The Persistent Stereotypes About Latino Workers
*So much of the perceptions about Latinos in the U.S. begins with Hollywood’s portrayals. From the article: “Latinos comprise 25 percent of ticket sales at the box office, something that Hollywood is finally noticing as the industry slowly starts to move beyond the toilet cleaner trope.” VL
By Esther Yu-Hsi Lee, Think Progress
During a live taping of The View on Tuesday, guest co-host Kelly Osbourne sparked some outrage among viewers when she stereotyped Latinos as toilet cleaners as a way to rebuke 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s incendiary remarks about Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers.
“If you kick every Latino out of this country, then who is going to be cleaning your toilet, Donald Trump?” Osbourne asked. After a swift response from viewers, including many Latinos using the Twitter hashtag “#queridakellyosbourne” (or “Dear Kelly Osbourne”), Osbourne apologized in a Facebook post, in part stating that she used a “poor choice of words.”
[pullquote][tweet_dis]“It is not wrong to be a maid, or even a Latina maid, but there is something very wrong with an American entertainment industry that continually tells Latinas that this is all they are or can ever be.” -Alisa Valdes, Latina screenwriter[/tweet_dis][/pullquote]Osbourne’s comments are not entirely unusual. Other public figures have made similar blunders while drawing a crude connection between Latinos and immigrants who work in low-wage sectors.
For example, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said in 2013, “I am not in favor of a housekeeper or a landscaper crossing the border illegally.”
And when Florida congressional candidate Alex Sink (D) was asked about immigration reform last year, she said, “We have a lot of employers over on the beaches that rely upon workers, and especially in this high-growth environment, where are you going to get people to work to clean out hotel rooms or do our landscaping?”
[pullquote]The stereotype is rooted in some reality: Latinos do disproportionately work in the agriculture and service industry. But that doesn’t mean the Latino community wants to be seen only as janitors or maids.[/pullquote]These stereotypes are also pervasive in Hollywood — so pervasive, in fact, that Eduardo Medina-Mora Icaza, the former Mexican Ambassador to the United States, once commented, “Mexicans on the silver screen are usually portrayed as poor and uneducated at best, corrupt and violent at worst.”
“It is not wrong to be a maid, or even a Latina maid, but there is something very wrong with an American entertainment industry that continually tells Latinas that this is all they are or can ever be,” Alisa Valdes, a Latina screenwriter asked to write the script for the hit show Devious Maids, wrote in an opinion piece in 2013, after that show faced widespread criticism for relying on tropes about immigrant women.
The stereotype is rooted in some reality: Latinos do disproportionately work in the agriculture and service industry. Data from the 2000 U.S. Census shows that about one-tenth of Latinos work in agriculture. That number could be higher and incomplete since undocumented immigrants also work in the industry and are unaccounted for. A Southern Poverty Law Center survey found tha tLatino immigrants are most often employed in construction, factory work, cleaning, and restaurant work. And a 2011 National Council of La Raza study found that nearly one in five employees in the accommodation industry is Latino.
But that doesn’t mean the Latino community wants to be seen only as janitors or maids, according to Mario Carrillo, the communications manager at the immigrant advocacy group United We Dream. “[tweet_dis]Latinos and immigrants take pride in all the work we do, whether it’s housekeeping or architecture, but all of us should be valued for who we are rather than what we do[/tweet_dis],” Carillo told ThinkProgress.
[pullquote]A 2012 University of Cincinnati study found that Americans’ perceptions of Latino Americans and immigrants were “strongly linked to their beliefs about the impact of immigration, especially on unemployment, schools and crime.”[/pullquote]The issue with fixating on the stereotype of Latinos who hold low-wage jobs isn’t that it’s demeaning work, but that it’s demeaning pay for the amount of physical labor involved.
[tweet_dis]Latinos are disproportionately underpaid, averaging 70 percent of the amount earned by whites[/tweet_dis], a Department of Labor analysis found. Many live in poverty. A March 2015 National Partnership report found that Latinas receive 56 cents for every dollar paid to their white male counterparts — which is especially problematic considering that 40 percent of Latinas are the primary breadwinners for their families. Between 2005 and 2009, the median wealth of Latino households fell 66 percent, an analysis using census data by Multicultural America found.Plus, crude stereotypes can be harmful to public perception. A 2012 University of Cincinnati study found that Americans’ perceptions of Latino Americans and immigrants were “strongly linked to their beliefs about the impact of immigration, especially on unemployment, schools and crime.”
But stereotypes may soon start to be chipped away in Osbourne’s industry: [tweet_dis]Latinos comprise 25 percent of ticket sales at the box office, something that Hollywood is finally noticing[/tweet_dis] as the industry slowly starts to move beyond the toilet cleaner trope.
This article was originally published in Think Progress.
[Photo by Disney | ABC Television Group/Flickr]
