The Problem with CNN's Latino/Black/er...Others-In-America Series

CNN has just finished airing “Latino in America” the second of two major documentary/news reports on life as a “minority” in the US.  While I can easily acknowledge the intrinsic value of educating people about these large groupings, both series have had some unintended negative consequences.

The first is the myth of homogeneity – in other words, that when we speak about “Latinos” for example, the public jumps to the general assumption (which was briefly pointed out in the documentary) that all Latinos are of direct Spanish (meaning from the country of Spain) descent. 

Now, it is true that a large majority of Hispanics (separate from Latinos) have some Spanish ancestry, the reality is most Latinos are not of direct non–Latin American Spanish descent. In fact, many are not primarily of Spanish descent; and some are not of Spanish descent at all. If you think about it for just a second, you’ll realize that there are Latinos in America who have European ancestries (e.g. Italian, German, Polish), as well as Middle Eastern (Lebanese, Egyptian, etc.) not to mention Black, Native American, and Asian ancestries.

This brings us to the second myth – that the vast majority of Latino/Hispanic/Mexican-Americans are either first generation, or second or third generation descendants of illegal immigrants.  CNN’s own Lou Dobbs fuels this misconception with his fiery, inflammatory anti-immigration rhetoric (and he’s married to a Latina and has hired illegals to work his horse farm!).

Facts: In 2007 the US Census Bureau estimated (conservatively) that the number of residents who are immigrants (legal and illegal) was 37.9 million.  Of those, the Census estimates one third or 12.6 million are illegal immigrants (from all nations, not just Mexico or Central or South America).  But, it acknowledges the numbers of illegals may be much higher because they tend not to report themselves to census takers. Fair enough: but it’s this “not really knowing” that leads to news commentators like Dobbs claiming that we’re awash in “illegals” gobbling up all of our precious resources and jobs.

But turn that last figure around for a moment – it means that two thirds, or 25 million immigrants are “legal” – in other words lawfully here in the US!  And that’s not counting all of those who are second and third generation descendants of other “legal” immigrants. Now, of course, we could have a debate about whether or not American immigration laws are too liberal, but that’s a different topic, entirely.

My point is, when we start throwing labels around like “Latinos” and “Blacks” it’s human nature for our minds to immediately jump to the easy generalizations – often untrue – about these particular groups.  This is because most of us cannot instantly embrace the vast complexity of these hugely diverse communities: doing that requires having a lot of data easily on hand, and we’re just not wired for that.  And besides, CNN is trying to drive eyeballs to their programming – they have to make their show titles short and to the point, basically taking commercial advantage of our very human and unfortunate tendency to generalize about other groups of people.

At the end of the day, or programming, it seems to me a little "cultural competence" is called for. Essentially, if we’re to have a civil and productive public discourse on “differences” in this country then we first need to acknowledge that Latinos and Blacks and Whites and Asians and on and on… are simply catchall names for incredibly diverse and complex groupings of people; and secondly that we are – like it or not – a nation of immigrants, most of whom came here legally.

Besides, if anyone has a real right to complain about all of the immigrants taking up their precious resources and jobs, it's Native Americans.