Tony was a Latino man in his late fifties who wore a long black ponytail down his back. His face had the look of someone who had, as he put it, “been baptized by fire.” He’d had a tough upbringing in Los Angeles. Decades later as a successful attorney in Seattle, Tony clearly held onto some of the bitterness from his youth. You could see it in his eyes. His high school teachers thought he should be an auto mechanic. Perhaps they thought that by guiding him into a trade, they were actually doing this young Latino a favor. And in a way they did. Their advice provided Tony with the motivation needed to become a professional. “Going back to my experience as a young man and the idea that I should have been an auto mechanic made me so angry it was the last thing I was going to be” he shared with the group of Latino attorneys in Seattle on a cold night. Because of the discouragement and vocational tracking he was given by his teachers when he was young, he feels a special obligation to give back to the Latino community. He says, “I think we owe something. You know beside shoving it in people’s faces that I’m around, I think that I owe something.” You could hear his frustration in his voice as he shared how the notion of giving back was intertwined with his pride in showing people that Latinos can be much more than auto mechanic or laborers.
His experiences with racism have seeped into every area of his life, not just in his profession, and not just when he was young. When asked about the effects of being a minority on his life he says,
I’m always aware of it. And it’s subtle. It’s subtle… for example when I bought my home on Bainebridge [Island] and it overlooks the water. I was outside and I don’t know what I was doing and my neighbor says: ‘Oh, are you the gardener.’ And my actual gardener who is about 6’3” and a white guy with blonde hair says, ‘No, that’s the owner.’ And the face on the person was like, totally changed. And that’s what I have experienced for 55 years. That’s the kind of thing that you see. As a Latino or Native American or any kind of minority that you, you’re just another wetback or you’re just another migrant farm worker or whatever until you are a professional and that suddenly your stature changes, and you have to be aware of it whether it’s been brought out to you or whether you’ve faced it or you’ve experienced it, it’s there….[The] whole idea of being a minority and working as a professional, you almost have to be outstanding in order to be accepted.
Being “outstanding in order to be accepted” is something Tony has accomplished. However, when pressed about what costs it has meant for him he says
You have to work harder, it seems than if you were not a minority. It’s like women have always said being minorities you know you have to work twice as hard as a man in order to do the same job it’s that kind of attitude that is out there. And especially I think here in Washington, although it seems to be a bed of liberalism, though the discrimination is very subtle. You know, they talk about the glass ceiling. It does exist here. It does exist.
In order to survive as a Latino professional in a white world he states
You have to be able to be, I don’t want to say switch hit, but you’ve got to be flexible or you’re going to be left out.
On the other hand when it comes to the subject of language he laughingly states, “If you don’t speak Spanish in L.A. you’re toast.” Despite having had greater expectations placed on him as a professional of color because of perceived incompetence, or maybe because of the need to work twice as hard than his white colleagues to prove he was credible, his views are very conservative, particularly when he talks about individual initiative, drive, and ambition. He is very much against “handouts”, which he believes are a waste of money:
It’s like a little kid you know if you give them a toy, you know it doesn’t mean anything as much as if they worked, saved their money and go to the store and buy it with their own money that they feel this is something special and they take care of it. That’s how I feel about my education because I had to work for it. I missed out on all the affirmative action, you know, I was too old and by that time I’d already been through law school – at a cost of only $10,000 I might add. All those things I think are important but I think that ….you point them in the right direction, but not hold their hand all the way through. I think that’s what’s important. I think just indiscriminately throwing money out there, I think is a waste of money.
As a registered Republican, Tony sees affirmative action as just another obstacle for people of color:
One of the things that I’ve faced especially strong is the effect of affirmative action. And I have heard people say: ‘Oh, did you get into school through affirmative action.’ Which means that you weren’t good enough to get through the normal ways. You got in because you were a minority. And that comes up periodically.
However, Tony’s conservative views are mixed with the reality of his experiences with racism, stigma, and exclusion as a Latino growing up in America. The life of a Latino professional is “a very big balancing act” he proclaims. As a member of the Washington State Bar Committee on Diversity he found that there was some acceptance “for some degree of minorities.” But not for many partners. When asked by his colleagues to name one Latina partner in a major law firm in Seattle he replied, “Can’t. You can’t.”
The experiences that Tony describes of his life as a person of color are not unique to his chosen profession of law. They are unique to his being a Latino in America where a Latino is treated like just ‘another wetback’ as he put it. Tony’s story could be the experience of any Latino professional whether a banker, a real estate agent, a doctor or even a professor. The school tracking into a vocational trade such as a mechanic is an all too familiar experience for Latino males, as is the secretarial tracking for Latina females; the negative experiences growing up in the California or other Southwestern States are shared by most Latinos; the assumption that he was the gardener if he was in a fancy neighborhood; and most of all, the assumption that he doesn’t belong in America—these are all experiences that stem from the racialization of Latinos as poor, undocumented, alien, and unwanted. Tony’s experiences are the reality that any Latino with an education and money could encounter because of the way Latinos have been racialized in America.
Central to issues between whites and Latinos is the racial framing of Latinos. In a recent book titled How the United States Racilizes Latinos: White Hegemony and Its Consequences, several scholars document the racialization of Latinos in America.Cobas, Duany, and Feagin begin by defining this phenomenon as follows:
The racialization of Latinos refers to their definition as a “racial” group and the denigration of their alleged physical and cultural characteristics, such as phenotype, language, or number of children. Their racialization also entails their incorporation into a white-created and white-imposed racial hierarchy and continuum, now centuries old, with white Americans at the very top and black Americans at the very bottom (p. 1)
Tracing the pattern of racialization throughout the centuries, Cobas et al. provide ample evidence to demonstrate that Latinos have been constructed as “unwanted and disreputable aliens.” This can be seen in today’s immigration debate, which link Latinos, regardless of their citizenship status, to being “foreign and dangerous.” Tony can never truly escape from this reality, no matter how successful he becomes.
This is an excerpt from a book manuscript by Mária Chávez, assistant professor, Pacific Lutheran University
Tony is very correct about if person of color must work harder to prove himself. Not right but is this way. White people do not believe you are educate easily. Must show them, be convinced. That mean black people must show them. Can do if have pride and self respectfulness. Not care about if rasism in school. That is easy way to not work. You hurt your selfness. You do not hurt teachers. Tony did right thing. He is very much good example.
I disagree vehemently with Tony on the issue of affirmative action. The fact that whites think minorities aren’t as good because they could only get in through affirmative action is just another manifestation of white racism. As I first heard from a friend, “Affirmative action may get you there, but it can’t keep you there.” To whit I say, “er, duh!” I wish people would think more.
I’m not sure how much I agree with the idea that being a Latina/o is so very different from being black. And I’m not sure how much you mean to stress that difference or the degree of difference etc, etc, and so forth.
But as for the sneak peek, as it were, I really dug it! It’s really captivating. It really did grab and pull me in. Can’t wait for it to come out. It’s going on my reading list, plus, I’m a name-dropper!
Really good stuff, Maria. Congratulations!
Thanks for the feedback. I know what you mean about his views on affirmative action. I don’t understand why people don’t realize why it is needed in the first place–if we didn’t have a system with systemic racism there wouldn’t be a need for policies to remedy it to begin with. When you have children tracked in a certain direction–all the Tony’s who should have been auto mechanics–when you have disparities in wealth due to generations of racism, what do people expect.
Regarding your comment about the idea that being Latino is so different from being black–where did that show up? I don’t think the experiences are over all too different, unless a Latino is undocumented. In that case, being undocumented is even different from Latino citizens because of the fact that they live in fear of being deported. But thanks for highlighting this point. The next section that didn’t get included looks at Hoschild’s Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation that examines black professionals’ experiences.
I’m so glad you like it. I appreciate the encouragement!
I was thinking of that sentence. No worries, though. I’m looking over a manuscript for a friend, guess I’m being particular. I agree with the analysis in your response. I can’t imagine being an undocumented Latina. At least if I were an undocumented black immigrant, I could “blend” in with American blacks. But in today’s climate . . . Wow! It must take hella mucho valentía!
Yes, it is a bravery I know I don’t have. When my mother went in to deliver my sister the nurse said to her, “Why do you people always wait until the last minute.” This statement has always stayed with her. If “you people” included getting checked for citizenship status, as Arizonans will do shortly, it would be soooo scary.
Was she saying that most Latinas in labor wait till the last minute before going to the hospital? Or that most Latinas forego prenatal care all together and only see the doctor when they’re 9cm dialated?
Whichever it is, I can’t blame’em!
And anyway, home delivery is much safer and healthier. I’d recommend it for the documented and undocumented alike.
As for your comment below as to how so many professional Latina/os fail to realize that “when the bell tolls for one it tolls for all,” – this is just a guess, completely wild speculation – but maybe it just boils down to their not seeing themselves as a collective group. For recent immigrants, there was no previous need to see yourself as part of a collective group in their home country. Even as a community, there’re all the various ethnicities, ie Dominicans and Hondurans; not to mention the different possible racial identities, ie Afro-Cuban vs white Cubans.
Just last month, a study came out that showed that while both whites and blacks experience more empathy for ingroup members in pain than outgroup individuals in pain; blacks experienced an even greater level of empathy for blacks than whites did for whites. The researchers speculated that it could be because African American individuals see other African Americans as part of their self (as in self-identity).
I’m speculating that seeing ingroup members as part of of the Self is maybe why so many African Americans are politically and economically liberal. And maybe not viewing other Latina/os as part of the self is why so many Latina/o professionials are conservative and have the “I succeeded. Why can’t you?” attitude.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to “educate” you on something you don’t already know. I only took the one course of Latino lit. It’s just that I only read about that study late last night and am excited to have any excuse to bring it up!
Tony, of course, is giving us the white-framed view of affirmative action. The ONLY reason there is ever a stigma is because whites make it so. So it is actually the white racist framing of people of color that lurks just beneath the superficial veneer of notions of Affirmative action hurting people of color. Of course, whites never talk about the huge white affirmative action programs that helped them get where they are — like the Homestead Act, from which an estimated 46 million whites today have benefited because their white ancestors got some of that affirmative action land given away by the federal govt almost entirely to whites, esp white ethnics/immigrants (often stolen Indian lands ).
Good point. I’d never considered the Homestead Act affirmative action. And so was the Federal Housing Administration policy after WWII, which gave subsidized home loans to mostly whites. When we start to think about it, a lot of public policy has been affirmative action for certain whites and when there is one policy that attempts to redress the inequities, the public screams reverse discrimination.
One of the difficulties I found in interviewing this group of Latino professionals was how conservative they were as a group. But then again, Latinos as a culture (Catholic church etc.) can be conservative. We also operate in the white frame, as immigrants often do, hoping against hope that whites will find us “acceptable” and let us join their club. I can’t think of why else we wouldn’t see that “when the bell tolls for one it tolls for all.”
Now you’ve really got me thinking about public policy and affirmative action. Social security was a public policy that excluded fields of work that were dominated by blacks and Latinos initially.
Even post-1970s policies, which were post-Civil Rights and hopefully less racist–have been administered in an exclusionary fashion. So, we can probably hypothesize that most public policy has benefited one race (whites) over all others and yet affirmative action has a stigma attached to it. Unbelievable.
Oh yeah! Like the mortgage tax credit – most minorities rent.
Maria, and No1KState, those are key points. Maria, you might want to explore how Mexican Americans (since the 1840s) have, like African Americans, been kept (formally or informally) out of access to the large federal government giveaway programs for “white welfare recipients” such as those who got Homestead land, radio and TV licenses, access to federal mineral/oil lands, government contracts, as well as the FHA and VA programs. I suspect local white officials — over a century now — not only operated to exclude Blacks, but also Latinos?