Opinion: Latino workers are erased from a picture-perfect white world they help create
Opinion: Latino workers are erased from a picture-perfect white world they help create
- May 1, 2023
- Héctor Tobar, Chicano/Latino studies and literary journalism, explains courtesy of the Los Angeles Times (also ran in Yahoo News)
“The self-image of the “white” American middle class, as depicted in film and on television ad nauseam, begins with a block of large, orderly homes with big lawns. The kind you might see decorated with plastic reindeer at Christmastime, holiday lights dangling from the pitched roofs. Or the curving suburban tract of an early Spielberg drama, with cul-de-sacs and boys pumping the pedals on their bicycles to go faster. When the movie camera enters into the homes themselves, we see carpeted spaces, and polished dining-room tables, and mom at work in the kitchen in heels and an apron.
When I wander into these neighborhoods in real life, they do, in fact, have the otherworldly feel of a movie set. In the class structure of this country, the role of Latino people is to build the movie set of white perfection again and again.”
Continue reading at https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-04-30/latino-laborers-landscaping-maids-white-suburbs-race.
Would you like to get more involved with the social sciences? Email us at communications@socsci.uci.edu to connect.
Share on:
Related News Items
- A Pulitzer Prize winner aims to bring Latinos out of the 'transit lounge' of American identity
- Read your way around Los Angeles
- Who or What Is 'Latino'? Héctor Tobar Considers a Term's Many Meanings
- Héctor Tobar and Roland Betancourt are named 2023 Guggenheim Fellows
- Perspectives on Hispanic Heritage Month