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
- Tobar's Our Migrant Souls named among The New York Times, TIME Magazine, Amazon and Audible best book lists in 2023
- The 10 best California books of 2023
- Tobar earns Kirkus Prize in nonfiction
- Shrinking California still dreams, but more modestly
- Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of "Latino"