Time to Panic for Hispanics?

By Juana Bimba

Atrocities can happen to Latinos anywhere in the US, but here in NYC, at least the facade of interracial civility is a bit less wobbly than elsewhere.

 True, local ethnics sometimes shoot up their own block parties, and the NYPD kills Blacks and maims Hispanics with some regularity. But on the whole, most NYC Latinos have never known the cold dread that comes from facing stark, open, rabid discrimination. That’s not part of our reality—not yet—-as it’s always been out West, where Latinos are like the Blacks of the Jim Crow South.

 Discrimination is subtler on the East Coast.

Growing up among Cubans, I didn’t even know it existed until I joined The Miami Herald as a reporter. I soon noticed that the paper sported an anti-Cuban tone, and that its white staffers treated me dismissively. Me. With my light skin, my college degree and my perfect English. (WTF?)

More recently, I’ve survived attempts to eviscerate me at work under trumped up, contrived accusations of wrongs so slight they verge on absurdity. I even had to hire a lawyer (my real fault likely being that I’m Hispanic and I refuse to eat dirt). And yet  I note that some of my coworkers have been forgiven for things like drunk driving, drug dealing, sleeping around, drinking on the job, etc.

 But these Forgiven Ones are White.

“Don’t ever forget who you are, or THEY will remind you”, someone once told me. Well, it’s not that I’m trying to pass, I just dislike the endless stream of  “holas” ,  “que pasas” and Spanish 101 phrases proffered in friendship by Whites I know.

 I hear them as dog whistle for “We. Are. Different”. It offends me and also makes me feel dumb,
 like some Chiquita Banana Twinkie.

I know such heightened sensibilities might sound petty to a Latino from the West, and no wonder.  I’ve been out there and seen how fear is the local currency. How Latino strangers telegraphed their heritage to me in code, through discreet eye contact and careful pronunciation of my last name. How they warned me of nearby Immigration checkpoints and cautioned me to always carry “mis papeles”, lest I get stopped and deported to a place I’ve never been.

This was all new to me as a New Yorker.

I saw cops gratuitously break up an impromptu meet-and-greet of polite Latino professionals in a hotel lobby. It was a convention of Hispanic journalists in Albuquerque.The next day, some Catholic muckamuck added insult to injury by refusing to officiate at the opening ceremonies. Organizers then called in a curandera (indigenous folk healer) to deliver the blessing instead.

 On the last night, when I stepped outside the ballroom for some fresh air with a friend, a police car circled us until we fled back in.

That was a trip in more ways than one; like belonging to a secret society of outlaws or misfits. It was the first time that I’d sensed any danger because of my ethnicity, the first time I fully realized that in this country, being Hispanic can be hazardous to your health. A rude awakening.

Even so, if anyone had told me what the future held—open season on Latinos at Walmart, kids
caged like animals, babies torn from their mothers—I might not have believed it.

Growing up Cuban with the Rebel Flag

People say that if Germans don't display swastikas over their public buildings, US Southerners shouldn't fly Confederate Flags over theirs. They're both reminders of shameful pasts, right?

But Hitler never got to cloak his infamy in rosy myths; also, Nazis

never benefited from the ministrations of  beloved media apologists, like fiction writers and movie stars, who glorified the memory of antebellum Dixie.

Views on antebellum culture began to transform with this nation's

first efforts to heal by honoring war veterans from both sides at early 20th century parades. Then along came "Gone with the Wind”, and historical revisionism dug in for good.

Subsequent media depictions of the Confederacy were mostly sympathetic.  The Antebellum South became a happy memory-land of singing darkies and the kindly whites who "took care" of them.

For at least a century, the white South's celebration of its antebellum history was considered a harmless quirk. Racism? Slavery? Those pages conveniently flapped loose from the main script to become  anomalies, unrelated to the True Glories of Dixie's Past.

As the child of Cuban exiles, I landed in 1960's Miami amid these historical delusions. Back then, all blacks lived in separate neighborhoods. Florida schools were segregated, so they housed no black sensibilities to offend.

One local learning institution named itself Robert E. Lee, while another, the South Dade Rebels, draped its marching band in Confederate uniforms. Kids carried Confederate flags to football games and waved them whenever their side scored. 

We Cubans snickered at these displays, but they didn’t really bother us; that flag was just a symbol of battle, too bad it got hijacked by the lunatic fringe. 

 Also, back in the 60's, Cubans were oblivious to any considerations of prejudice or bigotry. We even ignored the subtle fumes of apartheid that enveloped us in high school, because we believed they were coming from us, and not from the ones who were excluding us.

Tacitly kept from Anglo American fraternities and sororities, we created our own, or joined honor societies and academic clubs. We flocked together in hallways, classrooms, games, sock hops and the cafeteria. We only dated each other. We had no "American" friends, because acceptance by the larger group would mean suppressing

our ethnic ways.

 And we thought Anglo Americans were boring, anyway. 

The more sinister racial implications of Southern history also eluded us, because we considered ourselves white. So I grew up with the idea of  Former Confederate Glory as a normal ingredient of the Zeitgeist, part and parcel of my adopted background as an American.

And when I moved up North as an adult, I was startled to discover just how deeply the Southern perspective had been etched into my soul. Who knew that a cemetery in rural Vermont could hold nothing but Union Soldiers? That a historic hotel in upstate New York would proudly display Union relics? That anyone could celebrate the same people who had victimized poor antebellum Southerners? 

I've since gotten over those qualms, but I had to wince at the recent outpour of media vitriol against the South, at the hate one segment of the country was directing towards another. To me, that's like stomping on a corpse, or disparaging American war dead.  It's compounding past wrongs.

Yes, slavery was a major disaster and this entire country would have been much better without it and all of its unfortunate ramifications. Just think: we could be Canada! (Kidding.) But no, we're rabid Americans, bent on redressing historical wrongs with violence. On both sides. 

It occurs to me that while we're at it, we could also start trashing the hayseeds who died at  the Alamo, trying to defend Texans' right to lynch Mexicans and steal their land. Instead, we celebrate them, which I’ve always found appalling as a Hispanic.

Why isn't anyone talking about THAT?