http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2011/04/why-amy-chua-is-dangerous-to-asian.html
Now, I'm sure whoever read that must be thinking "why is Pablo spending time criticizing problems within the Asian-American community. Why doesn't that part-Latino guy start focusing on all those problems within the US Latino community?"
That's what I'll do today!
Part 1 - Latinos need their own version of Bill Cosby
In fact, I already criticized certain segments of the US Latino community back in July 2008.
It was part of a blog post titled "The 2 political Jesses". While it started off with criticizing Jesse Helms and Jesse Jackson, I did later go off topic in Part 3 of that blog post on why the Latino community needs its own version of Bill Cosby. And no it's got nothing to do cute Jello commercials or funny family sitcoms.
That blog post here http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2008/07/2-political-jesses.html
But I'll just re-post the part where I mention why the Latino community needs its own version of Bill Cosby right below.
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The Obama speech on absent fathers remind me of Bill Cosby!
It was a few years ago that legendary African-American comedian Bill Cosby was speaking out against irresponsible parents. His speech-making tour was criticized as a "Blame the Poor Tour"!
As a person of Mexican-American ancestry, I say the Mexican-American also needs it's own version of Bill Cosby, and it also need it's own version of the so-called "Blame the Poor Tour"
Someone in the Latino community needs to speak up about the problems within the Latino community, including
1)the high school drop-out rate (highest of all racial groups in the US). Some blame the language barrier. Remember, many Asian immigrants also face the language barrier, but they don't drop-out at the same level of Latinos in the US! Even US born Latinos (who speak mostly English) drop out at high rates!
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=22692
http://www.centrohispano.org/_pdf/Latinos%20in%20highschool.pdf
2) the high level of Latino youth joining gangs. Too many of our people are wasting their potential in violent crime instead of studying and trying to successful in legit ventures! And it's mostly the ones born in the US who are involved in violent crime
3) the hate crimes committed by Latinos against African-Americans and other groups!
It is known that the Mexican Mafia has declared war against African-Americans!
It was only last year when Latino gang members in the Harbor Gateway community in Los Angeles were targeting anyone of African-American ancestry for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. They even shot an innocent 14-year-old girl. Maybe those murderers were too cowardly to fight the Bloods or Crips, so they targeted unarmed citizens
http://www.laprensa-sandiego.org/archieve/2007/march30-07/gangs.htm
http://www.infowars.com/articles/immigration/mexican_gangs_ethnic_cleansing_blacks_in_la.htm
If there's anyone who needs to be castrated, it's those racist killers associated with the Mexican Mafia!
(2011 note : I shall also mention that several Mexican gangs also have gang rivalries with Asian, Armenian and Polynesian gangs. The fact that many Mexican gangs bullied Asian immigrants is what led up to the rise of various Asian gangs in California, including but not limited to the Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian gangs.
This issue of Mexican thugs terrorizing and committing hate crimes against non-Mexicans is a serious issue that ought to be addressed by the Mexican-American community)
4) the high rate of alcoholism within the Latino community! Too many of us are involved in drunkenness, and the Latino community has the highest rate of drunk driving!
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-04-10-hispanic-dui_N.htm
According to the University of North Carolina's Highway Safety Research Center, 7.04% of Hispanic drivers involved in crashes in the state in 2005 were suspected of driving while intoxicated. That compares with 2.82% of whites in crashes and 2.29% of African-Americans, according to Eric Rodgman, a researcher at the center. Most of the Hispanics involved in crashes are young men, he says.
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We need someone in the Latino community to be blunt on those issues the same way Bill Cosby is blunt with his fellow African-Americans!
We can't blame it all on the "white man", "Anglos", or "gringos"!
Yes, we must continue to stand up to divisive bigots like Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, Michelle (Maglalang) Malkin or Rod Tam !
But too many disfunctions within ghetto Latino communities (commonly called "barrios") have nothing to do with the anti-immigration fascists!
It isn't "blame the victim", "blame the poor" or "making the white racist smile"! It's being blunt about what's going on and ringing the alarm!
Too many Latinos lives are wasting in dropping out, gang violence, committing hate crimes and drunkenness! Someone needs to say something!
Now that I'm done re-posting those thoughts, there are other self-inflicted wounds among many Latinos.
Part 2 - Cultural Adjustment of Immigrant Parents
One self-inflicted wounds is immigrant parents not understanding that raising kids in the US is NOT THE SAME THING as raising back in their homelands. (and this goes for Asians, Europeans, and other immigrant groups as well).
One example of that that really stood out was what I read in the book titled "Dream in Color: How the Sanchez Sisters Are Making History in Congress" written by Loretta and Linda Sanchez. The Sanchez sisters are both in US Congress and both were raised by Mexican immigrants.
What really got my attention was Loretta (the older sister) mentioning the parents not allowing her to attend her own high school's football games. A few years later, after Loretta moved out, she came back home to visit her parents home. But nobody was in the house. Then the parents came back and admitted they went to a high school football game with Loretta's younger brother. Loretta then said "you never let me attend football games when I was in high school". Then the mother was in tears saying "I didn't know", meaning she had no idea HOW MEGA-IMPORTANT high school sports events are in US teen culture.
When I read that, I felt like yelling to the mother "WHAT THE (beep) DO YOU MEAN 'I DIDN'T KNOW'"? YOUR DAUGHTER ALREADY HAD A HARD TIME FITTING INTO HER mostly Anglo school, AND YOU MADE IT WORSE BY NOT ALLOWING HER TO TAKE PART IN A MAJOR RITE OF PASSAGE IN the US teen culture?
All I can say is that mother is lucky Loretta has more forgiving tendencies than I do!
And I'm lucky that my dad (Mexican immigrant, just like Loretta's mom) allowed me to attend high school football games and other school events.
Immigrant parents (of any race) need to understand that their kids already have 2 strikes against them that make it hard socially in their schools1) looking different and 2) sounding different! When immigrant parents don't understand US teen culture and major rites of passages (attending football games, homecomings, proms, graduations, etc) they're making their kid's social, emotional and psychological lives A LOT HARDER THAN IT HAS TO BE! That makes the kids feel not only alienated from their school peers, it also makes them alienated from their families too! So you got a kid who's angry at their peers for being bigots AND angry at their parents for being clueless about American culture!
So Loretta's mom (and other clueless immigrant parents) can't always blame "racism" for their kid's problems. Sometimes, they have to blame themselves for not even trying to learn about what's important in American youth culture. Maybe if they stopped acting like Amy Chua and start listening to their kid's concerns, they might have a better understanding of what their kids go through!
Raising your kids in Orange County if you're a Mexican immigrant (like the Sanchez parents) mean your kids will face DIFFERENT ISSUES than you did growing up in Mexico!
Raising your kids in the USA if you're an Asian immigrant (like Chua's family) mean your kids will face DIFFERENT ISSUES than you did growing up in Asia.
And to be fair, raising kids in Hawaii if you're a parent from Montana will your kids will face DIFFERENT ISSUES than you did growing up in Montana.
While parents are older and have experiences their kids don't have yet, parents shouldn't pretend they have all the wisdom in the world. After all, your kids are growing up in a different time than you did! If you're a parent now, you grew up in a time when texting, facebook and YouTube didn't exist. But they're all a part of the culture your kids are growing up in!
And if you're from a different place than where your kids are being raised, then don't act like you know what it's like to grow up in the place your kids are growing up in now! That goes for the Sanchez family, Chua family and any parents from the continental US raising kids in Hawaii. Or Hawaii-raised parents raising kids on the continent too!
Part 3 - Latinos not immune from the Amy Chua attitude
I mentioned earlier in this blog post that even though my dad is a Mexican immigrant (just like the Sanchez parents), he did have a better understanding than the Sanchez parents about high school football games. We could talk about the local and national sports scene all day!
I have to say, coming from Mexico to Hawaii, my dad adjusted pretty well. He came from Oaxaca, a Mexican state with a large native population. He's from a place where the main cultures were the native Mexican cultures and the Spanish settler cultures. He moved to a place which is influenced by North American, Asian and Polynesian cultures. I'd say he did do a good job in learning what's important in all those cultures.
My dad can be a fun guy to be around when times are good! However, he does have a dark side. Part of it is his love of alcohol. Even though his father didn't drink, heavy drinking is accepted in Mexican society. This is a part of Mexican culture that my father got into and it's contributing to problems among Mexicans in Mexico and USA! Those problems include drunk driving and violence.
My father does get overly moody when drunk, and that did cause problems between him and other relatives. Watching how my father is when drunk makes me want to stay alcohol-free for life!
My dad also did have some AmyChua like tendencies. And I do think some of those tendencies were something he learned growing up in Mexico, and those tendencies did strain relations between me and him. He grew with a military father, so I think he was trained to think in terms of ranks and blind obedience. It is this tendency of "I can talk mean to you and you better be submissive". In that culture, toughness is measured by how well you take crap from others. That's different from the USA culture, where toughness means you don't take crap from others.
My father had AmyChua like impatience when teaching new skills. While that tendency had occasionally popped up various times, it was at its worst when he attempted to teach me how to drive. The driving lesson took place in an isolated area, so we were in no danger of running over pedestrians or crashing other cars. Of course, when learning new skills, you will make some errors But my father made it worse by using vicious insults when I made mistakes in that driving lesson. I'm trying my best to learn a new skill, and you're insulting me? He told me to "not answer back". Later, as I attempted to turn the corner, I accidentally crashed his truck, and more profanities and insults came out of my father's mouth! All this in my 1st and only driving lesson.
[in the following years, my dad crashed the same part of his truck multiple times! Karma happens]
From that moment on, I started to hate my father. While Amy Chua believes toughness is "taking crap from others with total submissiveness", I had other ideas. I had violent revenge fantasies that would've made Eminem songs look tame! I wished I was brave as Latrell Sprewell was when he choked his verbally abusive coach! To me, that was real toughness! That was a real man!
Or just be like the Menendez brothers, 2 Latino boys who won't take crap from their parents!
Well, I was too scared of being in jail, but I knew sooner or later I would explode! Another argument with my father happened 2 years later, and I threw my hands up in the air in a manner usually interpreted as "come on, let's fight"! My dad just yelled "in this house, I am the law", then walked away!
My mother asked "are you challenging your dad?", then I reminded her about that driving lesson and the time she got a TRO on him a few years before that! She then said "I didn't know you are this angry?" What the (beep) you mean"I didn't know you are this angry?" How did you expect me to feel about all this? I was angry at my mom for being too submissive to my dad, being too accepting of his verbal abuse to her and me! I told her all that!
I was already angry about an unrelated issue (their move to a suburban home I've mentioned in http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2010/10/my-first-3-decades-of-life.html look under the section From the Hood to the Suburbs) and I was a ticking time-bomb ready to explode. My school peers didn't know this, because I don't talk to my peers about personal problems.
My mom finally stood up to my dad and told him that his ways were hurting us! Eventually, I moved out of that home and moved to my grandma's home!
One of my brothers made excuses for my father and expected me to take the crap in silence! I accused him of "ass kissing". I also think that "ass-kiss" mentality is what made Latin America (as well as Chua's ancestral lands) vulnerable to dictatorships. After all, it's easier to be a dictator if your people have a submissive mentality.
That brother apologized a few years later for his "take crap from others" attitude. My father also toned down his act in the last decade, though we still don't always see things the same way!
Part 4- Conclusion
Reading Amy Chua and her lame excuses inspired me to write a letter to my father about how I truly felt about him. I also left the door open in case he is willing to meet with a trained professional about this issue. He has yet to take that offer.
My dad's negative tendencies are an example of too many Latinos not getting rid of bad habits that set their homelands backwards for a long time. While Latin America was a victim of Spanish and Portuguese conquest and oppression, most of those countries have been independent for about 2 centuries already! They had more than enough time to get their act together. (though we do have to congratulate Brazil and Chile for being rising economic powers)
Latinos in the US had great influence in our national culture, whether it is food, music, or arts. They had worked our farms, built our buildings, manufactured our products, educated our children, heal us when we're sick, and many put their lives on the line fighting for our nation! This is the stuff that has been overlooked by anti-immigration fanatics who only want to scare us about exaggarrated illegal alien crime waves, burdens on social services or more signs in Spanish!
But the Latino community shouldn't use the anti-immigration fanatics as an excuse to be silent on our many problems, some of them self-inflicted. There's too much gang violence, alcoholism, abusive families, high school dropouts and rivalries with other ethnic groups. Improving these situations won't be done by blaming "white society." Real change must come from within! This was what Bill Cosby was talking about in regards to the African-American community, and this is the message needed to be spread within the US Latino community too!
As for as I'm concerned, while I do have major respect for Latin American culture, I am more of a U.S. American when it comes to anti-authoritarian mindset! We don't take crap from anyone, not even our relatives! From the Founding Fathers to the Civil Rights Movement, our nation is about demanding respect!
And it's going worldwide, as we have seen in Tunisia and Egypt this year! And we can hope to see it soon in Cuba and Venezuela in the near future.
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PS:
There's nothing worse than to be mean to someone who is still learning new skills!
To use vicious insults on someone learning a new skill is about as brave horrible as someone who starts fights with the physically disabled! That person learning a new skill already feels bad, shy and insecure about not being good at that skill! This is the time you need to be the most calm and patient person in the world.
If you can be calm and patient with that person, that person will always love and honor you forever! That's how I feel about my favorite teachers and supervisors! And that's how I hope my students will feel about me too!
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PS #2 - yes, I put the same exact message as the PS in 2 previous blog post, because it deals with my #1 problem with people like Amy Chua and my dad!
