Esther J. Cepeda

Welcome

 

 

Welcome to Esther J. Cepeda's archive of columns published by The Washington Post Writers Group and other publications. 

 

Follow Esther on Twitter: https://twitter.com/estherjcepeda

 

 

 

Do we have the courage to pray for our political opponents

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Most Sundays at our church, "Pastor Leslie" begins service with a welcoming prayer asking for strength to "love our neighbors, (BEG ITAL)all(END ITAL) our neighbors." This week, she decided to dump her planned sermon to let the congregation share their ideas about what responsibilities people of faith hold in these times.

"In these times" was deliberately vague. But I was heartened that in addition to naming political polarization and amnesia about the suffering of the poor and homeless amid news of our "booming economy," several members of the nearly all-white congregation despaired about immigration.

The owner of a neighborhood restaurant was beside himself because, out of nowhere, two of his longest-serving employees had their work permits revoked by immigration authorities.

Others noted the general fear in the community -- not just fear that immigrants have, but that all of us have who love and depend on those immigrants.

In that moment, I felt there was nowhere I could go to get away from the daily traumatic burden of carrying grief and worry about what's happening both at the border and in communities all over America.

The news stories bring an unending torrent of pain: There are still so-called "unaccompanied alien children" being held in detention centers in Chicago and across the country as a result of President Trump's zero-tolerance enforcement policy, which separated children from their families so parents could be prosecuted for crossing the border illegally.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is still reportedly treating immigrants and their friends and family cruelly and without regard to their humanity.

Last week, an unarmed Hispanic man was shot in the face by ICE agents as he attempted to intervene in an ICE house arrest. According to the victim, the agents attempted to detain his housemate without identifying themselves or explaining on what grounds they were making the arrest.

The Trump administration used the incident to double down on so-called sanctuary cities -- Attorney General William Barr announced lawsuits, the withholding of funds and possible criminal prosecution against cities that do not cooperate with federal immigration detainers.

According to ICE, the target of the arrest was released by the New York City Police Department on charges of possessing forged papers even though he had been deported to Mexico twice and had been convicted of assault in 2011. Basically, the administration blames NYPD and their sanctuary city status for an unarmed bystander getting shot in the face during a federal house raid.

Less violent, but equally heartbreaking, are the stories of U.S.-born children being separated from their parents because, for instance, dad was granted a deportation deferral but mom wasn't. Or the stories of states refusing to accept legal refugees who need communities in which to settle. Or the stories of immigration officials arresting, detaining and deporting immigrants who were lured to immigration offices for interviews as they sought legal status based on their marriages to U.S. citizens.

I sat thinking about all the angst rocking immigrant communities as, one-by-one, people shyly asked for the microphone and said it was our responsibility to also recognize and savor all the good that was happening in the neighborhood and the world.

They also said that it is our responsibility to not tune out of what's going on because it's so painful. And that it's our responsibility to have humility.

And, I thought, courage.

The courage to keep fighting for what we believe is right even when it's obvious that the people who hold the highest titles and positions can lie and act in their own self-interest with impunity.

And the courage to do what Pastor Leslie asked us to do this week. She said that we would not be praying for the poor, the weak and the pained.

This week we were asked to pray for the rich, those in positions of power and those who lead.

They, Pastor Leslie said, were the ones who needed our blessings, appeals and the divine guidance to find humility, wisdom and brotherly love.

Courage is not bravery -- it means doing something despite intrinsic fears.

It will take courage to not see our political opposites as enemies. It will take courage to not be overwhelmed with fear about what the next four years will bring, and not act out of anger instead of seeking to understand.

Humans are hardwired to cluster into tribes and respond to outsider threats by uniting against the "other." Will enough of us have the courage to pray for the political or national "other" over the next eight months?

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com or follow her on Twitter @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2020, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

 

 

Battling Trump's SOTU misrepresentations of immigrants

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- At this point, it feels futile to even try to use facts to debunk the half-truths and outright lies President Trump presented during his State of the Union address.

When it comes to partisanship, sociologists have found that even facts are not enough to sway people from their political beliefs. Banging people over the head with real, authoritative information can result in them accepting the facts, but they find or create rationales to fit those facts into their preferred worldviews.

Also problematic are the truths that partisans believe but don't want to accept.

People on the left believe that immigrants and refugees are a net positive addition to our nation -- our nation whose native-born population is stagnating and hit an 80-year low in 2018. We tend to shun negative facts about them. They hurt to hear.

"Last year, our brave ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] officers arrested more than 120,000 criminal aliens charged with nearly 10,000 burglaries, 5,000 sexual assaults, 45,000 violent assaults, and 2,000 murders," Trump declared during his speech.

For the record, 120,000 is the number of total ICE arrests, which includes women and children whose crimes were limited to entering the country illegally.

Also for the record, unauthorized immigrants commit crime at lower rates than the native-born population in the United States. More than a century of data gets analyzed over and over again by different groups and it always comes out the same.

"A large majority of the areas recorded decreases in both violent and property crime between 2007 and 2016, consistent with a quarter-century decline in crime across the United States," wrote Anna Flagg, a senior data reporter with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that focuses on criminal justice. "The analysis found that crime went down at similar rates regardless of whether the undocumented population rose or fell. Areas with more unauthorized migration appeared to have larger drops in crime rates, although the difference was small and uncertain."

Flagg has also crunched data which has found that deportations do not lower crime.

Nevertheless, how many burglaries, sexual assaults, violent assaults and murders are too many?

Even one, is the only answer. All such crimes are life-altering traumas for families across our nation.

Even one unauthorized immigrant harming someone else is to be decried. It is undeniable that crimes by the undocumented are real.

Immigrant advocates tend to not talk about this sort of crime because nativists already over-emphasize its prevalence. But we should address it because, as a result of trying to avoid the topic, what is always left unsaid is that the perpetrator's immigrant status has nothing to do with his or her propensity to harm someone else.

I'm no apologist, just a realist: Unauthorized immigrants don't commit violent crimes because they left their own country to come to the U.S. to harm others. If they commit crimes at all, they do it out of desperation, or due to any of the same reasons the native-born commit violent crimes. Nothing about immigration status correlates with the propensity to harm.

Without a doubt, we should absolutely do everything in our power to prevent all burglaries, sexual assaults, violent attacks and murders.

But let's say unauthorized immigrants did commit 2,000 murders. What does that say about the 11,382 other murders that occurred in 2018 (for a total of 13,382), according to the latest FBI statistics?

Of all the murders in 2018, legal immigrants and native-born people living in the U.S. committed nearly six times the number of murders that Trump attributed to "criminal aliens."

Sexual assaults? Trump cherry-picked the 5,000 undocumented immigrants accused of rape and left unmentioned the 119,653 total reported rapes the FBI tallied in 2018.

Again, every single crime that is perpetrated by an unauthorized immigrant is one too many.

But saying that a particular crime could have been prevented if the perpetrator had been stopped from entering the U.S. (or deported) ignores the poverty, racial discrimination, education disparities and personal histories that those who committed 1,206,836 violent crimes in 2018 are likely to have in common.

Yes, everyone, even immigrant allies and advocates, must get behind doing all we can to reduce violent crime committed by unauthorized immigrants.

But first, let's all acknowledge that -- because those particular offenses are such a small part of all the crime committed in the U.S. -- the best way forward is to fix high poverty, broken education and unaffordable health care for all.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com or follow her on Twitter @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2020, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

 

Shakira and JLo put on a melting pot masterpiece

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Amid the frenzy of reactions to Jennifer Lopez and Shakira's Super Bowl half-time show, I saw several people on social media wondering who could possibly have clutched their pearls about, arguably, the most athletic performance of the night.

Guilty as charged.

This was the first year I didn't watch the broadcast with my parents and sons, and I was so grateful, because I would have been incredibly uncomfortable and embarrassed sitting next to them during the butt shaking, twerking, pole dancing and crotch thrusting.

But, that's just me.

Growing up in a Hispanic household, Spanish language TV channels brought shows like the infamous "Sábado Gigante" — and its bevy of string-bikinied eye candy — right into my kitchen and living room. These days you can't even watch the weather report on Latino cable channels without being confronted by incredibly proportioned and scandalously clad meteorological goddesses.

Basically, I've been tyrannized by Latina beauty my whole life.

From my cousins teasing me about not having anything like the breasts "all" Latinas are supposed to be endowed with, to my family members constantly remarking on my fatness or lack of Latina "style" (I was an 80s new-waver who adored gothy, boyish, black clothes and accessories), I was regularly shamed when I was held up against the ideals of Latina beauty.

It was super weird to me that I was expected to aspire to wearing skimpy clothes, lots of make-up and to dance in a suggestive manner. But if I had done this, I'd likely have been called a slut for it. In a devout Catholic family, that was not right. (And, the fact I was super-secretly lusting after all those sexy Latinas was problematic as well, because being bi- or homosexual was definitely not right.)

So, yeah, as an "out" gender-fluid, pansexual, 45-year-old feminist, J. Lo and Shakira's butt-shaking elicited many, many feelings.

Not that the show was too inappropriate — it's an evening performance during one of the most violent, trauma-inducing games in the world. Anyone worried about their little kids being exposed to content not right for young children should have kept them away.

And it's not that the women were too sexual — sex is the currency of modern-day entertainment; it's everywhere.

Also, the poles were not "too much." For Pete's sake, athletic/artistic pole dancers have petitioned for pole dancing to be included in future Olympics. Even senior citizens use pole dancing to keep fit in some of our nation's retirement homes.

Shakira and J. Lo were magnificent and entertaining. They highlighted Puerto Rican, Colombian and Middle Eastern culture, made political statements against holding kids in cages and showed that you can love America and other countries at the same time.

But my angst persisted. Were these performances empowering because of their skillfulness and joy, or embarrassing and cringe-worthy because they feed negative stereotypes?

Unsure, I asked my favorite feminist, Veronica Arreola, the assistant director of the Center for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

"It's very complicated when you factor in the oversexualization of Latinx bodies, balancing wanting to be sex-positive and embracing that we have this cultural sense of music and moving our bodies. It's art, but, unfortunately, that art does follow us into the workplace and the rest of our lives," Arreola told me, the day after watching the halftime show with her husband and 16-year-old daughter.

"It brings up the question about how, as Latinas, we can be ourselves and still be respected," Arreola said. "It's hard because there are stereotypes and bias, but I'm moving into a space where I'm more comfortable with having tension in my beliefs; in having my feminism tested by appreciating two amazing artists in an amazing show and, at the same time, wondering what it means for them to be dancing around partially clothed in a society that values women more for their looks than what's in our brains. There will always be those questions, and we will always be able to appreciate a performance and still be able to critique it at the same time."

It's true: Complex, multilayered works of art like J. Lo and Shakira's melting pot masterpiece cannot be distilled into either-or sentiments. They can be declarations of strength that also make us question how we represent ourselves in the world.

Ultimately, my discomfort will persist until Latinas are judged the same as everyone else. When white artists like Britney Spears, Madonna and Lady Gaga dance suggestively or wear revealing costumes in performances no one projects their behavior onto all other white women.

Why should Latinx women be any different?

 

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com or follow her on Twitter @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2020, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

 

Ada Calhoun's “Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis” gives a lift

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO — I don’t feel well. I’m in a lot of pain.

Yes, present tense. No matter when you read this, whether it’s next week or next month, I will surely be in pain, because that’s how it’s been for the past 20 months.

Right now, it’s a headache, a patch of sore skin on my left arm that feels like bad sunburn (it really isn’t) and tingly throbbing on my upper back. But tomorrow, sharp discomfort may be radiating from my right leg down to my ankle. Alternately, it could all be in my neck, or only in my rusty-feeling, swollen hands.

Or I could be pain-free, but desperately sleepy. Or merely sore but suffering from insomnia. Who knows?

The nonfiction writer Ada Calhoun thinks she has an idea about why so many of us are suffering these days. Actually, she’s written a whole book about it called, “Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis.”

The “why” seemed obvious to me.

Immigrants, their children and anyone else who lived through and escaped generational poverty — or, really, anyone trying to maneuver through a different socioeconomic status than their parents — know why sleep doesn’t come: Life is hard, full of difficult work. You worry about “making it” and cross your fingers that your kids will be OK. Then you die.

After reading Calhoun’s book, however, I see I’ve simply been cursed to have been born female and destined to reach my mid-40s in the time of the self-care movement.

The “unique circumstances” that have brought Generation X women to sleeplessness include: high expectations borne from having more choices for careers, families and lifestyles than any other generation in history; the stifling nature of family responsibility — whether you have a spouse and children or merely creaky old parents; unfair workplace policies that favor single people, or those with families and full-time homemaker spouses; ageism from pesky millennials who assume people in their 40s can’t use computers very well; the pressure to perform a perfect life on social media; menopause

If it seemed a little tiresome to run through such a long, uninterrupted list, understand that it’s a defining characteristic of Calhoun’s writing style.

I like my’ ’80s/’90s pop culture references as much as the next person (I also can remember the sound of a dial-up modem!), but some sections of Calhoun’s book read like lists jotted on a notepad, inspiring the thought: “OK, OK, I get it, let’s get on with it!”

That said, I don’t regret devouring this book from cover to cover. Every Gen X person — male or female — needs to hear that others’ lives are insipid and full of hurts, disappointments and regrets along with joys, just like any other human who lives to middle age.

And every woman should know that the whole process leading up to menopause basically starts long before you think it possibly could, lasts way longer than you ever bargained for (perimenopause could last “anywhere from a few months to 10 to 13 years”) and is — surprise, surprise! — not considered important enough to be the subject of in-depth medical research.

Plus, guess what? All the smiling, gorgeous, rich-and-happy seeming female peers who stare back at us from social-media photos of them and the people who adore them (usually on beaches or at fabulous dinners/Broadway shows/rock concerts, etc.) are probably just as saggy, bored, tired-but-unable-to sleep and in pain as me.

I seriously wondered if my diagnosed depression, anxiety and fibromyalgia (the conclusion some doctors come to when they can’t figure out what in the world is wrong with the women who come in miserable and looking for any kind of relief) is just a weirdo case of perimenopause-menopause.

Not that it matters — there’s not much the doctors can do for that, either, and no one’s exactly killing themselves looking for cures or good symptom-management treatment regimens.

Though at times Calhoun’s book reads like a litany of the complaints of middle- to upper-class women who, from afar, seem like they “have it all,” the tome had a soothing effect.

By assuring us overachieving Gen X women that we’re all very far from having reached the full potential we were endowed with at birth, Calhoun doesn’t take the pain of standard midlife misery away. But she does take a little of the sting out of it.

Cepeda is a columnist for The Washington Post Writers Group.

 

 

 

The discussion around 'American Dirt' must stick to the issue of exclusion of Latinos in publishing industry

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- There's a literary war going on over a new book about migrants in crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. "American Dirt," by Jeanine Cummins, elicited ferocious fuss and combating reviews even before its release last week.

Writing in The New York Times, staff critic Parul Sehgal said: "There are so many instances and varieties of awkward syntax I developed a taxonomy. There is subtext announced at booming volume. There are the strained similes. ... There are perplexing bird analogies. ... Then there are the real masterpieces, where the writing grows so lumpy and strange it sounds like nonsense poetry. I found myself flinching as I read, not from the perils the characters face, but from the mauling the English language receives."

Other reviews about the narrative were glowing -- including one that also appeared in the Times. In it, Lauren Groff, the author of the best-selling novel "Fates and Furies," wrote: "I was sure I was the wrong person to review this book. I could never speak to the accuracy of the book's representation of Mexican culture or the plights of migrants; I have never been Mexican or a migrant. In contemporary literary circles, there is a serious and legitimate sensitivity to people writing about heritages that are not their own because, at its worst, this practice perpetuates the evils of colonization, stealing the stories of oppressed people for the profit of the dominant."

Groff hit the nail on the head. The fuss is because Cummins is neither Latina nor of any Mexican heritage. And that caused a lot of fireworks on the internet, where people of color go to get the hearing they feel is often missing in mainstream media.

First up was Myriam Gurba, writing on the academic blog Tropics of Meta, who told her story about being asked to write a review for a feminist magazine and turning in such an on-fire take-down that the editor told her it was "spectacular" but a nonstarter, because Gurba wasn't famous enough to level such criticism.

"The nicest thing I can say about "[American] Dirt" is that its pages ought to be upcycled as toilet paper," she wrote.

There's no question that Cummins' story lacks a certain authenticity -- she may have visited Mexico a lot to research the story, but she identifies as white, even though she does have a Puerto Rican grandmother.

We can criticize inauthenticity in lots of literature, though.

The real issue here is that legions of Hispanic, Latino and Latinx writers, authors and journalists who either have written an authentic border story book, or have pitched one and been turned down -- or write about real people in real immigration crises all the time but are roundly ignored -- see a white lady getting a windfall of opportunities (the book has gotten Oprah's love, plus a movie deal) for writing stilted trauma porn about brown people.

This isn't an issue of who can or "should" write fiction about people who are not their own so much as it's about who gets to write about important issues that are about their own people.

I can think of so many great, knowledgeable Latino/Hispanic/Latinx writers who could have tackled a fictional treatment (or already have but got little notice for it) about the border. But they aren't recognized by the same brown-averse white media and publishing establishment that made the choice to uplift a white author and not let Latinos even review the book.

And did I mention the barbed-wire table decorations at the official launch party? Ugh.

In the end, Groff put it best: "Perhaps this book is an act of cultural imperialism [but] 'American Dirt' is written for people like me, those native to the United States who are worried about what is happening at our southern border but who have never felt the migrants' fear and desperation in their own bodies."

It's good that Cummins is getting the word out about the atrocities at the border. I just wish it weren't to the exclusion of others who could tell the story from a more authentic perspective.

========

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com or follow her on Twitter @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2020, Washington Post Writers Group

It's FAFSA time - please reach out and help any first gens in your life

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- It's the time of year when adults in higher education start waking up in the morning with persistent thoughts of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).

"Fill out your FAFSA" is a winter tradition that affects nearly all adults with kids who will start or continue their college studies in the fall. The dreaded form must be filled out in order to qualify for financial aid to attend college -- both federal loans and grants, and, in some states, scholarships and other forms of cash assistance.

Did I say "affects"? I meant the FAFSA afflicts.

It causes special mental and emotional pain in millions of people across the country as it confounds students and parents with no college-going experience.

Last year, the National Center for Education Statistics released an updated brief detailing the reasons why students failed to fill out their FAFSA. Many students simply thought they could afford college without financial aid or (in nearly the same numbers) thought they or their families wouldn't qualify for it.

Other students said they didn't want to take on student loan debt, didn't know they were eligible to apply for aid, didn't understand how to fill out the FAFSA or had decided they weren't going to college.

A student who would be the first in his or her family to attend college may genuinely have not heard of the FAFSA if, for instance, they attend a low-performing school where college matriculation is not something a critical mass aspires to. Or perhaps they attend a school where there are too few guidance counselors trained to spot students who could benefit, but just need an extra push.

(And what are the chances that such a school's counseling staff would have time to reach out to individual students and provide them with hands-on help?)

To many middle-class, college-educated people who fill out their tax forms annually and always anticipate a tax return, it just doesn't make a bit of sense that any student wouldn't try for college and get the financial aid form filled out.

They'd scoff at the nearly 10% of all students surveyed who just flat-out said the form was too time consuming or too much work.

For some students -- sometimes the likeliest to do well in college and the likeliest to get free money to attend -- they're not wrong about what a Herculean task it is. Not at all.

Their time and effort are not a middle-class person's time and work.

A first-generation college student may have parents who are not in their lives and have caretakers who are not comfortable entering their IRS information into the form for their student. Or their parents have irregular, low-income work and have not filled out their taxes in several years. They may even be homeless and not have an address to start with.

Just the emotional exertion required to have conversations about money for college with family is intense, making this the very point at which many potential first-generation college students figure it's not worth it -- when it really is.

These hurdles can be jumped with the help of an advocate who could offer advice for overcoming such barriers -- if such an advocate were available.

Filling out the FAFSA is a pain, but doable (there are resources on the web for figuring it out).

It's doable even if students have been out of school for a while or even if students aren't great scholars. It's doable and worth trying even if a student's family makes up to $200,000 per year.

Getting the FAFSA done creates a solid foundation upon which to build a life plan that may include several secondary education options and at least a few ways to pay for them.

Ironically, the students who are likeliest to qualify for grants, scholarships or loans -- low-income students who would be the first to attend college -- are the ones who might see the FAFSA as an insurmountable barrier to higher education.

According to the most recent data, 34% of Hispanic and 27% of black students said that they didn't complete a FAFSA because they didn't have enough information.

Most of them probably just needed someone college-educated, with a computer and internet connection, to get them on a path to more options in life.

Could that someone perhaps be you?

========

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com or follow her on Twitter @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2020, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

King's 'I Have A Dream" speech always worth coming back to

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- When I was in college, my roommate and I would together drive the six hours to our southern Illinois campus the day before the spring semester started. Our tradition was that, while my friend took a turn driving, I would read aloud Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, which was printed in our local newspaper annually on the Monday commemorating the activist.

That was a quarter of a century ago -- before our first black president seemed to have made good on the promise of an America that could see beyond race.

It was also before white supremacists seized on King's ideal of not being judged by the color of one's skin but by the content of one's character in order to push back against what they perceive as rampant racism against whites in the form of affirmative action and other preferential treatments for historically marginalized people of color.

And it was before blacks, as well as others of color, wondered whether being "good" (or, in fact, "twice as good as whites" and hoping to at least attain "half as much") was really the way to gain equality in a country that refused to see the lasting, daily impact of the legacy of slavery and the Jim Crow era.

It was at a time when, in public schools across the country, trotting out the "I Have a Dream" speech in mid-January and then discussing King -- along with Rosa Parks and Jackie Robinson -- during a few social studies lessons in February was considered super progressive.

And it was long before African Americans would look critically at King's life -- such as his purported sexism and marital infidelities -- and consider how his legacy of nonviolence is often used to point out the failings of today's more aggressive, less polite Black Lives Matter movement. (Don't miss Mychal Denzel Smith's electric 2018 essay "Is King All That We Are Allowed to Become?" in The Atlantic.)

"I Have a Dream" holds up through the ages, but it's not difficult to imagine that King would have hated his "day" being the prequel to a single month out of each year when black people are recognized as important, positive contributors to the greatness of America.

While the month does give saintly treatment to a handful of very important black icons, those same icons would probably be horrified to learn that Americans' interest in outstanding, important and pivotal black people ended, more or less, in the '60s.

In a perfect world, Black History Month -- like the months celebrating the heritage of women, Latinos/Hispanic, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders and Native Americans -- would be every month, just like white history is celebrated. They are not separate, they are equal.

Since perfection does not describe how history is taught in the public schools or reported in the media, it falls on us to seek out alternative sources for information in February.

The Civil Rights History Project of the Library of Congress (www.loc.gov/collections/civil-rights-history-project/) is a great place to bookmark on your web browser. This collection couldn't make it easier to read an article or essay on a little corner of history, such as the role young people played in the fight for civil rights or how music fueled the movement.

Even more enticing are the many video-recorded oral histories of people who lived in the communities struggling to win their civil rights and what their everyday lives were really like. Just prepare your chest to tighten -- these are powerful, emotional stories.

This idea to explore black history might be one we return to, or it might fall by the wayside as we navigate busy, hectic lives. But, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the chances are high that you'll see a copy of his famous speech scroll across your news feed or posted in your social media streams and notifications.

Take a moment to read through the speech. It's not long. And it remains tragically relevant today.

While there's no comparing living conditions for some African Americans in the Jim Crow South with the lowest-income blacks today, it's still true that, regardless of educational attainment, many often still live on a "lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity."

And, for people of all races and ethnicities, King's words ring out as strongly today as ever, because now is absolutely still "the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children."

========

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com or follow her on Twitter @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2020, Washington Post Writers Group

 

Immigrants have deep faith in the American justice system than

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- For many years, well before Donald Trump was elected, immigration hawks complained about the practice of so-called "catch and release."

These observers just couldn't understand how migrants who were caught living illegally in the country, or attempting to enter, weren't just bounced back to their country of origin right away instead of being given an opportunity to "disappear into the shadows."

But that's not how it works.

Research has long shown that the vast majority of migrants who have been released into the U.S. show up for their court cases in front of immigration judges.

In fiscal year 2019, immigration judges decided a record 67,406 asylum cases, more than twice as many as in 2014. Even though 69% of those cases actually resulted in asylum, 99% of migrants appeared for the opportunity to plead their case, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, a nonpartisan research project that tracks staffing, spending and enforcement activities of the federal government.

And the time between arriving in the country and actually getting a determination had little to do with how faithful the immigrants were. Asylum applicants waited on average 1,030 days, or nearly three years, for their cases to be decided. A quarter of them even waited 1,421 days, or nearly four years, for their asylum decision.

Just imagine nervously waiting for the final decision on your immigration status and hearing news of people being deported after reporting for their regular check-in meetings. Add to that the headlines about the Trump administration trying to prevent others from even attempting to seek asylum. It must be terrifying.

It has to be, but the alternative -- being held in immigration custody for any amount of time -- is even worse.

A 40-year-old native of Angola and citizen of France died in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody days before the new year. He had been in custody since early November and was taken on Dec. 12 to the Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque for "evaluation of emaciation, altered mental status and possible sepsis," according to an ICE news release. The man died of a bowel obstruction.

He was the fourth person to die in U.S. custody since October, according to BuzzFeed, and just the latest grim reminder of how migrant men, women and children fare while in the care of the U.S. government.

An earlier BuzzFeed investigation detailed a Department of Homeland Security memo that cited detainees receiving the wrong medicine, getting treatments only after long delays and suffering from what was described by a source as "grossly negligent" care.

Some detainees grew urgently sicker, while others were so distraught that they seriously lacerated themselves or committed suicide. An 8-year-old boy was misdiagnosed with swimmer's ear when he was actually suffering from an infection inside the skull -- the misdiagnosis cost the child part of the skull bone behind his forehead.

In the 2019 fiscal year, eight people died while in custody. Thousands more reportedly grew sicker than when they arrived or suffered other abuses such as lack of fresh water or food, lack of sanitary products like toilet paper or facilities in which to shower. Plus, they allegedly endured routine intimidation, use of physical force and sexual assault.

Why in the world would people who are awaiting an immigration court date show up for routine check-ins and for actual court dates when they could legitimately feel they are at risk for being immediately deported or put into the hellscape that is federal immigration custody, according to countless media investigations?

Why not just slip away and start fresh somewhere under a fake Social Security number, in an attempt to simply dodge or circumvent the system altogether?

Faith.

People who come to the U.S. fleeing the violence, repression or poverty of their home country believe in the American legal system, which promises justice for all -- especially the tired, the poor and those yearning to breathe free.

They believe in the promise of an America that will give them their day in court and, perhaps, the opportunity to eventually make a life here.

When you think about it, these seekers may have even stronger and deeper faith in the ideal of American justice than those who dehumanize them by wanting to eradicate, cage or "catch and release" them like animals.

========

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com or follow her on Twitter @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2020, Washington Post Writers Group

 

Young people (and older ones, too) just can't spot fake news

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- My son, his best friend, Dave, and I were chatting over a pizza last weekend when Dave dropped some (absolutely incorrect) information: The elderly are forgoing nursing homes for cruise ships, because the room and board cost about the same, plus you get entertainment and travel.

Again -- this is not a real phenomenon. A few healthy, affluent retirees have spent a few years this way, but the cruise ship industry is in no way prepared to offer extended care for masses of frail elderly adults with complex medical conditions like chronic diseases and memory problems.

When I prompted our friend for more information, he said it made sense because cruise ships have onboard medical staff and morgues.

When further pressed -- in my son's spirited retelling, I'm described as in a rabid state, pouncing on his innocent pal -- Dave said he'd definitely read a news story about it.

Errrrr, actually, he knew he'd definitely seen it somewhere.

Mmmmmm, maybe on Reddit?

My son acts like at this point I had fire blazing from my eyes. I'll only admit that I was alarmed.

Dave is a bright young man who attended an excellent high school, just completed his first semester of college at a fancy East Coast university and is generally thoughtful and curious about the world.

But he passed on information he believed was fact because he saw "something" on a news aggregation and message board site, or "somewhere."

This gem about retiring to a cruise ship has been around since at least 2003, according to the fact-checking site Snopes.com. It started out as a bit of viral e-lore, and there havebeen a few examples of real-life extended stays. But today, otherwise legitimate news-gathering organizations post branded, sponsored-content "articles" (these are paid advertisements) about how to plan such a retirement alongside real news that was reported by professional journalists and vetted by editors.

I'm not picking on a kid I care about -- he's just an example of how incredibly ill-equipped our young people are to navigate an internet that's loaded with fake news, junk science and other "information" designed to fool them and everyone else.

In a 2018-19 national assessment of U.S. high school students, researchers at Stanford University found that two-thirds couldn't tell the difference between reported news stories and advertisements set off by the words "sponsored content" on the homepage of a popular news website.

And more than one-third of middle school students in the U.S. said that they "rarely" or "never" learned how to judge the reliability of sources, according to an analysis of 2018 survey data from The Nation's Report Card by the Reboot Foundation, a Paris-based nonprofit that promotes the teaching of evidence-based reasoning skills.

But while it's clear that students must be taught media-literacy skills, there are few teachers prepared to do so. Many people, not just teachers, tend to believe that their maturity and life experience make them naturally media literate -- i.e., not likely to fall for fake news or bad sources of information.

A small 2011 study of the effectiveness of teacher training on media literacy found that eight hours of in-person training -- quite a lot by the common standards of professional development -- prepared someone to pass on such skills. And the study also showed that, like anyone else, teachers need systematic, direct instruction on media literacy, and it must be practiced over time.

The bright side is that it's not rocket science. For the average reader, becoming media literate is generally simple: Find some good sources, check bold assertions and be aware of any fine print, like the basis of an author's expertise or their potential financial interest.

Now, no one can check every fact in every bit of text they read, but a high level of skepticism is warranted in this time of newsy advertisements and active disinformation campaigns. If it sounds too good (or too bad) to be true, it probably is. And since those types of pieces of "information" are what drive clicks, views and "reader engagement," they've proliferated.

Do yourself and your loved ones a service, bookmark a few key fact-checking websites and use them regularly (an extensive list can be found in the appendix of the Reboot Foundation's report, at reboot-foundation.org/fighting-fake-news).

Just try not to burn your less-informed friends and family with the fire from your newly illuminated eyes.

========

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com or follow her on Twitter @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2020, Washington Post Writers Group

 

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- A fellow journalist friend recently posted photos of Julián Castro from last summer, showing the former presidential candidate in the wee hours of the morning after a long day on the campaign trail in Michigan.

There Castro was: still crisp in his suit, sitting ever-so-properly while chowing on a famed Coney Dog.

Oh Julián ... he never stood a chance. He's the super polite, clean-cut, high-achieving guy you'd be proud to bring home to your Mexican mom and dad. But, ultimately, he was the kind of guy undervalued by an electorate looking for a strong change agent.

Castro's brainy preparedness and youthful enthusiasm were overlooked on debate stages where many others were also whip-smart and on the young side.

Being Hispanic -- potentially the first Latino president -- and an effective spokesperson for the border when that region is in such turmoil never gained traction.

How could it? The media was too busy writing long-form love poems to Pete Buttigieg. The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, was depicted as a triple threat (young, gay, war veteran), and he never had to battle the baseline believability test of being "presidential" enough to win (read as: white and male).

Worse, while Castro initially sought to relate to wider national audiences as being just like everyone else, Hispanic voters started getting antsy that he wasn't effectively emphasizing his identity as the son of an activist Latina mom.

Even as the media took turns elevating the different candidates (the dude who was "born" to be president, the professor, the sassy black prosecutor, the young tech guy, etc., etc.), Castro never really put the glimmer in many assignment editors' eyes.

Until he dared question Joe Biden, that is. During a debate in mid-September, Castro pressed the former vice president about whether he was backpedaling on his Medicare stance. There was a semantic difference between whether Biden would require those who wanted Medicare coverage to have to "opt in" to a plan or if they would be automatically enrolled and have to "opt out."

In an instant, Castro went from a boring good boy to an attacker who disrespects the elderly. About a minute later, he was all but forgotten.

I knew his candidacy would never be taken seriously because -- despite Donald Trump's efforts to demonize and deport Latinos -- America doesn't hate us for the most part. It merely overlooks us, indifferent to our contributions to this country's military legacy, pop music and food culture.

Despite Mexicans having a history in the United States that actually predates the country as a sovereign nation, Hispanics don't fit neatly within the white-black binary that the sin of slavery set as a foundation for white-nonwhite dynamics.

Not that ethnicity was Castro's biggest "flaw" as a candidate.

Americans love bad boys and, to a lesser extent, "nasty women" who will snark, fight and defy convention, generating tabloid-style headlines and fun memes to share.

The days of so-called boring leaders in the White House -- like bookish, humble Harry Truman -- are long gone. You can say whatever you want about Trump, but he has delivered a level of excitement that, it seems, the American people are gobbling up.

Which brings us to a potential Elizabeth Warren-Julián Castro ticket, now that Castro endorsed her for president.

(Long exhale ...)

Right now, this country needs strong, steady leaders with the wisdom to walk a fine line between reshaping institutions that need systemic change and reinvigorating the ones that serve the common good but require investment and guidance.

Even if you made the case for Warren and Castro being such leaders, my bet is on an electorate that actually likes swinging from extreme to extreme, studiously avoiding the middle.

But were Trump to give the smart May-December ticket a snappy, hateful nickname and position them as actual rivals -- that might be another story.

Trump taught us that simplistic, direct messages that are repeated over and over win the day. The Democrats need to run a ticket that can plainly and quickly explain what the candidates stand for, not against.

Considering that the Democratic Party is having a difficult time figuring out how far to the left it will shift to win younger voters while simultaneously capturing moderate swing votes, it's going to take a lot more than Mrs. and Mr. Nice Guy to beat Trump.

========

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com or follow her on Twitter @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2020, Washington Post Writers Group

Fun audiobooks to start 2020 with

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Ugh -- I know I'm such a downer all the time. So much policy, so many research reports and data-data-data about the most powerless people in society.

Then every New Year, I tell about how to be kinder, smarter, more active and less dependent on your digital devices -- all wonderful life goals that require time and energy.

But who has both?

People often ask me when I sleep.

Sleep? Ha, I wish.

A life consumed with reading, writing, battling anxiety and depression, taking care of dogs, cats, a spouse and a partner; houses that require cleaning, meals to cook and friends who shouldn't be ignored makes me like everyone else just trying to keep their head above water.

So this year's advice is to simply add more enjoyment to your life.

Who has the time or money to go buy fresh flowers all the time? Not me, but this was the year I discovered the unending aesthetic boost of fake flowers and plants. They add beauty and cheer to life without ever making you feel bad about letting them die.

Also, I finally figured out that grocery stores have really upped their game -- freshly cooked, to-go food offerings have gotten more healthful and cheaper. Lean poultry and meats, selections of roasted vegetables, mix-and-eat salads for two and fresh-cut fruit. If you're in charge of dinner, don't be a martyr every day, OK?

My favorite "life hack," though, is listening to audiobooks.

Nothing makes lengthy commutes, cold dog walks, loads of dishes or laundry and just about any other mundane task more enjoyable than a real page-turner read by a skilled audiobook reader.

I've been listening to audiobooks for nearly a decade, and their quality and abundance has improved while their price and ease of use have gotten even more attractive.

Is it really "reading," though?

Who cares?! Great books are masterfully written, thought-provoking and so enriching in countless ways, not the least of which is that they provide pure enjoyment. As long as you're not texting, watching TV or surfing the internet while listening, I say it counts as "real" reading.

I go back to "Moby Dick," "The Sea Wolf," "A Hundred Years of Solitude" and many other classics, but there are innumerable great books that are also excellent ear candy. Here are a few of my favorite fun listens from last year:

"Knife," the new novel by Jo Nesbo, the godfather of Nordic noir. Narrated by John Lee, who perfectly captures the gritty voice of the washed-out but ever-redeemed Norwegian detective Harry Hole, Nesbo returns with another murder, another set of prime suspects and more heartache for Hole. Yes, "Knife" is 12th in a series, but I promise: If you love a gritty whodunit, you'll drop right in without missing a beat and then have 11 more books to feast on when you're done.

"The Dutch House," Ann Patchett's latest novel, is surely amazing on paper because Patchett is a brilliant storyteller. But none other than Tom Hanks reads the audiobook, and he gives an incredible warmth and joy to the story of a brother and sister, whose twisting, turning lives always leads back to their childhood home. No one does family dynamics like Patchett -- and no one does nice, sometimes frustrated people like Hanks.

"The Institute," by Stephen King, is terrifying, not because there's gore or slashing or any of the horror tropes that people assume King uses as a substitute for thoughtful narrative, but because the world King creates is uncanny. Are super brilliant people harvested from America's far-flung corners to be used as conduits to manipulate world events through mind control? It seems extremely plausible, and reader Santino Fontana's performance of many very different characters makes the story feel all too real.

Another great listen is "Medallion Status: True Stories from Secret Rooms," written by John Hodgman of the "Judge John Hodgman" podcast and ever-so-sweetly narrated by the author. I'll admit I'm a total fool for anything Hodgman does, from podcasting to writing real books full of fake facts and acting roles that play up his brainy personality. In this, his second book of real, autobiographical vignettes, Hodgman uses his midlife ennui to poke fun at his amazing life. In the process he lets us peek behind several elite curtains -- and laugh uproariously at what lies beyond.

Trust me, listen to any of these books and your ears will soon be thanking me. Enjoy!

========

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com or follow her on Twitter @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

Family dinners cannot overcome the effects of living in poverty

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- For many, this week will be chock-full of family dinners, making it a perfect time to talk about why they're great for bringing people together -- but not a silver bullet for ensuring children's academic success.

Family dinners are the stuff of legend. Throughout history, countless brilliant minds have credited their enhanced intellectual development to the act of sitting down for dinner with parents, siblings and extended family.

As these stories go, gathering for a communal meal allowed the successful person to learn about everything from household happenings and their parents' work concerns to the political issues of the day. More importantly, it allowed them to eventually take part in lively back-and-forth of discussions, during which positions needed to either be argued against or defended.

In 2017, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates told CNBC that when he was a young entrepreneur, he felt confident having professional conversations with older business people because he'd grown up hearing his parents articulate their thoughts and ideas at the dinner table.

"I think family traditions that get you to come together and talk about what you're up to -- going on trips together, always sitting at dinner and sharing thoughts -- really made a huge difference," Gates said.

Basically, unless a family has some sort of serious dysfunction -- alcoholism, drug dependence and mental illness can make for some horribly painful family meals -- you can hardly go wrong with insisting that your crew gather to share some food and talk.

But, like so many other pieces of educational advice that seem like a slam-dunk to people with means, family dinners are neither a magical cure to what ails modern public education nor an adequate counter to families' economic struggles.

To start, though the majority (almost 71%) of children under 18 live in two-parent households, nearly 30% live either with one parent or with no parents at all. It's hard for kids to hear the interplay between two adults engaging in mature conversations about the world when there's only one caregiver present who's probably just doing the best they can to get dinner on the table.

And about those two-parent homes -- they aren't the be-all, end-all of what makes for successful children, either.

New research from Christina Cross, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of sociology at Harvard, found that living apart from a biological parent doesn't carry the same life-quality penalty for black kids as for their white peers. And, similarly, being raised in a two-parent family is not equally beneficial.

Cross contradicted previous analyses by using more than 30 years of national data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to demonstrate that family structure has a weaker relationship to the educational success of black adolescents than of white adolescents.

"I show that living in a single-mother family does not decrease the chances of on-time high school completion as significantly for black youths as for white youths," Cross wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed. "Conversely, living in a two-parent family does not increase the chances of finishing high school as much for black students as for their white peers."

The big factor at play in these instances was access to socioeconomic resources, such as a mother's educational level and generational wealth or business connections. Cross noted that, "although in general, youths raised in two-parent families are less likely to live in poverty, black youths raised by both biological parents are still three times more likely to live in poverty than are their white peers. Additionally, black two-parent families have half the wealth of white two-parent families."

So even though family dinners have been pushed as a surefire way to improve lifelong educational and earning outcomes, research going back to 2012 has bucked that notion by finding no causal relationship between family meal frequency and a child's success.

This isn't, of course, to say that two-parent and other families who are able to come together for a meal at least once a day aren't an ideal worth striving for.

But even as some tsk-tsk about "today's young people" or "unwed mothers," it's important to note that low-income children's academic performance isn't a matter of culture or character.

If we want families to have two parents, we must make it possible for them to thrive. And If we want families to eat together, we must first ensure that the most vulnerable among us actually have food to put on the table.

========

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com or follow her on Twitter @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

No need to fret about pronouns -- just be nice and call people what they want

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- For the uninitiated, it will come as a bit of a surprise that the familiar pronoun "they" has been named Merriam-Webster's word of the year.

No longer just another form of "them," which we use to refer to two or more people, "they" has been crowned the official nonbinary pronoun of the English language.

Basically, it's the word you'd use if you were to come upon a person -- oh, let's say ... me -- and they sort of looked female, but they were dressed kind of like a guy (let's say a NASA T-shirt, black skinny jeans, all-black Vans skateboarding shoes, no purse in sight).

Maybe I would be wearing only the barest hint of lipstick -- despite the pretty picture of me at the top of most of my columns, I look nothing like that on a day-to-day basis. I never wear makeup and, guess what? I shaved most of my hair off.

So if you were standing in a busy checkout line of a grocery store in a suburban town and the small child with you loudly blurted out: "Hey, that man just dropped his gift card!" you might be embarrassed. You also might say, "Oh, we should tell them so that they don't lose it."

And the kid with you would think nothing of it. Zero. Today's kids already live in a world where even rough-and-tumble 10-year-old boys who live on ranches will tell you, with incredulity that anyone would disagree, that "yeah, guys wear nail polish!" (I couldn't have made this up even if I'd tried, by the way.)

My haircut isn't nearly as edgy as those of some of the third-graders at the elementary schools where I've taught -- and my hair isn't even pink, green or purple.

Among young people, the idea that gender is a continuum, and not a binary limited only to male and female, is as normal as the air they breathe.

Some picture books in elementary schools already use the pronoun "they" for characters who have ambiguous gender. For that matter, some very popular books in classrooms openly hint at what it means to be nonbinary, or transgender, and treats the subject without judgment either way.

For us Generation X oldsters, using "they" and "them" instead of all the regular pronouns is uncomfortable because we're not used to it.

Even people who are nonbinary and total grammar sticklers don't particularly love it (yes, I'm speaking of myself here).

It just feels wrong.

But I persist even as I resist.

I struggle with labels -- always have. I never wanted to be "a girl." I hatehatehate being called a "Latina" and have been looked down upon by my less "colonized" Hispanic peers for the only label I've ever been proud of: American.

I've even voted for both Democrats and Republicans -- and found myself a lonely, independent "moderate" in a time when politics is very starkly binary: "You're either with us or against us!"

Now, I'm wary of labeling myself a "they/them" user because I don't want anyone to think, "Oh, she's one of those" before they even get to know me.

But times change, people change, the history of every language on earth is that itchanges, too.

Back when the title "Ms." for unmarried women in the workplace became common, some believed that insisting on being addressed as Ms. was a proclamation of militant feminism. Today, hardly anyone thinks that way.

If there's anything that the average fully female and fully male person needs to know, it is that no one is cramming political correctness down anyone's throat. It's not like the grammar police are going to come and give you a ticket for not using "they" or "them" all the time.

But it is a little different if you know that someone in your life uses the terms "they/them."

You'll know it's important to them if they specifically tell you they use those pronouns (it has gotten very common for people to put it in their email signature, wear pins on their clothes, or declare it when introduced).

If this happens to you, don't sweat grammar, usage or political correctness -- just be polite and show them respect.

========

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com or follow her on Twitter @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

Must-read (but depressing) books with a social justice bent

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- I read so many books in 2019 that I had a miserably hard time trying to decide which ones to include in my "favorites" list this year.

Usually, I present a roster of books that are diverse, but not specifically about diversity -- books that blur our differences while sharpening the issues that affect us all, regardless of our race, ethnicity or gender.

This year, the issues are as sharp as knives, and the books I'm suggesting could fit in the self-improvement category because they're more educational than entertaining. In fact, most of these books will make you feel angry, sad or helpless.

But even informed helplessness is better than going through life being sure that things are one way, when in fact there are many forces at work -- forces that either we never became aware of or that simply didn't exist in the innocence of our younger years.

Get ready to learn.

First up is "Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men," by Caroline Criado Perez. This is not the type of book I would usually read -- it's common knowledge, at least to very petite women who shop for the latest fashions in the children's section, that it's a world designed for guys. But, oh boy, there's so much more to it.

"'Invisible Women' is the story of what happens when we forget to account for half of humanity," Criado Perez writes. "It is an exposé of how the gender data gap harms women when life proceeds, more or less as normal. In urban planning, politics, the workplace. It is also about what happens to women living in a world built on male data when things go wrong."

This book was genuinely painful to get through because the inequalities that are baked into every aspect of female life are both endless and mind-boggling. Statistical analysis and historical sleuthing combine to illustrate why "equality" leads to fewer bathrooms for women in public places, why cars are less safe for women (short people are especially in danger) and why medical trials of medicine and surgeries favor men's experience over women's.

You might be depressed, but you won't be bored.

My next pick is "The Years That Matter Most: How College Makes Or Breaks Us," by author Paul Tough, a devastating portrait of how, after society promises our most vulnerable that college will be a ticket to economic security, the higher education apparatus chews young people up. By spitting them out either with a financially dodgy investment or with no degree and a mountain of unforgivable debt.

Tough follows several students' paths into and out of college, the most memorable being young people who were the first in their family to attempt higher education. Their struggles -- regardless of whether they were low-income, rural whites or black or Hispanic -- are illustrated in both cold statistical data (it isn't pretty) and through the harrowing experiences of students who were just trying to get a toehold in the middle class.

"The particular set of decisions we have made in creating our current higher education system -- and those include individual decisions, institutional decisions, and public-policy decisions -- have produced a mobility engine that functions incredibly well for a small number of people and quite poorly for many others ... the ones who benefit least tend to be from families that are deprived or isolated or fractured or all three," Tough writes.

Last, I have to suggest you read the most challenging book I've ingested all year: "Border Wars: Inside Trump's Assault on Immigration," by Michael D. Shear and Julie Hirschfeld Davis, both reporters at The New York Times.

Immigration is not a fun topic to read about, and it's no fun writing about it either. The authors' reporting reveal horrors and, surprisingly, bipartisan concerns. Both Democrats and Republicans do their best and their worst to fix long-standing problems. People of conscience in both parties strive to be humane to migrants, but others make -- or pave the way for -- policy choices that impose cruelty on people who are just trying to survive.

Whether you've been following the issue for a long time or are just interested in how the border became such a debacle, this book -- like all the ones I've highlighted this year -- will break your heart in a variety of ways.

Just remember that in a society in which we are all interdependent, ignorance is not bliss.

========

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com or follow her on Twitter @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

Is the new NAFTA just as bad as the old NAFTA?

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- The newly signed U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) has one claim to fame: It's bipartisan legislation that was passed while the president is facing impeachment.

Aside from that, the tepid legislation's biggest historical accomplishment might only be not getting constantly referred to as "NAFTA 2.0" -- if, in fact, it can get away from its dastardly predecessor.

There are things to like in the new USMCA trade deal. But they could be overshadowed by not-so-great unintended consequences.

For instance, theoretically, the new pact will result in more car and truck parts being manufactured in North America. To qualify for zero tariffs, a car or truck would have to have 75% of its components manufactured in Canada, Mexico or the United States, instead of the currently stipulated 62.5%.

But there's always the chance that such requirements will drive up the cost of smaller cars, and their manufacturing will be shipped off to Asia, where it would be tough to compete with their low wages.

And speaking of wages, the new trade deal requires that Mexico change its laws to make it easier for workers to unionize. This should increase wages for Mexican workers, making it less appealing for companies to move jobs from the U.S. to Mexico. The Trump administration, Democrats and U.S. labor unions even pushed for a formal committee to monitor Mexico on labor issues, creating positions called "labor attachés" for people who would be based in Mexico to monitor benchmarks that could trigger penalties if wage increases aren't met.

This strikes me as fanciful.

Our neighbor to the south has the labor-friendliest president in decades. But the unions and labor courts in Mexico have the reputation of being as corrupt as the government they no doubt collude with to keep wages low enough to lure the U.S. and other manufacturers to relocate their operations to the border.

Part of the reason is that, for everyone, but especially for the Mexican people who live in the direst poverty you could imagine, low wages are infinitely better than no wages.

In 2015, I was in Juarez touring factories and the shantytowns where the workers live. I visited a plant that boasted $16 billion in revenue per year, but the workers there averaged $200 per month, with possible cash bonuses for attendance, punctuality and productivity totaling maybe another $140 per month. Supervisors and other higher-paid workers could make anywhere from $430 to $600 per month.

Think about what kind of economic and living conditions make a job that pays roughly $300 a rational choice for people trying to feed their families.

At the time, economists had concluded that NAFTA's original promises of closing the wage gap between Mexican and U.S. workers never panned out and that inequality in Mexico had actually gone up.

Today, some observers say that there is new energy in Mexico's independent union movement -- thanks to a younger, more social-media savvy crowd emboldened by leftist president Andrés Manuel López Obrador. But let's face it, the average citizen has never been the odds-on favorite to win anything when facing the intractability of the Mexican government's corruption.

And can we say much different when it comes to the little guy in the U.S.?

Citing recent history in both the U.S. and Mexico, economist Robert E. Scott isn't super sunny:

"The USMCA will in no way offset or reverse the massive devastation caused by the original NAFTA agreement. Nor is the deal a 'model for future trade agreements,'" wrote Scott, senior economist and director of trade and manufacturing policy research at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI), on the EPI blog. "It may result in significant improvements in labor rights for Mexican workers, which could help them in the long-run. But those changes will have virtually no measurable impacts on wages or incomes for U.S. workers. ... At the end of the day, the USMCA is the best of a set of bad choices. And only concessions obtained through tough negotiations by labor, environment, and consumer activists made it any better than the status quo. As a result, it is better than the alternatives."

Considering the times we're living through, this may be a major accomplishment in and of itself. But only time will tell if the USMCA will actually help workers on both sides of the border or merge easily into the legacy of the little-guy-crushing NAFTA.

========

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com or follow her on Twitter @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

Refugees have a right to look for asylum in the U.S.

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- The beauty of being human is that you can hold two seemingly opposite positions in your heart at the same time.

Our fragmented, partisan society -- in the era of cable news and social media -- isn't good at portraying this reality, especially when it comes to religious or political issues.

But people who pursue a spiritual practice know that you can be a lover of Jesus Christ or God and hold political views that are usually ascribed to the secular left.

You wouldn't know it, though, based on some ultra-loud reactions to churches using their nativity scenes to make statements in defense of migrants from Mexico and Central America.

The latest such case is a scathing critique about the conditions in which the U.S. has lately kept migrants and asylum seekers. The Claremont United Methodist Church, which is about 30 miles east of Los Angeles, erected its nativity scene with Joseph, Mary and the baby Jesus separated and in cages. Barbed wire adds another true-to-life touch.

This isn't the first time a church has done something like this. But after the Rev. Karen Clark Ristine, the church's senior pastor, posted the image on her Facebook account, the image went viral and attracted wide attention.

Here's the part -- if you were reading a straight news article -- where you'd get a sampling of "reaction" quotes, which would pit a person who supported the statement against a person who felt slighted that a place of worship would be outwardly political. Other reactions would surely include someone just being coldhearted and cruel about how "illegal immigrants" deserve whatever they get because they shouldn't have come in the first place.

But this is an opinion column, so you won't get that type of so-called balance.

Instead, let's connect some dots.

In 1968, the United States ratified an international treaty, agreed to by 146 countries, that it would "not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened ... enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence."

The treaty goes on to specify that the countries "shall not apply to the movements of such refugees restrictions other than those which are necessary and such restrictions shall only be applied until their status in the country is regularized or they obtain admission into another country ... allow[ing] such refugees a reasonable period and all the necessary facilities to obtain admission into another country."

A refugee is defined as someone who, with "well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it."

 

Refugees from Guatemala, for instance, are fleeing vicious, depraved, violent crime that limits their safety and freedom. Right now Guatemala is one of the most violent countries in the world, and it got that way in large part because of gangs that started in the United States and were then exported, via deportation, to countries all over Central America.

Cut to May 20, on the concrete floor of a cell in a Border Patrol station in South Texas. That's where Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez, a 16-year-old migrant from Guatemala, died.

Afraid, alone and critically ill with flu-like symptoms, video footage obtained by ProPublica showed Carlos writhing on the floor for 25 minutes and then going deathly still for the next four and a half hours during which time no one checked on him.

At least five other children -- that we know of -- have died in Customs and Border Protection custody since September 2018.

This is how the U.S. upholds its commitments toward refugees and asylum seekers.

Thankfully, several churches across the country want America to understand that we have opportunities to be more compassionate toward the stranger.

The message of the nativity scene featuring baby Jesus in a cage is: Don't avert your eyes from what's happening at our border.

========

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com or follow her on Twitter @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

Harvard shuts out its Latina superstar professor from tenure

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- In May 2018, 26 female professors signed an open letter to the media asking that coverage of a celebrated Latino author's #MeToo scandal be treated with restraint and fairness. They did so not because they doubted the veracity of the allegations, but because his characterization as a sexual predator would add to the degrading and stigmatizing stereotypes of Hispanic men and women.

It was a controversial but important message that sparked discussion about how to react when one of the leading lights of a historically marginalized and underrepresented group gets in trouble and his or her fall threatens to undermine all the other members of the group.

Part of the open letter's power came from the stellar credentials of the signatories -- a long list of distinguished scholars of color with a professional and personal stake in ensuring fair treatment for all people of color, even those accused of sexual misconduct.

Whether you agree or disagree with this premise, it is a matter for contemplation. And the letter was an act of courage and intellectual leadership by scholars of color who often don't wield the same kind of power at their institutions as their white colleagues.

Among the co-signers was Lorgia García-Peña, an internationally renowned scholar and the Roy G. Clouse professor of romance languages at Harvard University.

García-Peña, who has been described by many students as "a monument on campus," was denied tenure even though she was awarded Harvard Professor of the Year in 2015, the Roslyn Abramson Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, and Harvard Professor of the Year by the Graduating Class of 2017.

García-Peña has other honors to her name, but the teaching awards are especially notable considering that college professors have been singled out for prioritizing research over the craft of teaching.

And the awards speak to the subtext that underlies far too many conversations about people of color in higher education -- that they waltz into positions that should go to more accomplished white candidates and then bring down the quality of the greater group's work.

By these measures, it seems like making García-Peña a tenured professor would be a slam-dunk, checking off the boxes for excellent teaching as well as diversifying the faculty. Given that only 1% of full-time professors at degree-granting postsecondary institutions are Latina, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, you'd think that Harvard would jump at the opportunity.

It didn't.

 

And the snub inflamed students and others who see the denial as unacceptable business as usual in the rarefied realm of academia.

"We are dismayed and do not understand why she was denied tenure," wrote a coalition of graduate students and concerned scholars, numbering in the thousands, who are demanding Harvard review and make public its rationale for its decision. "This denial strikes us as a disavowal of Harvard's recent commitment to invest in ethnic studies. Denying tenure to a faculty member of color who is actively serving on the committee for new hires in ethnic studies undermines Harvard's commitment and betrays efforts to advance diversity and inclusion at this institution. Although Harvard has responded to the call of the student-and-alumni group Harvard Ethnic Studies Coalition (HESC) by pledging to hire a cluster of four ethnic studies faculty members, the outcome of Professor García-Peña's tenure case damages this important cause."

This whole episode would be puzzling if it weren't so typical. Big, major organizations from corporations to media institutions to nonprofits that specialize in uplifting people of color regularly pledge to diversify their ranks and their leadership teams.

Then they throw up their hands, shrug, and declare that they tried, but just can't find qualified people, all while not looking very hard. Or looking only in the places they've always looked -- in majority-white networking circles, social clubs or professional organizations.

The worst, though, is when they ignore their own employees. If Harvard was looking to cripple its own diversity hiring efforts, rebuffing its very own beloved educator of color was a sure way to do it.

Harvard is a private institution that has every right to make wise or ridiculous tenure and hiring decisions. But for big-name brands, sometimes there's a difference between what you can do and what you can get away with.

========

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com or follow her on Twitter @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

What did first generation college students say about their first semester of college?

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- There are a few key milestones in the first semester of a college freshman's life: the first few days away, especially if they're on a far-off campus; the first big paper to write; the first big exam. Teary calls home or anguished texts may come in the night, along with family and friends' reassurances that all will be well.

Then there's the Thanksgiving breakdown. If it comes, this one is bad.

The student who left to great fanfare for a near-magical life journey at their dream school returns home to a hero's welcome at family gatherings. Practically everywhere they go someone is asking them how classes are going, whether they like their professors, what their major is.

It's a ton of pressure -- especially if things aren't going well. And then, if the student feels confident enough in their support system to be open, the tears come.

Desperation finally reveals itself, and the truth comes tumbling out: Classes are way harder than they were in high school, the professors are too tough on students, the first tests were impenetrable, and their final papers loom like seemingly insurmountable tasks.

These are just your standard, high-achieving kids who were always expected to go to college because their moms and dads, and maybe other family members, attended a university. For these students, this is probably just a natural bump in the road.

For a first-generation college student -- the first in his or her family to attend college -- it could be a devastating roadblock that presages an eventual drop-out.

In fact, a full third of first-generation college students who were on track to graduate with a degree during the 2003-04 academic year left their studies and didn't return to school within three years, according to the U.S. Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

There are so many reasons for this: financial-aid woes (despite many superstar first-generation students being people of color, they don't all get full rides or tons of scholarships) and problems fitting in to affluent campus cultures.

But the biggest issue has to be that students of color who achieve great academic success in high school are oftentimes unaware that their community schools left them woefully unprepared for math classes like calculus (sometimes even if they took it in high school), or for building and defending a point-of-view in writing.

This has been a well-known issue in getting students of color and low-income white students into higher ed for decades -- one that I expected would get worse as universities trended toward dropping requirements for high ACT or SAT scores for admission.

In 2011, DePaul University in Chicago dropped its standardized test score requirement for incoming freshmen, because the correlation between high test scores and parents' income or education had a negative impact in evaluating first-generation college students.

At the time, I lamented that it would represent a dumbing down of educational standards in high schools when they were already low. After all, a mere quarter of the nation's high school graduating class of 2011 had ACT scores that indicated they were likely to score a B or higher in college courses.

But luckily I was wrong -- 27% of the high school graduating class of 2018 met all the benchmarks that would predict they'd score a B or higher in college courses.

This is because inequality in this country still trumps any market fluctuations in how certain people get in to college and excel once they arrive on campus.

In the race to college, the schools with resources prep their students for the ACT and the SAT rather than relying on parents to pay for the service. Not out of the goodness of their hearts, mind you, but because in the past eight years more and more public-school systems across the country have adopted the ACT or SAT as their official measure of academic success.

Schools with few resources just have to hope that giving their students the ACT or SAT test for free will encourage some to try to go to college at all.

As a result, the kids who came home last week to a family full of college grads will overwhelmingly be fine. They'll have any fear tears wiped away and be reassured by a track record and maybe given some tough love.

The first gens may not even have the courage to open up, fearing the dreaded "I told you so." The sting will only be made worse by the finger-wagger being right, because kids from low-income communities are all too often not adequately prepared to thrive in college.

========

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com or follow her on Twitter @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

New DHS report says mistreatment of immigrants due to IT and was predicted

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Words alone can't convey the disgust and outrage I feel over the Trump administration's cruel and careless treatment of migrants and refugees at the border.

In the spring of 2018, President Trump asked his top immigration and homeland security officials to end the so-called "catch and release" practice. He did this even though the overwhelming majority of people released into the country after being caught at the border are eager to return to immigration courts to have their cases heard.

At the same time, the president instructed the U.S. attorney general to direct all federal prosecutors' offices along the southwest border to work with the Department of Homeland Security to adopt a "zero-tolerance" policy, which required criminal prosecution of all apprehended migrants.

This meant that for about six weeks in late May and most of June 2018 -- until the public outcry over the atrocities at the border ended the practice -- all adults, even those accompanied by children, were put into detention. Mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles were separated from their young ones.

We all know the rest -- the freezing cold detainment centers, the cages, the lack of clean water and bathroom facilities, the 10-year-olds taking care of toddlers and babies on concrete floors, the shiny mylar "blankets" that kids were using to cover themselves over their filthy clothes.

What we all suspected, but hadn't had confirmed until now, is that there was little to no consideration given to the worth of the humans who were ripped from their loved ones' arms.

There had been so much indifference to these families that there was no plan in place to reunite them.

In fact, seven months before zero tolerance went into effect, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) knew that DHS didn't have the technical capacity to accurately track and account for the whereabouts of families separated during the zero-tolerance policy period, according to a new report from the DHS Office of Inspector General.

Preparing to move forward even though they really weren't equipped to do so, CBP adopted a grab bag of ad hoc methods to record and track family separations. But, according to the inspector general's report, those methods led to widespread errors.

In many cases, because the computer systems in place didn't have fields for capturing the kind of information necessary to reunify people later, Border Patrol agents wrote narratives about the reasons the family members were separated and pasted the text into the "criminal history" or "other reasons" fields.

Many systems didn't have such rudimentary functionality as a search capability to match a child and an adult by last name, age range or apprehension date. There was no flag or tag for "zero tolerance" so that searches could be narrowed, and no way to note who had been reunited.

Because of these IT deficiencies, the inspector general still can't confirm the total number of families DHS separated during the zero-tolerance period.

The best DHS estimates are that Border Patrol agents took 3,014 children from their families while the policy was in place. The concludes that DHS "had completed 2,155 reunifications in response to a court order, although this effort continued for seven months beyond the July 2018 deadline for reunifying children with their parents. However, we conducted a review of DHS data during the zero tolerance period and identified 136 children with potential family relationships who were not accurately recorded by CBP. In a broader analysis of DHS data between the dates of Oct. 1, 2017, and Feb. 14, 2019, we identified an additional 1,233 children with potential family relationships not accurately recorded by CBP. Without a reliable account of all family relationships, we could not validate the total number of separations, or reunifications."

Apparently, In the minds of those who calculated that the pain wrought on these migrants would deter others from making the grueling, horrific journey up through Mexico to the U.S. border, the barbarity might be worth it if people stopped coming.

But it didn't.

Despite DHS spending thousands of hours and more than $1 million in overtime costs, the zero-tolerance policy did not achieve the original goal of deterring immigration from south of the border, according to the report.

This cruel effort was a failure in every possible way -- not to mention a human rights disaster that we taxpayers paid for, courtesy of our president's ignorant whims.

========

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com or follow her on Twitter @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

Make giving thanks personal

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- We are surrounded by grief, fear and strife, yet for about a week or so each year, we're scolded for not being thankful enough. Sadly, gratitude has become yet another corporatized platitude designed to tug the heartstrings and open the wallet.

The command to show appreciation can be purchased on pillows, mugs, mouse pads and candle holders in what Vox calls "'bridesmaid font' ... bouncy, hyper-feminine scripts." Trust me, you've seen it a million times; just Google the phrase "give thanks" and you'll see what I mean.

"Self-care," the hipper, more commercially appealing new iteration of the self-help movement, has taken the wisdom of introspection and made millions, if not billions, off of selling pricey lotions, candles, gratitude journals, cosmetics and aromatic contraptions -- mostly to harried, overscheduled women who don't have time to enjoy them.

Perhaps at issue is that the general concept of gratitude is amorphous. As is the order to "give thanks."

To the cynic -- like me and countless others -- the phrase begs the snappy, bitter rejoinder of "to whom?" and "for what?"

The events of the world have brought a new lens with which to see the tricks and tips for being a more grateful person. I think of the Central American and Mexican refugees at the border, clamoring for asylum, sometimes getting in to our country and landing in a freezing dog-cage-like holding pen with few basic necessities like fresh water.

I think about the families in the rural parts of our country -- like my in-laws -- whose gutted towns have left formerly vibrant communities struggling with ills like drug addiction and dependency on faraway food pantries and medical professionals for basic safety-net services.

I ponder the coping strategies of low-income children who suffer from malnutrition and inattention because their parents don't know better than to send them to school with a bag of hot cheese curls, a sweet snack cake and a plastic bottle of "juice" for lunch. Maybe their parents are too proud to accept free and reduced-cost lunch services. Or they don't understand how the program works. Or they're scared to take the benefit because they fear it will be somehow used against them.

Can you imagine any of the people in these situations lighting a candle -- in a relaxing bath -- and opening their gratitude journal to write about at least having their health? If they have it at all, that is.

Don't misunderstand: Gratitude journals are powerful tools for becoming aware of just how good and joyful and important the people and things in our lives are. But two years after abandoning my journal because a chronic ailment was causing me such pain that I was lapsing into a coma-like sleep every night, I know it doesn't work for everyone.

Also, there's absolutely nothing wrong with embracing the ethos to give more thanks -- it's an important and critical exercise to our mental and physical health, even if it has been commodified by people who want to sell us stuff.

My observations are only in service of bringing more meaning to an exercise that can quickly become just another daily task.

If you're past simply writing down all the things you ought to be thankful for, or breezing by a mental list as you dig in to the turkey and mashed potatoes, maybe you should move on to something deeper.

Just think of one answer to the questions of whom to give thanks to and for what.

It will be different for everyone. There's no wrong answer. And you won't need special note cards, stationery or gifts.

Just find those people -- whether in person or by phone or internet video call (don't cop out with texts, Facebook messages or emails) -- and tell them you're grateful for their presence in your life.

And don't just say "thank you," either. That tends to feel transactional. It can elicit a "For what?" type of reaction. Better to be straightforward. Let me give you an example:

I am grateful for each of you, dear readers, for your dedication to the exercise of confronting new, different or challenging ideas (or critically analyzing ideas you may already agree with). I value your time and attention. Please know that I appreciate your readership and your emails and letters, even if I can't respond to each individually. And know that, as I write, I'm always thinking of you.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com or follow her on Twitter @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group