by Cindy Tovar
It always throws me off when I venture outside of any metropolitan area. Maybe it’s just me, but I start feeling a little uncomfortable when the only colors I see are black and white, and hardly any of the shades in between.
I don’t think all Latinos feel this way, but I imagine that there must be others, like me, that do.
Perhaps I feel this way because I’ve always lived in areas where it didn’t take long for me to spot a fellow Latino on the street, and where there’s so much diversity that life has never felt like oil and water. Or maybe I’m just too aware of my surroundings and ethnicity for my own good.
All I know is that when I read that West Virginia is the state with the least number of Latinos, I wasn’t surprised. As the largest minority in the United States, Latinos are everywhere, but we’re definitely not spread out equally throughout the country. Here are the top ten states where Latinos are living: California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, Arizona, New Jersey, Colorado, New Mexico, and Georgia.
When I think of where I want my children to grow up, I’d want to raise them in a place where not everyone looks the same. I’d want them to have friends of various backgrounds, teach them that people are different and that different is okay. It saddens me that children are growing up in places where they aren’t exposed to different cultures. I feel that many of these children grow into adults with a distorted perception of reality.
For example, I visited a friend of mine in Charleston, South Carolina. She told me that her coworkers described many things as ghetto: the bus, the housing projects, a certain part of town. During my stay, I took the bus, passed by the projects and walked in that part of town, but I didn’t see anything ghetto about it. For goodness sake, the projects were only one story, and had a grassy lawn in front of each apartment! When I took the bus, all I noticed was that the majority of the people on the bus were black, which I’m guessing to her coworkers, automatically made it ghetto. I kept thinking, “If this is ghetto to them, what would they think of the projects, or even public transportation, in New York?” It seems like these people live in a bubble and don’t know it.
South Carolina is a nice place to visit, but not on my list of places I’d want to live. West Virginia is out now, too.
People say that living in rural areas is peaceful, safe, and beautiful. I’m sure this is true, and maybe I’ll consider it…when I retire. But for now, I’d feel most comfortable living in a place where I can see people who look like me, along with every color of the rainbow, when I step out my door and take a walk around my neighborhood.
To learn more about Cindy, visit Dagnys Dichotomy.
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and should not be understood to be shared by Being Latino, Inc.
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About Cindy Tovar
Point well taken, I live in Georgia and I am maybe one of 3 or at most 5 Latinos where I work. I am probably one of the 2 Mexicans that have a graduate degree as well. In that same token, I feel that I fit in with neither group. I used to be discriminated against by my own race for speaking proper English and those that meet me are often perplexed at how I am not like those other Latinos that work in the polleras (poultry plants). Not only do culture, education and upbringing differences need to be explored but accepted by all groups.
Ghetto is a commonly misused word and many do not know the real definition. Most of the time they are confusing ghetto with slums and vice-versa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghetto
Interesting you point this out Cindy. The census numbers for Milwaukee, Wisconsin were released recently and out of the 594,833 total population, 103,007 were Latinos. We actually saw a growth of about 44% from the 2000 Census. Perhaps something to think about when scratching cities off your list.
I understand your position entirely. But all the compartmentalization in the U.S. is frustrating, even more so when the victims of oppression internalize that oppression (e.g. names that the oppressor gives to the marginalized) and identify with it (e.g. LatinO/A, Black, White, Indian, Asian etc).
While it is not explicitly stated that Latino=Hispanophone only in the article, it is implied, and I’ve some cultural and historical issue with that.
Louisiana, a state that has 4 Latin-based languages spoken natively (Louisiana French, Louisiana Creole, Louisiana Spanish and Louisiana English) is not highlighted, for instance. And many of us Louisiana Creoles, do identify as Latin people. (Louisiana had a 78% increase in the decennial census of self-identified Latinos. Not all of them are Hispanophones!).
More on this topic at http://latinlouisiana2010.wordpress.com/2010/11/01/the-people/
Great article, though.
I only wished that Latin peoples in the U.S. would unite and that folks would embrace all Latin peoples, like the administrator of the Being Latino facebook fanpage.
I remember asking him to include the Louisiana Creole flag and the nasty retort. It was along the lines of “if I add Louisiana Creoles, then I’ve to add …” and he threw in a non-Spanish-speaking country’s name. Now, clearly he had no idea that there is Louisiana Spanish spoken, nor do I think he cares that Latin people in Louisiana (Creoles) of all linguistic backgrounds have suffered the same marginalization, debasement, disfranchisement and disenfranchisement as Hispanophones from other regions and countries of the Americas.
If you seek acceptance unconditionally and are selective in who you accept, then I take issue with that.
In any case, keep informing folks of a different perspective.
Voices are important.
Christophe Landry
I actually beg to differ on this subject. I am a 37 year old New Yorican and I lived for 14 years in Sumter, South Carolina (2 hours north west of Charleston) which is home to Shaw AFB as well as 35 minutes east of Ft. Jackson Army Base in Columbia, South Carolina. I found a job there that I loved and that was very open to diversity. the company already had a lot of latinos working there when I started. I loved raising my son there. He is now 13 and has had a great childhood with plenty of diversity. I was part his elementary PTA was only one of the many latina parents with children there. My son is not only well rounded, but very street smart in spite of having grown up in South Carolina. He has had many advantages that other children don’t get growing up in a major city. He is an avid rider of ATV’S-Four Wheelers, dirt bikes, and dune buggies, He also knows how to hunt. He went to hunting camp for 2 summers and learned how to duck hunt and shoot with a bow and arrow. (The Fresh Air Fund does this in major cities and takes kids to the mountains or rural places outside of the city to get this experience- If you have the money to pay for it)
I as a parent, got the chance to be very hands on at the schools and with the doctor’s as he was growing up. There is more of a community “down home” feeling in most states in the south. You don’t get that in places like New York. I should know, I was born in New York and lived there until I was about 24. Most of my family is still there.
I was on the opposing view. Since I had to grow up in such a hardened environment, I wanted my child to enjoy being a child and have space to roam and be a kid. I (having to ride the trains and the buses back and forth from Queens to the Bronx when I was 10 for school so I wouldn’t get left back when my mom decided to move) (NO, the child that made the Today Show for doing it a few years back was not the first! There were many just like me when I was growing up.) knew I didn’t want that for my son. I don’t ever regret moving to the south. I no longer live in Sumter but I am still in the south. Now, when I do go home to visit I enjoy being back in the city but I can still see that I made the right choice for my family. I will always go back home to visit but I will probably never live in New York again. The cost of living and the hardened, fast life is just not for me any more.
Venus Garcia
It’s all relative and I promise you that even in places with few Latinos, we find each other! Community happens because the Latinos sniff themselves out.
It is what happened to me when I moved to Nashville 20-years-ago. I thought I was the only one, and then, slowly and surely, I met Cubans and Mexicans and everything in between.
Twenty years later, my new city is full of a wide variety of Latinos from all different backgrounds..and I survived when it wasn’t so common…maybe because I enjoy the simplicity of life here versus say, New Jersey or Miami, where I used to live.
As a Miami, Cuban-American girl raising a child in Nashville, Tenn…gotta say, that all is OK in the Boonies.
Yes, It is way harder to instill culture in my daughter here than if we lived in Miami, or anywhere else more Latin, but it is possible, and we do hang with Latin friends and attend festivals, and I make her speak Spanish at Mexican and Salvadoran restaurants. We also read books that celebrate culture and spend as much time as we can in Miami, New Jersey and Chicago…perception is distorted if parents don’t make the effort to show the wide angle view of life.
But again, it is all personal choice. I have certainly met other Latinos who did not enjoy it here and returned to the big cities….Just be careful not to judge the cities that are not yet heavily Latino…it isn’t their fault and eventually, the Latinos will show up.
I promise you that.
Welcome to America.
America is made up of all different type of races. What is a Latino anyway. The term was made up by the government to try to take political power away from African Americans. As we can see it didn’t work. African Americans are still the true largest minority group in America. Cubans, mexicans, puerto ricans and dominicans just name a few are all different ethnicities. ” Latinos” or hispanic wil always be 4th class citizens. The chain of command in America goes whites, blacks, Asians and the “Latinos”. And you guys better watch out because that is a very soft 4th place. Africans are coming over here in record numbers with legit papers. And their not coming over here to clean houses and cut grass. Their coming to get their BA, masters and PHDs. Jan 1, 2050 might not be a good day for the “Latino”. Especially if you guys want to work for crums and not learn the language.
The “America” I grew up in existed before the Anglosphere and we still speak our languages and celebrate and practice our non-Anglo cultures everyday in 2011. So, I’m a bit concerned with what your America is.
You definitely zoomed in on the principal social setback in the U.S.: contrived identities/categorizations (race). None of it means anything biologically or genetically, but it clearly means everything socially/politically in the U.S. (and a few other countries). What it all boils down to is quite simply social control. And that is exactly why I stated above re: internalizing oppression.
The goal should be a single national identity (U.S.) which we can all agree on and be proud of, with recognition of distinct histories and cultures. The latter is what matters in epidemiology, education, and comportment. And we must capitalize on polyglotism, not condone it or imagine that it defects one language in favor of another.
But got to get rid of the racial and ethnic (one in the same term) b.s. and asap.