*Bill Valdez thinks all presidential candidates (read here Donald Trump) should be required to watch I Love Lucy reruns, where Latinos aren’t depicted wearing sombreros, sleeping under a cactus. VL
By Bill Valdez, NewsTaco (4 minute read)
At a time when Washington, DC was still segregated and people of color were being lynched in the South, my dark skinned Mexican-American father married my light skinned Pennsylvania farm girl mother shortly after World War II in DC.
Amazingly for the time, no race riots occurred and my father wasn’t lynched.
Instead, my mother’s family warmly embraced my father, despite the fact that my mother remembered a KKK cross burning in her Western Pennsylvania hometown when she was 7-years-old.
Pete and Donna Valdez
How could this marriage of white and dark have taken place during an era when Jim Crowe laws and Operation Wetback were the norm in our country?
A lesson for Donald Trump
I think a convergence of two factors explains it and provides some lessons for all of us at a time when Donald Trump is demonizing various ethnic groups and terrorism threats are encouraging nativist behavior, such as building a wall or banning all Muslims from the U.S.
The first reason was that my father had the great good fortune to be born with an “exotic” look.
As a young Air Force sergeant, he was stationed in Hawaii and everyone thought he was Polynesian. Towards the end of his Air Force career he was stationed in the Philippines and people thought he was Filipino. He was fond of recalling a meeting with Imelda Marcos, who remarked that she would have never guessed he wasn’t born Filipino.
In the latter stages of his life, he grew a beard and was a dead ringer for Saddam Hussein, which would have horrified him, but thankfully he was in the final stages of Alzheimer’s and didn’t know any better.
A genetic stew, an “exotic” look
But my father was born in Brownsville, Texas in the 1920s and was Mexican-American. His grandmother, Mama Tacha, was born on the plains of Texas in the mid-1800s and was 100% Caddo Indian. His mother was short and dark, while his father was light skinned and tall. That genetic stew gave him the exotic look that served him so well his entire life.
Pete Valdez and Mama Tacha
Why would I say that? Because he wasn’t the victim of a stereotyped view of Mexican-Americans that folks like Donald “Murders and Rapists” Trump continue to promulgate to this day.
For those with short memories, recall that Operation Wetback began in May 1954 at a time my father was in Hawaii and was being compared to Hawaiians. If he had still been living in Brownsville, he might have witnessed some of his relatives being deported, including his grandmother Mama Tacha, who had no citizenship papers because she had no birth certificate. Fortunately, that didn’t happen, but it easily could have.
Cuba and Desi were “exotic” for most Americans and people like my father benefited from that association.
Geography matters when it comes to race relations
The second reason centers on geography: my father wasn’t stationed in the Southwest until late in his career. We traveled the world and none of his five kids were ever exposed to the kind of racism and exclusion that is routine in Texas and other parts of the Southwest. That point was driven home to us Air Force brats when we were stationed in Clovis, New Mexico and suddenly discovered that we were Mexican-American, not Americans.
We learned what many people of color have learned from the day they were born: geography matters when it comes to race relations. Growing up in the barrios of South Los Angeles is a fundamentally different experience than that of a kid raised in the Air Force who never lived in the Southwest.
This helps explain why Millennials and other young urban professionals are so horrified by The Donald.
Most grew up in diverse neighborhoods and sat in classrooms next to the sons and daughters of reputed rapists and murderers. They know from their own experience that what The Donald says about race relations is not only medieval thinking, it’s dangerous to a healthy society.
Imagine an America in 2016 where we had cultural role models like Lucy and Desi.
I was reminded of the dangers of this kind of stereotyping by a NewsTaco reference to Desi Arnaz, who had a strong accent and was married to redheaded and light skinned Lucille Ball in the 1950s. Their show, “I Love Lucy,” remains a cultural landmark to this day.
Cuba and Desi were “exotic” for most Americans and people like my father benefited from that association. When he and my mother met in DC in the 1940s, Desi and Cuban music and culture were all the rage, so it was natural that my father would not only be accepted, but was a hot commodity given his dashing exotic look and love of romance and partying.
We don’t sleep under a sombrero
As Desi and Lucy’s daughter said, “Inadvertently (Desi) introduced Latinos to America in such a compatible way. [He introduced] the music, and showed we’re not scary and we don’t all sleep under a sombrero, [that] we can be intelligent, funny, loving parents, and working people, and that’s a big deal.”
Imagine an America in 2016 where we had cultural role models like Lucy and Desi who helped celebrate what is good about our many different cultures rather than using them to divide us? Seems like it would be a better place.
Maybe it’s time to make “I Love Lucy” required viewing for all Presidential candidates.
Bill Valdez has family roots in Brownsville, Texas, was a newspaper reporter/editor in Austin, Texas in the 1980s, and has extensive experience in Washington, DC policy circles, including serving in the Clinton White House and at the U.S. Department of Energy. He currently is a business consultant, university lecturer, and a proud grandfather.
[Photo by Lucy_Fan/Flickr]
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