Op-Ed: Latinos Fired Up Over “Economist” Chile Peppers Miss Point

*This is more than fair. We need voices like Nuño’s for a balanced, sophisticated discussion. NewsTaco took offense to the Economist cover and published a commentary explaining why there was a need for a backlash against the stereotype.  But we also posted a link to the original Economist report with no mention of the cover, becasue we felt the content was worthy of discussion as well. Nuño is right in that we need to spend more energy on the report itself – at least as much energy as we’ve spent on the cover. What do you think? VL

By Stephen Nuño, NBC News

Many Latinos erupted online with the collective groan of heartburn in response to the latest special report in The Economist about the impact Latinos are having on the national economy, as well as the cultural implications of the tectonic demographic shifts undergoing the United States.

While the British magazine’s series of articles was as broad and as comprehensive a collection of articles on Latinos one is likely to find in a European magazine – especially one with the Economist’s influential, global readership – what drew the greatest attention was the cover picture, an American flag fashioned with red chile peppers for stripes.

Media Matters responded to the cover by calling it “tone-deaf and destructive”.Roberto Lovato, founder of a Latino advocacy group called Presente.org, posted on Twitter that The Economists’ “Latino edition” was “ugly and racist”.

Adolfo Flores of Buzzkill, I mean Buzzfeed, wrote that the chile pepper cover was a “dated stereotype” that encapsulated the diverse Hispanic population.

It’s ironic that the response to the cover – focusing on how it encapsulates Latinos into a singular stereotype – was stereotypically whiny about such an insignificant subplot, rather than spurring a discussion about the substance of the articles.

Click HERE to read the full story.

[Photo courtesy of The Economist]