We Are One: Preschoolers know more than Trump voters


In the lobby of the school where I work, there is a huge image of Earth taped onto the wall. It is made of kraft paper and crisscrossed with colorful broad strokes of tempera paint.

Circling the perimeter of the planet are cutout drawings of children holding hands. No two children are the same, partly because of the way the preschoolers scribbled and colored them in.

Above the planet are the words “WE ARE ONE.”

Mas…We Are One: Preschoolers know more than Trump voters

Can you spot the Latino in this photograph?

salvadorlitvakI’m pretty sure I was the only redhead at the NYU Latino Law Students Association Gala in the spring of 1990. The food was delicious, my date looked stunning, and I was glad I had jumped on the opportunity when I received the LALSA invitation.

My journey to that moment began 25 years earlier. I was born in Santiago, Chile in 1965: a third generation Chilean on my father’s side (whose people came from Odessa), and first generation on my mother’s side, who arrived when she was 12 from Hungary.

We left Chile in 1970 after the election of socialist president Salvador Allende. For Mom, socialism was close enough to the Soviet regime she’d fled in Hungary.

I started kindergarten at P.S. 81 in the Bronx. With a curly mop of flaming red hair and speaking only Spanish, I immediately embarked on a lifelong career of not fitting in. I learned English fast, but I still felt like an outsider. I got into X-Men comics because I identified with the mutants.

Mas…Can you spot the Latino in this photograph?

True Story: I was a teenaged guera, white like Jesus too

bigblondejesusIn 1969, my mother registered to vote as a member of La Raza Unida, an independent “third party.”

When she came home and shared the news with her father — declaring that she was a “Chicana” — he grew angry.

He told her never to use that word, since “Chicano” was a derogatory term when he was growing up.

Despite my mother’s defiance of the patriarchal family regime that day, she never talked much about the importance of our Mexican heritage or exploring the values of Xicanisma.

Mom did send me to an all-girls Catholic high school, however, and maybe that was an attempt at showing me empowerment for women. The school was in 75% white Glendora, though, so our Jesus statues were white (photo, above), just like our feminism. 

Mas…True Story: I was a teenaged guera, white like Jesus too

What’s in a trend? Google tracks ‘Latino’ and ‘Hispanic’ over time

ngramHispanic or Latino? This question comes up all the time, and not just during Hispanic Heritage Month, which we insist on calling Latino Heritage Month.

Is there a trend? We asked the Google NGram Viewer to search their big index of published books to see how many times the word “Latino” and the word “Hispanic” were used over time.

Mas…What’s in a trend? Google tracks ‘Latino’ and ‘Hispanic’ over time

Don’t call me a ‘Mexican,’ America! Also, I’m not a ‘Latino’

HispanosAgaintsLatinoTermIt’s a phenomenon older than the United Estates of America. We’ve named it Looking Down On More Recent Immigrants Syndrome:

Last week three latter-day Looking Down Syndrome sightings lit up our screen, INSISTENT MESSAGES from people who want you to know THEY ARE DEFINITELY NOT THOSE OTHER PEOPLE OVER THERE — those Mexicans and/or Latinos.

Mas…Don’t call me a ‘Mexican,’ America! Also, I’m not a ‘Latino’

White Hispanics: ‘Hey! We’re not ALL murderous douchebags’

ronstadtbrown“White Hispanic” is one of mainstream media’s hottest new buzzwords, a term that has leaped off of old census forms and job applications to join the ranks of “twerking,” “3-D printing,” and “Death to Edward Snowden!”

The mainstream media needs to distinguish between different colors of Latinos because it was too polite to ask  “Why is Trayvon Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, so… DARK for his name? And isn’t Aaron Hernandez, that allegedly trigger-happy New England Patriots player, a little… LIGHT for his?”

I guess I could be called a “White Hispanic,” as my dad’s from Colombia and my Yiddishe momme reps Brooklyn.  I really wish it didn’t take two high-profile killings to bring Latino-and-white people into the public eye, but Linda Ronstadt (photo) and Joan Baez aren’t making new albums and Little Ricky’s been off TV for a while.

Mas…White Hispanics: ‘Hey! We’re not ALL murderous douchebags’

Student stunned to learn blue contacts don’t make her look white

(PNS reporting from SAN ANTONIO) Marisa Rodriguez just wanted to look “fresh” for the summer.

What she didn’t want was the public humiliation from finding out the blue contact lenses she bought at the Mothers’ Day car show and swap meet at Traders’ Village didn’t actually make her look fresh, or more white.

“It happened at school when one of my classmates laughed at me when I asked him if he noticed something different about me,” the Harlandale High School junior tearfully told PNS.

“Justin is a bully, he just laughed at said I had a nopal on my forehead and that I looked lame with these blue contacts!”

Mas…Student stunned to learn blue contacts don’t make her look white

Breaking: San Diego firm offers Thailand plastic surgery tours

(PNS reporting from SAN DIEGO) Horton District travel agency Mad Mad World Tours is now offering a new cosmetic surgery/tour package featuring makeovers in beautiful Thailand, the company announced today.

The tours, organized in partnership with the Bod Thai Clinic of Bangkok, Thailand, promise an all-expenses-paid two-week luxury trip to the southeast Asian country and a procedure called a frental nopalectomy. The forehead surgery promotion targets upscale Mexican-Americans.

Mas…Breaking: San Diego firm offers Thailand plastic surgery tours

Student activist confesses: ‘I’m actually mestizo, not indígena’

(PNS reporting from SAN JOSE) Johnny Ramírez had a huge confession to make to his Pre-Columbian Latin American history class last week. The summer he spent in Barcelona really changed him, the San Jose State junior told his fellow students during section.

“I always felt this pressure to be true to my indígena Aztec roots, you know? Even though me — and well my parents and grandparents, too — were all born right here in California, I always wanted to honor my family’s real roots,” the well-known Latino campus activist said. (Ramirez, right, was photographed at an immigrants’ rights march last May Day.)

When he was in Barcelona, he said, he realized that he had Spanish blood, too, and it wasn’t something to be ashamed of — but proud. He has a cousin, Juanita, who has hazel eyes, so obviously his family has Spanish blood, too.

Mas…Student activist confesses: ‘I’m actually mestizo, not indígena’

Blonde Mexican dissident seeks asylum in Chinese restaurant

Rubio "doesn't look Mexican" neighbors say
(PNS reporting from GUADALAJARA) Blonde Mexican dissident Pablo Rubio holed up in a Chinese restaurant here after eluding taunting neighbors who say he can’t be Mexican since he is fair-haired and light-skinned.

Rubio was spirited away from his home in a car trunk at noon yesterday by friends who convinced suspicious local gang members the getaway vehicle was sagging the trunk was filled with drogas, one source told PNS.

“Pablo went to the Che Xuan Panda restaurant because to them he looks Mexican,” she said. “We all look Mexican to them. Also the 75 pesos lunch special with soup and egg roll rocks.”

Pocho Ñews Service PNS is a wholly-fictitious subsidiary of Pochismo, Inc., a California corporation, who is a person according to the Supreme Court.  Don’t ask us, we just work here.

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