of love! It’s harmless” is just not viable when people are harmed. It’s not enough to “think before you speak.” You have to get others to think, too.

(Latoya’s Note: This post has been edited for length and clarity.)

There’s a trend in the Americas. Latina* women are getting tired of Catholicism. They’re sick of being called “mamacita” in the streets. They don’t want to deal anymore with the chauvinistic pigs otherwise known as Latino men. So they’re throwing away their tank tops and their statues of the Virgin Mary and pulling on the hijab and ‘abaya instead.

Or so the media would have you believe. I’ve seen a stream of articles about Latina women converting to Islam, and they overwhelmingly rely on stereotyped images of Latino cultures as well as Muslims. The topic has been covered by MSNBC, NPR, the Christian Science Monitor, the Houston Chronicle, and more.

Here’s the standard lead:

Latina woman is walking down the street. It’s a hot day, and she’s dressed in a full-length skirt (dress, coat, etc.) and a hijab. She passes some Latino men. They look towards her and don’t scream at her. She sighs thankfully and reflects on the days of the past, of catcalls and shouts of “Hey, mami” as she walked by in her skimpy outfit.

The article then explains that in Latino culture, men are macho jerks and women are sex objects. In Islam, they are covered up and immediately respected. The author retells the woman’s decision to leave Catholicism for Islam, her experience putting on hijab, and the sad reactions of her family. If the journalist tries to dig a little deeper, there may be some theological reasons for choosing Islam, but they’re usually an afterthought. Some articles will note that Latina women like the strict gender roles of Islam because that’s what they’re used to.

Of course, not every article follows this mold precisely, but none stray from it completely. They paint monolithic pictures of both Latinos/Latinas and Muslims. It’s especially unfortunate in a time when both groups are often vilified and misunderstood in the United States.

From reading any one of the articles on this topic, someone without much knowledge about either group could easily assume that it’s impossible to be a Latina woman without rocking the halter top and being objectified by the men in your community, or that it’s impossible to be a Muslim woman without knowing your place — which is, of course, to subordinate yourself to your husband and be respected for covering your body and hair. You’d think sexism and patriarchy are non-issues for other races and religions. Articles on converts of other ethnicities rarely spend this much time on the sexual harassment they received pre-Islam — if at all. I mean, I know machismo is a Spanish word, but come on — patriarchy isn’t limited to Spanish-speakers. Consider this quote:

“The way Latin men portray women, it’s terrible,” Avelar said. “You look at Spanish CDs, and you see women in bikinis on the cover.” (Washington Post)

Yes, Spanish-language media frequently sexualizes women. But since when do American media not? I don’t know what part of the U.S. you’re living in if you’re never seen women’s bodies used to sell products. The bikini-clad woman in the wine glass… the bikini-clad women reclining on sports cars… I could go on. But that issue rarely seems to be an issue brought in white convert stories.

But for Latina women, it seems to be the biggest issue. It’s as though Latino cultures have the monopoly on men who make crude comments in public, and Latina feminism doesn’t exist. It’s also as though only Muslims are allowed to dress conservatively. Most articles paint Latinas as perpetually clad in tank tops, shorts, and mini skirts, unless they become Muslim — at which point they always, always wear hijab… unless they choose niqab instead. Come on, the world is not the dichotomy it’s portrayed to be:

On a hot summer day, Stefani Perada left work for the day in West New York, N.J., and stepped outside in her long jilbab, the flowing clothes worn by many Muslim women. Meanwhile, other Latinas in the mostly Hispanic neighborhood were taking advantage of the warm day, walking around in shorts and midriff-exposing halter tops. (MSNBC)

It’s easy to make everything so simple. Latinos disrespect their women; Muslims respect them. Latinas show off everything; Muslim women cover up completely. This simplification seems to be hard to avoid when discussing Latina converts. Another article wrote,

While some Latinas her age try to emulate the tight clothes and wiggling hips of stars like Jennifer Lopez and Christina Aguilera, Ms. Pinet and others are adopting a more conservative lifestyle and converting to Islam. (Christian Science Monitor)

It should be obvious that not all Latina women want to be sex kittens, and the world isn’t so black and white. Let’s not forget that emulating the “tight clothes, wiggling hips” look happens in white America too.

It’s frustrating that the Islam the women profiled turn to is consistently the same. They put on clothes with Arabic names, attend Qur’anic study groups at the mosque, and marry men they meet there. (By the way, there’s never any mention of Muslim men who sexualize women, because that’s apparently the domain of non-Muslim Latinos.) There’s nothing wrong with doing these things, but you’d think there’s no room for Muslim women to do anything else. These articles never mention Latina Muslim activists, or writers, or anything, really, but the archetypal domestic woman who fulfills both the Latina stereotype pre-conversion and the Muslim stereotype post-conversion.

And that brings up another assumption. There’s the idea that all Latinos are Catholic — or even religious. Although Catholicism is clearly the dominant faith of Latin America, there do exist Latinas who follow Protestantism, indigenous religions, or, in smaller numbers, other religions — including Islam. And to be Muslim and Latino is not always to convert to Islam. I think I may have once seen an article somewhere — nowhere to be found again — about a Latin American woman who grew up in a Muslim family, but that was the exception. Let’s not forget that Islam isn’t new to the Americas; slavery brought it here centuries ago. And neither should we forget that non-religious Latino families also exist.Unfortunately, the majority of coverage of Latina Muslims works from a framework that sees both Latin American cultures and Islam as strange and different. I guess the only way to explain how the two could meet is to fall back to the tired stereotypes and extreme dichotomies.

*The term “Latino” or “Latina” includes the Portuguese-speaking country of Brazil, but I’ve seen almost no coverage of Brazilian Muslims, except for this article, explaining why Brazilians aren’t Muslim.

For more information on Latino/a Muslims, see LADO or HispanicMuslims.com.

Photo credit: MSNBC

Over the weekend, I received two email bulletins about recent events surrounding ethnic studies programs, one focusing on Asian Americans in Maryland and one focusing on Latin@s in Arizona.

Lee Fang wrote in with an Action Alert: Save Asian American Studies at the University of Maryland:

Asian American University of Maryland Students Mobilize To Save Asian American Studies

(COLLEGE PARK, MD) — Students at the University of Maryland are stepping up to demand Asian Americans are included in the future of the University. The current draft of the University “Strategic Plan” – a document which governs future resource allocation and academic affairs policy for the next 5 to 10 years – completely ignores Asian American Studies and does nothing to address meeting the needs of Maryland’s growing Asian American student population.

Outrage has been vented at several recent meetings of Asian American student organizations and activist groups. Given forecasted fiscal shortfalls for the state of Maryland, many students fear Asian American Studies, as well as other academic programs dedicated to the study of race, gender, sexual orientation and issues of identity, face elimination or severe cut backs in the case of a budget crisis.

“Without inclusion in the Strategic Plan, you don’t exist,” lamented Pi Delta Psi President Scottie Siu.

As the deadline nears for community input, several Asian American groups are preparing to lobby and write letters demanding that the Provost add provisions to ensure that Asian American Studies be protected and promoted one day into a Major. Other demands include that there should be more needs based assessment surveys so counseling services can be improved, and that there should be a space on campus for Asian American cultural events.

Take action now! Call Provost Nariman Farvardin at (301) 405-5252 and ask that Asian American Studies be in the Strategic Plan!

(You can also contact Lee Fang at Lhfang@gmail.com).

I also received an email from Aaminah with an opinion piece from the Arizona Daily Star. The piece was written in response to a proposed bill in the Arizona State Legislature to target courses of study that they perceive as anti-American:

Some state lawmakers are again sticking their noses where they don’t belong and trying to tell educators what should or shouldn’t be taught in public schools.

The Legislature is attempting to usurp the decision-making responsibilities of local school boards and is perpetuating lies and creating divisions among Arizonans by pushing a bill that seeks to end programs like Raza Studies in the Tucson Unified School District. The bill would deny state funding to schools whose courses “denigrate American values and the teachings of Western civilization.”

Whatever that means.

Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services reported in Thursday’s Star that the bill, SB 1108, is aimed at MEChA, the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán, a student group that state Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, describes as racist.
Raza Studies has also drawn the ire of anti-immigrant-rights activists and last year was criticized by state schools superintendent Tom Horne, who said the program was promoting “ethnic chauvinism.”

[...]

SB 1108 was approved 9-6 by the House Appropriations Committee and goes to the full House.

The measure should be rejected because it goes against the concept of academic freedom — letting local school boards decide what is best for their students.

The bill is vague and subjective.

The measure would give the state superintendent the power to decide when schools “overtly encourage dissent” from values such as democracy, capitalism, pluralism and religious toleration. It’s too much power to give one person.

We wonder whether learning about communist China in history class or discussions about the Middle East and current events would fit into the “teachings of Western civilization.” Mexico is in the Western Hemisphere and thus, part of Western civilization.

SB 1108 would encourage propaganda, not education, in our public schools.

I wonder if these are two isolated incidents of school administrators and legislators being short-sighted? Or, alternatively, is this part of an emerging trend against ethnic studies in schools?

Your thoughts?

I was recently at a gathering with a Korean-American friend of mine when a young Asian guy approached us.

“You’re not Korean, right?” my friend asked.

He shook his head at her. “No, I’m Japanese.”

“You don’t look all Japanese. Are you half?” my friend asked.

I searched his honey-colored face, looking for telltale signs of whiteness but finding none. I wondered aloud if my friend thought he was half because of his hair. It was textured and brown rather than her hair, which was stick straight and black.

“It’s because of the way I carry myself,” he chipped in before my friend could answer. He went on to invoke some stereotypes about Asians, explaining that he didn’t look fully Asian because he had a very emotive face and liked to gesture a lot. All in all, he was a banana, he said.

I’m assuming that most of you know what this term means. But, for the uninitiated, a “banana” refers to Asians who believe that, while they may be yellow on the outside, they are culturally white on the inside. A synonym for banana used in this context is “Twinkie.” Anyway, when the guy self-labeled as a banana, my friend nodded in agreement, declaring that she, too, was one. Then, a white guy joined us and declared that he was an “egg,” white on the outside and yellow on the inside. Why a group of people in their twenties and thirties was using terminology that should have been left on the schoolyard years ago is beyond me. But, before I knew it, I felt their eyes turn to me.

“Well, I’m black,” I said.

But this response wasn’t acceptable to them. They wanted me to declare myself an “Oreo,” black on the outside and white on the inside. I explained that I thought this term was offensive. It suggested that the person in question was a sellout or an Uncle Tom, and I would never use the term to describe myself.

The day after, I found myself wondering why my friend and the Japanese American guy had no qualms about labeling themselves in these terms. I suppose that, if I based my racial identity solely on my familiarity with my father’s native Nigeria, I, too, would have to declare myself white on the inside. I don’t speak my tribal language and have no intimate knowledge of Yoruba customs. Still, I am intimately aware of what it feels like to grow up black in America and that experience precludes me from ever viewing myself as internally “white.”

I wonder what would have happened had a Chicano friend of mine, who speaks only English and had little familiarity with Mexico until adulthood, joined our group that night. I doubt that he would have openly declared himself a coconut or a pocho.

Now, I’ve heard Asian Americans derisively refer to fellow Asian Americans as being “whitewashed,” so I don’t believe that Asian Americans as a whole would proudly identify as “bananas” or “Twinkies.” But I wonder, because of their status, however problematic, as America’s “model minority,” if it’s simply more acceptable for Asian Americans to openly identify as white than it is for blacks and Latinos to? What do you think?

As for the white guy, or “egg,” in the group—it’s long been acceptable for whites to latch on to other cultures and claim them as their own. The idea being, which I find absurd, that whites have no culture and, thus, have no choice but to be “culture vultures.” Given that, it’s never very remarkable to me when a white person claims to be more yellow, black or brown than white. In one of the oddest moments I’ve ever had with a stranger, a white man approached me to say that he believed he was black in a former life. Go figure.

Associate Editor Alex Alvarez, befuddled to find that her boobs and hips, or lack thereof, seem to fall in and out fashion like leggings and stirrup pants and poppers, takes a look at the American women’s magazine industry in an attempt to decipher just how, exactly, they can get away with telling women their bodies are ok – if only they’d look more like white girls. (Take The Quiz On Page 62!)

My name is Alex Alvarez. And I hate women’s magazines.

Don’t get me wrong: I like fashion and I’ve worked at several magazines over the past couple of years. I can talk about Courrèges and Two Girls, One Cup in the same breath. But so many women’s magazines, both “fashion” mags like Glamour and Vogue and “sexy” mags like Cosmo and Horse & Hound do women so much more harm than good.

Women’s magazines have long been accused of creating a standard of beauty that will forever be just out of the grasp of most women – prompting them, of course, to wait until next month’s issue for more advice on how to be perfect. (Hint! Transplant your face with this other face.) Selling women this promise not only keeps magazines on newsstands and subscriptions in the mail, it also helps appease the real driving force behind all magazines — advertisers and Satan. And what women end up purchasing is cosmetic “whiteness.” You know you’ve made it, baby, when you wake up looking like you faceplanted on Plymouth Rock.

In this feature, I’ll take a look at women from four, over-simplified ethnic or racial backgrounds and see just how, exactly, magazines are fucking them all up. Then, after a few dozen sex quizzes and several minutes of trying to figure out how you can both “Love Your Body!” and orient yourself on the latest “Plastic Surgery Tips Every Woman Should Know!” without wanting to gag yourself on an exclamation point, I’ll give the magazine industry a few tips on how to talk to women.

Latina

Brief Overview: Latinas are portrayed as being sultry and seductive. They can get away with playing the “bad girl,” possibly because they are allowed – and even encouraged – to have more overtly sexual bodies, with an emphasis on curves, dark eyes and bright, plump, shiny, slick, wet lips shown in loving close-ups, usually while the face to which they’re attached is growling or purring or doing something else that’s totally fierce. They also give better head. Oh. There goes my attempt at subtlety.

The ideal: Jennifer Lopez

Hair: Often enough, Latinas have “big hair” with lots of volume, possibly as a middle ground among the various hair textures found among Latinas of different races.

Skin: Latinas are often depicted as having an olive complexion, with lighter or darker generally ignored or unmentioned by mainstream media.

Ass: Big, round. Makes a “ka-ching ka-ching” sound when bouncing in time to a song about cars and beach houses.

Breasts: While Latinas are generally depicted with large backsides, breast size is allowed to vary. As long as they’re big.

How magazines fucked up: “Latina” is not a race. It’s a diverse group made of many racial, ethnic and religious groups. Some who don’t even look like J-Lo. Additionally, women can’t have it both ways. While Latinas have been “en vogue” for a period of time, certain celebrated icons of “Latina beauty,” such as Jennifer Lopez and Salma Hayek, have whittled down their once-celebrated curvy figures as the years have gone by. Wait until Jennifer loses all that baby weight. She’ll look so much better without Marc.

Black

Brief Overview: While black women can come in a variety of shapes and complexions, those who are most often represented in mainstream American magazines are often, for lack of a better, equally descriptive phrase, “white-washed” in appearance. Features that are seen of characterized of black people, like curlier hair textures, wider noses and fuller lips, are often downplayed in American magazines, conforming to a white standard of beauty.

The ideal: Halle Berry

Hair: There was quite a controversy surrounding a Glamour magazine article that portrayed “ethnic” hairstyles, such as afros and cornrows, as being inappropriate for the workplace. This works to politicize the black body, hair included, and also upholds the standard that in order to be neutral, apolitical and inoffensive in the public sphere, one must become as white as possible. As such, many black women in magazines have relaxed hair, extensions and weaves.

Skin: Lighter-skinned black women are more often represented in magazines than those who are darker complected.

Ass: While black women are “allowed” to be more overtly sexual than those who are white, many “high fashion” black models are quite thin and thus their backsides are smaller and the object of less focus than black women represented in other areas of mainstream entertainment. Like in any rap video that airs after midnight in between commercials for “Girls Gone Wild: Preschool Edition.”

Breasts: The more high fashion the magazine, the less busty the models. After all, even your eyeballs’ll look fat in a Hervé Léger bandaid dress.

How magazines fucked up: While Halle Berry is a stunningly attractive woman, she happens to have a white mother. And while Latinas are allowed to “fiery” and “seductive,” the magazine and fashion industry seem confused about how, exactly, to portray black women, choosing instead to whitewash them and choose only light-skinned women with whittled-down figures, or very dark “exotic beauties” that are treated more like sculptural objects than flesh and blood women.

Asian

Brief Overview: Asian women hold a curious place in the beauty stratum. Often, what is perceived as their “natural” physical traits are encouraged and often emulated by White women trying to achieve a certain standard of beauty. The idea of a natural physical ideal is a harmful one, because those who do not possess such traits are ignored or considered somehow inferior, physically. The Asian ideal, as perceived by American fashion magazines and elsewhere, revolves around the idea that one must be petite, slim, fair and delicate. Doll-like would be the best way to describe this ideal, both in terms of physical appearance and attitude.

The ideal: Ziyi Zhang

Hair: Straight. What was interesting to me, actually, was that a former Korean roommate of mine had all these magazines that featured girls with curly hair all dyed a sort of reddish color. Seriously, every. Single. Girl. In her magazines had the exact same hairstyle. She also had one magazine dedicated to Japanese girls who wanted to emulate the style of American Black women -this included wearing afros. Also interesting? Girls in Japanese and Korean magazines are generally much, much thinner than in American ones.

Skin: Clear, light. Although there are many, many ethnic groups prevalent throughout Asia, only porcelain-skinned girls find representation in American fashion mags.

Ass: N/A

Breasts: N/A

How magazines fucked up: Some Asian girls are chubby. Really! Some are muscular, some are tall, some are dark, some are doughy, and some are boney and awkward.

White

Brief Overview: The gold standard of white beauty is a woman who is thought of as being the least “ethnic” and most “neutral” as possible. Fair skin, fair hair and thin, often lacking in curves that would be considered vulgar or distasteful (or exotic?) the stereotype of corn-fed Midwestern girls or sun-kissed, muscular athletic girls are eschewed for fair, tall, boney girls – often with what is described as a “boyish” figure, one without the tell-tale markers of womanhood – hips, ass. Personality.

The ideal: Gwyneth Paltrow

Hair: Hairstyle changes with the season but barring avant-garde styling, styles are usually pretty tame, alternating from loose ringlets to super-straight, shiny, sleek hairstyles. Comes in a variety of haircolors, again, depending on the season.

Skin: Pale or tan, depending on the season and the style of the photoshoot. Like to mix colonialism and cultural oppression with your couture? Bring a healthy glow!

Ass: N/A

Breasts: Depends. In magazines focused on middle to upper-middle class women, breasts are often normal to large. In high-fashion magazines, however, fuller bustlines are used to indicate “plus-size” or “seductive” women like Eva Mendes, not necessarily elegant or stylish ones.

How magazines fucked up: There’s been a long tradition of a “fight for white,” meaning that various ethnic groups over the years have had to struggle for the chance to be seen as normal and neutral. Irish-Americans, for example, who are today almost synonymous with the concept of what it means to be white (fevered dancing without the use of hips or shoulders, the consumption of potatoes), were very much “the other” for a very, very long time in America. Jewish and Italian Americans were also not always considered white folks here in the old U.S. of A. This isn’t mentioned to encourage anyone to wait whiteness out, it’s meant to highlight the fact that whiteness is a culturally manufactured concept and is only given meaning by a certain segment of society in a certain slice of history.

Sigh. What can you do? Well, for one, you can stop reading fashion magazines.

No, ok, calm your ass down. (Ooh! See what I did there?) And remove your stiletto from my cornea. You can still celebrate fashion and enjoy girlyness without conforming to patriarchal and Anglo-centric standards of beauty. There are some magazines out there that will let you know you’re fine, and even beautiful, exactly as you are without telling you to lose five pounds in three days to fit into a bathing suit you can’t afford. Dig around. Put effort into being a consumer, and be discerning in your taste. Women make up the majority of the U.S. population; it’s not far-fetched to say we drive a lot of the economy. So why do we give up all our power to the beauty and fashion industries, only to be rewarded with the idea that we’re still not good enough? These standards and fads only have meaning if you elect to give it to them.

—

Latoya’s Note: In the comments to the original post, Alex addresses something that appears to be an omission in her piece:

I purposefully used these four, generalized groups because these are found most often in mainstream media / American fashion magazines. Your statement on not being able to find Middle Eastern or South Asian women in such magazines is exactly why I chose not to include these groups in my feature. It’s the same reason I didn’t include, say, Native American women or ethnic groups in China who didn’t fit the “pale, small” stereotype.

Additionally, I did not mean to include South Asian women under the “Asian” header at all, on purpose, because there is almost always a distinction in popular culture and language between “Asian” and “South Asian.”

The General Market ad shows the Kleenex being hurled like a snowball. The Latino version? A soccerball, of course.

Fast Company recently profiled Alicia Morga, founder and CEO of online-marketing firm Consorte Media.

The opening paragraphs of the article reveal exactly what is wrong with the advertising industry:

Every marketer, pollster, and advertiser knows this much about Hispanics living in the United States: They are deeply family oriented, and their families are big. So when Alicia Morga, founder and CEO of the Hispanic-focused online-marketing firm Consorte Media, first started working with ad agencies on home-financing campaigns, she was told to use cheery images of happy, home-owning families. Problem: “The pictures of the big, brown family turned out to be the lowest-performing creative among Hispanics,” Morga says with a laugh. “By far.” What worked instead were simple shots of well-kept homes with white fences and lush lawns. “It’s aspirational,” she explains. Who knew?

Anyone who bothered to think outside the caja would know–and Morga does. In less than two years, she and Consorte Media have changed the thinking on how to find Hispanic Web surfers in the United States and convert them into customers, replacing the stereotypes that often typify minority-targeted marketing with insights gleaned from rigorous data collection and analysis. And she has built a business that’s already profitable, scored big-name clients including Best Buy and Monster.com, and completed two rounds of venture funding worth $10 million. Her secret: “Data works. There’s too much of the anecdotal in this marketplace.”

I am not sure why marketers want to overolook things that are fairly obvious. Perhaps it is the need for quantifiable, packaged data. I used to work for a market research aggregator and some of the reports that came across my desk for loading were sketchy, at best. Much of the research targeting specific ethnic/racial/gender/age demographics were heavily biased, used to essentially justify pre-existing stereotypes.

A coworker and I occassionally amused ourselves by opening some of the reports and laughing about what the researchers said our demographic wanted. Apparently, according to an older report targeting the African-American market, I am supposed to be single, very religious, overweight, and respond well to food images and church choirs. I guess that’s what the deal was with this Nivea ad.

As a gamer, I was socially awkward and probably spent a lot of time alone. (I was also a guy. Girl gamers had a very small segment near the end explaining how we need pink to relate to video games and we prefer games that were more feminine with a focus on relationships, cooking, or shopping. No I’m not kidding.)

I am not saying all market research is bad – on the contrary, there were some very well researched and thorough reports out there that did crazy things like actually poll the market. Or observe trends. Or conduct focus groups. Still, there were a great many companies who seemed like they couldn’t bother to even do that basic amount of research.

So, I can’t say I was surprised to see the language barrier brought up in the article as another key stumbling block:

The language barrier is obstacle enough for many marketers–the most infamous example is a Spanish-language version of the “Got Milk?” campaign, in which the mangled-in-translation tagline ended up meaning something akin to “lactation.” But Morga emphasizes that the demo “is not monolithic”: One-third of U.S. Hispanics are English-dominant, one-third speak primarily Spanish, and one-third are fully bilingual. And Forrester Media analyst Tamara Barber adds that “it’s not just about language. It’s about culture.” U.S. Hispanics are incredibly diverse, hailing from more than two dozen countries–and that jumble of mores, traditions, and cultural quirks renders generalizations problematic.

What? Latin@s speak English?

¿Desde cuándo?

And Hispanics/Latin@s in the US are diverse? (Meaning everyone isn’t Mexican?)

I think I just heard the sound of heads exploding on Madison Avenue.

[Image taken from the Fast Company website]