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.