Esther J. Cepeda

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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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

The Latinx vote requires money investments, now

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- The mainstream media has two settings when it comes to Latino voters: "The Sleeping Giant will determine the next president!" and "A confounding mystery endures: Latino voters don't turn out to vote, but why?!"

A primer: There is no such thing as a "Latino community." Latino voters are diverse -- from many different countries and cultures. And complex -- with different views toward immigration, depending on where they're from (remember that all Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens by birth and Cubans have enjoyed special rules for entering the U.S. and obtaining legal status since the Cold War).

Candidates uttering a few stock phrases in heavily accented Spanish aren't going to cut it. This is especially true when issues that have particular resonance with Hispanic voters -- education, health care, gun violence, jobs for our children's future -- are left largely unexplored.

Last week, Arnold Garcia and Kyle Longley wrote an essay in The New York Times with the headline "What Democrats Need to Know to Win Latinos." As they put it: "The 2018 midterm elections showed a sharp increase in Latino voter turnout, but the continued failure by Democrats to understand the nuances of the Latino electorate could well result in another forehead-slapping, head-scratching rerun of disappointing turnout in 2020."

Yes!

But, also, let's not forget that even as the Latino electorate requires understanding, it needs something far simpler to get energized and ready to vote next November.

Money. Cash. Moolah.

Or, in the parlance of politics: resources, investments.

"The best strategy to increase Latino voter turnout in presidential elections is to close the registration gap," according to a new analysis of Latino voters by UnidosUS (formerly the National Council of La Raza) and the polling firm Latino Decisions.

"Closing the registration gap" is an artful phrase that hides the stone-cold truth: Organizations that care about getting Latinos registered to vote, informed about the candidates and issues, and energized to actually get to a polling place on Election Day need the money to make that happen.

Printing leaflets in Spanish and getting organizers to go door-to-door preaching about this or that candidate won't move the needle.

Airing ads on Spanish language radio and TV isn't anywhere near enough.

Organizations need to pay lawyers to advocate for Latino voters in state legislatures where fights against gerrymandering and discriminatory poll practices are ongoing.

Organizations need help sponsoring civics sessions that educate Hispanics whose families may be from foreign countries about why and how their vote matters in this coming election.

Organizations must register Latinos to vote, and they also need to identify those who need proper identification -- like state IDs and driver's licenses -- for when they get to the polls.

Organizations must help potential Latino voters wade through the maze of getting their registration sorted out if there's a typo or their card doesn't arrive in the mail, or if they've somehow been thrown off their state's voter rolls in a data "cleanup."

And on Election Day, organizations need to be everywhere on the ground. They need to help by getting people out to vote, driving people to far-flung poll locations and monitoring balloting places for irregularities, such as machines that are malfunctioning, improper electioneering or election judges who are confused about Latino people's multiple last names.

These tactics are longtime, tried-and-true methods of getting any special group of voters out to the polls. But they need to happen now, when the countless grass-roots organizations who understand their specific Hispanic communities' needs require the funds to build and staff their outreach efforts.

There are many, many organizations that would love nothing more than to be able to provide these services -- free of charge, of course -- to every potential Hispanic voter in every community across the country.

They just need money. Resources. Investments from larger, national organizations who claim to be very eager to get Latinos out to vote.

Getting Hispanics to vote ain't rocket science, folks.

It just requires the focused interest of large, national and moneyed organizations to care enough to commit now to getting the Latino vote out in November.

I'm looking at you, Republican National Committee, Democratic National Committee and philanthropic foundations. Will you step up?

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

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Steel yourself -- the book "Border Wars: Inside Trump's Assault on Immigration" is infuriating, heart-wrenching reading.

New York Times reporters Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear set up their book's narrative by cataloging the administration's disjointed efforts to fulfill contradictory campaign promises. President Trump wants to make a "deal" on immigration but can't because of the nativist desires of his closest advisers and his base for tougher immigration restrictions and enforcement.

According to the authors, Trump "feels" for the so-called Dreamers -- whom his handlers insisted he re-brand as "DACA recipients" because the beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Act aren't the only people in America who have dreams of thriving in this country. But he can't do anything (despite on-again, off-again promises to "take care" of them) because his base recoils at any sign of mercy for the young, unlawfully present immigrants.

And on and on. If you've been following the issue, you know the story.

But read "Border Wars" to learn how the Obama administration inadvertently set the stage for the Trump White House to inflict maximum pain on immigrants. Or to understand just how cruel (not to mention factually inaccurate, ignorant, petty and vain) Trump's general approach to policy setting is.

Or to learn how racist Trump's top advisers on immigration really are. (Chief aide Stephen Miller's recently leaked emails show that the basis for much of his immigration policy "expertise" comes from white supremacist and conspiracy theorist websites.)

What I took away from the otherwise depressing book is that there were, are -- and hopefully will continue to be -- knowledgeable, thoughtful people in top government positions who have dedicated their lives to public service and do their all to keep Trump from making barbarous policy decisions.

According to "Border Wars," Trump demanded that his staff look into building a shock-inducing electrified border wall comprised of pointed, flagpole-like spikes -- sharp enough to pierce human flesh in an instant. Trump wanted the spikes painted black so they'd get hot in the desert sun and burn anyone who got to the top of the wall.

And he asked for the Army Corps of Engineers to estimate the cost to dig a trench around the wall, confounding advisers. According to the authors, "Some of the president's proposals were so outlandish that aides could not even tell whether he was serious."

But experts and program officers put the brakes on the zanier ideas and confronted Trump and his most demanding aides with uncomfortable truths.

The book recounts one memorable meeting between Miller and longtime staffers. "'The president believes refugees cost too much,' Miller declared as he looked around the room at White House aides and career officials who had built their professional lives around resettling persecuted people in the United States. It came as no surprise to anyone seated around the table that Trump was taking aim at refugees," the authors wrote in a chapter laden with examples of longtime analysts, policy experts and program directors who insisted that the data said the opposite.

Even Trump's own people couldn't bear the ways in which the administration was trying to vilify immigrants and portray them as expensive and dangerous using out-and-out misinformation.

At one point, Jennifer Arangio, a senior director at the National Security Council with top secret clearance, reportedly pushed back at Trump's toadies.

"Yeah, I did used to think that the refugee program was vulnerable to terrorist infiltration," Arangio said, according to the authors. "But then I got here and made it my business to learn the facts about the program, and now I know that refugees are the most vetted category of any immigrant. You'd be crazy to come if you were a terrorist. This is the last way you would try to get into this country."

Like other Trump supporters in the administration, Arangio, who worked on his presidential election campaign, refused to distort facts, pretend they didn't exist or actively try to bury them. Other Republicans and Democrats of conscience stood up to a tyrannical president and his pugnacious inner circle in defense of truth, accuracy and fairness.

Sure, oftentimes they were steamrolled.

But they tried. And that represents a fragment of hope that there are quiet civil servant heroes who are advocating and sometimes actually fighting for immigrants and refugees, even as the president tries to keep them out of our once-welcoming land.

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

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

Reading officially goes from "leisure" to "independent"

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Parents are constantly told that reading to their children will instill vital communication skills and that modeling engaged reading will set their kids on a course to becoming bookworms.

Not always.

It doesn't matter how much you adore books, how many hours you spend enjoying the 998th read-aloud of "Go, Dog. Go!" or how many tomes fill your bookshelves as a testament to your insatiable reading addiction -- your kids could still turn out like mine did.

Both my sons hate reading. Hate it. With a passion.

Actually, it turns out they hated it -- past tense.

The other day, I asked my younger son, who is now a freshman in community college, if he was enjoying his English class. His answer was unprecedented: "I really enjoyed reading 'In Cold Blood.'"

I couldn't have been more surprised. Especially since, earlier in the semester, he had commented that the first chapter of Truman Capote's novel was dry and dense.

What changed?

His professor told him to read the story. Period. No required highlighting, underlining or asterisking. No flurry of Post-it notes. No enforced and graded summaries of every chapter. No months upon months of protracted discussion, with a group of relative strangers, about how the story or a particular character makes you "feel."

Just read the story. See what you think.

This is how it was done when I was a student, back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

Don't misunderstand: My Catholic school teachers ruled with an iron fist, and we dissected strategic text selections and diagrammed sentences like junior medical examiners. We learned the mechanics of grammar and spelling by force of sheer repetition, and we did it "out of context," as the reading specialists might tut-tut today.

But for all of our slicing and dicing of written language, we never beat a book to death. And I can't remember a single elementary school classmate who complained about reading books.

This came to mind the other day when the National Council of Teachers of English released a position statement on the topic of independent reading -- a term they changed from "leisure reading."

"Research supports that independent reading has the most significant impact on student success in reading, but unfortunately it is a practice that is often replaced with other programs and interventions," the statement said.

Quoting reading researchers, the statement went on to note that independent reading should be prioritized as essential in the development of strong readers and global citizens. Far from being mere "entertainment," independent reading must be elevated in classrooms.

"All reading communities should contain protected time for the sake of reading," the statement said. "Independent reading practices emphasize the process of making meaning through reading, not an end product."

This is, if you can believe it, revolutionary.

For years, "language arts" classes have been emphasizing analysis and discussion as the only valid activities for students to prove they've gotten something out of reading.

Based on what I've seen in schools and experienced with my own sons (the older one also began to enjoy reading as soon as he left the education system), the joy gets wrung right out of the act of reading when students don't have ample time to get excited about books they read for themselves -- instead of for evaluative purposes.

And no one gets hammered with reading-for-performance like young, struggling and reluctant readers who are pulled out of regular classes for even more intense reading instruction. As a resource teacher, I saw what a drag it was for some of these children, even though they would have otherwise loved to have extra time to just read books that interested them.

What, you might ask, has this educational standard yielded? Well, the most recent release of the Nation's Report Card came out earlier this month. It showed that students' reading scores are getting worse, and the lowest performing students are doing worst of all.

There's no official causal link here. And no one would argue that interventions aren't necessary for some students. Or that reading and comprehension skills should not be explicitly taught, practiced and tested -- technical skills will always need to be drilled into students so that they can eventually develop their reading acumen.

But it's like a breath of fresh air to see reading for pleasure prioritized as an academic right -- a right many of us old-timers took for granted.

When children are respected as readers with their own likes, dislikes and reading tempos, they actually get into and enjoy stories -- and isn't that the whole point?

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

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

What the red MAGA hat means to people of color

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- A recent column in which I asked readers to do some introspection about their own racial beliefs spurred many infuriated emails.

Some people took offense at my implication that a white person who feels strongly that his or her race is being discriminated against might be likelier, among other things, to wear a MAGA hat.

Why is it so difficult to imagine that wearing a very specific hat could signal alignment with someone who has done so much to divide the country -- and who, by the way, has belittled, demonized or mocked people of color, women and those with disabilities?

We are walking billboards who pay for the privilege of advertising products on various parts of our bodies, endorsing what the words or symbols stand for.

Author Issac Bailey calls the MAGA hat a "signifier for those who believe America was great during some point in the past they dare not name, knowing if they do, it would reveal a time when it was worse for people of color."

Washington Post fashion critic Robin Givhan noted that the hat "has transformed into an open wound, a firestorm of hate and a marker of societal atavism."

Harper's Bazaar political editor Jennifer Wright asserts: "Do you know why people think MAGA hats are a symbol of hatred? Because people wearing them keep doing hateful things."

Such hateful things as the New York case of a man wearing a MAGA hat and shirt who sat next to a Hispanic man on the subway, pulled him onto the platform, punched him in the face while saying, "F---ing Mexicans. You people are dirty. You people are nasty" and then threw him onto the tracks.

Thank goodness the victim, who had been in the country six years, was not hit by a train.

But incidents like these are wreaking havoc on the mental and physical health of people who wonder if they'll be the next target.

Or worse -- worry that their parents, children or other vulnerable loved ones will be harmed.

A new research study in the scientific journal PLOS One describes how the president's rhetoric has even affected Latinos' willingness to see a doctor.

The participants were "not a medically naive group -- the vast majority had seen a doctor in the U.S. previously and were aware that health care workers do not report patients to immigration authorities [and] few believed that doctors and nurses treat them differently," according to the study, titled "Declared Impact of the U.S. President's Statements and Campaign Statements on Latino Populations' Perceptions of Safety and Emergency Care Access." Yet the researchers from the University of California, San Francisco found that "nearly a quarter of them still had fear in coming to the [emergency room, attesting] to the potential power and threat of statements about deportation and denial of services coming from the president or being used during a presidential campaign. Notably, rates of safety concerns and fear of accessing the [emergency room] were similar in recent and non-recent immigrants, indicating a pervasiveness that does not appear to wane over time living in the U.S."

It only gets worse every time a person who "looks Mexican" is attacked for simply being in the United States.

Last week in Milwaukee, a Peruvian immigrant had acid thrown at his face after being called an "illegal" and told to "Go back, motherf---er," by a 61-year-old man outside a restaurant. The suspect has been charged with a hate crime.

Yes, incidents like these make me scared to live in the country I was born in. There's no amount of financial resources, social capital or professional prestige that can wipe the brown off my skin or my parents' skin, not to mention the peril we feel in certain places if we wish to speak our native language.

On that note, if people want to wear MAGA apparel, well, it's a free country. But it has to be done with the understanding that some people will assume they've bought into President Trump's record of discriminating against black people, degrading women and demonizing people who look like they might be immigrants.

 

Seeing the words "Make America Great Again" reminds many of us that some people wearing those hats have attacked others on the basis of their race or ethnicity.

You can call that racism, but those of us who stand a chance of being mentally or physically harmed call it self-preservation.

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

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

Hispanic immigrants do as well as those from European countries

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Though some people proudly think of America as a nation of immigrants, many forget that the pilgrims on the Mayflower were immigrants, too. And, of course, waves of immigrants have been arriving on the shores of the United States for so long that social science has more than a century of hard, statistical data about them.

The factoid I like to trot out every time immigrants are erroneously tied to crime is that they are more law-abiding than native-born U.S. residents. That has been the case for at least 100 years.

Shortly after the 2010 census detailed a large and growing Hispanic population, a big part of the story was how poorly educated many immigrants were, especially those from Latin America.

Inadequately staffed public schools bulged with children who spoke languages other than English at home, even as the No Child Left Behind Act and the college-for-all movement put pressure on K-12 schools to graduate more Hispanic students and pushed universities to diversify their campuses.

Many public policy experts warned that we needed to make major investments in the exploding Latino community lest their undereducation and unsure immigration status combined to create a permanent underclass of disaffected new Americans.

Those fears weren't completely overblown, and this confluence of factors did, in fact, spur heavy investment in Hispanic students. Today, Hispanic high school students boast an all-time low dropout rate of 10% (compared with 34% in 1996).

They're also going to college more than ever -- up to 37% from 22% between 2000 and 2015. Today, 28% of Hispanics have at least an associate degree, up from 15% in 2000.

I could go on and on with statistics about how Hispanics are bettering themselves, but the point is that they arrive as immigrants and find a way to thrive -- just like every prior wave of immigrants.

In fact, according to a new working paper last month from the National Bureau of Economic Research, the children of immigrants have had greater success at climbing the economic ladder than the children of U.S.-born families in the same income group. The study, titled "Intergenerational Mobility of Immigrants in the U.S. over Two Centuries," looked at millions of father-son pairs over the decades.

The researchers analyzed census data from 1880 (when immigrants were mostly from Northern and Western Europe) and 1910 (when they mostly came from Southern and Eastern Europe), all the way to the most recent data from 2010. They found that this pattern of social mobility has been stable for more than a century -- even through the immigration "invasion" scares of the late 2000s.

The study also looked specifically at immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Mexico and other major South American countries and compared them with children of poor Finnish, Scottish, Norwegian and other European immigrants. The researchers found that the average income rank of the Hispanic group is the same or better as the European group, relative to each other and adjusted for inflation.

The researchers concluded: "Children of first-generation immigrants growing up in the poorest 25% of the distribution end up near the middle as adults. These children of immigrants have rates of economic mobility that are 3-6 percentage points higher than their U.S. born peers. For those in the top quarter of the income distribution, the gap in mobility is about 1-5 percentage points."

They also found what nearly every researcher has concluded in nearly all studies of immigrants: Even immigrants who come to the U.S. with no generational wealth or few academic skills bring a lot to the U.S. economy, mainly their healthy children, who keep America young. I'd add that they also carry an ironclad belief in the American dream, the energy of fully buying in to a country's work ethic, a love of our culture and no room to fail.

It's a powerful combination that people who were born here in the U.S. have a hard time understanding, because they've lived in relative comfort -- relative, that is, to the soul-crushing poverty, violence and government corruption of many other countries.

But successful, law-abiding, society-enriching immigrants are like gravity -- a natural phenomenon that acts upon our lives whether we recognize it or not.

Don't despair about the current political climate: Immigrants never have and never will be dependent on others' belief in their capacity and potential to make the most of themselves. It's something they carry across borders and give to the U.S. in full every day.

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

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

People of color need Americans to become anti-racists

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- A recent Pew Research Center survey on perceived discrimination in America seems to confirm what some already believe is gospel: There is a disturbing and gaping divide between Republicans and Democrats on race.

Nearly three-quarters (73%) of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents agreed that there is "a lot/some" discrimination against blacks and "little/no" discrimination against whites, while only 23% of Republicans felt this way.

In fact, 16% of people who identified as Republican or Republican-leaning said that whites experience "a lot" of discrimination, and another 39% felt they experience "some."

Sigh. And, also, ugh!

The survey results are depressing, but unsurprising. Some of those white Republicans who feel discriminated against are out and proud. You see them coming in their red "Make America Great Again" hats, driving with confederate flags on their pickup trucks and posting signs on their lawns that say "We don't call 9-1-1" along with the image of a handgun.

They're the easy ones to avoid.

Meanwhile, 20% of those who are Democrats or lean Democratic believe there is "a lot/some" discrimination against white people. That's, frankly, way too many.

And it's clear that some of the self-identified white progressives and liberals who wear "Black Lives Matter" or "Build Bridges, Not Walls" T-shirts are actually somewhat clueless about black and brown people -- unwittingly perpetuating racism against the very people they claim to defend. Robin DiAngelo, a white social-justice professor at Washington University, penned her book, "White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism," specifically for white progressives who believe they are allies to people of color.

"I believe that white progressives cause the most daily damage to people of color," she writes. "I define a white progressive as any white person who thinks he or she is not racist, or is less racist, or in the 'choir,' or already 'gets it.' White progressives can be the most difficult for people of color because, to the degree that we think we have arrived, we will put our energy into making sure that others see us as having arrived. None of our energy will go into what we need to be doing for the rest of our lives: engaging in ongoing self-awareness, continuing education, relationship building and actual antiracist practice. White progressives do indeed uphold and perpetrate racism, but our defensiveness and certitude make it virtually impossible to explain to us how we do so."

Any Latinx person who has ever had a self-identified progressive ask them if they grew up in a barrio surrounded by gangs understands DiAngelo's point. As does any black person who has been asked by a white person, with grave concern, if it's acceptable to eat fried chicken or watermelon in their presence.

People of color navigate these indignities on a constant basis -- in addition to openly derisive behavior from people who won't deny that they don't like us.

And while we understand that white allies can often simply be well-meaning, but clueless, we also know that they have the resources and power to do something about it.

There's no need for anyone to be ignorant about how their implicit beliefs about others shape their daily interactions with people who are of a different race or ethnicity. Information about how to be anti-racist is freely available on the internet.

And books like DiAngelo's or Ibram X. Kendi's "How to Be an Antiracist" are a great start. They provide a wealth of resources -- like other books and academic research -- that are available to those who want to better themselves.

Whatever you do, would-be white allies, please don't ask a person of color to teach you or show you the way. We have enough of our mental and emotional bandwidth taken up with navigating a country that is racist and, more often than not, doesn't even suspect it and recoils at its racism being pointed out.

For the record: We thank all our white allies. Truly, we do. People of color have so little actual political, economic and social power in our communities and our jobs. We truly do need partners and supporters who can speak up for us when we find ourselves alone among whites who don't have our best interests at heart.

Just please take the next step. Do some introspection and learning about your own racial beliefs and practices before assuming the position of Superfriend to the Marginalized.

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

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

Language is nothing to be afraid of

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Take enough undergraduate psychology courses and you'll internalize a simple precept: Your perception is your reality.

For instance, if you go around terrified that people with skin slightly browner than yours are coming into the U.S. to rob your land of its apple pie and baseball, you're going to worry about whether America speaks more than one language at home.

I got an email the other day from a nativist think tank with the subject line: "More than one in five U.S. residents does not speak English at home."

"Oh no!" you might think. "We don't want large swaths of the American population to not speak English, the international language of commerce and higher education!"

Of course we don't. But, rest assured, there isn't anything near a critical mass of people in the U.S. who don't want all citizens to learn and be fluent in English.

Upon opening the email, I learned the rest of the story: "67.3 Million U.S. Residents Spoke a Foreign Language at Home in 2018. In nine states, one in four residents now speaks a language other than English at home ... a number equal to the entire population of France."

The France comparison is a red herring -- 20% of our population speaking another language at home is nothing to fret about. And more context: About 1.2 million people over the age of 5 reported speaking French at home, according to 2017 Census estimates. Another half million speak Italian.

Another million or so speak German at home, plus half a million speak "other West Germanic languages." Nearly a million people speak Russian, and half a million speak Polish.

Throw in Serbo-Croatian, Ukrainian and other Slavic languages, plus Armenian, Greek and Hebrew, and together you have another 1.3 million.

Oh, and just to clear away any confusion: These are not counts of people who don't speak English, they are of people who speak both of these languages in their homes. The Census bureau breaks these numbers into the categories of "Speak English 'very well'" and "Speak English less than 'very well.'" Most of those who responded said they spoke English "very well."

You know why?

Because globally, most countries' citizens speak, read and write in two languages (or more), with the second language being English. (Americans are weirdo monolinguals.)

And because there are communities across the nation whose public schools are teaching dual-language programs that feature Chinese, Russian, French and Spanish as options for children starting in kindergarten.

Indeed, even this stress-inducing email from the anti-immigrant think tank goes on to say that "45% [of those who speak other languages at home] were born in the United States."

 

Are we now clear that the English language is not being overrun by Spanish spoken by monolingual Latin Americans who are invading this country and robbing America of its English-speaking culture?

No, of course the email didn't specifically use those words -- it's the general vibe, though. And it's a continual method of scaring people who are already terrified of "others" into being ever-more scared of immigrants from Latin America.

Am I reading too much into it?

Nope. Note this other alarming quote: "There are now more people who speak Spanish at home in the United States than in any country in Latin America with the exception of Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina."

And just as I cherry-picked data to highlight languages of white, affluent countries, the nativist think tank only focused on statistics about Spanish, Arabic, Tamil and other languages of brown-skinned people.

If scared white people weren't so dangerous to people of color -- who everyday walk this world afraid to become the next target of a Trump-emboldened white person harassing them as they go about their lives -- we'd have to pity them.

It must be tough going through a moment in time when our president is agitating you into believing you are under attack and threatened with economic strife and, even worse, extinction.

None of these scare tactics is true. There's no cabal of dark-skinned people conspiring to take away what whites have -- the U.S., unlike any other place, is a land where there is so much to go around that all people could work and have peaceful, prosperous lives without anyone being robbed of a birthright.

But only if whites can stop being scared of brown-skinned people and their mother tongues. If they could perceive that we can all get ahead without it being at anyone's expense, it would become their reality.

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

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

 

 

Don't slam math - even babies can do it

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- "I hate math!"

As a fourth-grade math teacher, I hear this at least once daily. It's like a dagger to the heart every single time.

I have been hearing this even more since math instruction has moved away from first instilling the basics of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division (to some detriment, I believe) toward "problem solving" and abstracted versions of the simple equations that older generations practiced.

Long before the mantra of problem solving became gospel in education, it fed into the concept of what a 21st century "leader" should be able to accomplish. From there, the modern transformational leader (usually of the tech or finance variety) injected the credo into the hiring process, a la the famed set of puzzles put forth to job applicants at Google.

Example: "How would you cut a rectangular cake into two equal pieces when a rectangular piece has already been cut out of it? The cut piece can be of any size and orientation. You are only allowed to make one straight cut."

This question requires an understanding of both mathematical and geometric equalities, as well as background knowledge of what a rectangular cake looks like. Seems like common sense stuff, but you'd be surprised how many people have trouble solving it.

(Make a diagonal cut through the center of the corner of the missing cake piece, by the way.)

The human resources trend of testing potential employees with puzzles, brain teasers and, in some cases, questions from the SAT test became standard practice at large organizations circa 2015 -- about the same time that K-12 public education changed its objective from "educating citizens" to getting students "college and career ready."

As a result, kindergartners are trained to parse simple word problems and taught to fill out worksheets of simple math equations like "1 + 2 =" (prematurely, as far as I'm concerned).

So, when I get them in fourth grade, they either have excellent math skills or "hate math" -- in, almost certainly, the same proportions as when I was a fourth-grader. I heard the dreaded chant Monday again, as I assigned the week's homework to my students.

It doesn't have to be this way. Math ability is as intrinsically available to everyone as breathing or eating.

Brain-science researchers at Johns Hopkins University recently observed that babies as young as 14 months old seem to recognize that counting is about the dimension of numbers. Young kids don't generally understand the meanings of words like "two" and "three" until they hit preschool age. Writing in the journal Developmental Science, the researchers concluded that counting "directs infants' attention to numerical aspects of the world, showing that they recognize counting as numerically relevant years before acquiring the meanings of number words."

This is not totally groundbreaking work -- it builds upon a body of research that has plumbed the depths of how much number sense humans are born with.

For instance, some infants can distinguish between images of 10 and 20 dots.

I'm no baby researcher, or math expert for that matter, but science also knows that nurture has at least as much influence on human development as nature. The missing link between babies' innate math skills and some elementary school students' hatred of math (sometimes lasting a lifetime) could be as simple as how much their parents practiced number sense with them.

As the National Association for the Education of Young Children puts it, "From the moment they are born, babies begin to form ideas about math through everyday experiences and, most important, through interactions with trusted adults. Language -- how we talk with infants and toddlers about math ideas like more, empty, and full -- matters."

They don't usually tell you this in birthing classes, do they?

As with virtually all other positive early-childhood habits -- making eye contact, pointing out patterns, making comparisons (like big and small) and modelling responses to simple questions -- parents with higher educations and incomes just seem to know to do this with their children without being taught.

Do this old math teacher a favor: If you're anywhere near a baby or child, do some simple, positive, stress-free number talking with them, such as counting the stairs as you walk up or down. And whatever you do, never, ever say you "hate" or aren't "good at math."

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

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

The horrors at the border continue

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Lest we forget, inhumanity and injustice continue unabated at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The topic of these horrors seems to have been left for dead because of the focus on a potential presidential impeachment, the 2020 election and, well, life.

It is human nature to attempt to go on even in the face of widespread suffering. All over the country, people are getting excited for Halloween -- even those children who are scarred from having been separated from their parents at the border, and kids who are in this country illegally and endure teasing about it at school.

Yes, even young adults who have no idea how long it will be before life as they've known it will evaporate are wondering what sort of fantasy and dress-up motif to indulge in for a few hours of release from their worries. They will try to forget that they could be sent back to a country at any time that they, for all intents and purposes, don't even remember.

In turn, those who are free from such pressing anxieties must do their part to not forget that there are millions of people who need us to remember their anguish. This includes people both here in the U.S. -- our friends, neighbors and co-workers -- and the desperate souls at the border seeking entry.

Here's a short run-down of what's going on:

-- Late last month, a federal court upheld protections for immigrant children kept in detention, reinforcing the so-called Flores Settlement Agreement, which says that children should be held in immigration custody for no more than 20 days. And the ruling maintains the requirement that facilities holding children make every effort to address opportunities for kids to be released to responsible adults.

-- Also in September, a federal court blocked the expansion of an "expedited removal" program. This would have allowed the government to deport people without such basic due process procedures as getting to speak with an attorney or presenting evidence in their own defense.

-- Last week, the Trump administration backed down on its strategy to levy six-figure fines on immigrants seeking sanctuary in holy spaces like churches and mosques. It was an intimidation tactic that never stood a chance, because it relies on extracting huge sums of money from people who are basically peasants living in monastic conditions as an alternative to being deported to a country where they fear imminent starvation or violent death.

Those were the bright spots. Now on to the egregious happenings of late:

-- A new lawsuit underscores the corruption in America's deportation apparatus. A woman from Honduras who was living in Connecticut unlawfully was allegedly threatened with deportation and death by an immigration agent who, the woman said, sexually assaulted her for several years, impregnated her three times and paid for an abortion. The lawsuit names the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and a former ICE agent.

-- The Trump administration has new plans to take DNA samples from the hundreds of thousands of people living in detention centers without their consent. The Justice Department says this will help solve crimes, but where does the use of mass surveillance tools and involuntary capture of biometric data stop?

-- Lastly, more walls have captured President Trump's imagination. During a speech last Thursday in Pittsburgh, he told his adoring admirers: "And we're building a wall on the border of New Mexico. And we're building a wall in Colorado. We're building a beautiful wall. A big one that really works -- that you can't get over, you can't get under." Trump later tweeted that his reference to a Colorado wall -- hundreds of miles from the U.S-Mexico border -- was made "kiddingly."

Sure, you could just shrug your shoulders if none of these situations directly affects you. But civil liberties have a way of being eroded when no one's watching. And it's a short hop from how the Trump administration treats immigrants to how it could decide to treat foreign-born U.S. citizens and, then, U.S.-born citizens.

Open your eyes and see what's happening right now. Though none of us can take in the injustices without averting our gazes to regroup and recharge, please turn back. There are still children living in prison-like conditions at the border, if not in literal metal cages. There are still constitutional violations of migrants' rights and other horrors that require our sustained attention and anger -- all the way into November 2020.

 

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

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

Start talking about racism if you really want to confront and end it

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- A few weeks ago, I got into what became a heated argument with one of my young students, who was indignant that her teacher flat-out refused to share an important cultural, political and social fact.

The topic was a term that will never pass my lips: the N-word.

"But what does it mean?" pleaded the student, the lone white girl in a 99% Latino classroom. And she was not trying to push my buttons, be defiant or stop our classroom lesson.

We had been discussing the inarguable fact of slavery's impact on the bargain struck to make Washington, D.C., our nation's capital. The decision was made in part to appease Southerners' concern about not having the nation's seat of power too far north. That's when she asked me the question that I couldn't answer.

I told her that the N-word was so fraught, so toxic and so loaded with hatred toward blacks that I absolutely could not say it aloud.

"It's as if you were asking me to tell you what the 'F-word' is," I explained, empathizing because she truly wanted to understand why I refused to share something that was common knowledge, based on her classmates' begging her not to go there. "I could describe the F-word, but I couldn't write the full word on the board or whisper it in your ear or write it on a piece of paper and pass it to you."

This student made a compelling argument: If it's so very important to not say the N-word, shouldn't I name it, say it aloud for educational purposes and discuss why it's so bad instead of asking her to go home and ask her parents to explain the whole thing to her?

Finally, I wrapped up the conversation: "Look, I don't want to lose my job. If I breathe this word aloud, and our principal hears about it, I'm in big trouble. You don't want me to go away and not come back, do you?"

That did it, because I wasn't being hyperbolic. Zero-tolerance rules against bullying and racial epithets in U.S. public schools put me -- one of a tiny handful of teachers of color in a typically all-white teaching staff -- at risk of losing my job. Even if I was explaining a slur during a teachable moment.

Only a few weeks later, in Madison, Wisconsin -- a bastion of progressive values in the middle of a conservative, rural landscape -- high school security guard Marlon Anderson's situation proved my point.

He uttered the N-word during an exchange with a student and was subsequently terminated from his job.

The kicker? Anderson said the word as he was trying to explain to the student why it was wrong for the student to have used the slur as an insult against him. You see, Anderson is black.

"Every type of N-word you can think of, that's what he was calling me," Anderson told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "I said, do not call me that name. I'm not your N-word. Do not call me that."

It took social media virality and outrage to reverse the school's decision. This included a pledge from the singer Cher to foot the bill for Anderson to sue the Madison School District, and a student walkout, protesting the termination of one of the school's few nonwhite staff members.

I'm not here to criticize the school's policy, which was put into place after forcing out six district employees for using racial slurs in front of, or at, students. But it is a perfect example of how rules initially instituted to keep students safe, especially students of color, can have the unintended consequence of muzzling the very people who can help heal the wounds of racism.

The lesson here is not about zero tolerance, per se. It's about how important it is for people of all colors and races to be able to truly engage in personal, meaningful conversations about race.

As so many scholars preach, from race educator Robin DiAngelo to historian Ibram X. Kendi: We'll never be able to eradicate racism if we can't describe it, name it and see it in ourselves, even as we try to point it out in others.

And who are we as a society if we can't make common-sense decisions about who gets to defend themselves from racial slurs through education and the use of certain racial slurs to make a point?

Until we get past the fear of recrimination for discussing racist language, we cannot educate ourselves on how to actively not be racist.

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

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

White fragility leads to a Latina author's book being burned

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- After a recent reading of Robin J. DiAngelo's urgently needed book "White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism," I vowed to wait for a clear-cut example of white fragility before writing about it.

My wait lasted all of two weeks. That's when white students at Georgia Southern University burned the books of a different author who discussed the dangers of white privilege.

The crux of DiAngelo's book is that discussing white racism is threatening to white people, because the topic has typically been broached in terms of how racism impacts people of color.

Instead, DiAngelo, a white social-justice professor at Washington University, illustrates all the ways in which the system of racism undergirds, enhances and benefits every aspect of whites' lives without them even realizing it.

It's an understandably jarring, infuriating, painful and necessary revelation -- even for people of color who are light-skinned enough to "pass" for white in many situations.

DiAngelo explains that the discomfort white people feel when they recognize their economic and social advantages is the key to dismantling the system of white supremacy over brown and black people that our country's economy was founded on.

Because racism is often couched in terms of good morals vs. bad morals -- i.e., nice people can't be racist -- DiAngelo says that some whites "perceive any attempt to connect us to the system of racism as an unsettling and unfair moral offense. The smallest amount of racial stress is intolerable -- the mere suggestion that being white has meaning often triggers a range of defensive responses. These include emotions such as anger, fear and guilt along with behaviors such as argumentation, silence and withdrawal from the stress-inducing situation. These responses work to reinstate white equilibrium as they repel the challenge, return our racial comfort, and maintain our dominance within the racial hierarchy."

Meanwhile, on Oct. 9, I was finishing Jennine Capó Crucet's haunting new collection of essays, "My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education." On that same day, Capó Crucet, who is Latina, was essentially reliving -- to an even worse degree -- an anecdote she shared in her book about a white college student reacting negatively to a speech. In her book, Capó Crucet recounts speaking "at a predominantly white college in the American South." The student first heckled the author, calling her racist, then burst into tears because she was so upset at the idea of preferential faculty-hiring practices for diversifying the college's teaching staff.

Last week, after Capó Crucet gave a speech and discussed white privilege at Georgia Southern University's campus in Statesboro, students burned copies of her book.

According to the school's student newspaper, a student asked the author during the question-and-answer section of the talk, "What makes you believe that it's OK to come to a college campus, like this, when we are supposed to be promoting diversity on this campus, which is what we're taught? I don't understand what the purpose of this was."

Capó Crucet reportedly responded, "I came here because I was invited, and I talked about white privilege because it's a real thing that you are actually benefiting from right now in even asking this question."

Hostile shouting ensued. After the talk ended, some people crowded outside the hotel where the university had put up Capó Crucet, so the author was moved to another location for her safety. Later, a video of white students giggling and cheering as copies of her book were fed into a fire gained traction on social media.

The author's scheduled speech at Georgia Southern's Savannah campus was subsequently canceled because the school, in a state where college students are allowed to carry concealed weapons on certain parts of campus, couldn't guarantee her safety.

Capó Crucet lamented that her book began as "an act of love and an attempt at deeper understanding." But white fragility has derailed that attempt and reinforced the stress and fear that students of color on predominantly white campuses experience daily.

Incidents like these breed a sense of despair in people of color who understand white fragility all too well from their constant interactions with it.

Our only hope is that white allies, colleagues, friends and even family take the time to learn about white fragility -- DiAngelo's book and Capó Crucet's books are excellent starting points -- and confront their own reactions when faced with racism's realities.

Until we all admit to ourselves that entrenched racism pervades nearly every aspect of our lives, we'll never get past just being angry that it exists at all.

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

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

 

Parent teacher conferences reveal public school's white privilege

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- It's parent-teacher conference time at schools across the land and I'm here to share the two unfortunate rules of thumb that teachers like myself understand about this exercise.

First, mostly it's the stronger students' parents who'll show up. They're a joy, but you really need to see the parents of the kids who are struggling. Second, teachers too often dispense advice that only those with college educations and middle-class lifestyles could hope to follow through on.

Think about it: Teachers almost always ask parents to read with their children, overlooking the fact that, in some instances, the parents themselves can't read. I've had parents tell me straight out, "I'm illiterate," in which case I tell them not to worry -- just have the kids read to you and not the other way around. My goodness, if harried parents who are working two or three jobs don't deserve a simple, soothing bedtime story themselves, I don't know who does.

Lots of teachers tell parents that they should "work on" their kids' spelling words, or addition facts, or multiplication tables as if the students who need remediation in these areas are arriving home to the smell of freshly baked cookies served by a smiling, English- and math-fluent caregiver who has the time to sit beside a child and guide them through practice before or after serving a hot, nutritious dinner.

Maybe a few kids have that sort of sweet setup, but growing up as a latch-key kid, I sure didn't.

Usually, whether it's reading or math that's a concern, I ask parents to just talk with their kids.

Converse. Ask them about their favorite show, who the characters are, where it's set, what time period, what happens, who are the "good guys" and the "bad guys," what happened first, next and last in the most recent episode they watched. These are the basic components of reading comprehension and narrative writing, and you can't go wrong with making this sort of structured talk a part of your relationship.

For that matter, conversations like this are also fundamental to mathematics these days. Parents of grown children would hardly recognize elementary school math. It's often esoteric and abstract compared with the simplistic work a generation ago of memorizing "times tables" and using pie or pizza as the standard metaphor for fractions.

Today's math is all about problem-solving. Story problems are multistep and complex. The language is extremely academic and relies on a store of shared background knowledge that too frequently is culturally mismatched to low-income students.

I gave a test last week in which one word problem was based on the premise of two people running a 10K. I had to stop the test and give everyone a primer on what a 6-mile run was, and not to mistake the "K" for a unit of weight measurement. It was a distraction that test writers, who are overwhelmingly white and well-off, had not surely considered.

 

So, I suggest families talk with kids about real, everyday math -- changes in the temperature, how measurements work as food is cooked, the passage of time, how money changes as it's being forked over. Regular, practical stuff that anyone can do at nearly any time and will help students see that math is everywhere, not just during my class and in a workbook.

Lately, though, in addition to giving tips on academics, I've found myself suggesting to some parents that they consider taking their children to the doctor. I sometimes feel uncomfortable doing this because not all families have medical assistance at their disposal. Maybe they have insurance but can't get to a doctor because of a lack of transportation or time off of work. Many in my area just don't have insurance at all.

In this month's issue of the journal Pediatrics, researchers from the American Academy of Pediatrics write that caregivers should consider academic struggles as a symptom of a possible underlying medical condition:

"Pediatricians care not only for an increasingly diverse population of children who may have behavioral, psychological, and learning difficulties but also for increasing numbers of children with complex and chronic medical problems that can affect the development of the central nervous system and can present with learning and academic concerns."

A broader recognition of how underlying health conditions can impact a child's education could certainly deepen the home-school connection.

And imagine a world in which all U.S. public school students have truly ready access to high-quality medical care -- and how the test scores would soar. If only.

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Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com. Follow her on Twitter, @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

 

All White people should read 'My Time Among the Whites'

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- When you grow up surrounded by white people, you become, in many important ways, white.

Your neighbors next door, your teachers at school -- everyone from the person behind the counter at the bakery to the mail carrier. If they're white and they treat you with respect and affection, part of you becomes white, too.

This is my story, but it's definitely not what happened to Jennine Capó Crucet, author of the newly released book "My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education."

Capó Crucet's story reminded me of the context Michelle Obama laid out in her memoir "Becoming." Both women of color lived solidly in the middle class, grew up in single-family homes that belonged to their parents, attended schools with students who looked just like them, in communities where everyone -- including doctors, lawyers and other professional role models -- shared their race and ethnicity.

Both women showed up at elite universities as fish out of water and learned, quickly and painfully, what it's like to try to live in spaces where white people were not always used to having people like them around.

It takes a tremendous level of skill, personal insight and love for your fellow humans to be able to write about such matters as being "with the whites" without alienating readers, like me, who happen to adore "the whites." I was raised among them and, like Capó Crucet, married a white man.

As such, I have two reactions to this beautiful and heartbreaking book.

The first is that any nonwhite person who grew up in the U.S. was trained to read -- and internalize, identify with and enjoy, even love -- stories by and about the white experience. This isn't a criticism, per se, but a statement of fact.

The opportunity to read the observations and experiences of a U.S.-born Cuban American is a gift. This is not just because the author shares the demographic category of Hispanic, but because she's not Mexican.

No shade to the Mexicans of the world (I'm a halfsie, on my mom's side), but theirs is the narrative that's usually centered in literature, mostly because we share so much culture and the U.S. is so jam-packed with Mexicans. The Ecuadorian side of me adored reading someone whose viewpoint is Latinx but not Mexican.

 

My second reaction is that -- though it would be wonderful if every Hispanic/Latino/Latinx or other person of color read this book -- the world would be a significantly better place if every white person who thinks they are politically progressive or an ally of people of color read "My Time Among the Whites."

There's plenty here to chew on for Latinx readers, including what kind of privilege we carry around depending on our parents' wealth and education, the color of our skin, the whiteness of our names and even the opportunity to have a university experience.

But Capó Crucet illustrates what it's like when the people around her take a look at her name, listen hard for an accent and then decide it's OK to truly be themselves around her. It isn't always pretty -- declarations of love and support for President Trump, complaints about "all the Mexicans" taking white people's livelihood and grousing about the customs, practices or cuisines of other people of color.

That's just the baseline stuff. There's a stunning story Capó Crucet tells at the end of her book about a white college student reacting negatively to a speech the author is giving "at a predominantly white college in the American South." The student declares that the author's ideas for diversifying the faculty are racist, then she bursts into tears at the mere thought of passing over white candidates in favor of nonwhites.

"Is it uncomfortable, reading all this?" Capó Crucet writes. "Does your answer depend on your race, on whether or not you consider yourself white? Are you feeling like that white girl in the crowd who wanted to tell me about reverse racism? If you do consider yourself white and don't feel like that girl, are you not yet uncomfortable because, despite this being about your people, you don't think it's about your people? Because, as a white person, you've gotten to be just you your whole life?"

Answer these questions honestly, white readers. The fate of our next election and the future of our society largely balance on whether whites will be able to reckon with people like Capó Crucet being their neighbors, their peers and their teachers.

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

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- In 2011, a Kansas state lawmaker suggested shooting unlawfully present immigrants from helicopters, the way the state controlled its feral hog population.

He was building on a long history of politicians and other officials who have dehumanized undocumented immigrants, especially those at the border. In fact, in 1911, the federal Dillingham Immigration Commission stated: "We should exercise at least as much care in admitting human beings [to the United States] as we exercise in relation to animals or insect pests or disease germs."

This is why it came as no shock to learn that President Trump suggested shooting migrants in the legs to keep them from coming into the United States.

Trump said this in a fit of rage in March, while his White House aides tried to explain to him why the United States can't just shut down its 2,000-mile southern border, according to a new book, "Border Wars: Inside Trump's Assault on Immigration," by New York Times reporters Michael D. Shear and Julie Hirschfeld Davis.

Fuming and using expletives to berate his staff, Trump shouted, "I ran on this. It's my issue," according to the book.

It's also been the issue of countless hardline conservatives who took the tack of scaring fellow white people into believing that their country is being invaded, overrun, flooded and infested with "bad hombres" looking to take white people's jobs, their women and their place at the top of the pecking order in America.

The strategy has proved extremely effective thus far, for Trump and for so many others -- like eight-term Iowa Rep. Steve King, who once took a 12-foot model of a border wall to the floor of Congress. It was topped with wire that could be electrified to stop immigrants in the same way that livestock are managed.

It's a winning strategy to cast those who seek asylum from political violence and economic travail as being simultaneously super powerful in their ability to take, take, take everything America holds dear and be as intellectually backward as hogs and cattle.

Superpowered is a good way to put it, actually, considering the other ideas Trump had for controlling the border, according to "Border Wars," which was recently excerpted in the Times ahead of its Oct. 8 publication date.

There was talk of fortifying the border wall with a water-filled trench -- you don't need to be a medieval scholar to think of it as a moat -- stocked with snakes or alligators. He actually asked aides to provide him with a cost estimate.

Trump also wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh, according to the book. (The president has denied the report.)

It's borderline funny.

It has to be for the millions of people with Latin American roots to be able to live another day in a country whose president represents the very real hatred that many white Americans have about new residents from our southern neighbor and multibillion dollar trading partner.

But it's truly a laugh-so-you-don't-cry situation for the rest of us.

Mostly because crying would play into the hands of Trump and other white supremacists who hope to strike fear in the hearts of the brown people who have the nerve to demand equally funded neighborhoods and schools, and equal opportunities for access to good universities, jobs and housing stock.

Meanwhile, countless jokes and memes have been around the internet for a long time featuring Mexicans on ladders that are a few inches taller than a border wall, alligator costumes for traversing the moat and pictures of the Latino and/or Mexican laborers who'd be the ones building a big, fancy wall -- under budget and on time.

There's really nothing to be done about people who are unreasonably scared of immigrants and become enthralled with a politician who plays into those fears.

Sure, we can talk and engage in dialogues out the wazoo. But too many brown people have put in the effort only to realize that there's only so much individuals can do.

The only method that will work is to dismiss the legislators who keep stoking this fear. And for that, our white friends and allies who see people of color as more than vermin, livestock or worse will need to step up for us at the voting booth in 2020.

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

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

I used to hate Barbie, but I'm excited about Mattel's non-binary dolls

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- When I was a kid, I hated Barbie.

I mean I hated her.

But Christmas 1980, I found "Western Barbie" under my tree. This was long before I knew the terms "race," "ethnicity" or "identity," and long before learning about the groundbreaking research that Drs. Mamie and Kenneth Clark did in the 1940s, when they found that black children internalized white supremacy and preferred Barbies to black dolls.

Unwrapping Barbie was a blow.

The dreaded doll came from my favorite uncle, the one who seemed to understand that I liked playing with his toolbox and hanging out in the garage more than organizing tea parties, so it really hurt that he gifted me a reminder of all I would never be.

She was tall, thin, blond, blue-eyed, busty and had impeccably straight teeth -- everything every man and woman in America seemed to cherish. I could take one look around at the women in my family and know that there was zero chance I would ever measure up. Even my teeth were hopelessly crooked.

Plus, Barbie was boring. I had wanted a Lego set, but what I got was a stiff, plastic white woman with a ridiculous cowgirl outfit and high-heeled boots. What was I supposed to do with that?

I tore her hair out and threw her in the garbage long before New Year's Day. I never told my uncle, who had merely attempted to give his favorite niece the "hot" toy of the season, that I had been insulted.

But that was all eons ago, long before there were brown and black Barbies, Barbies in wheelchairs, Barbies with prosthetic limbs, Barbies wearing hijabs and short Barbies with curves.

There are now professional Barbies, including military, artist, politician and banker Barbies.

And, today, there are queer Barbies, too.

The new line is called "Creatable World," and it is touted by Mattel as "designed to keep labels out and invite everyone in -- giving kids the freedom to create their own customizable characters again and again."

The labels in question are gender-identity labels and, boy, does that make some people mad as heck! So does the very premise, which sounds like it accurately reflects real, current life and is not subversive: "Switch long hair for short hair -- add a skirt, pants or both. It's up to you! Mix and match, swap or share."

A post on the conservative website Vigilant Citizen captured a certain type of outrage, with the uncredited author writing: "The Mattel dolls are yet another attempt at indoctrinating children while they're young, planting the seeds of gender confusion in their developing minds."

Another post, on the progressive website Medium, had its own criticisms.

"Even if it is a craven, trendy cash-grab, it does reflect how far society has come in terms of trans and nonbinary acceptance in just a few short years," wrote Devon Price, a nonbinary person who teaches sociology at Loyola University Chicago's School of Continuing and Professional Studies.

Still, they -- "them" and "they" are the pronouns that nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people like Price (and me) use to avoid being gendered -- were disappointed.

"Associating moderate/soft features with androgyny is a problem because it is racist," wrote Price. "What types of people have small foreheads, narrowish jaws, relatively little body or facial hair, and lips that aren't 'too full'? White people. White [assigned female at birth] people, to be exact. In so many ways, our commonly accepted social portrait of gender neutrality is just a rehashing of norms of white, female beauty -- the ideal nonbinary person is expected to be a stereotypically pretty, lithe, thin, light-skinned white person, with relatively little body hair, no facial hair, and features that are narrow and European."

Realistically, thoughtful parents of all political persuasions worry that they'll accidentally indoctrinate their children in some negative way. And yes, trans and nonbinary people are misrepresented, demonized and fetishized far too much in the media.

But there is one important truth: These dolls look like America's public school children.

All races, all bands of the gender spectrum, all styles of clothing and hair. Girls who "dress like boys" and boys who love pink and sometimes pretend they are feminine, in addition to girly girls and scrappy boys. Plus, shaved heads on either gender.

I work in an elementary school in rural Wisconsin -- trust me, even there both boys and girls disregard "traditional" gender norms.

So, if it's no biggie for kids, let's not let it cause too much fuss among the so-called grown-ups. And we might even think about adding this new line of Barbies to our shopping lists this holiday season.

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

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

How white privilege derails dual language programs

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Dual-language programs have recently become more common in public schools. In most of them, half the students are non-native Spanish speakers and the other half are non-native English speakers. They each get 50% of their instruction in English and the other in Spanish.

Initially I thought this method could be powerful in communities with influxes of Spanish-speaking students. In addition to creating students who are fluent in more than one language, successful programs tend to have been driven by passionate and enlightened community members and parents, not via dictate from a school board.

Oh, my naivete. Oh, my lack of hands-on experience with real-life dual-language programs. Oh, how white privilege derails public education efforts.

It didn't take long to learn that well-administered dual-language programs taught by highly qualified bilingual teachers can truly produce students who fluently read, write and speak in two languages. But the gains are not spread out equally among participants.

Critics have pointed out that dual-language programs could position native speakers of Spanish to be exploited as a language resource by native English speakers. This, to a certain extent, is by design. However, it advantages native English speakers to potentially reap all the economic benefits of bilingualism.

Research going back to 1997 posited that native English speakers could end up benefiting more from becoming fluent in Spanish, thereby reducing Latinos' natural advantage as bilinguals in the workforce and dampening already scarce opportunities to win a job or be promoted.

Today, more research demonstrates that students of color and students from low-income families are less likely to participate in dual-language programs than white students and/or those from higher income families, inadvertently privileging native English speakers.

In their new paper, "Recognizing Whose Bilingualism? A Critical Policy Analysis of the Seal of Biliteracy," Georgetown University professors of linguistics set out to see whether maintaining a native language while acquiring fluency in a new one actually reaps social and economic rewards for the students.

"Although [dual-language programs are] often presented as benefiting both students marginalized by language, race, and social class as well as their privileged peers, we are conscious of the fact that many educational initiatives that have set out to benefit all students often reproduce the privilege some students enter school with," the researchers wrote.

They analyzed California -- an early adopter of the so-called seal of biliteracy, which certifies fluency in other-language reading, writing and speaking. They found that schools with high percentages of students of color and students from low‐income families were less likely to participate in such programs. Non-native English speakers and those who wanted to gain proficiency in a home or heritage language also faced higher obstacles to entering programs promising biliteracy.

The findings suggest that students already privileged along lines of race and class have greater access to the programs -- further advantaging them at the expense of native speakers and other students of color.

I can attest.

At least that's what I'm seeing in my own elementary school dual-language program, which consists of a few white students who are rapidly becoming literate in two languages, and whole sections of Hispanic kids who are struggling with such basics as letter sense and simple reading and writing in both English and Spanish.

And in the very best scenario, at the end of the program, regardless of whether a seal of biliteracy is attained, the white kids will be superstars whose home resources made the seal a feather in a cap, but the brown kids will still be brown, possibly have an accent and likely have lower academic scores than the white kids.

Well-meaning public policy almost always fails in the implementation phase, contorting itself to the harsh, on-the-ground realities of a community's needs. It's also rarely financed well.

This isn't to say that students who earn a seal of biliteracy -- and their school districts -- aren't to be applauded. They are; the benefits of really knowing two languages are nearly endless, even if they don't automatically translate into specific career-related economic gains.

The message is clear, however: Those who have a stake in improving academic and life success for poor and/or non-white kids cannot pin all their hopes on any one program, method or educational fad.

Until we confront the systemic white supremacy that celebrates a white person who speaks two languages and yawns when a brown one does, no seal or plaudit is going to help people of color advance.

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

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

We cannot continue to normalize hate

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- In a 2016 blog post on the word "normalization," the Merriam-Webster dictionary website described how Donald Trump's candidacy made routine what used to be outlier behavior and language.

"The 'normalization of hate,' then, is not the removal of extreme and hateful rhetoric or views to fit the mode of modern discourse, but instead the redefinition of modern discourse to allow those extreme views to be considered normal," the post observed.

More recently, a report underwritten by the immigrant-advocacy group Define American found that the reality-distortion field of the Trump administration has spread beyond the president's tweets and statements and impacted the general population through traditional media as well.

For instance, the language used in immigration reporting at four of the country's most prominent newspapers grew less tolerant from 2014 to 2018, with an uptick in the use of such dehumanizing and offensive terms as "illegal immigrant" and "alien," according to the report, which is titled "The Language of Immigration Reporting: Normalizing vs. Watchdogging in a Nativist Age."

Some people will look at those terms and see only factual words that are descriptive and are used in official government materials.

But it's hard not to consider terminology like "anchor baby," "immigrant/migrant invasion," "flood of immigrants/migrants" and the grammarian's bane, "illegals," as what they are: othering. And racist.

Define American's partnership with MIT's Media Cloud and Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society looked for denigrating terminology and phrases, including those listed above, at The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and USA Today because they are widely seen as setting the standards and tone in immigration coverage.

The analysis uncovered that:

-- All four publications showed a slight increase in stories containing at least one of the terms or phrases that used the word "illegal."

-- The increase is perhaps due solely to the expansion of immigration-related news events that have occurred during the Trump presidency. A related trend is the use of the terms in quotation marks, such as I've done here, which effectively distances the author from the usage but can still reinforce the offending words to the reader.

-- While right-leaning and center-right-leaning news outlets had the highest percentage of stories with denigrating language between 2014 to 2018, "The Washington Post consistently used denigrating terms more often than The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times or USA Today."

-- The Los Angeles Times had the fewest uses of denigrating language in immigration stories and immigrants when compared to those three other major publications as well as a selection of other national news outlets and left and center-left leaning publications.

(My guess at The Los Angeles Times' secret sauce? They have more people of color on their staff than most other publications and are in a metropolitan area in which Latinos are not just part of the fabric but also a more established part of the middle and professional classes than out East.)

There is some good news, though.

Despite what we think we know about fake news and how it goes viral, it turns out that -- at least on Facebook -- the researchers did not find evidence that stories with denigrating terms were more likely to be widely shared. Only 14% of the top 100 immigration-related stories that were shared on Facebook used denigrating terms.

That's an important data point: It backs up the idea that news stories and headlines need not be sensational in order to gain traction with readers. Or, more importantly, to deliver the clicks and views necessary to continue funding the journalism we all want and need to maintain a functioning democracy.

In the meantime, it's worth noting that newspapers are businesses and rely on readers to come back time and again.

If you don't like the language your daily media publications use when talking about immigrants, people of color or other marginalized groups, tell them.

Don't simply go elsewhere; take a moment or two to drop the editor a letter that specifies how they can adjust their tone to not insult you or your loved ones.

Try it. Newspapers intrinsically want to be fair -- and even newspaper editors know that the customer is always right.

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

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

Why public school lunches are a feminist issue

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- You'd be surprised how many books have been written about school lunches. I feel like I've read them all -- usually during my short teacher's lunchtime, cowering over a pastel-green plastic tray upon which some form of cold, semi-gelatinous institutional slop was assembled to look like food.

Last week I was primed for a conversation with Jennifer Gaddis, the author of "The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools." I had just eaten a lukewarm cheeseburger (the cheese was totally unmelted) and then moved on to the accompanying banana, since I couldn't stomach the wilted iceberg lettuce that was called "salad" or the soggy, undercooked fries that came with the "meal."

But the public-school culinary experience isn't what makes Gaddis' new book important. It is required reading for anyone who wants this part of our students' school day to be nourishing -- not only for the kids, but for the women who feed them.

"So much of the work of feeding children is gendered -- the majority of workers in food service, especially frontline food service, are women," Gaddis told me. "Whether it's happening at school or in the homes of the millions of students who take lunch from home to school, feeding students is typically done by women."

In her book, Gaddis tells us the remarkable history of the lunch program -- and its roots as not solely a social good for impoverished children, but as a time-saving convenience service for the upper-middle-class ladies who pushed for programs and initially funded them.

"People put [the school lunch program] at having started in 1946, and it's true that that's when legislation passed to create federal support for the program. But it actually took 50 years of organizing led by women who were up against school boards that were made up almost exclusively of conservative men who believed that giving poor children free food would only encourage lazy parents to become dependent on the state."

Sound familiar?

What the ladies had working in their favor, however, was the cultural movement toward cleaner food that was spurred by new scientific research on food storage and preparation methods and public health concerns from dirty and lead-infused food as described in Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle."

Like today -- when the clean eating movement is butting up against Pinterest feeds dedicated to artistically presented boxed lunches with gendered kiddie themes -- Gaddis explains that among the well-to-do there was a certain level of social pressure to send kids to school with "healthy" lunches.

But even back then, making them was a time-suck for moms. Wasn't there a better way?

Enter cheap, female labor.

"School lunch programs have never been really good, quality jobs for women, though back in the day they were considered a good job for mothers because the part-time hours aligned to their children's school schedule," Gaddis told me. "But there has always been an assumption that the work is so close to mothering -- an unpaid form of labor -- that these jobs have never been considered to need, or to offer, a living wage."

Our whole concept of what school lunch could be would have to change in order for this country to find the political will to revamp and fund more delicious, healthier, locally-sourced school lunches: ones that offer economic opportunities to everyone from farmers to cooks, to the ladies who serve the children during what is often students' favorite part of the day.

"This is something that requires investment, but it's not rocket science," Gaddis said. "Feeding children is something that we should be proud of. It should provide high-quality food and good jobs that appeal to people. But what's standing in the way of that, at least in part, are the huge industrial food companies who recognize that school districts are going to scoff at the kinds of major front-end investments required to change their food systems. So instead they offer food that has characteristics that make it seem like an acceptable substitute for fresh, local food -- chicken tenders instead of chicken nuggets. But buying 'better' mass-produced food is not the same as cooking real food, on-site."

Like many of my contemporaries, I came of age at the time when women who had spent decades making food in real kitchens were being fired from careers as cooks and rehired (at minimum wage) to unpackage and microwave food packets for kids.

And now I understand why some of them seemed so bitter.

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

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

Backlash against Castro highlights the double standard people of color are held to

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- As I was chatting with the young man ringing up my purchases at a big-box store last week, he forgot to scan the microwave in my cart. I told him that although I would love his mega corporation to give me a free appliance, I'd be paying on this day. We shared a chuckle.

Moments later, the greeter stopped me at the exit and asked to check my receipt. My husband, who is white, said to me, "What are the chances that the greeter would have checked your receipt the one time you accidentally hadn't paid for a big-ticket item?"

I glared.

My response to his naive comment was: "Only someone who rarely gets asked to validate a purchase would say that -- I almost never get out of this store without having my cart items checked against my receipts. Do you want to guess why?"

I don't usually have to play a spirited game of "Spot the White Privilege" with my husband or sons -- they've seen the disparities in how we're treated in countless situations.

It's everyone else -- those who aren't in a group that our president encourages his fellow white citizens to look upon with suspicion or plain outrage -- who needs double standards and inequities pointed out.

Here's the most annoying one of the past week: the uproar over former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro's so-called attack on former Vice President Joe Biden during last Thursday's presidential debate.

In a stunning case of projection by everyone from political commentators to "straight" news reporters, Castro was accused of ageism for questioning if Biden was backpedaling his Medicare stance. At issue was whether Biden would require those who want Medicare coverage to have to "opt in" to the plan or if they would be automatically enrolled and have to "opt out" of the program.

USA Today declared Castro's end of the back-and-forth an "attack" as did Politifact, MSNBC, The Washington Post and countless other media outlets.

Several of those stories included quotes from scandalized innocents who couldn't bear to witness a youngster "talk back" to an elder, (BEG ITAL)on a debate stage(END ITAL).

Paul Begala, who served as a senior aide to President Bill Clinton, tsk-tsked, calling Castro's questioning a "cheap shot."

Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick called the instance "unnecessary." The Democrat added: "There are differences in how the candidates view their policy choices and their policy proposals, and that is all fair game, but it doesn't have to be trivialized."

Fellow presidential candidate Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota piled on: "I just thought that 'this is not cool.' ... I thought that was so personal and so unnecessary."

Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill.

The exchange wasn't even all (BEG ITAL)that(END ITAL) heated, frankly. But when Castro uttered the words, "Are you forgetting what you said just two minutes ago?" the commentariat clutched its pearls, because it assumed ill will that Castro never explicitly voiced, and subsequently denied. "I wouldn't do it differently. That was not a personal attack," Castro told CNN the next day.

Would anyone have even blinked had former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke or South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg couched their comments similarly?

It's doubtful. So much candidate-to-candidate pushback has gone on for the past few months that most people hardly notice or care when it happens.

I'm here to cheer for the Latino backlash to the non-Latino backlash against Castro, which clearly illustrates that the moment a person of color fact-checks someone in real time, they will have projected onto them sinister intentions, unfair play and aggression.

Mayra Macías, executive director of Latino Victory Project, which has endorsed Castro and works to get Latinos elected to public office, told NBC News that Castro's role in the primary campaign has been to push the conversations deeper and hold candidates accountable. Macias noted that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has done it time and again, without scandalizing the masses, as have other candidates.

"When a brown man is calling out a prominent white man, why is there this backlash that I don't think would have happened if Sen. Sanders was the one telling Vice President Biden if he forgot?" Macias said.

The answer is clear: A double-standard against brown people.

In this country, people of color hold certain places in the collective mind. If they aren't criminals, they are subservient; glorified if they "work hard" to overcome systemic racism to scratch out a living.

Rarely are they perceived as smart, energetic and powerful.

All I can say to that is: America, get ready for your worldview to be rocked.

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

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group