PRESIDENT Obama got his mouth busted last Friday and that's cool. Not in the sense that I'm glad the president got hurt, of course - I mean it's cool because we have a hard-core athlete in the Oval Office.
The elbow shot heard `round the world happened Friday afternoon, a couple of hours into a basketball game where Obama was setting about the task of working off his portion of the six different pies served at his White House Thanksgiving the day before. The five-on-five included Obama's nephew Avery Robinson, his ubiquitous assistant Reggie Love, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and the now infamous Rey Decerega, the director of programs for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. In the last of five games, Decerega's elbow hit Obama, who was playing defense, in the mouth, causing the lower-lip cut that required 12 small stitches.
The irony that our President got smacked down on his home court by a Latino was not lost on any of the people who reacted to my Tweet by imagining a symbolic nudge for Obama to pay more than just lip service to comprehensive immigration law reform.
Others saw it as the latest in a string of domestic and international "shellackings" he has suffered. News website comment boards lit up with sentiments ranging from snarky disappointment that he didn't get his entire mouth stitched shut to those inflamed that the man dared take some time to play basketball before facing the tumult in the Koreas and the remainder of Congress' lame-duck session.
I, on the other hand, am psyched that we have an athlete in the White House who isn't scared to compete hard and occasionally get smacked.
Lest anyone think Obama is charting new territory as a president getting razzed for being a "wuss," as he's been described on many comment sections, let's not forget January 2002 when then-President George W. Bush was mercilessly skewered after his athletically low pulse combined with a pretzel stuck in his throat caused a fainting spell that gave him a bruised cheek and a fat lip.
Few appreciated that the freak accident reflected an ultra-healthy man's cardiovascular system rather than someone prone to passing out. Many thought out loud: What, exactly, is the point of being so darned healthy if you're going to get a shiner for your efforts? I heard those same words last weekend, but you don't have to live in the White House to know that exercising your body is worth the trouble.
Forget about any perceived symbolism or the politics of the day. There's no better role model for a country plagued by life-shortening physical inactivity than a president who's not afraid to get sweaty and even bloodied as a result of strenuous exercise.
Obama may have lost Friday's last game, but he really scored by setting a good example for a nation of couch potatoes: Playing hard is rewarding despite the peril of a few scrapes.
You may have heard that mayoral candidate Gery Chico’s education agenda includes a proposal that the Chicago Public Schools provide each student with a laptop to use in class and at home.
I wondered how long it would take one of the candidates to propose this. It sounds really good and might even be relatively affordable, depending on which computer maker steps up to the plate with a jaw-dropping volume discount. Chicago is, after all, the third-largest school district in the country.
Chico won’t be the only mayoral candidate to jump on the laptop bandwagon, and he’s certainly not the first local politician to suggest laptops are the definitive tool of empowerment for our schoolchildren.
In the spring of 2006, then-Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn floated a proposal to equip 13,000 public school seventh-graders and their teachers with laptop computers; he called them the “textbooks of the 21st century.”
I was still working as a teacher then, but I wrote a Sun-Times guest column pointing out what should still be obvious to all: The major factor in the success of students is a low student-to-teacher ratio. Knowing that, any money Illinois can scrape together to pay for efforts to improve student achievement should be spent on getting more well-trained teachers into classrooms so students don’t have to be packed together like sardines. It shouldn’t be spent on silver bullets.
And four years later, I’d still say laptops are no silver bullet.
Ofer Malamud, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago, co-authored a study released last January that investigated educational outcomes after low-income families received vouchers to help them buy computers. He and Cristian Pop-Eleches of Columbia University found that while students gained improved computer skills — a benefit that should not be undervalued — there was no significant improvement in grades. The students with the computers, in fact, earned lower grades on average in three key math and language subjects.
Why? Because at home — regardless of Internet connectivity — the kids used the equipment to play games. Duh.
Likewise, a Duke University paper published last June looked at the arrival of broadband service in North Carolina between 2000 and 2005 and found that, in that time, middle school students’ math and reading test scores dropped. One explanation, the researchers said, was the kids’ new access to Web-based entertainment.
This is not to denigrate Chico’s education agenda, which includes considerably more than just a call for laptop computers, nor is it to say that computers necessarily have no place in a classroom. Dueling studies contradict each other.
I can point to school districts across the country that sing the praises of their send-a-laptop-home programs, but I can just as easily point to school districts in Liverpool, N.Y., Richmond, Va., Costa Mesa, Calif. and Broward County, Fla., that have reported laptop-related cheating, student hacking and exorbitant repair costs accompanied by little or no academic gains.
The important thing to remember is this: While a laptop computer can be a powerfully useful tool of education, it’s not the superman schools have been waiting for to swoop in and rescue struggling students. You can’t just slide a laptop across a student’s desk and assume that his or her intellectual curiosity will save the day.
With realistic expectations, good planning and loads of cash for training, a take-home laptop program could be a success. Before getting them into kids’ hands there would have to be a tremendous amount of training for teachers who, if not flat-out technophobic, are unfamiliar with how to teach classes that integrate laptops. You’d also need a robust outreach plan for parents to make sure they know how to drive positive academic results.
To properly prepare for life in the real world, students need as much access to computers as possible — for academic use. But nobody should assume the benefits of a laptop in every backpack automatically outweigh the costs.
Are Latinos leaderless? According to a recent bilingual survey, three-fourths of Latinos could not name a national leader. I say it's no big deal. And apparently a lot of other Latinos agree with me.
The Pew Hispanic Center's report – "National Latino Leader? The Job Is Open" – got little if any notice in the mainstream media, most likely, I assumed, because it said what I thought was an obvious fact. Pew asked Hispanic adults to name "the most important Latino leader in the country today." Sixty-four percent said they didn't know, and 10 percent said "no one."
Of the 26 percent who did have an answer, the responses were scattershot: politicians such as outgoing New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson; organizational leaders such as Janet Murguia , president of the National Council of La Raza; Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor ; Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois; Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa ; and Univision anchor Jorge Ramos.
When Latinos discussed the findings on social networking sites and blogs – the place Hispanics go to read and write about themselves – it buoyed my spirits.
"I actually see this as a positive thing," said Cristina Lopez, president of the National Hispana Leadership Institute, an organization dedicated to developing Latina leaders. "The great thing is that our community is so large and diverse that we have so very many leaders."
And not to criticize the Pew Hispanic Center – it does a great job of putting its finger on the pulse of Latino issues in America – but let's flip this a little. As many bloggers noted, say your phone rings one evening and the person on the other end of the line asks: "Name the most important white leader in the country today." Or this one: "Name the most important female leader in the country today."
My guess is that you'd be overwhelmed by the vagueness of the questions. But more importantly, even if 64 percent of Latinos didn't name a national leader, it does not mean Hispanic leaders aren't making things happen. Just look at the midterm elections where Hispanics won two governorships and one U.S. Senate seat.
Another item in the report noted that Latinos don't have a champion such as Susan B. Anthony or Martin Luther King Jr. The 48 million Latinos who comprise the nation's largest minority are not an oppressed class forced to set aside such factors as diverse as native country, preferred language or citizenship status in order to back one leader pushing a single issue.
And don't let immigration reform cloud this thought. Recall that last month a Pew survey of registered Latino voters found that it came in fifth after education, jobs, health care and the federal budget deficit as a top issue of concern.
Like me and the Latino Twitterati and bloggers who scoffed at the Pew report, Juan Andrade, president of the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute, thinks the entire premise of Latinos lacking a singular leader is strange. "You'd have to live your whole life under a rock to believe that there is such a person in the white or black or Latino community – that person does not exist," Andrade told me. "Latinos will always transcend their differences for issues that matter, but a 'national leader' for all Hispanics? That just isn't going to happen."
That's not a problem. All around us are Hispanic teachers, librarians, lawyers, activists, police officers, executives, doctors and many others making strides in their work. Any perceived lack of power for not having a "national" Latino leader will continue to be overshadowed by these role models who address the issues that challenge Hispanics – and all Americans – every day.
Esther Cepeda may be contacted at estherjcepeda@washpost.com.
I was on a panel on covering Latino education issues in mainstream media last week when an audience member criticized this newspaper’s recent story on Latino kids’ relatively low preschool attendance rates.
“Your coverage put the blame on parents when in reality our schools are overcrowded and we have no access to preschool programs,” an attendee said passionately.
She was referring to an article that appeared in the Sun-Times last Tuesday under the headline “Preschool attendance lags among Latino children.” The deck headline felt like a slap in the face to me, too: “Culture, language gap may be to blame, experts say.”
Those who did not flip the page with a dismissive, “Yeah, tell me something I don’t know” learned these facts from a report by University of California-Berkeley professors: Only about 35 percent of Illinois’ Latino 4-year-olds attended some type of preschool, compared with 66 percent of white children, 63 percent of Asian and 54 percent of African-American children. The U.S. average is 48 percent.
The news story focused on explanatory factors mentioned in the report, and by the lead researcher in an interview, such as that Latina moms are less likely to have attended college and less likely to have read to their children than their black or white peers. Also, that the custom of sending young children to preschool has not yet taken hold in Latino households — no surprise given that three generations typically reside together. Furthermore, the story said the report noted that Hispanic families might face barriers such as the inability to confidently communicate in English or fears about’ legal status.
Any or all of these help produce this result: In Illinois, Hispanic children start kindergarten, on average, five months behind white children and one or two months behind African-American children.
But the news story didn’t include another factor that keeps Latino children out of preschool: There are far fewer preschool centers in Latino neighborhoods than in white and African-American neighborhoods. This lack of supply contributes to gaps in early learning even before kids start kindergarten.
Lest you be left with the outrageous impression that Latino parents are too backward, too fearful of immigration agents and too unsavvy to maneuver the school system, which offers almost every bit of information in Spanish, here’s what Marta Moya-Leang, director of CPS’ Belmont-Cragin Early Childhood Center has to say about preschool access:
“I have 280 students in our center and there is simply not enough space,” Moya-Leang told me. “There’s no funding to expand because it’s not a mandated program, and we don’t actively promote the program in the community because since the day we opened we’ve had waiting lists to get kids into the school.” Two hundred children are waiting for the next opening.
“Our school runs three shifts from 8:30 in the morning to 6 p.m. at night, and let me tell you that the families who find a way to get their toddlers to a 3 p.m. start time, coming through dark and cold, are committed to those kids’ education,” she said.
There is no question that the Latino community faces serious roadblocks, but Hispanics are known to be unusually reverent of education as a path to economic empowerment. I have no doubt that as recent immigrants are acculturated to understanding that preschool is an important first step in the education process, this will change. If enough preschool classes are made available to meet the demand, that is.
In his closing remarks to the assemblage, study author Bruce Fuller, of the University of California-Berkeley, responded to the crowd’s concerns about how their culture was portrayed by sharing this great advice: “Culture is always in motion, there’s nothing fixed about it — values, beliefs and commitments change. We need to get beyond these labels.”
CHICAGO — Everyone knows that Thanksgiving is all about giving thanks for the food. But in contrast to millions of other Americans, I will not be gorging myself on my favorite family comfort food, and for that I thank the great American melting pot.
Growing up in a tri-generational, half-Ecuadorean, half-Mexican household, my two cousins and I endured the annual ritual of being barred from the kitchen for two days before Thanksgiving. We were then starved all turkey day until the feast was laid out at 6 p.m.
By the time the blessings were said, our low blood sugar made the spread of "special occasion food" seem miraculous. The corn tortilla chips and fresh pico de gallo, which most restaurants today call salsa, were laid out as an introduction to the turkey, which was filled with relleno, a stuffing made of a combination of ground beef, green peppers and chopped boiled eggs. Fresh bread was laid alongside my mother's ensalada de papas, a potato salad featuring more chopped boiled eggs and absolutely zero yellow mustard. My grandmother's signature remolachas, a mixture of chopped bright purple beets, avocados, shredded lettuce and green peas, always had a special place next to the white rice on the plate. Sure it looked gross, but it was tasty.
The highlight of the meal for us kids was dessert. The empanadas — turnovers gloriously rolled from special corn flour dough, stuffed with a near-mystical concoction of egg yolks, soft cheese and sugar, then fried crispy-dark in lard and corn oil — took hours to prepare. That's why they only made an appearance at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and were guarded like gold in the hours leading up to dinner. The cheery mix of cumbia, merengue and salsa music playing in the background provided the festive air. I think back on it as though it were heaven.
Fast forward 20 or so years. This week I'll be traveling south 400 miles to join my absolutely delightful in-laws for our 13th Thanksgiving Day together. Each of the last 10 or so has been better than the last. On the ride there I no longer say bordering-on-rude things to my husband such as: "Croutons? I'll never understand why people stuff their turkeys with Stove Top."
During the meal, I avoid the "cranberry sauce" that is served room temperature and sliced still in the metal can's tube shape. And I give thanks on my waistline's behalf that I never acquired a taste for the ubiquitous pumpkin pie. Instead, I get to concentrate fully on conversations, baby gurglings and visiting all the relatives we won't get to see again until summer.
At these moments, I'm not torn at all. It is actually a joy to watch my husband delight in his beloved dumplings and gravy-soaked mashed potatoes. I love knowing that our two sons get to experience a traditional, all-American Thanksgiving complete with the afternoon carbohydrate-induced stupor and dinner-time repeat.
It's true that I might not feel this way if we didn't spend Spanish-flecked Christmases with my family, but even this is worlds apart from my childhood days. Like me, my cousins married non-Hispanics and today we celebrate what I lovingly call our "cultural convergence Christmas."
The Spanish music has been replaced by the TV blaring "Home Alone" — our generation's "It's a Wonderful Life." Three tongues (Spanish, Tagalog and English) are spoken freely — four if you include the kids' video game-speak, which none of the adults understand. My mom still makes the potato salad and my aunt the empanadas, though, ironically, none of our six kiddies will touch them.
My cousins' African American and Filipino wives bless our table with their scrumptious pancit noodles, egg rolls and spare ribs. Before we eat, my aunt gives the holiday blessing, which includes gratitude for our life here and remembrances for family members "back home," as she has done since before I was born.
Just like at my husband's family gatherings, we gossip, chat about football, compare games on our smart phones, and talk about work. In those moments the great melting pot bubbles all our past traditions into today's American experience.
BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group (11/11/10)
CHICAGO -- Happy Meals in San Francisco are about to become a little less happy, and my smile has been super-sized.
Not because I don't love Happy Meals. On the contrary, I buy them for myself as a treat because as an over-30 adult who exercises a minimum of five times a week, my daily intake limits allow me the 525 calories of the cheeseburger, small fries, three packets of ketchup and kid-sized diet drink packed in the delightfully petite carton.
If I were a 6-year-old boy of average weight who is moderately active, that might be OK, too, unless mom or dad added low-fat milk or succumbed to pleas for chocolate milk, regular soda or a shake. Then you're looking at 100 to 400 more calories -- or well over half that child's 1,700-per-day calorie needs -- in that one happy little meal.
And even that wouldn't be so bad if trips to fast-food joints were a rare, once-in-a-while occurrence as many who were around when McDonald's first became nationally popular in the late 1950s might recall. But today high-fat, high-salt, high-sugar fast-food meals and their fun, highly collectible, much advertised movie-themed toys are a staple of adults' and children's food routines.
And this is where a child's desire for a fun treat, a parent's desire to cheaply feed and simultaneously entertain their kids, and a profound ignorance of the basic tenets of nutrition intersect to fuel the obesity epidemic in this country.
It is an epidemic that is estimated to put a $168 billion annual burden on health care costs, according to a recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Obesity was recently classified as a national security threat by a group of retired generals in a report titled "Too Fat to Fight," which found that 27 percent of all young adults are too overweight to serve in the military. It's the leading medical reason for rejection from the armed forces.
Which brings us back to San Francisco's new rules. Supervisors there just voted to ban toy giveaways in any fast-food meals where the calories total more than 600, there are more than 640 milligrams of sodium and more than 35 percent of calories come from fat.
"Nanny state" you say? Sure, a lot of people are burning up newspaper website comment sections with notes such as "Parents should be in charge of kids' diets, not the government" and "It's parents' obligation to monitor the food their kids are eating."
But understand one thing clearly: Parents cannot make wise decisions about their own or their child's eating habits when they rarely possess even the most rudimentary grasp on what it means to eat all kinds of food as part of a balanced diet. We simply don't know how much food our bodies need and what the healthiest -- and the worst -- foods are.
A recent USA Today survey found that 63 percent of respondents didn't know how many calories they should consume in a day to maintain their current weight and another 25 percent couldn't even guess. Only 12 percent knew how many calories their bodies need to live healthfully. How are they going to know how many calories their children need daily?
The only reason I'm an amateur dietician is because as a Hispanic with several Type 2 diabetics in my family, I watch what I eat closely. But most people rely on their doctors to counsel them on nutrition-related topics, and some docs aren't talking. According to researchers at Duke University Medical Centers, nearly one-third of doctors in a recent study were observed never broaching the topics of healthy weight with their patients. Those who did spent an average of just 3 1/2 minutes on this life-sustaining topic, not terribly impactful.
San Francisco has not taken a stand against parental choice or even against fast food. The city is trying to educate parents so they understand the nutritional value of what kids are gobbling while they play with their toy. The rest of the country should follow its example, if for no other reason than to keep nutrition on the tip of everyone's tongue.
Esther J. Cepeda 's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com.
In the slicing and dicing of the electorate by age, gender, race, ethnicity, geography, income, political affiliation, marital status, education level and propensity to vote, one type of engaged -- probably disillusioned -- voter tends to slip through the cracks:
Single moms.
The very term "single mom" conjures up an array of stereotypes that generally revolve around the twin anchors of under-education and a reliance on welfare benefits. But single moms are an educated, hardworking, aspirational and rapidly growing part of our community -- and they need the time and attention of our elected officials.
"Candidates should really think about what's most important to single moms -- quality child care and education for our kids and for us. That would really help us focus on making our lives better and help us make our whole community better," says Emily Carrazco, a divorced 34-year-old who everyday wakes and feeds her 7-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son, drops them off at two different schools, then makes to her way to the Loop for a full workday.
Carrazco told me her experiences as a single mom during a short break in her hectic day as an accounts payable clerk.
This was two days after the Eleanor Foundation, a Chicago organization that funds economic security programs for households headed by working moms, released a report shattering old inner-city single mom stereotypes.
According to the report, "Changing Conditions in a Changing World," women-led households have increased 9.77 percent -- more than double the rate of "traditional" households in the Chicago region since 2000.
The number of households headed by single working mothers earning lower-to-moderate incomes grew 18.5 percent between 2000 and 2008, with significant increases in the suburbs, resulting in a third of a million women-led households in the Chicago region.
According to the report, which used 2008 census data, these women are increasingly Hispanic and educated. The percentage of women with less education than high school declined to 18 percent of the total population of women studied, while the percentage of women with a college degree or higher degree increased to 13.
They also work hard for their money. Strikingly opposite the stereotype of the freeloading single mom, 78 percent of these women were employed and only 7 percent were unemployed -- and reported that they were actively looking for work -- representing a 10 percent drop in unemployment in this group since 2000. Of the single moms with a job, 79 percent worked more than 35 hours a week and only 6 percent received any public assistance in the 12 months before the survey.
"It's rough when we're viewed as on welfare, not pulling our own weight," Carrazco says. "I really have to do work of two people, and it's hard to make ends meet. I don't have access to a lot of assistance programs because I don't make a large enough income to live comfortably month to month and I don't make a low enough income to qualify for affordable housing, foods stamps or free childcare. It is the struggle we face day to day."
Carrazco's challenges are magnified by city living. Unlike most suburban single moms, Carrazco deals with two separate private schools for her children because she doesn't want her kids going to the low-performing public schools. Because she has to drive her kids, she can't use public transportation and ends up paying outrageous downtown parking fees, reducing her limited funds even more.
Like other single moms, Carrazco says she has high hopes for Tuesday's election.
"What I'd most like the elected candidates to do is really think what we go through," she says. "Forget about what's politically correct or what others would like to hear and really think about how they'd handle their lives with the challenges single moms face. Would their views be different. Would they run their offices differently? I would hope so."
A little over a year ago, I wrote a column headlined "Recovery? Worst ahead for some," pointing out the green shoots that were, at that time, emerging in the economy.
Christy Romer, then on the President's Council of Economic Advisers, had just reported that 1.1 million jobs were added in the third quarter of 2009, 21,000 Oprah fans had swarmed the Magnificent Mile, and Steve Jobs had just introduced an iPod equipped with a video camera and radio tuner.
The clouds seemed like they would soon part.
But in that same column, I quoted Terry Mazany, president and chief executive officer of the Chicago Community Trust, who was the voice of cold reality.
"Nationally, there's talk of the green shoots of an economic recovery, but we know that in a three-year cycle, the pain of 2009 will prove to have been the easiest," Mazany said back then.
I called Mazany a few days ago, after the Chronicle of Philanthropy reported that donations to the nation's biggest charities dropped 11 percent last year, the worst decline in the two decades since the Chronicle started its "Philanthropy 400," which ranks organizations that raise the most money from private sources. The drop in contributions was nearly four times as great as the next-biggest annual decrease -- 2.8 percent in 2001 -- when charities similarly struggled to raise money from recession-battered donors.
"If you recall, a year ago I told you this would happen because foundation funding, for the most part, experiences a lag effect, and we knew that in 2010, 2011, 2012, we'd continue to see reduced foundation grant-making," Mazany said. "There is a compounding factor -- we are just now starting to experience the pain of the state budget cuts. Up until Sept. 30, when federal funding officially ended through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the stimulus artificially masked the state budget's underlying weakness, and the impact is now twice as great."
At an early October panel discussion on the issues Chicago's minorities should ask political candidates, I and other attendees got an earful about exactly what havoc the state budget mess is wreaking on those who have been slammed the worst by this recession's long tail.
Amy Rynell, of the Social Impact Research Center at the Heartland Alliance, put the need in perspective. "According to our most recent census numbers, one in every five people in Chicago are living in poverty and one in every 10 are living in extreme poverty," she said, emphasizing that those hit worst are minorities.
A report released by the Pew Research Center just last week measured the rates at which different groups lost financial ground. They found it to be 50 percent of all whites, 66 percent of blacks and 70 percent of Latinos.
Sylvia Puente, executive director of the Latino Policy Forum, told the crowd at the panel discussion: "The budget crisis is having a devastating impact on the Latino community and the small, grass-roots, nonprofit community organizations, who were struggling before the crisis hit. They're giving up a lot just to stay open and continue providing services."
While there are no simple answers to how to keep the safety net from continuing to fray, Mazany stepped away from his self-described role as Mr. Doom and Gloom to offer a few silver linings. Because of the belt-tightening, he predicted, organizations will become more innovative to make the most of their resources and rely less on public dollars.
And, he said, the Chicago Community Trust will again this year offer a Unity Challenge Fund, which fills budget gaps for organizations caught in the state reimbursement molasses.
"Though most of us are saving everything we've got because of the uncertainty of the times, individual contributions do remain strong," Mazany said. "And we continue to stress to individuals who haven't lost their jobs to please consider donations to those living in poverty and are the most vulnerable."
CHICAGO -- When the Centers for Disease Control this month released its first official compilation of life expectancy for U.S. Latinos, the headlines were dramatic: On average, Hispanics outlive whites by 2.5 years and blacks by 7.7 years.
The study recast a spotlight on the "Latino health paradox" -- that Latinos in the U.S. tend to be healthier than the average population despite their generally low socioeconomic status and barriers to education. The CDC also released data showing that Hispanic males are three times more likely to have HIV than white males, and Hispanic females are a whopping five times likelier than white females, yet they inexplicably live longer than HIV-positive whites.
The breadth of the paradox has been disputed, but a 2007 study by the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute looked at mental health, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, asthma and overall health. Among these, the Latino health paradox definitively existed for mental health issues, asthma and high blood pressure.
Many theories about the paradox abound. Some say the very Latino immigrants who chose to move to the U.S. are the heartiest -- and the most likely to return to their native countries to die. Others point to the strong friend and family networks that are crucial to good health for anyone.
But here’s the important point: The paradox doesn’t last. The Tomas Rivera study also measured the effects of acculturation. It found that "Latinos are healthier ... when they first arrive in the United States, however, they become less healthy after acculturation."
This has been proved time and again. If you look at statistics on the frequency of alcohol and tobacco abuse, illegal drug use, obesity and obesity-related illnesses and teen pregnancy in the Latino community, U.S.-born Hispanics are worse off than the foreign born.
This is a five-alarm warning about the general state of American health. If you look at the CDC’s numbers, once you take out the Latino figures -- skewed by the fact the Latino population in the country is becoming more and more U.S.-born -- life expectancies declined.
The new life expectancy report -- and its implications -- comes as no surprise to Hector Castro, the director of the Beth Israel Latino Health Institute in New York and founding partner of Itzamna Medical Center, a Manhattan practice dedicated to eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in health care.
"We know that when Latinos come to America, diabetes and hypertension all increase," Castro says. "People say Latinos have health challenges because they’re not educated, have lower incomes, poor access to health care, linguistic challenges, but their health issues are directly related to the adoption of the American lifestyle."
More to the point, Castro says this is definitely not a minority/majority or an income-level issue. "The health care system is just not doing a great job in general, and this is just amplified in the minority community." He touched on patients’ inability to access specialized care and navigate medical and health insurance systems, but then brought our conversation back to basics.
"I just read a study that found that of all the Americans getting annual checkups, only 60 percent got what they needed. Think about it -- the last time you went to the doctor, did he look in your eyes? In your ears, your nose? At your skin? Did you get offered a pap smear? Doctors aren’t really examining patients thoroughly," he said.
Castro also cited the 2007 Commonwealth Fund ranking of six affluent countries’ health care systems that found U.S. care ranks last or next-to-last in quality, access, efficiency, equity and healthy lives. On top of it all, the U.S. spends roughly double on health care per person and as a percentage of gross domestic product as does Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand or the United Kingdom.
While the "Latino paradox" is intriguing, it tells us more about mainstream America than about the fastest growing minority in the U.S. And it points to a raft of health care issues we all need to address so the entire country can enjoy longer, healthier lives.
Esther J. Cepeda 's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com.
CHICAGO -- Appearances are important in most situations, but probably none more so than when the president of the United States goes on a foreign junket.
There is tremendous pressure to show an appreciation of the landscape and culture, and demonstrate willingness to work ever closer together -- all while upholding the gravitas, the very American-ness of the office of the president in an international spotlight.
So is it any wonder that, according to The New York Times, the spin doctors at the White House decided to take a pass on visiting India’s Golden Temple? It is beautiful, historic and revered by the authoritative Frommer's travel guide as "the most tangibly spiritual place in the country." But the deal-breaker was the traditional head covering -- a cloth wrap resembling a turban or head scarf -- required for entry.
In a perfect world, images of an American president taking off his shoes and tying a piece of cloth about his head in reverence to another country's holy site would be a healing moment -- a time to celebrate America’s proud history as a country that is tolerant, even welcoming, of varied religions.
This is not that moment.
Never mind that just months ago, the U.S. Army welcomed its third U.S.-born Sikh recruit in a reversal of a post-Vietnam War policy banning the turbans and beards that Sikhs wear as a part of their faith.
Never mind that Obama is not a Muslim -- though a recent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life poll found that nearly one in five Americans believes he is.
Though White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said on Wednesday that the schedule for the India trip was not finalized -- leaving the door ajar to the possibility of visiting the Golden Temple -- just imagine the frenzy.
Images of this president with the head covering would ignite exponentially more hysterical fears about his allegiance to the United States than did the picture of him on his 2006 trip to Kenya, wearing the traditional robe and head wrap, which came out during the presidential campaign.
Presidential historian Brandon Rottinghaus of the University of Houston pointed me toward a charming picture of Gerald Ford wearing a Mexican sombrero in the Oval Office circa 1974, and noted that it was a different world then. He recalled a 2008 picture of George W. Bush wearing a Peruvian poncho but added, "My guess is you wouldn’t see a modern president wear very traditional items. Today it’s all about looking presidential.
"For instance, when Bill Clinton was president he would wear sport watches, but his aides eventually got him to wear a leather-banded one. In all moments the president is expected to be a reservoir of dignity and to look presidential."
It’s too bad about the Sikh temple. And now I know I’ll probably go to my grave never spotting an American president in a Burmese longyi skirt, a Libyan fez, or a red Cuban tracksuit either.
Esther Cepeda 's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com.
By Esther J. Cepeda, Washington Post Writers Group
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
CHICAGO — Chancellor Angela Merkel declared the death of German multiculturalism at a conference of her political party, the Christian Democratic Union, last weekend. She said the very idea that guest workers who immigrated to Germany to fill a labor shortage during the 1960s could “live happily side by side” with native-born Germans was an illusion and suggested a hard line for those who refuse to assimilate.
The whole thing reminds me of Benjamin Franklin’s lament about German immigrants in colonial Pennsylvania. They didn’t speak English and therefore couldn’t be addressed “either from the press or the pulpit,” and he feared that their keeping to themselves would mean they’d never join the mainstream. Franklin even supported several schemes designed to dilute the Germans’ influence in the colony founded by William Penn to provide freedom of worship and religion.
Just as we in the U.S. struggle with the idea of how to define and proliferate “American culture” in the context of how to reform our clunky, sometimes laughably unjust immigration laws, other countries are dealing with similar issues brought into stark relief by the crippling global economic downturn.
Whether it’s Turks in Germany, Filipinos in Israel, or North Africans in France, it is time countries embrace the reality that the mobility ignited by our global economies will never end. Rather, they — like the U.S. — must formulate a plan for assimilating immigrants or suffer continued discord.
That’s why Merkel may be on to something. Multiculturalism — the idea that several different cultures can coexist equally and equitably in a single country — has always sounded a little too “separate, but equal” for my taste.
While the United States is far from a perfect example of complete brotherly love with recent immigrants — and the Great Recession has brought out the nativism in many — we come really close. That’s because we remain devoted to the American mythology of being a nation of immigrants that has always assimilated into a whole greater than the sum of its parts. We have a steadfast expectation that newcomers will become one of “us,” not stay one of “them.”
The fear of “otherness” is what unites Germany’s sharp conservative turn, Franklin’s angst about the Germans, and U.S. worries about immigrants from Latin America: a large group of foreign newcomers who are united by language and similarities in culture have the luxury of taking respite in each other rather than jumping into their new world.
By its own account, Germany has done little to foster the civic participation of its new residents, who were allowed into the country to combat a rapidly aging population and low birth rates among those in their child-bearing years. Polls have shown that more and more Germans fear that too many foreigners live in insular clusters with little or no connection to the mainstream culture.
The raft of “English-only” and enforcement measures that municipalities across the U.S. are trying to enact seem motivated by the fear that “they” are taking “us” over.
Both Germany and the U.S. ask that new citizens be able to speak the language, and pass a test, but neither country has nationwide standards or programs for welcoming newcomers who may or may not be interested in being more than legal permanent residents. This should change.
The word “assimilation” has always carried negative connotations — even Franklin disagreed with some of his fellow Pennsylvanians who called for banning the importation of books in German and a scheme to encourage government-subsidized intermarriage. But support for the newest members of communities is needed.
Reforming U.S. immigration laws promises to continue at the forefront of our national conversation. But how we stir all our immigrants into the melting pot is as important a part of any comprehensive plan as determining specific rules under which illegal immigrants can stay or must return home. Embracing the challenge of helping newcomers more easily become “us” is still, as it has been for most of our history, our great American opportunity.
Esther J. Cepeda’s e-mail address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com.
Add this to the twin pitfalls of religion and politics that lead the list of topics one should not bring up in polite conversation: healthy living.
Good, clean, healthy living gets a bad rap these days. Oh, not among the sort of people whose idea of fun is drinking raw milk directly from old Millie's wizened udder during a back-to-nature "hay-cation."
I mean among regular people. You know, the sort who generally don't feel they have the time, energy, money or need to work out or to make meals that require a lot of fresh food.
Bless their hearts! Everyone knows there have been generations upon generations of regular Joes and Joettes who never obsessed over a single calorie or laid eyes on an elliptical machine but had long, satisfying lives that even may have included the occasional cigar.
Yes, bless the naturally hardy and physically apathetic -- if only they didn't treat others like mental cases for making healthful lifestyle choices.
Who can blame them? Turn on the TV, open a newspaper or flip on the radio and there's a barrage of conflicting and confusing information that inspires the deep desire for a hot, delicious pizza and a glass of red wine followed by a nice nap.
For instance, everyone knows you're supposed to eat at least five fresh fruits and vegetables a day, right? Sure -- if you don't mind the insecticides your pears are bathed in, or the e. coli that might be lurking in your salad greens.
A few weeks ago, my dad leaned over and quietly warned me about the dangers of poisonous apple skins. I was still reeling from a recent Center for Disease Control warning: "Restau- rant salsa, guacamole can be risky."
"Nearly one out of every 25 restaurant-associated food-borne outbreaks with identified food sources can be traced back to contaminated salsa or guacamole, according to a new study," the Associated Press story said. It piled on the gory details of countless restaurant missteps with hot peppers, tomatoes, cilantro and too-warm refrigerators.
Don't think this didn't spring to mind when I was at Tacos El Norte chowing down my Saturday night pico-de-gallo and chips, but I emerged unscathed.
Amazingly, I also lived through the jogs I took in this summer's stinging heat and the ones I take now without meaning to get caught in the pounding rain. My mom fears the grippe, hail-induced lacerations etc., but I value my endurance too much to heed her warnings, nice as they are -- especially compared to hearing, "It's raining, stupid," yelled from a speeding car. But runners literally take that sort of thing in stride.
I, and the other health-conscious who walk among us, know well enough not to bring such wellness-related topics up at family parties, around the water cooler at work or at kids' school events. Rarely do these conversations end happily.
Our culture's heavily distorted view of what constitutes a healthy lifestyle has been caught in the crossfire between suggestions to get a minimum one hour of daily exercise and warnings about the ill-effects of obsessive exercise disorder.
The conversation about what to eat has been sucked into a distasteful vortex that includes good-for-you-bad-for-you-studies of chocolate and coffee, filthy egg/buggy infant formula food safety issues, and whether high-fructose corn syrup is "better or worse" for you than sugar.
The chatter is hastened by consumer advocacy groups, industry lobbyists, medical professionals, government officials and marketers each pushing their own eat-drink-live agendas.
Aristotle's golden rule -- "Everything in moderation, nothing to excess" -- seems a quaint notion in our on-24-hour-a-day, fleeting, Tweeting life, but we'll learn to cope. As Paul McCartney, another favorite philosopher, once sang: "We used to say live and let live, but when this ever changing world in which we live in makes you give in and cry -- say 'live and let . . ." Well, you get the picture.
Take my advice: Whether maneuvering cocktail party chit-chat or family patter, keep the health talk tucked away with the politics and religion. And whether it be a frosty footrace, or taking our chances with a deliciously suspicious-looking spinach leaf, let us soldier on with our death-defying behavior.
From the moment the iconic black-and-white archival footage rolls, then fades into shots of impoverished Latin American children playing ball to the tune of Jose Feliciano’s sweet rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner," Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s new documentary is a magic carpet ride through the last 20 years of baseball.
Never mind your crummy job (or lack thereof), never mind the pressures of everyday life — heck, never mind whether you’re a fan of the game or not. The momentum of this film carries you effortlessly off on the beer ’n’ hot dog, roasted peanut-scented American romp called baseball.
Manager Joe Torre and the Yankees celebrate after winning the 2000 World Series, less than a year before baseball would help New York and the nation heal after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
"The Tenth Inning," a two-part, four-hour documentary, is the next chapter in the 1994 series "Baseball." From the crippling 1994 strike to the increasing dominance of Latino and Asian players, to mega-stadiums, interleague play and the wild card, we see America’s national pastime at its best and worst. Two decades of ups and downs — from doping scandal darlings Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds to the Cinderella-story Boston Red Sox — are put under a microscope and into the context of baseball’s past heroes and villains, then held up to the mirror of today’s America.
With the same deep love of the hallowed institution that permeated "Baseball," "The Tenth Inning" wastes little time in tackling the 100-pound gorilla in the diamond and jumps right into a discussion of what doping has done for — and to — the game. But it does so by first putting the issue of steroid use into the context of other soap-opera-esque discrepancies that have hovered at the margins of the game since its infancy: bribery attempts, game-fixing conspiracies and corked bats.
Then, Burns walks the issue home, straight into our medicine cabinets.
"We are a society that turns to performance-enhancement drugs for everything. There’s vitamins, sleeping aids — there’s Viagra!" Burns said back in August when he was in Chicago to pre-screen his film for WTTW members. He was echoing the very point that historian Paul Thorn made near the beginning of the first night’s episode: "We live in a time when we think anything can be cured by medication. If you want to talk about a performance-enhancing culture, let’s look at Viagra, Levitra, all the things that are advertised on daytime TV. This is the time we live in. We believe that modern medicine can make us supermen."
The film’s writers, David McMahon, Novick and Burns, don’t merely rely on luminaries such as comedian Chris Rock to point out that human nature dictates most people would take steroids to make it big in the big leagues. They anchor two decades’ worth of lightning-quick record smashes on the story of how Barry Bonds went from being a frustrated, mostly ignored son of a record-setting right fielder to the buff, steroid-popping home run king who never felt he’d gotten the respect or the due he deserved from both ballclubs and fans.
Based on exclusive pre-screenings, there is already some criticism of the documentary that implies the filmmakers went easy on Bonds by telling his personal story in such heart-wrenching detail, but Burns continually points to the bigger picture beyond any one player. The filmmakers point out the role fans played in Bonds’ saga, but Burns says the tension between succeeding and succeeding at any cost essentially boils down to the complexities of being human in our modern world. "Baseball is a precise mirror of who we are," Burns said.
This is not to say that "The Tenth Inning" dwells just on scandal; there are many complex and intertwined themes. For instance, the stories of immigrant baseball players and their struggles are woven throughout the film. And those stories dovetailed nicely with the business and marketing aspects of the game that are both a threat and an opportunity as baseball becomes more global and America becomes more diverse.
One particularly touching section of the documentary recalls what happened to baseball in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York City’s World Trade Center. Then-Yankees manager Joe Torre talks about the morning the attacks occurred while archival footage plays, taking the viewers directly back into the moment before recalling Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2001, when the Yankees resumed play against the White Sox in Chicago.
Images of fans holding signs saying "We are all Yankees" immediately bring us back to Burns’ basic premise: that baseball reflects the continuing evolution of a diverse America seeking to hold its athlete heroes to high standards even while forgiving their peccadilloes in order to enjoy the game, warts and all, and that this instinct binds us together as a community.
Burns and Novick also spend time on the 1994 strike, and the dramatic way then-hero Roger Clemens brought an ethic of hard work and fan love to the game and drove a resurgence in the game’s popularity.
Though there have been phenomenal changes to how athletes get into the game and fans experience it — enhanced minor league baseball recruitment and marketing; split screen; real-time viewing; smart-phone apps for fans to follow games, which bolster fantasy leagues, and whole communities devoted to following baseball from a strictly statistical viewpoint — Burns and Novick were not able to fit it all into this installment.
"The biggest criticism I ever hear is about all I’ve left out, which is actually a huge compliment," Burns said. "But I think we did get in some really important turning points in this inning.
"Baseball reflects who we are as a community, as a country. It reflects the sentimental values we hold dear and is the greatest game that has ever been invented," Burns said. "It has a rhythm; it’s like breathing."
Burns’ reverence and enthusiasm are present in almost every moment of this film — from the looks on the faces of impoverished children in the Dominican Republic who play their hearts out with broom-handle bats in the hopes of becoming the next Sammy Sosa, to the looks on fans’ faces when the infamous "Bartman ball" was exploded, to testimonials from Boston fans about how life-altering was the Red Sox’s 2004 World Series win — their first in 86 years.
This is a TV experience well worth blocking out two evenings’ worth of time. Viewers will not only revisit where baseball has been for the last 20 years but also catch a glimpse of what it might look like for generations to come.
Esther J. Cepeda writes a weekly column for the Sun-Times
As unemployment continues to cast its shadow across the country's present and future, young people poised to become the first in their family to go to college are asking themselves whether an expensive degree really is the smart choice.
Here we are, 15 years after a movement to promote college to qualified low-income and minority students got under way, and many of the very people who were supposed to be empowered by that degree are out of work. Of all young adults with degrees, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 17 percent are unemployed or not seeking work.
"People are starting to lose their faith in the promise of college as being the way out of poverty and the way to create a better life," said Phil Jackson, executive director of the Black Star Project, a Chicago nonprofit that has been on the front lines of college access efforts since its inception in 1996.
"The families I come into contact with look around them, see the degreed professionals in their communities who sacrificed so much to go to college and are now sitting at home unemployed," he told me. "They're no longer believing the hype about college being the path to a better life. They say, 'You can be just as unemployed without a degree.' "
I called Jackson on a hunch that headlines were scaring away the very people who could best influence a young student to take a shot at college: parents.
He shocked me with this first-hand account: "For months we have been promoting Saturday morning college preparation sessions that give families the opportunity to talk one-on-one with colleges and university academic and financial aid representatives from across the country. I had one school tell me, 'Bring us your qualified students, we are willing to sign them up on the spot.' We promised them a good turnout, screamed about the opportunity from the rafters, and do you know how many families came out? Not one person showed up."
Jackson's observations seem to back up data showing that faith in a college degree as a sure ticket to a prosperous future is eroding. Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that in a survey of 3,000 people "63.5 percent said a college education is still a good financial investment for young adults given rising costs, compared to 79.1 percent last year and 80.9 percent in 2008."
There are more opportunities for those who attain a college degree or professional certification compared with those who immediately join the work force in low-paying unskilled jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2009, the unemployment rate was 9.7 percent for high school graduates but just 5.2 percent for those with bachelor's degrees. Median weekly earnings for college grads were $1,025, compared with $626 for high school grads. Even after you figure in the cost of repaying student loans, it works out in subsequent earning years.
Unfortunately, those figures don't speak much to a low-income family that has to decide whether to encourage their student to embrace the completely unknown quantity of college. The tradeoff between finding a job after high school and earning a small income today in exchange for taking out frighteningly large student loans on the promise of more money and opportunities later -- if the kid graduates -- is a difficult decision for a family with no college experiences.
For years, scholars have known that family influence is the most important factor in determining whether a student will go to college. As parents lose faith in the higher education system, at least a solution to the problem is clear. In the quest to get academically capable, low-income students into and through college, it's more important than ever to reach into the home to explain the long-term, lifetime monetary and non-monetary value of a degree to families with no college experience.
Regardless of higher education's many broken promises, there can be no doubt that when students and families question whether a college degree is a good investment, the answer is yes, in the long-term, a solid education will pay untold dividends.
I saw it all in my first-grade classroom -- plastered on the faces of my students. My high school students were much the same, except for the added woes of unwanted pregnancies, bullying, gang violence and the associated depression.
To assist my students, I would visit their homes and offer research advice on health insurance, social programs and college savings plans. I spent my own money on classroom supplies and extra hours planning cutting-edge lessons to engage all the different students in my class. Yet in the end, I felt I had accomplished far too little.
My efforts weren't special or rare, this is how a great many -- though certainly not all -- teachers in schools across America ply their trade during the academic year and, yes, even during summer vacation.
But you won't see much of this effort reflected in the numbers that tell whether a school has made "adequate yearly progress," or in year-over-year reading and math scores, or in frameworks for evaluating teacher performance that rely heavily on standardized test data.
Last Wednesday -- as Congress continued stalling the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, aka "No Child Left Behind" -- Education Secretary Arne Duncan urged public schools to publish more data on student achievement so teachers' performance can be evaluated based on students' academic performance.
That sounds like a good idea, but in the real world it's unfair to measure just one outcome that is, in fact, the result of multiple factors -- only one of which is an individual teacher's performance. It is just plain irresponsible to ignore the burden the other factors put on a student's performance.
In March 2009, David C. Berliner, a researcher at Arizona State University, published "Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success," which noted that U.S. students spend about 1,150 waking hours a year in school vs. about 4,700 more waking hours with their families and in neighborhoods. Berliner identified the top six nonacademic roadblocks to student success: low birth-weight and nongenetic prenatal influences; inadequate medical, dental and vision care; food insecurity; environmental pollutants; family relations/stress, and neighborhood characteristics.
His data spotlight the obstacles poor students have always brought into the classroom.
In June, the Foundation for Child Development released its annual Child Well-Being Index for 2010, illustrating some of the effects the Great Recession is having on the quality of life for America's children. Their study of 28 key indicators found that this quality of life began to decline in 2009, and by the end of 2010, the recession will have wiped out virtually all progress made in the last 35 years for children in economic factors such as secure parental employment and health insurance coverage.
This doesn't mean school districts across the country can't or shouldn't hold educators accountable for delivering the best teaching practices. Now more than ever the U.S. educational system -- held hostage to tenure structures that limit the ability of a school to pull a poorly performing teacher out of the classroom -- requires nothing less.
"Out-of-school factors matter a lot -- any of the identified factors or just stressful situations like someone in the family dying; all those kinds of things can and do affect students from middle, working, or any class," Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, recently told me. "Educators aren't here to make excuses, but it's ridiculous to think that teachers individually can overcome every single issue in a child's life."
There's no question teacher accountability for student performance is crucial. But the focus must be on evaluating teachers' performance in the classroom, not strictly on student achievement, which is so compromised by the weight of their outside-the-classroom life.
Excerpt from just one of the many letters I received after having included the phrase "the current anti-immigrant atmosphere" in a recent column:
"Unfortunately you are mistaken in using the phrase ‘anti-immigration atmosphere’. Many American citizens with brown, black, white, or even yellow skin are angry with ILLEGAL immigrants and the damage they have done to our country. If the millions of ILLEGAL immigrants, Hispanic/European/Asian etc, would have entered through the "front door" instead of the "back door", much aforementioned damage to our country would have been avoided. Now we have governments in bankruptcy due to these cheaters, and people are rightfully angry. You need to tone down your inflammatory rhetoric and see the issue realistically."
My standard response has been that while it’s easy to say that the anger and hatred currently aimed at Latinos is about "ILLEGAL" immigration, the fact of the matter is that I, my family, friends, and neighbors have all gotten called terrible names, sent hateful emails or been otherwise snubbed not based on citizenship or residency status, but because we "look foreign."
Baltimore officials arrested a 19-year-old man Saturday night after he gave a taped confession to police saying he "hated Hispanics."
Let me clarify here: he didn’t say he hated illegal immigrants – he said he hated Hispanics.
Not convinced? Here is a teeny-tiny selection of emails – some just subject lines – that find their way into my inbox, none of which make any reference to citizenship status:
"Immigrants are the scum of the earth. Latinos are the worst of the worst. Execute this scum. Enforce the freaking law. Kill this vermin - DEAD, DEAD, DEAD!"
"Mexico is a malevolent machine of evil malice. Why won't my country declare war on this evil menace - Mexico. Death to Mexico. Death to Mexicans."
You are a spic slut whore"
Hatred is, in fact, boiling over in the U.S. against anyone who does not seem to be from this country - regardless of whether they are U.S. born, or legal permanent residents, or illegal immigrants, or not. (Sadly, it’s not limited to those who look Latino, but is starting to boil over onto any brown-skinned individual who looks like they might be – GASP! – Muslim.)
So to all of those out there who dare say that the current anti-immigrant outrage is all just about legal residency status: stop kidding yourself because you aren’t kidding anyone else.
The fact is that immigrant and non-immigrant Latinos alike are facing pure, bald-faced hatred, ire, and discrimination that goes well beyond perennial annoyances such as being asked how much you charge for mowing a lawn (if you should happen to garden in front of your nice house) or being asked if you "Habla English" for no apparent reason other than the looks of you.
The real question is: what are we going to do about it?
Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com
The United States of America has been buffeted by the winds of transnational change and the storms of our punctured economy. As a nation, we're looking in the mirror and wondering if what we see is the America we all thought we knew.
Times being as tough as they are, there is a growing chorus of people inclined to look at me -- and others whose skin is brown and have the gift of speaking a second language -- and very literally say things like: "I don't know you, why are you here? You're dragging our schools and our job market down. You need to go back home."
Home? I was born in a hospital on the North Side of Chicago, grew up 1.2 miles west of Wrigley Field. Ironic: My soccer-crazy family moved from south of the border to a country where the language is studded with baseball metaphors and settled a stone's throw away from one of the game's crown jewels.
Alas, I never really took to baseball. But I always reveled in its status as the quintessential symbol of Americana -- as patriotic a pastime as kissing your mom and eating apple pie. So when documentary filmmaker Ken Burns swept through town last week to promote "Baseball: The Tenth Inning," a four-hour follow-up to his 1994 Emmy-winning documentary, I sat down with him to talk about that mirror of America we call baseball.
In the first three minutes of the film, broadcaster Keith Olbermann gives this stirring testimonial:
"Other sports have some interest in its own history and will occasionally make reference to it but [in] baseball . . . it's there. You come in the start of the game or the start of the season or the start of your own family, you feel as if you're joining the river midstream and all that has gone before. You can enjoy as much as if you were there, it's as simple as that."
Gulp. That's exactly how I feel about the Latino population's integration into our country -- we're joining the great American river midstream.
Not everyone sees it that way, but even as anti-Hispanic sentiment has geared up in the last few years, there has been no lack of talented Latino players being actively recruited to enliven our national pastime.
Ever since 1928, when Emilio Navarro blazed the Hispanic major league trail by becoming the first Puerto Rican to play in the Negro Leagues, Americans have been able to see Hispanics not just as resource-sucking immigrants, but as sports heroes who make the game -- and our country -- better.
In the new documentary, Burns and his co-director, Lynn Novick, delve into the Hispanic contribution to baseball with great compassion, presenting a fascinating and honest look at the rise of Latino players in the game.
While we're on the subject of baseball, by the way, Burns gave me his take on White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen's recent inflammatory complaint that new Latino players don't get the red carpet treatment that superstar Japanese players get.
"Guillen was absolutely right," Burns said without hesitation. "Sure, it's not economically viable to provide translators to individual players, but we always have to be sensitive to the needs of new players."
When I asked Burns if he thought the current anti-immigrant atmosphere threatened to dull fans' love of the game, he said that hateful nativist sentiments are harming our society in many ways, and he tried to put it in historical context.
"There is this 'otherness' that people fear," he said. "And right now, the Latino population is growing and this is just a continuation of the story, this demonization of the 'others.' "
In time, he predicted, this will pass for Latinos, as it has for so many other groups.
"Baseball is such a precise mirror of who we are," Burns said. "It is the story of immigration -- and assimilation. There were the Italians, the Irish and of course now the Latin Americans; the most common names in baseball today are Ramirez and Rodriguez."
Burns revels in holding up this mirror to America, and in "Tenth Inning" he shows us the America that he sees -- this magnificent, diverse, baseball-loving melting pot.
Welcome to the brave new world of social (media) government -- a world where you can use mobile phone apps to get information from Uncle Sam so you don’t actually have to talk to him.
On July 2, the White House relaunched its usa.gov website and rolled out 20 sleek new multiplatform apps that allow phones to perform wonders such as reading bar-codes and searching the database of Consumer Product Safety Commission recalls, and getting up-to-the minute travel advisories from the Transportation Security Administration.
Do an (iPhone) App store search and you’ll find "official" tools like apps to get mission updates from NASA, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s UV index app next to "unofficial" ones like the Bailout-Stimulus app that "will help you get a better understanding of money spent on government contracts and grants as part of the $787 Billion Recovery act package."
If you wanted to have recently arrested fugitives, most wanted reports, and breaking news from the U.S. Marshals Service or top stories about the U.S. Department of Agriculture, they too are available on your phone.
It all sounds very trendy – "Federal Government? There’s an app for that!" – and indeed, the winds of change may be at long last sweeping into governmental IT infrastructure, finally breathing fresh life into the strained relationship it often has with its incredibly diverse users.
"Trust in government has plummeted from 1987 to 2007 with the exception of the period after 9/11," said Vivek Kundra, U.S. chief information officer, during a telephonic briefing before the release of their initial app crop. "Today, two thirds of people surveyed believe that if the government runs it, it is not effective. The only way to change that is when people have good interactions with government services."
Kundra went on to stress the dire necessity for government to reach people where they are: in front of their computer screens, on their mobile devices, with easy searches. "The old usa.gov was engineered 10 years ago for the bureaucracy it represented, not the American people it was to serve," he said. "Today we don't go out to a site to navigate hundreds of links and see what the government can offer us, that's why the new site was fundamentally re-engineered using contemporary search technology."
For those of us "netizens" who can barely remember a time when both pleasure and business wasn’t conducted over the Internet, it’s only natural. But the so-called Digital Divide always stands sentry over any debate about the use of technology in delivering government programs and services to "the people."
It is true that the poorest in our communities don't have the kind of unlimited, free access to high-speed Internet and appropriate hardware that would allow anyone to proclaim that there is no digital divide. But the gap is closing fast due to ubiquitous and affordable internet-enabled mobile phones that serve as many families' e-mail and Internet connections. Also, government programs that put laptops in kids' schools – and therefore in their homes – and myriad other community programs offering computers and high speed internet connections to residents are bridging the gap. (Just a few weeks ago Chicago Mayor Daley announced $16 million in federal funds – plus $6 million from other local organizations – would be dedicated to offer low income Chicagoans more access to technology and training in underserved communities. One program run by a non-profit group will be providing free computer and internet access to more than 11,000 people at neighborhood community centers.)
It's easy for me to picture Kundra's vision of an interactive web-based government – in time – becoming the de facto method for residents of all classes and incomes to connect with public programs and services.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project released a May 2010 report, "Government Online: the internet gives citizens new paths to government services and information." The authors not only detailed the skyrocketing number of American adults who looked for information or completed a transaction on a government website in the year preceding the survey (82 percent of all Internet users, representing 61 percent of American adults) but also debunked a common minority myth.
They found that while, yes, high-income and well-educated Internet users are more likely to use government services and information online, it is also true that African Americans and Hispanics are just as likely as whites to use tools such as blogs, social networking sites and online videos to keep up with workings of government and are significantly more likely than whites to believe that government outreach with these tools "helps people be more informed about what the government is doing," and "makes government officials and agencies more accessible."
Despite a growing body of research that African-American, Hispanic, and low-income users are increasingly accessing the web to connect to government services, as well as for support agencies and entertainment, it's still a relatively common opinion that government outreach through the Internet or phone apps is somehow elitist.
Not so, Kundra argues. "A recent study showed that one in three people use mobile apps. So when you talk about priorities ... it's not that we don't care about the other 66 percent - but I think one-third will soon become two-thirds. That's how the American people are conducting their business: on their phones."
Though the General Services Administration opted not to share the cost of the overhaul of the site and the app development, Jeffrey Zients, OMB deputy director for management, did speak of agencies taking the initiative and working with independent, third party developers to make available a vast array of BlackBerry, iPhone, and Android government apps.
Now if we could only get more African American and Hispanic students into high-tech careers that would put them at the forefront of the government app-building frenzy, we might close the digital divide forever.
President Obama has made history yet again, this time for the dubious distinction of being the first sitting president to appear on the daytime television chatfest ''The View.''
Millions of people watched to see if he'd reveal some juicy personal tidbit or say something controversial. To the contrary, his well-scripted topics were designed to boost his all-time low approval ratings by gabbing with The Ladies about the benefits of the economic stimulus, Wall Street reform and a strong presence in Afghanistan.
But I wasn't interested in any of that. I spent my morning before air time fantasizing that Obama -- who chose the popular program to connect to everyday American women because it's a show "Michelle actually watched" -- would pitch this important question at The Ladies: "Why don't you have any Hispanic women on your show?"
I know, I know -- a pipe dream. Obama, in fact, went out of his way, when asked about the Shirley Sherrod race debate, to say he's "less interested in how we label ourselves" and "more interested in how we treat each other."
But because I live in a world where labels often determine how we treat each other, the question was at the top of my list.
A few weeks ago, CBS announced that when the long-running soap opera "As the World Turns" ends in September, it'll introduce its own estrogen-infused daytime talk show. It is a massive understatement to say I was disappointed when I read the proposed lineup of the new mom-centric show.
Sara Gilbert, Sharon Osbourne, Holly Robinson-Peete, Marissa Jaret Winokur, Leah Remini and Julie Chen are without a doubt all gorgeous, talented, dynamic and interesting women. They are younger, older, Asian, African-American, Caucasian and gay (Sara Gilbert has a partner, compared with the other hosts' heterosexual spouses) moms. This is wonderful.
But ... where's me?!
No, I don't literally mean me. I mean a Hispanic woman. Any Hispanic woman. There are plenty of U.S.-born Latina stage, TV and screen actors --old ones, young ones, gay ones -- and even a few broadcast journalists who could chitchat with the likes of a Sharon Osbourne.
The omission bugs me. It bugged me back in 2007 when ''The View'' was looking for a smart, sassy, fun new face to replace Rosie O'Donnell and they even considered a man -- but not a Latina -- and it bugs me today.
Latinos are already the nation's largest minority group. We'll account for most of the population growth from 2005 through 2050, when census data predict our numbers will have tripled. Of the 50 million or so Hispanic adults counted in this year's census, about half are . . . drum roll, please ... women.
And I don't mean just poor, Spanish-speaking immigrant women who don't watch ''The View'' -- or ''As the World Turns,'' for that matter -- because they're too busy working in apple orchards or in factories cleaning toilets. I'm talking about educated, 61.9 percent U.S.-born, English-fluent, dollar-spending Latino women who know how to TiVo a daytime talk show if their mommy duties or professional day jobs make it impossible to watch the gabfest live.
If the people who create these programs ever read ''The View'' website's message board, they'd find impassioned requests for Latino representation. It would be plain old good business: Consider that many of the top 100 consumer brands either have an English-language Latino marketing campaign or one in the works to reach out to what is the nation's second-largest consumer market.
Those products underwrite TV shows.
This is a win-win situation, folks!
No, I fear Latinas are simply in a blind spot. For years, their roles on TV and film have been limited to that of nanny, maid or super sexy fill-in-the-blank.
Just imagine the ratings a network would enjoy if it were brave enough to add an intelligent, all-American, professional Latina to its stable of coffee talkers!
Too bad the president didn't think to bring it up to The Ladies on ''The View.''
You've heard of "manteca?" It's the rendered pork fat -- a k a lard -- used in traditional Latin American cooking to fry anything and everything from plantain chips to chicken to bananas that have been stuffed with cheese and dipped in batter. Yummy!
Manteca makes food delicious. And Latinos love it. A lot. Too much, in fact. So much it's killing us.
OK, so it's not all the fault of our beloved manteca, but talk to most Latino moms or grandmas about healthier cooking and you'll see them instinctively slit their eyes with an expression that screams "Oh no, don't even think you're going to take my lard from me."
And how do you argue with your abuelita?!
This is what the Latino community is up against as leaders attempt to keep the twin evils of obesity and Type 2 diabetes from decimating the current and next generation.
It's a challenge the Miracle Center, a Northwest Side organization that offers arts programs for neighborhood kids, is tackling head-on through its Healthy Lifestyles Campaign. Funded in part by the Illinois Department of Public Health and the University of Illinois at Chicago's National Center for Excellence in the Elimination of Disparities, the campaign employs skits, cooking demonstrations and dance classes to teach kids what it means to live a healthy lifestyle -- knowledge they can take home to the entire family.
"The families are harder to reach than the kids," Youth Development Director Vanessa Torres told me on a steamy Thursday afternoon, when the day's exercise activities were taking place out in the shade under streams of alternating rain and cooling sprinklers.
"When we reached out to families through focus groups and through community presentations, we got a lot of pushback. They immediately think, 'This is trying to change our traditional Puerto Rican or Mexican food which is made with a lot of love, manteca, and oil.' They say, 'You can't change it, these are our roots,' " Torres said.
But in the face of such resistance, knowledge is a powerful tool, Executive Director Mary Santana says.
"Many parents just didn't know how this eating was affecting their kids' bodies," she said. "They didn't know what healthy food was until their kids helped them understand a few things about basic nutrition, and even about how marketers target Latino consumers with 'biggie' sizes and lower-cost unhealthy snacks."
All the same, it's a tough sell. Just ask Ryan Negron, 16, who has worked on creative projects for the program, helping to design posters, campaign slogans and a pitch on YouTube.
"I just didn't know anything about Type 2 diabetes or what the Body Mass Index was -- I had no clue," said Negron, a sophomore at Lincoln Park High School. "But it hit close to home; I'm tall so I thought I was OK, but I was overweight. I never expected it, but it got me to start getting in shape.
"My parents were pretty supportive. They were glad someone was teaching me about this stuff, especially because there are a lot of people in my family who are overweight," Ryan continued. "But my friends took some time. When I told them why I was getting healthy, some of them said, 'That's not cool -- they're pretty much calling you fat.' But I'd tell them, well, when you think about it, I am. When they want to get healthy, I tell them how and what to do."
It is absolutely beautiful to talk to a young person who is not frightened or overwhelmed by his body, but instead is active, informed and advocating for others to take better care of themselves.
The heartbreaking statistics -- one out of two Hispanic kids is overweight -- demand more full-community initiatives like this one to improve our health.
"It's a challenge, sure," Santana said. "We'll never put the manteca away for good, but maybe some days we can compromise with olive oil."
Last week, my Sun-Times colleagues Fran Spielman and Rosalind Rossi reported that Mayor Daley is considering Mary Ellen Caron, founder and former principal of his daughter's Catholic elementary school, to be the Chicago Public Schools' chief education officer.
My eyebrows raised. An administrator with little experience with the expansive, highly political bureaucracy of the country's third-largest public school district as chief education officer? Could Caron scale her past experience at an elite private school to the daunting tasks of eliminating achievement gaps, increasing academic rigor, managing meaningful evaluation processes and building capacity among teachers and administrative staff in a system beset by poverty's ills?
Maybe. Maybe not. But either way, two sentences in the story raised the eyebrows of many online readers: "If Mary Ellen Caron is tapped as chief education officer, she would be the first white and non-CPS educator to assume that post since Daley won control of the city's public schools in 1995. Over the last 15 years, the top CPS education post has been held by three successive African- American women, all former CPS principals in a system that is 45 percent black, 41 percent Latino and 9 percent white."
The comments board lit up:
"White? Oh my gosh, she's being judged by the color of her skin, and not based on character? Maybe this is what you Black and Hispanic people should know: RACE has no bearing on her qualifications. I'm sick of the race card."
Another reader wrote: "You mean Chicago has become so bad that black people only must fill positions previously filled by black people. That is racism! Come on, if someone said only white people can be governor of Illinois there would be protest marches in Springfield, and the media would be jumping up and down yelling racism."
And so on and so on.
I agree the position shouldn't be a black entitlement -- nor should it be a Latino entitlement, though 41 percent of CPS students are Hispanic. Every CPS student is entitled to the most qualified person for the job, regardless of political viability, personal relationships or skin color.
As it happens, diversity hiring has been at the top of my mind lately. When President Obama chose Elena Kagan as his Supreme Court pick, she was criticized for her racial hiring record at Harvard. As Boyce Watkins, a prominent African-American scholar, put it: "Kagan did not hire a single African American tenured or tenure-track faculty member. This says, very clearly, that Elena Kagan doesn't care about black people, at least when they are applying to be professors. . . . With all the applications that poured in every year from top black attorneys, she didn't feel that one single black, Latino or Native American scholar was qualified to teach at Harvard university?"
I have discussed both of these news items -- the Caron story and the Kagan story -- with a wide variety of people, and their reactions have been passionate. Dividing into two camps, some insisted that hiring of any kind should be a strictly merit-based, color-blind affair, while others insisted that strong measures must be taken to get people of color fully integrated into every workplace at every level.
Because I agree with both camps, I blew in a call to Gloria Castillo, president of Chicago United, a group that promotes equal access to professional opportunities, to help me square these seemingly opposing views.
"Yes, there has to be a commitment to accessing great talent, and there has to be a commitment to casting a wider net in order to find it," Castillo told me. "For doubters, I'd say do the research. Read Scott Page to learn how diversity of all kinds leads to more positive outcomes."
Page is the author of The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools and Societies.
And that, it seems, really is the best way to reconcile the two camps: Go the extra mile to find the very best applicants, including minority ones, for any position, and then be truly color-blind in making the final decision.
That won't necessarily diversify an organization as quickly as anyone would like, but it is the best way to ensure that diversity is equitably practiced in every workplace. And it does so in a way that no one feels discriminated against, unfairly assisted or disadvantaged or a victim to ethnic or racial entitlements.
Now that President Obama has given his definitive immigration law reform speech -- he said we need it but he didn't task anyone with making it happen -- and the Justice Department has filed its legal challenge to Arizona's law on grounds that state law should not preempt federal law, let's take a look at another, related topic: English language fluency.
It's one necessary ingredient in garnering popular support for any immigration reform.
The issue of not being able to easily communicate with newcomers to our neighborhoods, schools and businesses is one bone of contention people love to chew on, and it transcends any particular ethnicity or language.
The following comments from a widely circulated chain e-mail I received are representative of a popular opinion: "Today's American is not willing to accept today's new kind of immigrant any longer. Back in 1900 . . . people had to get off a ship and stand in a long line in New York and be documented. They made learning English a primary rule in their new American households and some even changed their names to blend in with their new home. They had waved goodbye to their birth place to give their children a new life and did everything in their power to help their children assimilate into one culture."
Concerns that newcomers don't want to become "real Americans" who will fully commit to our language -- much less our culture or values -- underlie the battle to reform our ineffective immigration system. Any reasonable reform plan must make English language fluency a required stepping stone on the path to legal residency.
Surrounding this touchy subject are two myths to be busted: that immigrants don't want to learn the language and that there aren't enough people to teach them. The truths are, of course, more complicated.
It's no secret that it's tough for immigrants of diverse nationalities to take classes to improve their English skills. Each day is a struggle for survival before adding impossible class times, money for books or supplies, child care issues or other barriers.
It's up to us as a nation to take a long honest look at how we -- merchants, marketers, customers, employers, neighbors -- can break down those barriers and encourage English-language fluency for all our residents. This effort would create both a sense of shared community and a multi- language bilingual work force that will help the U.S. compete in an increasingly global economy.
Then, we need to find ways to help organizations who already provide these resources to scale up for the massive task of helping those learning our ridiculously difficult language and find the skilled teachers and eager volunteers who can make it happen.
Mano a Mano Family Resource Center -- a tiny organization in Round Lake -- has hundreds of people on its waiting lists for all levels of English-as-a-second-language classes.
Carolina Duque, the center's executive director, says that in her neck of the woods -- a small town where in the last 10 years Latino immigrants have flooded once-exclusively middle-class, Caucasian neighborhoods -- there's also a waiting list of people ready to volunteer to help sharpen English skills.
"Both community leaders and residents get frustrated by feeling they can't talk to their neighbors, but we're really lucky that the community is working together to overcome those frustrations," Duque told me. "We mostly work with volunteers who don't speak Spanish -- they get so much joy from being able to help others learn English and they want to do more. Unfortunately, we just don't have the capacity to train more volunteers, hold more classes or service all the people who need the help or want to give it."
Round Lake is just one little town where the swirling torrents of immigration, language and culture are coming together with little rage or angst.
If the bipartisan immigration law reform architects can learn from this town's ability to address this critical cultural issue -- and put some muscular incentives behind uniting the country via the English language -- we'll be on a pathway to true reform.
What will be impact of Spanish-only preschool classes on young Latinos?
July 5, 2010
BY ESTHER J CEPEDA Sun-Times Columnist
Hold your breath for Latino members of the Illinois high school class of 2026. Who knows what recent changes in how they are to be taught will do for them.
Or to them.
New rules requiring pre-school English Language Learners (ELLs) to be educated according to the same standards as for kindergarten through 12th grade ELLs were adopted last month by the Illinois State Board of Education. The rules, which are expected to sail through the final legislative process in time for the 2010-2011 school year, will make Illinois the most prescriptive state in the union for identifying and educating English Language Learners.
This will affect hundreds of thousands of ELL students -- the fastest-growing segment of the study body in Illinois.
The overwhelming majority of these students come from Spanish-speaking households, and if they have 20 or more peers in the same grade level, they're entitled to a classroom with a Spanish-speaking teacher. Children whose native languages are not Spanish also must have 20 or more grade-level peers to qualify for language-specific instruction and, therefore, are rarely isolated in non-English-speaking classrooms the way Spanish-speaking kids are.
The thought of 3-, 4- and 5-year-old Hispanic kids getting stuck in Spanish-language classrooms so they can be taught beginning literacy skills in their parents' native language before being taught the basic tenets of English makes me want to poke my eyeballs out. Despite widely accepted research that says teaching literacy skills to a child in his or her native language leads to better English-acquisition, I -- like Arizona, California and Massachusetts, who've turned away from this educational philosophy -- am skeptical.
Why? Mostly because I know that what works modestly in the lab does not always transfer to the classroom -- especially when there already are too few qualified teachers for the many non-English-speaking students.
Plus, in my short time as a bilingual teacher, I witnessed horrors such as underqualified teachers who never felt the need to address their students in English. And teenage U.S.-born students still confined to Spanish-only classrooms because the "transitional bilingual" program had never made them truly bilingual or transitioned them to mainstream English-speaking classrooms.
Because I've had such experiences, I turned to two less-emotional experts to soothe my fears that Illinois' educational system is about to disintegrate for children who happen not to speak English by the age of 3.
"This goes back to the bilingual education laws put on the books back in the '70's, before 'preschool for all' was popularized," said Reyna Hernandez, a policy analyst at the Latino Policy Forum. "This isn't really a new idea. The state was looking at where there needed to be cleanup in the legal language that had artificially limited rules to K through 12."
She also stressed that "starting in 2014, these rules will mean students will be taught by teachers that are certified in language acquisition" and she said this is "one of the greatest points."
Nancy Wagner, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction at Arlington Heights' multinationally diverse School District 59, says there are always risk and costs -- in this case to teachers who must get additional education and to school districts that must pay for that upgraded expertise -- but this definitely is a step up.
"The laws regarding preschool used to not have anything regarding English instruction; teachers weren't specially trained and could basically screen all the kids, identify them as ELLs and teach them in whatever language they wanted," she said. "There are many factors to take into consideration when you're talking about such young children, but no program wants its bilingual students to be the lowest tracked program. The goal of the program HAS to be English language proficiency."
Gosh, I hope so. Better-trained preschool teachers who can effectively address the special needs of English language learners sure can't hurt.
Still, the proof will be in the pudding, so keep your fingers crossed for Latino members of the Illinois high school class of 2026.
editor's note: this definition of satire comes from en.wiktionary.org/wiki/satire "A literary technique of writing or art which principally ridicules its subject often as an intended means of provoking or preventing change. Humour is often used to aid this; A satirical work."
And, NO, the subject of ridicule is not obese people, but rather, society's passive acceptance of a debilitating and deadly disease.
Obesity is hot these days -- it's all over the news. Take the unprecedented media coverage of Michelle "Let's Move" Obama's continuing war on childhood obesity: She's (thankfully) getting a ton of play in her quest to end the malnutrition devastating the lives of millions of American kids.
And did you see the April report from the nonprofit group Mission: Readiness, which laments that 9 million young people ages 17 to 24 -- 27 percent of all young adults -- are too fat to fight in the military? They say obesity is now a national security issue because being overweight is the leading medical reason for rejection from the military.
Add to that last week's report out of Britain that says more people are not only too fat to fight but also too fat to . . . um, make love. The study concluded that women with a body mass index greater than 30 reported having fewer sexual partners and less sex in general. And they were so generally embarrassed about their bodies that they were less likely to talk to their doctors about reproductive health, a big reason they were more likely to contract sexually transmitted diseases and have unwanted pregnancies than less-heavy women.
I'm not going to copycat my tall and thin Sun-Times colleague Laura Washington, who used her space in this paper to become the "Fat Nag" -- a proud African-American woman brave enough to take her dear sisters to task for allowing killer obesity to be culturally accepted in the black community.
But just for today allow me to be the "Skinny Grumbler." Join me in rallying against a society that pretends morbid obesity is socially acceptable. Some of us would like to enjoy summer.
What am I getting at here? I'm cold! C-O-L-D!!
Cold on a sunny morning when I have to wrap myself like a mummy in my three morning newspapers to stave off hypothermia from the overblown air conditioning that Metra needs to keep its well-padded clientele from melting in its packed cars.
Cold on a pleasantly warm day when I must wear my parka into the supermarket, which blasts the A/C to keep the store at 50 degrees so that all the over-stimulated and over-served customers can buy food without breaking a sweat.
Cold on a hot summer night when my restaurant's water glasses have icicles forming on them because all the already-health-challenged chow hounds are working up a sweat while overdoing it.
Hey, it's not just me. I've seen thick, sturdy women and men -- innocently wearing tank tops or shorts on a hot day -- walk into these same places and immediately shrug their shoulders and cradle their elbows in the universal body language for "Whoa -- why is it so darned cold in here?!"
I've witnessed complaints to managers over icy coffee shops, clothing stores, and locker rooms -- and I'm begging all of you out there to do the same.
Enabling people who are challenged with the burdens and risks of obesity by making them more comfortable in public situations where, under normal circumstances, they'd be uncomfortable only reinforces the idea that their ill health is bearable. Why do we accept our public spaces masking unhealthy people's natural body signals that something is very wrong?
You should be outraged that your hard work in supporting a loved one's quest to make healthier choices is undermined by a society willing to make them feel more comfortable. And shouldn't others get to be comfortable sometimes, too?
Stand with me, non-obese people, and revolt against the freezing-public-space status quo.
DUBLIN, Ireland -- This column is a love note to the country that has -- more than any other -- made Chicago what it is today: a city defined by a group of immigrants who came to the U.S. tired and poor but overcame institutionalized discrimination to become a politically empowered majority.
Yep, I'm on the Emerald Isle, and everywhere I go I see a little bit of home. In addition to the Bulmer Vintage's thrilling billboard which cheekily asks "North Cider or South Cider?" there are the two stunning Santiago Calatrava creations -- the Samuel Beckett and James Joyce bridges over the River Liffey -- which make me long for the Chicago Spire to come to life.
Let me assure you, based on my admittedly unscientific but in-depth research, that your favorite Chicago Irish bar is a darned good replica of the pubs all over Dublin. And also, I met your Irish uncle; almost everyone I've spoken to in my travels has either been to Chicago or has a relative in our fine town.
Oh, and Dublin -- like the rest of Ireland and much of Chicago -- is filled with Polish immigrants whose ethnic grocery stores dot the town, displaying "mowimy po polsku" signs.
From the sparkling glass high-rises built during the tech boom to Ireland's standing as a top beef, lamb and dairy exporter (hog butchers to the UK) and the dueling Old St. Patrick's churches, there are a million similarities.
I've spent time here learning about Ireland's history of struggle, uprising, independence and migration. What impresses me the most is how these people made names for themselves in the U.S., and how their success could be a model for the Hispanic community.
The Irish started showing up on U.S. soil en masse in the 1830s. They spoke English, sure, but with an accent and were ridiculed, marginalized and discriminated against.
When they weren't being denied work just for being Irish, they generally were used as cheap, disposable labor. Unlike today's Latin American immigrants, they weren't singled out as "illegals" but were demonized as "immorals." Take your pick as to which could be considered worse in historical context.
The key to the eventual economic empowerment of Irish immigrants was a heavy involvement in the political process: They networked, building powerful organizations, then set out to work successful alliances with non-Irish ethnic groups.
That's the inspiring part, the part that makes me feel I'll be writing a similar success story about Hispanic immigrants in a few decades: The Irish came here poor, uninvited and uneducated. They were hated, used and abused, but they worked hard, found their own political voice and eventually became part of the landscape -- just another ethnic minority taking a fair shot at the American Dream while melting down in the great assimilation pot.
Latinos in the U.S. are getting there. For all the angst and gnashing of teeth the Arizona anti-illegal immigrant laws are causing, what cannot be denied is that today's divisive immigration anxiety is successfully uniting the Latino community into an all-American subgroup that can and will come together to have a strong voice in the U.S. It's a community that's starting to flex real political muscle and simultaneously create alliances with Asian, European and other immigrant groups on the rise.
Like the Irish, Latinos and their multicultural offspring will grow up to become just another part of the landscape, with representation in all walks of private, public and civic life. Oh, it'll take a while, but those days are coming.
Like the Irish, Hispanics will achieve complete assimilation through politics.
I can almost hear the cheers at the someday presidential inauguration: "Kiss me, I'm Latino."
And in this week's edition of "How Can I Make This World A Better Place?" I'm going to tell you a story about love.
But first, a word from our sponsor . . . Today's heartwarming testament to the indomitability of the human spirit comes from none other than Luis Barrios, executive director of the Latino Consortium, eight Chicago nonprofit organizations under contract with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services to provide child welfare services to Hispanic children and their families.
Barrios would like you to know that of the roughly 17,000 children in the Illinois foster care system, about 6 percent are Latino. And while they are only the sixth group most in need of foster parents (behind brother-sister pairs and ahead of babies born with HIV), those numbers are sure to grow as the Hispanic population continues its explosive growth.
Unsurprisingly, one of the big challenges to finding foster care parents for these kids is the language barrier.
"We need bilingual foster care parents -- those fluent in any language other than English, of course, but especially those who can speak Spanish," Barrios told me one sunny afternoon last week as he struggled with my remarkable ignorance about what foster care is and how it differs from adoption.
"Foster care is a temporary placement outside a child's home, usually due to abuse, neglect or other family problems -- it's an alternative to group homes or institutional care -- but it's not intended as a permanent living arrangement," he told me. "The point is to protect the child, with the ultimate goal of returning the child back home to the rehabilitated family."
It's exactly because of that end goal of reuniting children with their families that bilingual foster care parents are critical: It's not because the kids don't speak English, but because the foster family must be able to communicate with the child's family in their language.
And now, this week's edition of "How Can I Make This World A Better Place?"
Let me tell you about Georgina Salmeron. One fine day 16 years ago, her husband, Francisco, who at the time worked for Seguin Services, a nonprofit, community-based agency offering social and rehabilitative services to adults and children with special needs, came home and asked her if she'd mind "fostering" a sick child he'd met at Seguin. At the time, they had four young ones of her own, but they had the guts to open their home and hearts to a child with a severe developmental disability.
"I can't say for sure, but by now it's probably been 10 kids we've had. Even though my own kids are grown and left the house, we still take foster kids in," Georgina told me. "We just like it so much we keep doing it -- and there's such a need!"
Georgina and Francisco are extremely unusual; not only are they Spanish bilingual, but they don't bat an eye at severe physical or developmental disabilities.
"Right now I have an African-American baby who just has so many problems because he was born with drug-related complications," she says matter of factly. "Our hands are always full."
How do they do it?
"It's not about the size of your house or your paycheck," she said. "It's about opening your heart. And what you get back. It's really a beautiful thing to open your life to a child who needs love -- and someone to love -- and patience, stability."
The answer to the question: "How Can I Make This World A Better Place?" is simple. Consider being a bilingual foster parent.
Call (800) 624-KIDS and a local DCFS or private child welfare agency representative will contact you, and after you've heard the tremendous impact you can have on the life of a child, you can decide if offering foster care is a good plan for you and your family.
"There are so, so many kids who need a temporary home," Georgina said, "and it's so beautiful to send them back to their family well-fed and happy."
This space is usually dedicated to tackling the big issues head-on; to posing big, pressing questions and coming up with small, everyday solutions. Today will be no different.
Today you will take an intellectual journey with me -- ending with a plea for your assistance -- that will cover the rocky terrain of trans-Atlantic travel in the age of terrorism, the collision of American and European cultures, epicurean snobbery and global commerce.
The issue du jour is ketchup.
In 19 days, I will board a plane to England and spend two weeks sightseeing, then hop over to Ireland, and then Scotland, to check out the cool castles and the even cooler accents. Of course I'm looking forward to it -- it's a vacation! -- and yet . . . in the last few weeks I've been held tightly in the grip of an obsession. An obsession with ketchup.
It started out innocently enough: I told a pal I was going and he extolled the delights of the countryside and the wonderful fries. Then came the warning: "But the ketchup is kinda weird. Sorta vinegary."
Vinegary? Ewwwwwww. That will not do.
A normal person would have forgotten about this in about three seconds. Yet I've lain awake at night plotting, scheming to figure out how I'm going to get American ketchup into Europe so I can lavish my very favorite condiment on these world-class fries I've been hearing about. I started brainstorming -- glass bottles, plastic bottles, packets, jars -- thinking it would be a simple purchase and pack.
In the days before 9/11, and even before 2009's Christmas Day attempted airplane attack, the obvious thing would have been to pack a few bottles into a carry-on bag so the cabin pressure could keep my ketchup pristine. That's just not an option anymore. Can't you just see me, my multi-ethnic olive skin, and three 20-ounce bottles of the red stuff getting hustled away by security to some scary back room at O'Hare?
I considered just buying some good American ketchup overseas, but the good folks at the Heinz Consumer Resource Center schooled me on the particulars of their international marketing strategy.
"Dear Valued Consumer," their e-mail to me read, "Heinz USA and our affiliate companies throughout the world operate as separate entities within the international framework of the H.J. Heinz Company. Each produces products best suited for the markets they serve. Heinz Ketchup produced in the United States is not normally available in the U.K. except through international importers."
Bottom line: practically out of the question.
Last week, I happened to have a chance to chat with David George Gordon, author of the Eat a Bug Cookbook and the perennial favorite, The Compleat Cockroach, while he cooked up grasshopper shish kebabs and tempura-battered mealworms for a crowd of squealing grade-schoolers. He told me he'd carried plastic ketchup bottles in checked bags and flown all over the world.
I'm too nervous for that. I had a chance encounter with someone who fell in love with Jamaican ketchup last fall, stuffed his suitcase with several dozen packets and found himself home with a giant wet mess when his bags came off the conveyor belt; all had exploded in flight. This is the stuff of nightmares.
Oh, that Garrison Keillor's "Catchup Advisory Board" was real so that they could guide my travel plans! Sigh.
For now I will have to pacify myself with my favorite ketchup's "natural mellowing agents" until you, constant readers, can bail me out. E-mail me at eejaycee @600words.com with a solution to my ketchup conundrum, and I'll bring you back a souvenir from the United Kingdom and, of course, my eternal gratitude.
It's Money Smart Week in Chicago, that annual event sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and -- if nothing else -- the city is accented with portraits of a robust Benjamin Franklin winking knowingly from the center of a $100 bill.
Catchy marketing materials aside, I wish Money Smart Week were not just an annual springtime community outreach effort to increase awareness about the importance of financial education, but rather a matter of national law. One of those pseudo-oppressive nanny state jobbies that turn people into stark-raving lunatics about being "force fed" something that's good for them.
I can see it now. Wouldn't it be cool if those replica Ben Franklins roaming the streets of Chicago in support of Money Smart Week were carrying functional revolutionary-era firearms and were allowed to shoot anyone who couldn't differentiate simple from compound interest?
I'm kidding, I'm kidding!!! But only because most people would fail that one and the Chicago Police Department would be working overtime to pick up bodies. What with all the money troubles the city has, that just wouldn't be a financially sound way to incentivize people to learn about the power of the cash they work so hard for every day.
So anyway, financial literacy. It's not a sexy topic to most people, though in some circles it is considered the next civil right. The fact that my very favorite founding father greeted me at the train station the other morning didn't hurt, but what really inspired me to write this column was not a hand-wringing "oh, the children of this country will never learn to manage their money" moment. Quite the opposite.
A few weeks ago, one of my favorite young pals asked me if I would take him to the bank.
"What for?" I asked, wondering if there was a local bank giving away some sort of kid-friendly tchotchke.
"I want to open an interest-bearing checking account with the $220 I've saved up," said the 11-year-old boy, whose first name is Stimpson.
Yes, this kid, who attends school in a financially struggling suburban school district where about 60 percent of students live at or below the poverty line and 20 percent of kids are considered limited in English proficiency, had learned all about the power of interest-bearing bank accounts at school. Having taught high school math in this very district, I know that as recently as four years ago the average high school student didn't have a clue what an interest-bearing checking account was.
Unlike the average kindergarten through 12th-grade child in this country, Stimpson -- a strapping young fifth-grader -- is getting familiar with money topics that have made it clear why putting your money in a bank is preferable to cashing your check at the currency exchange and will ultimately help him decide whether and how to take out car loans or student loans.
Yep, Stimpson is one of the lucky ones because some visionary at his school district decided to partner with Junior Achievement, a nonprofit that goes into schools to "teach the key concepts of work readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy to young people all over the world."
Their work is sorely needed. According to a recent article in the New York Times, only 13 states require students to take a personal finance course or include the subject in an economics course before they graduate from high school, up from seven states in 2007, according to the Council for Economic Education. Only 34 states (including those 13) have personal finance education in their curriculum guidelines, up from 28 states in 2007.
It's too bad more elementary school kids aren't itching to get their very own financial adviser. And too bad there aren't enough Benjamin Franklin costumes in the basement of the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank to personally reach all of the kiddies in the state to teach them how to manage the money they'll earn and spend throughout their lifetimes.
Teach kids to love learning, not just to learn how to earn
March 22, 2010
BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Sun-Times Columnist
Whether straining to Leave No Child Behind or Race to the Top, there's no question that this country's leadership is zeroing in on education from kindergarten through college. Most specifically, they're working on the academic gap between the haves and have-nots domestically and on the gap between the United States and other affluent countries.
The Obama administration's new blueprint for overhauling the way our nation educates children is blessedly less focused on just reading and math and more inclusive of art, science and social studies.
There's no question that the overriding concern of the new policy -- getting every state to adopt "college- and career-ready academic standards" -- reflects the White House's belief that higher education is a fundamental driver of future economic stability for this country.
That couldn't be more true, and this renewed commitment is nothing short of wonderful. But still, the former teacher in me laments, why in all this talk of training good teachers and closing student achievement gaps do I rarely hear discussion about learning for learning's sake?
What's constantly missing in this conversation is how to capitalize on the joy of learning, the celebration of a child's (and a teacher's) innate intellectual curiosity, of personal edification.
Actual learning has been replaced by an emphasis on "achievement."
If you had visited a teacher training program in the late '90s, you would have heard conversations about educational philosophies based completely on the goal of harnessing all of the above to create lifelong learners.
But by the time I stood at the front of my own classroom and was finishing up my master's in education in the early 2000s, it seemed the overriding educational goal of policymakers, administrators and not a few teachers was to create lifelong achievers. And not necessarily high achievers mind you, but kids who could sit quietly and do well enough on standardized tests to achieve adequate yearly progress.
With that hurdle jumped, the second burning goal was to get kids through high school and in and out of college for the sole purpose of moving them on to gainful employment.
Nothing wrong with that -- we all gotta eat, and I happen to love work way more than the next guy. But this does not nurture educated masses who value learning so much that they do it for a lifetime and pass it on to their own children; it creates a nation of lifelong earners, not learners.
That's weird to me. I don't think of higher education as just job training.
Let's look at the mission statements of my alma maters.
Roosevelt University, which trained me as a teacher, says it is "dedicated to the enlightenment of the human spirit." Its aim is to prepare "diverse graduates for responsible citizenship in a global society."
Southern Illinois University, where I was an undergraduate, says that it "supports intellectual exploration at advanced levels in traditional disciplines and in numerous specialized research undertakings" to "help solve social, economic, educational, scientific, and technological problems, and thereby to improve the well-being of" basically, the world.
Those are the kinds of aspirations that will create new jobs in the future. They'll be created by innovative thinkers and entrepreneurs who can conceive new businesses, products and services the whole world will be dying to get from the United States This innovative class will do it not only because they want to get rich, but because creating something new using what you've learned -- and learning something new in the process -- is ridiculous fun.
Applause to the White House for putting education at center stage. Now if they truly want U.S. schools from kindergarten through grad school to make it in that race to the top, they need to keep their eyes on the prize:
How you doin'? Did you get enough rest over the weekend -- catch up on your sleep? If not, join the club.
Oh yes, the subject of sleep is near and dear to my heart, and I can tell you from personal experience that none of us is getting enough, and last week the good folks at the National Sleep Foundation made it official -- yet again -- with the results of their annual Sleep in America poll. This time with the twist of gathering data comparing whites, blacks, Asians and Hispanics.
It didn't surprise me one bit to see that no group had a majority reporting the good, solid seven to eight hours of sleep most often recommended by doctors for optimal health. I myself had been clocking in at a shameful four or five hours per night for the last few years, and it took several months of being miserable for my doctor to finally convince me that the deficit would kill me sooner than later. Through diligent work, I've now slept an average of 8.09 hours a night over the last 77 days, but it certainly hasn't been easy.
There's just too much to do in place of sleeping -- and I don't mean just chores.
Sure, most people lose sleep over things that are bothering them, but Hispanics ... well, for us it's an art form. According to the study, Hispanics are the group most likely to say they're kept awake by financial, employment, personal relationship and/or health-related concerns -- 38 percent of Hispanics, compared with 33 percent of African Americans and about 25 percent each of whites and Asians.
This is me, my family, and my friends' families: sleepers so light that morning dew forming on the lawn can rip one out of a sound sleep, providing ample time to fret about how the family will ever pay for their funeral someday.
This is not an exaggeration; it's a variation of death -- or the road to it -- that keeps Latinos awake at night. The economy, love/family and health worries are just the smoke trail spewing out of top of the angst express. According to the National Sleep Foundation, about 2 in 10 Hispanics and African Americans say their sleep is disturbed every night or almost every night by at least one of these concerns.
I have none of these worries, so I lay awake at night worrying about my parent's worry levels. Crazy, I know -- but that's culture for you.
Growing up in my household -- a traditional "Hispanics in America" home with the babies and the elders all under one roof -- it was a common occurrence for the grandmas to be up in the middle of the night fretting, and for long-faced fathers to look to the breakfast table for something warm to take the chill out of a long, agonizing night -- "Oh, I was just up ... thinking."
And let's not even get started on the aches and pains. This same study reports that Hispanics are more likely than blacks and Asians, and twice as likely as whites, to say that health concerns have disturbed their sleep at least a few nights a week. Even I succumb to this one regularly.
Incredibly, you'd think the good vibes from having the highest rate of sex before falling asleep (10 percent of both blacks and Hispanics claim to have sex every night or almost every night in the hour before going to sleep, compared with 4 percent of whites and 1 percent of Asians, for those of you keeping score at home) would keep the mind from awakening to torment the self with anxieties.
But no.
It's a darned shame, really. All this losing sleep over the things you can't control rather than resting up to take action on all the things you can control is killing us all.
I've mended my ways and am aiming for a solid 8.5-hour average over a 100-day period, and I'm hoping the warm milk and the thick, data-laden public policy reports will get me there serenely.
Coffee or Tea party? Whatever your cup, roll up your sleeves
BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Sun-Times Columnist
March 8, 2010
I remember my first Tea Party invitation. The "hosts" were a group of loosely federated regional anti-illegal immigration groups, the occasion was Tax Day, and the call to action was to "protest to demand the end of taxation without representation."
The particular bone of contention was Gov. Quinn's then-proposed tax increase, described thusly: "Governor Quinn says he must raise your income tax because he doesn't have enough money to pay for all the social welfare benefits demanded by the illegal alien invaders."
Fast-forward nearly a year and the Tea Partiers are going strong -- strong enough to have stumped some and horrified others. I've read big, epic pieces in several different publications alternately describing the Tea Party Movement as being one big quasi-Ku Klux Klan hate group, or the representative conglomeration of an America so fed up with our government they're ready to bear arms against it, or a young, dynamic collection of diverse individuals -- from liberal, nose-ring sporting actresses to frustrated middle-class professionals -- simply exercising their rights to free speech and peaceable assembly in support of controlling their own destinies. Pick yer favorite.
That's the thing that makes the Tea Party movement so fascinating -- and scary to some -- it isn't monolithic, it isn't easy to sort into a neat category and it isn't easy to dismiss out of hand, especially if your perfectly rational neighbor or friend can say they agree with a lot of what they stand for -- mainly an end to government's fiscal irresponsibility.
Might there be an alternative for those sick and tired of the mess that decades of waste and corruption hath wrought but who aren't anti-government?
Enter the Coffee Party movement. According to the New York Times, it is a burgeoning national movement for those hoping to work the system rather than eliminate it. Taking a quick Facebook jaunt over to the "Join Coffee Party Movement Chicago" page, I found their official mission statement: "We recognize that the Federal Government is NOT the enemy of the People, but the expression of our collective wills. As voters and volunteers, we will support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them."
By Thursday night, they had picked up an additional 95 fans on top of the 627 present and accounted for a mere 20 hours earlier when I first checked. Not bad for a group that had been alive for about the blink of an eye.
It's still in the infancy stage, and the postings on its discussion page have, so far, ranged from micro-narratives of hustling the local coffee shop for meeting space, complaints about meetups not being near enough to home, joyous woo-hoos, suggestions for tangible goals and long tracts wondering if they've bitten off more than they can chew.
About what you'd expect from grass trying to lay down roots.
Will the Coffee Party Movement grow into the populist political force the Tea Party groups are trying to become, or will the cups-o-joe get bitter after they've been around a while? I don't care either way -- it's all good.
Though the snarky among us would say, if nothing else, that President Obama can be credited with uniting people in their hatred of him, that's too cynical for me. I'd rather look at the bright side of the discontent and frustration boiling over across almost all economic classes, in cities, suburbs and on farms, among people of all ages, races and colors -- the muscular rise of a mass of civically engaged people.
Enraged, yes -- but primarily engaged.
Coffee or Tea, both movements are engaged, passionate, energetic and willing to roll the old sleeves up and put in the time and work toward reshaping their country in a way they think will serve their self-interests -- and their country -- best.
It's a beautiful thing, this season of hot and tasty parties. So much passion, so much energy, so much desire to just "do good."
'Go away!" I tell them. Let me explain. On occasion, well-meaning teachers call me in to high schools to talk to kids who are poised to be the first in their family to attend college. I get to impress these future leaders of America and their parents with the endless benefits of higher education.
Dutifully, I cover all of the important stuff that comes from completing a degree or certification: the increased opportunity for a lifetime of stable careers, the pure joy of intellectual enlightenment. Then I get to the part that makes parents cringe: the unparalleled fun of breaking away from all you know and becoming an independent adult for the first time ever.
Often this goes over poorly with the parents in the room. When it's a predominantly Hispanic crowd, the brows furrow in a synchronized wave of distaste at the mere mention of "going away" to college. That's because in Latino households where a college education is a cherished hope, it's also generally expected that the student in question will stay home to be supported by the family in the endeavor.
Culturally speaking, Latinos are literally all about the family. Generations live together under the same roof, caring for each other from infancy to old age. You fear Dad more than you fear God, and Mom is the center of the universe. So no matter how much of a fancy schmancy smarty pants you think you are, you just don't break Mami's heart by going away to college!
From the perspective of so many parents who didn't get the opportunity to do so themselves, you just don't let your tender young child go off hundreds of miles away to study and do who-knows-what with who-knows-who. In my case, my parents knew better than to try to stop me, and lo all these years later, I can finally say there are a whole lot of others following in my footsteps.
A recent study by the UCLA Higher Education Research Institute found that since 1975, the share of Latino freshmen at four-year colleges who choose schools more than 50 miles from home has risen from about 46 percent to nearly 59 percent. At the same time, those attending four-year colleges within 10 miles of home dropped from 30 percent to 15 percent, while the proportion of white freshmen who went away to school stayed unchanged, about 66 percent.
This obviously points to the explosive growth of an acculturated Hispanic middle class comfortable with the idea that college is a ticket to the "American Dream" and that high school kids graduate and leave home for school, rather than get a job to help support the rest of the family.
Sure, the whole issue of where Latinos study is trivial when you stop to consider that despite all efforts, only 27 percent of Latinos ages 18 to 24 were enrolled in college in 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Education. That's an increase from the 1980s, but still low compared with whites, at 43 percent, and blacks, at 33 percent.
But going away -- if the opportunity is within reach -- is really important. Even Latinos who stay home know they're missing out on a special part of life. "At first, I really didn't want to go away," Ana Perez, a senior at DePaul University who lives at home in Humboldt Park and commutes to school, told me recently. "I'm really close with my family, and I didn't want to lose out on being with them."
Ana admitted that although her parents never came out and said she shouldn't go away, her college years were never discussed in the context of being out of the nest. Now in her final months as a college student, she says she's happy with her choice, but "I wish I could have done it. I didn't get to experience a lot of things -- being on my own, learning how to rely on just myself. When I have my own kids, I definitely will encourage it."
That's just how it goes: the Esthers and the Anas of the world will continue to go out and broadcast how rip-roaring wonderful college life can be, and in a few generations, a whole culture will be changed for the better.
It's a perfect time to get reacquainted with Scott Joplin, King of Ragtime
February 22, 2010
BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA Sun-Times Columnist
I've been on an insane Scott Joplin bender for two weeks now. I woke up two Saturdays ago thinking about ragtime and didn't even wait to get out of bed -- I downloaded 37 different rags straight into my iPod and have been obsessively playing them all over and over and over again ever since.
There's the "Country Club Rag," "Paragon Rag," "Fig Leaf Rag," "Pine Apple Rag," "The Heliotrope Bouquet," "Maple Leaf Rag," "Elite Syncopations"; the list literally goes on and on. A few days later, I sent my piano teacher a hysterical e-mail begging him to teach me "The Entertainer" at my next lesson.
My favorite comment last week was, "Why are you listening to the ice cream truck music?" The honest answer is: I don't know.
But I do know this: I'm not a fan of "Months." You know, National Sweet Potato Month, National Foot Health Month, National Hispanic Heritage Month, National Tickling Month. There are so darned many of them that they no longer impart meaningful information -- not like they really should, certainly not how they were intended to.
For instance, February is National Black History Month. Sure, I remember learning about George Washington Carver, Frederick Douglass and Rosa Parks during my school years, but after that I didn't get much more in the way of continued awareness of that aspect of February.
Imagine my surprise -- and embarrassment -- when last week while blathering on about Scott Joplin, I decided to do a quick Web search for images of him, I uttered: "Scott Joplin was black?!" The answer was "Duh."
All right, so sue me. I've been hearing his music my entire life, been actively studying music for more than 21 years, have played orchestrated versions of his most popular tunes in various musical groups, mangle "The Entertainer" during my evening piano practice, and I just did not know Scott "the King of Ragtime" Joplin was black.
In my own defense, I'll tell you it never ever occurred to me to care one way or the other about this remarkably talented composer's color or race. But his story is so amazing I can't believe it isn't taught in elementary schools along with that of Revolutionary-era hero Crispus Attucks, pioneer Jean-Baptiste-Point du Sable and beauty entrepreneur Madame C.J. Walker.
I certainly can't do justice to his complete narrative here -- visit the Web site of the Scott Joplin International Ragtime Foundation for a wonderful account -- but I will say that it would have been enough that he was born with perfect pitch, taught himself the piano as a child, then the cornet and a bit of violin, and created an enduring and much-beloved part of American musical history for which he was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize.
But to have done all that starting out black in Texas circa 1870 -- sneaking practice on the pianos of the white people his mother cleaned house for as the result of an absentee ex-slave father -- is nothing short of amazing. He even did some chop-honing here in Chicago in the late 1890s with a band that played for visitors to the World's Fair who didn't mind getting their drinks in the seedier parts of town.
The classic 1973 Robert Redford/Paul Newman caper movie "The Sting" repopularized Joplin's music but, frankly, it's high time for another resurgence of interest in Scott Joplin; which is closer to the spirit of what "National Months" are all about: awareness of all the awesome things we should know.
So during this, the last week of Black History Month, I'm celebrating -- and making it up to ol' Joplin -- by jauntily pounding out "The Entertainer" and being grateful that every day brings a new opportunity to learn something new and interesting.
Melting pot giving rise to post-'Latino' Latino politicians
BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA
February 1, 2010
I have no idea what 2050 will actually be like, but I'm imagining it will be fantastic beyond my wildest dreams!
By then I'll have mastered the piano and will be making tons of cash singing nightly cabaret gigs, not a bit bothered that no one is interested in what I've got to say about the world anymore because there'll be plenty of multi-ethnic people opining on current affairs in whatever passes for digital newspapers by then. Me and my "unique perspective," which is representative of the "emerging" Latino population, will have become as defunct as my gas-powered car.
By then Hispanics will be about a quarter of the population. Add the 15 percent of the population that blacks are projected to be, plus the children of today's estimated 3 million mixed-race couples, and there surely will be so many "minority" journalists, columnists and lawyers, engineers, scientists and sports stars that no one will care what I think anymore because I'll be just another face in the multi-hued crowd.
That happy thought sprang to mind last week when I was asked to go on Chicago Public Radio WBEZ's news program "848" for a discussion of the "Future of Latino Politics."
I chuckle when I hear stuff like that because the real future of Latino anything is a mainstream, U.S.-born, English speaking one that will be about as exotic and ethnic as the Chicago Irish.
Sure, there'll be the obligatory heritage parades, but it'll be a "unique cultural identity" that's given consideration only annually and will be adopted by anyone who happens to be walking by and thirsty for beer. Think: Cinco de Mayo.
While the conversation's starting point was a recitation of Latino politics' greatest hits -- the supposedly defunct Hispanic Democratic Organization, the highly emotional Jesus Garcia/ Rudy Lozano campaigns against clouted incumbents, the rise of the young professional types like ex-Ald. Manny Flores -- I think I brought us back to the reality that the continually churning melting pot is already giving rise to the post-"Latino" Latino politician. Which is to say, a politician who's running as a candidate, not as a Hispanic candidate.
It's too soon to visualize that, I know. The Latino population as we know it today is relatively new to the United States, and its politics are defined by the civil rights, worker's rights and immigration reform concerns that naturally have particular resonance to a community still gaining a foothold in our society.
But much like the Italians and the Irish before them, who became just another thread in the fabric of this country, Hispanic community leaders will someday stop gathering from across the country to discuss a "Latino agenda" of social and political empowerment and instead concern themselves with focusing on more universal themes such as the U.S. economy, health care and education.
People often disdain my constant scanning of the horizon to a time when no one will focus on such matters as whether your mom's mom came from Latin America or Latvia, completely ignoring that our whole American conscious is made up of all the cultures of the people who live here and there's nothing wrong with focusing on the scary-to-some time when Latinos will have completely melted into the melting pot.
Like I told the radio show producer, as assimilation draws immigrants into the "American" culture -- as it always has and always will -- this "Hispanic" narrative that's currently playing out will become old hat. In the not-too-distant future, we'll be talking about the future of Muslim politics or of East Indian politics.
Or, if I look into the faces of my own family's children, we'll be talking about the rise of quarter-Mexican-quarter-Ecuadorian-half-black politics, quarter- Mexican-quarter-Ecuadorian-half-Filipino politics, and quarter-Mexican-quarter-Ecuadorian-half-white politics.
But it'll be called something else by then: just plain old politics.
And me? I won't have much to say about it, I'll be too busy tinkling the ivories, crooning "When You Wish Upon A Star" for you.
My favorite Martin Luther King Jr. Day memory: Each year, the spring semester at my beloved alma mater, Southern Illinois University, began on the day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day. And each year, I played out the same ritual of leaving home.
On the morning of MLK Day, I'd finish packing my tan '84 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme with a healthy supply of clean laundry and junk food, kiss Mama and Papa Cepeda goodbye, and take off on a six-hour odyssey down Interstate 57 back to school in Carbondale.
As the Kankakee exits blew by on this particular MLK Day in 1993, I was in a car full of fellow simultaneously reluctant and excited back-to-schoolers. Having switched from driver to navigator, my chief duty was to kill an hour by entertaining the driver with tales from the newspaper.
I lovingly orated the full speech, reprinted in that day's Sun-Times, being sure to inhale before "Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends" so that the phrase would be properly articulated. I moved gingerly through the "I have a dream" sections so as not to caricature King's iconic delivery, bit back the overwhelming desire to sing the snippet of "My Country 'Tis of Thee" he quotes, and ended the "Free at last" proclamation in a near whisper as if in prayer, given that the federal holiday was as much a commemoration of his violent death as it was a celebration of his peace-inspiring life.
The memory of reading those words aloud still gives me the chills!
That was almost 16 years to the day before the first black president would be inaugurated.
Back then, I was a marvelously innocent 18-year-old who had never even given consideration to the idea that King's national civil rights push was every bit as much for me -- a female, ethnic minority -- as for the descendents of slavery.
All those connections were yet to be made during subsequent college courses, but let's just say I got a firsthand inkling of the very real oppression blacks experienced in this country during King's time when that next summer, at a fair in a tiny town even deeper in southern Illinois, I came across my first glimpse of white supremacists.
A vendor sitting at a table next to the corn-dog shack was hawking Ku Klux Klan lapel pins, Nazi swastika ball caps and T-shirts with racist epithets too crass to repeat here. Seeing him in all his army-helmeted, skull-tattooed glory made me wonder -- in a typical fit of naivete -- if there were other people in the world who didn't like people who were not white. I'd never met any before that time, so how could I have known they actually existed outside of dusty history books?
Fast-forward to 2010, an African American is the leader of the same U.S. of A. that imported slaves to help build the country, yet first lady Michelle Obama still has to explicitly explain to people -- reacting to this latest Harry Reid racial comment dustup -- that the existence of a black president would not heal all our race-related ills. Who could have blamed us for hoping so?
It doesn't matter. King gave us 21st century advice good for a post-racial, peace-filled, poverty-cured world we haven't quite attained -- yet. Advice aimed at "black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics" that was never guaranteed to be easy or fun, but necessary:
"As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back."
Animal shelters across California are juggling Chihuahuas. A rising tide of abandonment has led the little dogs to now rival pit bulls for the unhappy title of most popular, most unwanted breed.
In Oakland, half the dogs at one shelter are Chihuahuas. In San Francisco’s municipal shelter, the proportion of full- or part-Chihuahuas is one-third and rising. Officials in Los Angeles have taken to airlifting them to the Northeast, which has many more Chihuahua lovers than shelters here can supply.
Shelter officials say breeders and puppy mills have been saturating a market that has been artificially stoked by pop culture. Add a deep recession, and it’s easy to understand the flood of plaintive stories and photos of unwanted dogs on shelter Web sites and on Craigslist, so far from the sunny worlds of "Legally Blonde" and "Beverly Hills Chihuahua."
But let’s leave Elle Wood out of this. Too many people learn too late that their little handbag companions can be nervous, yappy, fragile — they are prone to chronic problems with their teeth, skulls and bones — and expensive to maintain.
As shelters try to solve what is essentially a distribution problem, states need to discourage reckless breeders and pass laws requiring spaying and neutering. People also need to realize the responsibility they are taking on before they buy or adopt any dog. The dogs deserve a safe, caring and permanent home. (And, if it’s a shorthaired Chihuahua going to the Northeast in winter, a sweater.)
Yep, it’s been a full year that I’ve been writing about the effects of the economic downturn on pets ("Trickle-down economics: housing crunch hits man’s best friends") and the hits keep coming. Last time I spoke to Tom Van Winkle, the Executive Director of the Animal Care League in Oak Park, IL, not only were there still more pets arriving every day but also fewer and fewer good home to place pets in – and less dollar donations flowing to keep them sheltered.
But, alas, it may be tough out there for man and beast but the holiday spirit of hope must burn brightly. And with that I offer this happy holiday poem to steel you through the cold days ahead. Enjoy!
That I jumped to my feet like a frightened cabrito.
I ran to the window y mire' afuera
And who in the world do you think that it era?
Santo Nikos in a sleigh and a big red sombrero
Came dashing along like a crazy bombero!
And pulling his sleigh, instead of venados,
Were eight little *CHIHUAHUAS*, approaching volados.
I watched as they came and this quaint little hombre
Was shouting and whistling and calling by nombre:
Ay Milo! Ay Tobee! Ay Frida y Sasha!
Ay Todo! Ay Pepe! Ay Poco y Nacho!
Then standing erect with hand en su pecho
He flew to the top of our very own techo
With his round little belly like a bowl of jalea
He struggled to squeeze down our old chimenea.
Then huffing and puffing, at last in our sala,
With soot smeared all over his traje de gala,
He filled all the stockings with bonitos regalos
For none of the ninos had been muy malos.
Then chuckling aloud, seeming muy contento,
He turned like a flash y volo' como el viento.
And I heard him exclaim (y es la verdad!)
"MERRY CHRISTMAS A TODOS, !! FELIZ NAVIDAD !!"
Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com
The first time I ever set foot in Pilsen was as a newly hired reporter after a white editor asked me to go there to "find some Latino stories" for the next day's paper.
That might sound weird to some, but I'd always been a Little Village gal. For as long as I can remember, my family had made monthly Sunday treks from our Lake View two-flat to "La Garra" at the University of Illinois at Chicago, also known as the Maxwell Street flea market. Afterwards, it was up to 26th Street to hit the Mexican bakeries and shops.
And I cannot remember a time when I wasn't intimately familiar with the city's Hasidic Jewish, Indian, Chinese, Korean, Iranian and Polish neighborhoods, but Pilsen was just a big old blind spot for me.
I've often written about how I hate it when people assume I grew up there -- that's a sort of a blind spot, too. It's one of many, many blind spots many of us didn't even know we had until a transplant to our fine city took it upon herself to define them.
Fascinated by Chicago's ethnic neighborhoods when she arrived back in 2000, Maria Krysan, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at UIC, decided to gauge residents' knowledge of city communities and quickly realized that Chicago's North Sider vs. South Sider pride stands akin to that of the Union and the Confederacy in the 1800s.
In her report, "Black-White-Latino Differences in Community Knowledge," based on a 2005 survey of more than 700 adults living in Cook County, Krysan explored the gaps in awareness these different groups had of the myriad segregated, integrated and everywhere-in-between neighborhoods in the Chicago region. She called these gaps "blind spots."
Like all good studies, it quantified gut feelings that had never before been confirmed, with simultaneously obvious and shocking results.
For instance, on the common-sense front, Krysan found that whites were generally unfamiliar with communities that featured a significant black population or were racially integrated -- including a few communities with majority white populations, such as Beverly and Homewood/ Flossmoor. Relatively unknown communities for at least a third of the African Americans surveyed included distant suburbs with majority white populations, such as Libertyville and Crystal Lake, in addition to racially and ethnically diverse Chicago neighborhoods such as Uptown, Logan Square and Albany Park.
Latinos, though, are in a league of their own when it comes to blind spots. Hispanics, when compared to whites and blacks, were oblivious to more than twice as many communities.
With the exception of Hispanic-centric spots such as Humboldt Park, Cicero, Pilsen and Little Village, more than half of the 41 communities used as examples in the study were "unknown" to a third or more of the Hispanic respondents. We were equally in the dark about segregated, integrated, city and suburban communities alike.
"Well, the bright side is that once you control for background characteristics like socioeconomic status and number of years of residency in the city, Latinos are quite knowledgeable about a wide range of communities; more so, in fact, than whites and blacks," Krysan told me. "But, from a practical standpoint, you can control away any factor to level the results and, the fact is, the Hispanic community in Chicago is still relatively new to this city -- not in all cases, of course, but generally -- and these blind spots do exist."
The neighborhood knowledge gap for Hispanics isn't the end of the world, but it keeps us more apart than we actually are. As it turns out, there are lots of inviting racially and ethnically diverse neighborhoods and suburbs, in addition to the well-marketed Oak Park, but most of us just don't know about them.
It has now been many, many years since I first set foot in Pilsen, but judging from my knowledge of the 41 neighborhoods on Krysan's list, I still need to get out more. And, probably, so do you.
Picture an idealistic Northwestern University cello student, circa 1993, playing a tune for a crowd of colorfully-robed monks from all over the world and you'll have visualized Michael Fitzpatrick.
Since his years in Chicago, Michael - golden-curly-haired, tall, and possessed of a chill-axed surfer dude vibe - has been featured on the recent PBS special "The Music Instinct: Science and Song" and has performed for political and religious royalty around the world. Really, the plaudits are so lengthy one's eyes glaze over.
I met him when he was in town giving a live performance of his musical accompaniment to the new Frederick Marx documentary "The Journey from Zanskar," a labor of love in a similar vein to the work he's done on his signature "Compassion Rising" project. The project serves - as the title of one of the tracks declares - as an "Invocation for World Peace."
What Fitzpatrick does with a cello cannot be adequately described as mere music; I can best describe the sounds Michael pours out of that four-stringed instrument as simple beauty that fills one's soul with nothing less than pure joy and peace. Plus, he just flat-out ROCKS, too. No kidding.
How Michael Fitzpatrick went from being a socially-conscious musician to becoming the virtuoso who travels the world injecting musical spiritualism into sacred events large and small - he's served as featured Soloist, Music Director, and Producer for the unprecedented musical collaboration recorded and filmed at sacred sites including Mammoth Cave, the largest cave in the world; the Abbey of Gethsemani; and the Furnace Mountain Zen Temple - is too a long a story for today.
But I was able to get Fitzpatrick on the phone for a few minutes in the hour before he went onstage with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet who is in Melbourne, Australia this week addressing the Parliament of the World’s Religions. Here's Fitzpatrick on the art of making music, spreading compassion, and providing the soundtrack for spiritual leaders, pictures from the morning performance, as well.
EJC: What are you doing right now?
MF: I just got done with the sound check and am on my way back into the theater among the high, high security protocols. I'll go onstage first, with the Dalai Lama, Wednesday morning for the morning keynote and invocation.
EJC: What's the extra-special magic for you with this set of events?
MF: It's very, very special! We're performing Wednesday and Thursday. And December 10 is the 10th anniversary of the death of Thomas Merton who was regarded as the most influential monk of the 20th century. Also December 10, 2009 is the occasion of the 20th anniversary of His Holiness the Dalai Lama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. December 10th is also the anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and of course, the day President Obama will be accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, so it's very, very exciting.
EJC: How does one gear up for THAT?
MF: (Laughing) How do you prepare to go on stage with the man many people consider the most enlightened being of our time?
I eliminate the extraneous thoughts from my mind then I prepare to send the notes out to everyone in the world to touch their hearts and move them to the compassion that the Dalai Lama is the embodiment of.
I meditate before I go on stage but not like, "oh I’m going to set 15 minutes aside," I do more of a walking meditation but so much of the time I’m already in a meditative state – I hold everything in, the energy, the creativity and when the show is going to happen I delve deep into that internal place. I review in my mind the Compassion Rising project then force myself deeper into remembering why we’re all here: to come together in peace, love, compassion and to hold that space.
Basically, it's like getting ready for the big basketball game.
EJC: So what's it like to be onstage with His Holiness? You've performed for and with him many, many times - spent a lot of time with him, actually, for a non-monk. So you're probably not nervous per se... Does His Holiness' vibe throw off your tuning or anything like that?
MF: Yeah, it's a very specific frequency he resides in it's an extremely high vibration but a really heavy grounded vibration at the same time. I've been working with him for 13 years and I've just learned how to adjust my frequency to him. It's kind of like downshifting.
Playing my cello is a bit different, yes. Being in the presence of the Dalai Lama and many other powerful beings, playing in sacred places all over the world - I’ve played on the site where Jesus was baptized, in sacred caves where there is ancient earth - the resonances are so different! When I start to play, [the energy] starts to wake up the sound vibrations and the sound molecules in the wood - it, like, heats up and the sound and quality leaps and takes on a mystical dimension.
EJC: Tell that story about when you first met the Dalai Lama.
MF: I was attending Northwestern University in Evanston, working on a master's in performance in 1993 when he was in Chicago and I met him for the first time. I didn't really know a thing about him except that he was the Dalai Lama. There I was in the Palmer House Hilton surrounded by every colorful turban-ed, robed monk - it was like something out of a movie.
EJC: What was happening in your training that was preparing you for the path you started on after that Palmer House Hilton performance?
MF: At Northwestern I had two exceptional cello teachers who gave me a tremendous amount of creative freedom to explore the other types of sounds a cello could make - overlaid on the basics of the core principles, of course.
As a student in Chicago I was very concerned about the role of the musician in 21st century and the need to not just entertain but to inspire and uplift. In particular, my teacher and conductor Victor Yampolsky really allowed for that next-level of exploration of the music. He had a titanic energy about him! I remember performing Beethoven's 9th Symphony at Pick Staiger Hall and feeling the truest expression of spirituallity - it just blew me away! The way this master musician from Russia brought through this most ancient energy to that work was life-changing.
EJC: What about now? What keeps you going on this quest to bring compassion to the world through your music - it's not a bed of roses every day, right?
MF: There’s this great line that Tom Petty said during his 30th anniversary concert, he was just riffing, and he said something like "just for one moment I want to believe everything is OK, because then there might be another moment where everything is OK." That’s how I feel when I’m making music for the world – if that "one moment" is possible, then the reality of the violence and the dark side of life can start to be replaced with peace and compassion.
Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com
Just in time for the biggest gift-buying, extended-family-all-shoved-into-one-house holiday extravaganza of the year, the Federal Trade Commission has again wagged its finger at Hollywood for peddling violent and inappropriate fare to kiddies.
For the seventh time since 2000, their report, titled "Marketing Violent Entertainment to Children," points out that even though the pushing of violent images by the film, music and gaming industries has become more restricted, they're basically still explicitly and pervasively targeting young children. No surprises there.
The FTC bemoans the entertainment conglomerates that put out unrated DVDs with more materials more explicit than what originally was released in theaters and calls out retailers that, more often than not when they get the chance, sell the stuff to children who don't meet the minimum age requirements. The FTC says Hollywood advertises PG-13 and R-rated movies during TV shows and on Internet sites where they'll be seen by too-young kids. The FTC also criticizes the music industry for not appropriately displaying their Tipper Gore-ian warning labels prominently enough in ads, but it gives an approving nod to the gaming industry for imposing strong self-regulatory codes.
What the FTC really ought to do -- though it's clearly out of its purview -- is create a rating system for parents. It could run the gamut from a gold star for the enlightened soul who engages in a thoughtful dialogue with his young 'un when something uncomfortably violent and sexual penetrates the cocoon of familial safety, down to a big fat dummy sticker on the forehead for the idiot who shows up to an 8 p.m. Saturday night screening of "Zombieland" with his 5-year-old girl and 7-year-old boy. The kids cried quietly the whole time.
What I'm illustrating here is that, yes, the FTC should absolutely continue to monitor the entertainment industry so that advertisements for "Grand Theft Auto" aren't stamped onto our 6-year-old's fruit roll-ups. But those really to blame for the pervasive exposure of kids to violent and sexually inappropriate entertainment are the families that either encourage it or do nothing to deal with it.
Take, for instance, a 2002 study by the Albert Einstein Children's Hospital in New York.
Researchers, who were testing the wisdom of the American Academy of Pediatrics' television viewing recommendations, observed 199 child patients and their parents when the kids were alert and awake. They found a "consistent exposure to inappropriate programming" -- with the number of instances going up when an adult was in the room.
Which brings me back to the gift-giving and movie-going season. If you're buying presents for pre-teen-wannabes, tweens or young teens, there are a couple of reasonable approaches you can take.
One: Have some spine and say "no." Don't go being the "cool" mom, dad, aunt or uncle by slipping your favorite 10-year-old that video game or DVD that makes you squirm. Accepting the role of hated villain now is good practice. If your kids are young, you'll be putting your foot down on 7 million other things, so get over it now.
Two: Bond over it. If you're going to buy that killing video game, go to that bloody movie or just out and get a dose of environmental sexually-charged violent make- believe, acknowledge it. Talk about it.
It sounds stupid, I know, but if you keep it real with the kids in your life -- "You know in real life you'd go to jail if you cut your neighbor in half with a sword, don't you?" or "Do you know how much money computer animation artists make!?" -- you can turn a negative into a not-as-negative that you can live with.
So what about Sosa? If he wants to be what the kids today call "light skinned-ed," well, is that so wrong?
The blogosphere is burning up with beastly, snarky comments and pictures of retired Cub Sammy Sosa, who has denied he has a skin disorder and instead credits his new hue to a skin-hydrating cream he's not ashamed to admit accounts for his stunning skin lightening.
I've seen people react with rabid disgust to Sosa's new look, with the main theme of the outrage centered around the idea that he's "making himself white" ostensibly because of some sort of self-hatred toward his dark Latin-American roots.
The filthy rich ex-slugger was born in the Dominican Republic, a land of lots of white sandy beaches and dark coffee-bean-colored skin.
But why is Sosa's desire to be lighter-skinned self-hatred?
Or better yet, why does it represent -- to some -- any more self-hatred than the adults who get braces to straighten their naturally gnarly teeth, or the man who gets a hair transplant to replace his long-departed hair, or the woman who can afford to de-gravity her once-perky bosom?
Sosa, who is making international headlines once again -- this time on a topic unrelated to cork -- has gotten so much heat about this he felt the need to tell an inquiring Univision television reporter, "I'm not a racist. I'm not like that. I'm just a happy person."
Sheesh.
My dad is from Ecuador and he is a very dark-skinned -- excuse me, a verrrrrry handsome, dark-skinned -- man. His whole life, our entire family and all his friends have called him by a nickname that referred to his dark caramel color. My mom is from Mexico and so very light she fries like a potato in a McDonald's deep fryer after being outside for 10 minutes.
I'm the lucky one: I get to be dark in the summer and light in the winter.
But what if that weren't so? What if I were really dark all the time -- would I be a "freak," "ashamed of my race," "disturbing" or "self-hating" if I were to lighten my skin?
Maybe I should go to the tanning salon -- like my white friends do to get their skin golden brown -- in the winter to stay closer to my "roots."
And by the way, would you say it was an affront to my lineage or a mark of low esteem when I asked my dentist to pull four of my teeth to get braces? I love myself plenty, thank-you-very-much.
The guy is rich, and when you have lots of money, you get to spend it on basically anything you can think of. When I first heard about his new skin color, my mind jumped to wondering whether he has also purchased any Beatles songs or large ranches equipped with carnival rides and the like -- but no, he seems to be mostly the same old Sammy.
He's just a Sammy who maybe looked in the mirror one day and said, in his best Lou Reed voice, "Hey, babe, take a walk on the white side."
Doot do doot do doot doo doo doot . . .
C'mon, it's the year 2009 and we have a black president in the White House. Black is beautiful, brown is all around and white's still just right. Isn't it about time we stop judging people by the color of their skin -- or by the color they choose their skin to be?
Esther J. Cepeda will blog about her darkening skin color right from the beaches of the Dominican Republic this December on
Death is all around us. Well, that much is always true, but it has been especially so around my house, where, since Sunday, my living room has been graced by the yearly addition of a candled, flowered, candied altar to my dead.
Yep, it's that time of the year: Saturday was Halloween, followed immediately on Sunday by the first day of the Mexican, Central and South American celebration Dia de los Muertos, a festival-like tradition honoring departed loved ones.
Today, Nov. 2, is when the whiskey, tequila, heavy food and cigarettes are usually brought out because that's the day deceased adults are honored. But I go to town with candy, toys, flowers and light-hearted trinkets on Nov. 1, which is the day infants and children are remembered -- and the day my own departed young one is celebrated in my home.
The coolest thing about this year's Day of the Dead celebrations is that this -- I proclaim -- is the year it went mainstream. It's no surprise every year when the Mexican supermarkets and bakeries put out the annual sugar skulls, pan de muerto -- "bread of the dead" -- and skeleton pinatas. But this year I've seen Mexican muerto skull sugar cookies in very mainstream bakeries, and I've seen feature stories all over the Internet, in mainstream newspapers, magazines and on TV about how to make the vibrant and fun accoutrements of this Latin American holiday.
I love that for two reasons. First, non-Latinos are learning about Hispanic culture and naturally integrating bits and parts into their own Halloween affairs -- melting pot, I think they call it.
Second, it's a great education for that segment of the Hispanic population who didn't grow up with this tradition. Culture is funny that way, some touchstones ignored by one generation only to be taken up by the next.
Take me, for instance. You might be imagining a young me flanked by black lace-garbed Mama Cepeda and Abuelita Cepeda in a great big sun-drenched kitchen decorated with colorful clay cooking pots, learning with tiny hands how to roll out the masa -- dough -- for the pan de muerto. Perhaps you imagine us decorating the graves of our loved ones. That couldn't be farther from the truth.
A family trip from the bosom of the North Side all the way to Pilsen's National Museum of Mexican Art to see dressed up little skeletons? Not once.
And there's nothing wrong with that. Culture can be so very strong that it need not be drilled in via field trip or workshop. Think chocolate bunnies at Easter.
No, I grew up in this city living whatever the "typical American life" means. Since Mayor Daley never dyed the Chicago river black on Dia de los Muertos, my family never made a fuss about it, reserving their loving attention to ensuring year after year of picture-perfect Halloweens for me.
Like I said, culture is a funny thing. It can skip generations, yet it is so strong that it can leave a homeland, travel thousands of miles and settle into new interpretations. This is only my sixth year of setting up a Day of the Dead altar.
When I started, I felt the need to connect to something symbolic in my heritage, but I didn't want to share my new personal tradition with anyone. I didn't want to deal with explaining that it's not some Satanic hoodoo voodoo thing.
But how scary can Latin American traditions really be to anyone -- even those who fear the melting pot has become an unwieldy and distasteful chunky stew -- when grocery chains sell Day of the Dead greeting cards and delightful pictures, and recipes for traditional sugar skulls, sweet bread, and hot chocolate seem newly omnipresent?
To my great happy surprise, I've "come out" of the Dia del Muerto coffin only to find a pre-Colombian, all-American tradition rising in the U. S. of A.
Nah, things went to the dogs well before the Great Recession, and – as if to prove that Americans have no capacity to learn from their own hubris – we’re already on our way back.
The first sign I saw was the elaborate display in the window of a particularly non-luxurious women’s clothing store: a bright display of fall sweaters with matching teeny-tiny dog sweaters to accompany them.
The second sign slapped me in the face when I opened my Chicago Tribune Wednesday morning. There, gloriously, was this headline: "Sexy Halloween get-ups also available for pets" and what looks like some sort of chocolate Labrador dressed like a pimp. (I couldn’t make this stuff up if I wanted to, folks.)
While telling us about the multitudes of sexy Halloween pet costumes at various retailers I won’t promote here, Tribune reporter William Hageman had the good sense to put it into snarky perspective for us: "Because nothing says Halloween like dressing poor little Bobo as a trollop and sending her out into the streets, does it?"
Ok, never mind that the whole idea is, well, sick, far be it from me to make light of anyone’s, ummm, special relationship with their pet. But let’s just all get a hold of ourselves for just a minute because I fear the fallout of this year’s Great Recession has been forgotten and as dusty a memory as that of Black Tuesday, which occurred exactly 80 years ago – October 29, 1929.
No one – not even the people on the phone to the unemployment benefits hotline to see how many more weeks of checks President Obama’s new appropriation would bring them – has been sitting around reallllllly thinking about what a cultural revolution the Great Depression wrought in comparison to our recent travails.
There’s not much to compare, sadly.
I will not attempt to lecture you on a topic better scholars than I have plumbed, but I do want you to ponder whether the "new normal" economists are talking about looks too damned much like the "old normal," the one where people where so awash in carefree affluence that their pets were treated to gourmet meals, designer couches and beds, and ritzy psychotherapy, even as middle and lower-income populations struggled just to get by.
Don’t misunderstand: I don’t hate rich people – I’d love to be one someday. And I don’t undervalue pet’s roles in our human lives. At my home I have two Chihuahuas, two guinea pigs I like so much I’ve vowed not to roast for a family meal, two gerbils, and a rescued crawdad. Sometimes I even dress them up (though not to resemble Playboy bunnies or sexy pirates) for Halloween.
No, I’m not here to guilt trip, but to put things into context. Last year I wrote a story "Trickle-down economics: Housing crunch hits man’s best friend" about the level of animals dumped at shelters and when I checked in a few weeks ago with Animal Care League’s Tom Van Winkle, things were holding steady.
The economy is inching upward. Nationally and in Chicago home sales are increasing, job slashing seems to be waning ever-so-slightly. The Chicago Community Trust’s most recent "Vital Signs" report, which tracks food pantry usage, food stamp utilization by household, homelessness prevention center calls, unemployment claims, mass layoffs and foreclosure rates in the Chicago metro region looks better. Early summer appears to have been the peak for all these services with downward – though still, unfortunately, robust – trends starting in August.
"While there is welcome news that the unrelenting climb of these statistics has abated, one quarter does not make a trend," Terry Mazany, the President and CEO of the Chicago Community Trust told me. "And we still have to confront continued cuts at the State-level, and the disappearance of the stimulus funds in another year or so."
And yes, there really are people living in their cars, campers, and storage spaces. And kids feeling the autumnal chill in too-thin hoodies.
Again, I’m not trying to bum you out, but like mom warning you not to eat too many mini Snickers bars, I have to nag to remind you that it’s not all wine, roses, and sexy teddies for your Calico cat.
So trick and/or treat your pets this year but don’t go overboard if you can bear it. Maybe you can split the difference and donate some canned food to your local food depository or something. Something. At the very least, just stop and think about all those who aren’t doing as well as you.
And to answer your burning question about how I will be costuming my menagerie of pets this year? All hobos, of course.
Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com
Chicago Sun Times http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/1845558,CST-EDT-esther26.article
October 26, 2009
Let's talk. Let's really talk about this problem of youth violence that is tearing us -- not just certain families and classrooms, but all of us -- apart.
Last Thursday, yet another unthinkable heartbreak occurred. A 17-year-old Chicago boy was killed in the middle of a drizzly afternoon, walking home from school. Police said some guy just walked up to him and shot him.
A few weeks ago, the White House had to send in the U.S. secretary of education and the U.S. attorney general because, seemingly, Chicago is ground zero in an escalating catastrophe involving poor kids in tough neighborhoods that's beyond local help.
But it's not. The helplessness you and I feel when we hear about the latest tragedy -- whether a shooting or an unspeakably brutal beating -- is an illusion that serves only to keep us from even contemplating the thought that insistently wakes me up some mornings: "What can I, personally, do to keep Chicago kids from getting killed on our streets?"
No one would fault you for coming to the conclusion that volunteering to serve as a cafeteria monitor at Fenger High School's lunchroom is out of the question.
But it's so much simpler than that: Just ask the question -- "What can I do?" -- out loud.
And I don't mean by posting a frustrated message on a news story comment board or kvetching to your seatmate on the bus that poor teens might simply be a lost cause.
I mean ask a teen.
"If you want to help, talk to young people," said Hilda Franco, a youth organizer at the Chicago Freedom School, a center for youth-led social change that works to get adults and teens to build understanding of current social problems and create coalitions. She teaches a monthly class there on how to think respectfully about, and act respectfully toward, young people.
"There isn't enough space for young people or adults to think and talk about violence in their own life, of how it exists and whether they choose that part of themselves, and no one is asking," Franco said.
If gearing up for a deeply philosophical inquiry with a teen is too much to tackle at first, Franco told me, it's critical to start by simply seeking and listening.
"We've had to do a lot of work to teach teens how to create their own media and document their own stories because the media does not talk to young people," she said. "It's always adults writing the news articles and telling the stories."
Faults of the media aside, what's important is to turn our respectful attention to the experiences of young people -- whether they're "at-risk" or not.
It's the only way to create a space where understanding can begin.
I find people really undervalue just talking openly and honestly about fears and concerns, and that's doubly true when it comes to talking to teenagers -- about anything, really. Popular culture, TV sitcoms and slapstick movies have reduced adults' ideas of the teenage temperament to a small handful of stereotypes.
How could anyone over 21 hope to meaningfully contribute to solving the puzzle of how to secure the passage of the city's future to the actual future through that sort of lens?
"People just don't want to talk about it or think about it, and that's going to continue the cycle," Franco said. "If we keep ignoring teens and this issue, we're ignoring a really, really big thing. We need this city's adults to step up and become allies to the young."
Give it some thought.
Open your mouth.
And if you can't find a young person who trusts you enough to talk honestly about how teen violence makes him (or her) feel and what he would do about it, start by searching for the answer within yourself.
Let’s celebrate! And let’s celebrate fish! And fishing!
Yes, you heard me right.
Between the shootings that happen steps from school boundaries and the domestic violence that splatters on the very kids who are supposed to grow up and lead us to a brighter, better tomorrow, it seems like there’s just not a whole lot of good news to celebrate on the teen front.
I have some. Good news – not fish, that is. But more about fish later.
This weekend while you and I relax Friday after work, then sleep late, overindulge Saturday night, and finally veg in front of the Bears game Sunday afternoon, there’ll be about 160 Chicago high school students gathering at Daley College Arturo Velasquez Institute and Little Village Lawndale High School to think deep, intellectual thoughts about the heady topic of food.
The occasion is the "New Frontiers of Knowledge" program a new collaboration between Bucknell University and nine Chicago public and charter schools. The program, starting Friday morning, is bringing together twenty-six Bucknell University students and faculty members to spend three full days helping our kids think critically, scientifically, economically, and artistically about food.
That’s right: our group of college-kid-wannabes aren’t going to train for some sort of academic competition or prepare themselves to do well on standardized tests, they’ll be talking, questioning, analyzing, defining problems, drawing conclusions, and reflecting.
In short the all-volunteer Bucknell crew – fresh in from a ten-hour road trip from their Lewisburg, PA campus – will be teaching our kids what it really takes to succeed after high school graduation.
"For twenty years we’ve worked with populations of students from average to the best and the first thing we discovered is that the number one determinant of success in college is not academic ability, rather it’s the ability to be self directed and to be able to do critical processing," said Rolando Arroyo-Sucre, the chief officer for diversity and equity at Bucknell University, who is spearheading this extremely ambitious project.
Triggered in part by the 2008 report by the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago, From High School to the Future: Potholes on the Road to College, and Bucknell University’s strategic plan to increase diversity on its campus, the collaboration wants to help prepare talented underrepresented inner city Chicago high school students for admission and academic achievement at private, selective, liberal arts colleges.
Translation: this weekend, while small groups are busily looking at food-wonderful-food through the lenses of the key components of liberal arts education, our high-schoolers will be gleaning from the Bucknellians what the demands are at highly selective liberal arts colleges and universities, what the transition from high school to college means, and, frankly, how to deal with being a kid from the other side of the tracks attending a predominantly white institution of higher education.
During the training of the Bucknell volunteers, Arroyo-Sucre said he emphasized that despite the fact that the high school participants will be underprivileged, the bigger lessons to impart should revolve around familiarity with the higher education culture. "Hispanics, blacks, poor whites, the challenge for them is not a color one, it’s actually socio-economical and the lack of familiarity with the system," Arroyo-Sucre said.
"These kids will have fun working in teams, making presentations, having side conversations about college life, and gain valuable peer-to-peer relationships, but the really exciting thing is this idea of the 160 of the best and brightest realizing they are not alone," Arroyo-Sucre gushed. "I’ve seen it before, I’ve seen the students realize it is OK to be what they are – to be smart. They see it’s OK because there is a critical mass of people who feel the way they do, people who enjoy learning."
When I caught up with Abraham Ramirez, 15, and Martina Camacho, 16, both from Hubbard High School on the city’s far-southwest side, believe me, they were ready to squeeze every drop of opportunity from the experience.
"I’m looking at it like a way to figure out how I’m going to get there," Abraham, a sophomore, told me, referring to "college" as a not a place but almost as another world. "I want a good career when I grow up, and spending the weekend with my friends and college people sounds interesting."
Martina, a junior who has had a life-long dream of becoming a pediatrician, is especially looking forward to finding out what this whole "thinking out of the box" business is and how she can use it to get to where she’s going. "I want this [experience] to be something I can use outside of school, like, to really improve my life."
She won’t be disappointed: this weekend is just the beginning of a years-long collaborative process between students and the Bucknell crew. They’ll be keeping in touch through web-based communication tools, working on a long-distance group project that will last a full year, and prepare for a conference next fall, all while maintaining the very relationships that will de-mystify college not only for themselves, but for their friends and families as well.
Arroyo-Sucre has the highest of hopes, not only for this "class" but for the ripple effect it could have. "As we get the student portion of this program set, in the future we’d like to include teachers and counselors to teach them how the college professors approach the work. Then there are the parents – the idea is to find professional mentors for parents and creating small groups where the parents can ask questions, have brag time, and get to feel comfortable with learning and enabling their students to learn," Arroyo-Sucre said. "Teaching parents how to help develop skills and instill motivation in their students is key."
Of course this out-of-town, fresh-faced, idealistic team has their work cut out for them but they’re dreaming big for Chicago students – thank goodness – even as we residents wallow in self-pity for how enormous their challenges are.
Arroyo-Sucre sees it as a simple thing, really, "We’re talking about these high-level theories for college admission and success, but we’re not giving away fish, we’ll be teaching these students how to catch their own."
Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com
A few weeks ago the following press release from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists was roundly ignored from sea to shining sea: "NAHJ Urges News Media to Stop Using the Term 'Illegals' When Covering Immigration."
I usually have no patience for these types of outrages because they inadvertently make themselves sound thin-skinned and clueless. In this case it's the terms "illegal" or "illegal aliens," that the NAHJ did a terrible job of deriding in their release.
"By incessantly using metaphors like 'illegals,' the news media is not only appropriating the rhetoric used by people on a particular side of the issue, but also the implication of something criminal or worthy of suspicion," NAHJ Executive Director Ivan Roman said.
Uhhh, no one's going to bat for you on that point, Ivan. The so-called "implication" NAHJ refers to is not so much an implication but a fact: We are, after all, talking about people who have broken a law and therefore have done something that can easily be defended as both "criminal or worthy of suspicion."
There are better arguments against offensive terms, and I've written about this very issue at length, both defending the legal term "illegal alien" and decrying the pejorative term "illegal."
This whole "alien" business is simple: the legal term, in relation to immigration law, simply means "One who is not a citizen or a national of the United States."
A "legal alien" is someone like my uncle Juan who is a legal permanent resident — he's not a citizen nor was he born here (a "national"). Not to be confused with someone like his brother Carlos, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen, and therefore no longer an "alien" despite his love of the starry night sky.
Now here's what gets tricky: the lady who sells corn on the cob slathered in mayonnaise and topped with parmesan cheese on 26th and St. Louis streets in the Chicago's Little Village neighborhood, she may be here illegally. She may have overstayed her tourist visa or may have entered the country with the intent to work here without proper permits. So what is she?
She's an "illegal immigrant."
Some would like to couch that to a more politically correct "undocumented worker," but that's a euphemism. The government's official term for people who are living and working in the United States without explicit permission from the government is "illegal aliens." It's nothing personal.
The tricky part, you ask? For me, here's where it crosses the line, let's take Mrs. Corn Vendor in the previous example:
If you were to say she's "an illegal," that's where I bust you out for being . . . I don't even know how to put it . . . divisive? Rude? Cold? I'm not sure, but not nice, and most importantly — imprecise. Why?
To say that Mrs. Corn Vendor is an "illegal alien" is to describe her in the context of her immigration status. However, to say that Mrs. Corn Vendor is "an illegal" is to make an abstraction of her and to dehumanize her.
The NAHJ is correct in insisting on a higher degree of journalistic objectivity. But since when are editors supposed to employ the use of euphemisms in order to report news? For the record: never.
Still, it wouldn't hurt for the Mainstream Media to get past the NAHJ's obviously emotional request and confront the heart of this matter: responsible, fair, and non-simplistic coverage of the complex illegal immigration issue is in order.
Take away the flaws in logic and Roman's ultimate sentiment rings true: "The words used can be part of the problem or can contribute to fair coverage and a fruitful public debate."
I went to see the movie "Zombieland" on Saturday, right in the middle of what seemed like a ferociously cold day, what it being early October and us on the verge of perishing from this global warming and all.
You might imagine that a post-zombie-apocalyse-survival movie might bring a girl down when everything in the "real world" has just gone to such crap.
Where to even start?
The poorest of the poor – or as I like to think of them, the very people who need government subsidized public health care – look like they’re going to get screwed in this round of the health-care battle.
The after-effects of the Great Recession are just now starting to kick into high gear even as traditional media have moved on to "trend stories" about how average people are returning to living high on the hog.
Our country is becoming more and more polarized between left and right, blue and red, gay and straight, legal and illegal…but not in "Zombieland."
Far from being pulled down into depression, I savored every single one of the film’s 80 minutes because there is nothing more comforting to me than imagining a zombie apocalypse.
I loved the movie on its own merits (I paid for my own ticket, thanks) – at 48, Woody Harrelson has finally come into his own and he hit the perfect notes of end-of-the-world lunacy alongside Jessie Eisenburg’s geeky-sweet straight man. But the witty banter – and the priceless and unexpected cameo – wasn’t the best part; leaving reality behind for the end-of-the-world was.
Angry, famished sprinter zombies coming after me to slurp the marrow out of my freshly cracked bones? Not a problem. The smell of rotting carcasses, lack of electricity, and absence of Taco Bells to run to when the fiendish desire for cinnamon twists hits? Easily bearable.
You could counter that running for your life all the time might be a bummer but I’ve got my running shoes on. Just imagine:
No more work – survival is a full-time job in the post-apocalyptic zombie world. Also, no more Fox news and CNN making a mockery of reasoned and intelligent discourse on political happenings and national and international policies.
No more worries about H1N1 or AIDS virus, the rise of China and India as global powerhouses who will eclipse the U.S. economy through the sheer force of their well-educated populace, no more worries about whether there will ever be a functional international carbon-emissions policy that will keep us all from incinerating the Earth.
CTA doomsday budgets, wagering over who's going to actually score Roland Burris' U.S. Senate seat, and worries about whether the Kennedy expressway will buckle under me or whether the James R. Thompson Center's granite slabs will crush me like a grape on my way into the office? Immaterial!
And no more wondering when things will ever get better.
You see, after everything goes away – such as in the zombie apocalypse, nuclear holocaust, or worldwide killer flu outbreak scenarios – if you’re one of the people who survived it then, pretty much, life is a little difficult, but refreshingly simple.
Keep warm, find food, stay alive in an environment where it’s just you and a quiet world of dead and semi-dead corpses – that’s much easier than, say, trying to figure out what you, personally, can do to keep Chicago kids from getting killed on our streets.
Give me the disappointment of a world without freshly-baked Twinkies in exchange for wondering how the State of Illinois will keep all the poor people in food stamps next year.
Sigh, maybe it’s just the weather…Chicagoans didn’t get the benefit of warming up during the summer this year and it seems like winter is nearly here…but the post-zombie-apocalypse is looking pretty good to me right now.
But, alas, since there are no reanimated corpses that will take over the world and spare me from yet one more whiny op-ed about why Barack Obama should or should not have won the Nobel Prize and "what it means," I guess I’ll just keep on truckin’ until Halloween comes and I can don the dress of the undead to live out my fancy-free fantasies.
Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com
I have a three-parter for you: first my FOX business channel interview about today's announcement, which aired at 3:40 pm CST. Then the White House's official announcement, and if you keep scrolling, the White House Q & A.
Following Posted at 7:38am Sept 28, 2009
I just got the official word from the White House, folks, President Obama will be travelling to Copenhagen. Here’s the release from the White House, sent out at 7:18am this morning:
President Barack Obama to Travel to Copenhagen
President will join the First Lady to Support Chicago’s Bid for the 2016 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games
WASHINGTON – Today, the White House announced that President Barack Obama will travel to Copenhagen, Denmark to support Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games at the 121st International Olympic Committee (IOC) Session. On Friday, October 2nd, IOC members will elect the host city for the 2016 Summer Games.
President Obama will join First Lady Michelle Obama, who will be leading the United States delegation to Copenhagen. Mrs. Obama will arrive in Copenhagen on Wednesday, September 30, along with Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to President Obama and head of the White House Office on Olympic, Paralympic and Youth Sport.
President Obama will depart Washington on the evening of Thursday, October 1 and arrive in Copenhagen on the morning of October 2 local time, just prior to Chicago’s presentation to the voting members of the IOC. He will arrive back in Washington on Friday afternoon.
President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will both make presentations to the IOC during Friday’s session. They will discuss why Chicago is best to host the 2016 Summer Games, and how the United States is eager to bring the world together to celebrate the ideals of the Olympic movement.
While in Denmark, the President and First Lady will meet with Her Majesty the Queen and His Royal Highness, the Prince Consort. President Obama will also meet with Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen.
What does it mean in layman’s terms? The President is coming in to seal the deal after national attention was put on whether this squeaker of a contest would be lost because the U.S. rock star president didn’t show up to schmooze ala Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin.
As late as Sunday night, aroundtherings.com was scoring the U.S. bid at an 82 – one point behind Rio but this political calculus might be changed now that the President’s presence is official.
UPDATE: (Here are portions from today's briefing specifically referencing today's announcement)
September 28, 2009 at 1:39 pm EST
PRESS BRIEFING BY PRESS SECRETARY ROBERT GIBBS
James S. Brady Press Briefing Room
Q Thanks, Robert. Why does the President think a trip to Copenhagen is going to make that much difference? And what does he hope his appearance there will help?
MR. GIBBS: Well, obviously, I think he hopes that he can make a strong case for Chicago and America's bid for the Olympics in 2016. Obviously any Olympics showcases the country that those Olympics are in and there's a tangible economic benefit to those Games being here. And the President wants to help out America's bid.
Q Did he get a hint that an appearance would help America's bid?
MR. GIBBS: Well, I certainly hope that an appearance wouldn't hurt it. But we have gotten no intelligence on it.
Q Robert, what can you tell us about the lobbying effort behind the scenes that the President has already started with the IOC?
MR. GIBBS: Well, I don't know that it's much behind the scenes if you're asking me about it. I think it's -- obviously the President has mentioned this in meetings when we were at the U.N. and at the G20. He's going to continue to talk to people, including in person in Copenhagen, in an effort to bring the 2016 Olympics to the United States.
Q What's his best pitch? What is he telling them?
MR. GIBBS: Well, look, I think, having spent some time in Chicago, I think it is a -- it's a perfect place to hold the Olympics. It is -- it offers a great place for the world to see. It offers all the amenities that one would want in the Olympics. And I think, far and away, it's the strongest bid of the four that are out there.
Q What if he goes and he doesn't get it?
MR. GIBBS: Well, we'll -- you can call Tommy on Saturday -- (laughter.)
Q The President said, I would make the case in Copenhagen-hagen personally if I weren't so firmly committed to making real the promise of quality affordable health care for every American. He sounded pretty clear that 12 days ago he was not going to go. What changed in the meantime? Is it health care that changed? Does it look like it's in better shape, or is it that this is in worse shape?
MR. GIBBS: I think the President believes health care is in better shape. I believe he felt strongly and personally that he should go and make the case for the United States, and that's what he's going to do.
Q And he's not worried about health care, as he seemed to be just 12 days ago, suffering if he went?
MR. GIBBS: I think he believes he can do this and get back in time.
Q Right. I wanted to ask, you know, when you look at the sort of picture here, you have a planeload of, you know, top level officials, the President himself, Mrs. Obama. The risks are obviously huge if he doesn't bring home the Games for Chicago --
MR. GIBBS: Call Tommy. (Laughter.)
Q But to what degree --
MR. GIBBS: I appreciate getting into what happens on Saturday, but I don't even know what I'm going to have for dinner tonight.
Q I understand. Okay, let's go forward then. So what degree is this pre-cooked in any way? Are there any assurances, anything --
MR. GIBBS: I think I looked back and addressed this not long ago.
Q It just seems you folks are too savvy to do this with it being totally up in the air.
MR. GIBBS: I appreciate that. Thank you. (Laughter.)
Q Is the Chicago Host Committee paying any of the costs for President Obama or Mrs. Obama to go to Copenhagen?
MR. GIBBS: I can check but I don't know the answer to that. I assume this is being handled as all presidential travel would be.
Q Are you saying that the reason that he wasn't going to go to Copenhagen and now is, is that health care is in better shape?
MR. GIBBS: Well, no, I don't -- as I understand it, Chip asked me, that was one of the reasons that the President stated --
Q It was the reason.
MR. GIBBS: -- and that while I believe that health care is in a better place, and I think he believes health care is in a better place, he also believes it's important for him to go and personally try to persuade the International Olympic Committee to pick the United States in 2016.
Q I'm just trying to close the logic loop here. (Laughter.) So did anything else change --
MR. GIBBS: I thought I did with Chip, but go ahead.
Q Okay. But did any -- so, are you -- so it's okay for us to infer, then, even though you're not going to say that's the difference between last week and this week?
MR. GIBBS: Well, I acknowledged to Major that -- and I acknowledged to Chip and I think to at least one other -- that I thought health care was -- so we can -- I'll go on background as a senior administration official -- (laughter) -- with intimate knowledge of the press secretary's thinking and say, yes, we think health care is in a better place.
Q And how does he see going to Copenhagen as part of his core mission as President?
MR. GIBBS: Well, I think everybody is proud of the Olympics. I think everybody is proud of the Olympics when they're in their country. It provides a wonderful opportunity to showcase the United States. It's, as I said earlier, a big economic benefit. Surely it's within the purview of the President to root for America, but maybe I'm wrong.
Q Yes, but is there a fear that the delegation that was going was not going to be on par with the heads of state from the other countries going?
MR. GIBBS: No, I've said this many times in the past five years, and I think the President would agree that Michelle and Michelle alone is a powerful presence and will be a powerful voice for the Olympics coming to America. The President simply wanted to lend his voice, too.
Q Then why do you need Oprah going, too? (Laughter.)
MR. GIBBS: Ask the Olympic Committee. (Laughter.)
Q This is all about Tommy. (Laughter.)
MR. GIBBS: Right, Tommy on Saturday. (Laughter.)
Q The First Family's Chicago ties, are they a factor in the decision to have both the First Lady and the President make this trip? And is there a feeling in the administration that it's a proper role for them to make this pitch than, for example, if it had been another city where they didn't have the same kind of long-standing ties?
MR. GIBBS: Well, look, I don't think that there's any doubt that the President is enormously proud of Chicago and would be enormously proud of the city hosting the bid. I think it's somewhat silly if it had been Los Angeles, I think the notion that the President would have done less because it was a different U.S. city just doesn't hold water.
Q But, I mean, I'm just saying did they have, by virtue of being from Chicago do you think that they have maybe a special message that they can carry?
MR. GIBBS: Well, I think there's no doubt. I think you'll hear directly from both the First Lady and the President about what they think the Olympic Games mean and how Chicago hosting those Games fits with what we all believe the Olympics mean.
Q On Copenhagen, is this more official or personal for the President, this trip?
MR. GIBBS: This is official, as the President of the United States representing the bid of the United States to host the 2016 Olympics.
Q So is it more about the United States versus Chicago?
MR. GIBBS: Yes, it's about the American bid which is Chicago.
Q Chicago doesn't have a great record, especially recently, of spending public money. Is the President convinced that there are safeguards in place to make sure that money that goes to the Olympic bid will not be misspent? I mean, the City Council, for instance, has a pretty big oversight role in the way it's been --
MR. GIBBS: And I think obviously the onus is on the city to ensure that whatever money is used is spent wisely and efficiently. The President is going to make the case for the American host city -- for the American city of Chicago, which is the bid that this country put forward -- is going to go advocate in front of the International Olympic Committee for that bid.
Q I just want to make sure, he's sure that the city is up to that task?
MR. GIBBS: Not only is he, but as is the U.S. Olympic Committee that picked Chicago over other cities.
Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com
Not on Twitter? Who can blame you, I’m sick and tired of hearing about it too, but, it’s soooo cool.
For instance, I was privileged to be one of a few journalists selected to attend DePaul University’s College of Communications 2016 Olympics Specialized Reporting Institute (which was generously supported by the McCormick Foundation) from Sunday September 13 to Tuesday September 15.
We had full access to elite Olympians, internationally-recognized Olympics experts, and even a voting member of the International Olympic Committee. (Read the column I wrote about it HERE)
If you had been following me on Twitter @ejc600words , you would have seen tidbits – quotes, pictures, and video – from the conference posted in real time. Those of you who keep up with me on www.600words.com could have seen the updates scrolling up the left hand side of the screen, also in real time.
Even if you aren’t on Twitter, you can check out my Twitter stream at http://www.twitter.com/ejc600words and click on anything you like without even having to join.
But if you’re like Mama Cepeda – who will follow me on Twitter when hell freezes over – I understand, so here’s my Twitter stream for you.
Read from the bottom up (or just know that the whole thing is in backwards chronological order) and don’t forget to click on the photos and videos, they’re fun!
Enjoy!
RT @Brooke22, after hearing IOC's Pound talk about voting process last night I'm less confident but it is 100% up in the air2:01 PM Sep 15th from web
If we don't get the Olympics? Lori Healy says:"The answer to that question is that we're focused only on 2016, it is the right place/time."9:44 AM Sep 15th from TwitterBerry
IOC’s Pound says no one's worried about who will be Chicago's mayor in 2016, "[Daley]'s the mayor now, that's really all that matters".7:13 PM Sep 14th from TwitterBerry
IOC's Pound says IOC not paying attention to local opinion polls of community support. "A very minor part of it."7:10 PM Sep 14th from TwitterBerry
"I think pretty important" for pres Obama to go to Copenhagen for deciding bid...if not, not maximizing chances of winning" says IOC Pound7:05 PM Sep 14th from TwitterBerry
IOC's Dick Pound says picking: "not necessarily which city is the BEST, but which has the least risk? You don't want to make a mistake."6:40 PM Sep 14th from TwitterBerry
Richard Pound, voting member of the Int'l Olympic Comm. tonight, Lori Healy tomorrow am, then documentarian Ken Burns after lunch whew!4:25 PM Sep 14th from TwitterBerry
The answer to #1 question is "no development east of Lake Shore Drive" because they are protected parklands says a 2016 rep.2:12 PM Sep 14th from TwitterBerry
2016 will require development contracts to be awarded 30% for minority/disadvantaged and 10% women - higher than City of Chgo requires1:01 PM Sep 14th from TwitterBerry
Redevelopment RFPs have already been written for M. Reese site: 1 for if we get games and 1 for if we don't12:59 PM Sep 14th from TwitterBerry
One 2016 representative says the Michael Reese facility will very definitely been demolished if Chgo gets the games (as planned)12:54 PM Sep 14th from TwitterBerry
Jimmy DeCastro is sitting across the table from me telling me he has the inside scoop - says we're definitely getting the 2016 Olympics8:43 AM Sep 14th from TwitterBerry
Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com
As we head smack-dab into the middle of election season again, let's take a look at the personal narratives of some of this season's colorful crop.
Of the handful of universal political stump speeches -- love of country, mom and apple pie, reform -- one in particular has resonated especially with crowds from sea to shining sea: being the child of immigrants and living the American dream.
But how does that play out today as we steel ourselves for another round of contentious immigration law reform battles in 2010? I set out to take a temperature read on whether the "child of immigrants who achieves the American Dream" page of a candidate's personal story still makes people feel all warm and fuzzy -- or just gets their blood boiling.
Tall, alabaster-skinned Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, who's running for U.S. Senate, speaks openly about his heritage.
"As you can tell from my last name, I think it's pretty obvious to everyone that ... I am the proud son of immigrants," he told a group of Hispanic businessmen and women at a recent conference. "My parents came here from Greece with nothing, didn't speak the language. My father started his own business ... and achieved a level of success for himself and his family that is part and parcel to the American Dream."
For Alexi, this story line is a total asset -- surely no one immediately wonders whether Giannoulias' parents came into this country legally or not.
"It connects him to a working-class background and humble beginnings," political consultant Jeff Riley told me. "For others, it might be a double-edged sword."
Of course it is. Others, for example, who are Mexican-American.
One little-known candidate for lieutenant governor, Elmhurst-based Thomas Castillo, finds himself maneuvering a very fine line of potential liability when talking about his immigrant roots.
"I'm Mexican, Italian, American Indian, German and Irish, so it doesn't really come into play," he told me in his thick Sout' Side accent.
So far the only Latino running for statewide office, Castillo is a long shot. He's a never-elected, mostly Mexican, Obama-inspired newcomer.
"Most people hear the name and assume I'm Italian, but I don't want it to matter anyway. I don't want people to vote for me just because I'm Latino," he said. "Of course, I'd be an idiot to not make that connection to Latino voters, but you have to be aware of your audience -- I've tried to avoid any divisive stuff because I don't want to be typecast as 'The Latino candidate.' I'm focused on talking about how to be a representative for all people across Illinois."
That's exactly the tack Pete D'Alessandro, a longtime political consultant, has suggested to candidates he's worked with over the years -- Giannoulias included.
"You are what you are -- use it to your advantage," he said. "And, above all, forge a connection to your constituencies."
Still, in increasingly global Illinois, just being who you are can present as many challenges as opportunities, especially a mere four years after Congress floated harsh anti-illegal immigration legislation and even more so during a recession.
"This remains a tough issue," said Chicago-based public affairs consultant Jim Prescott. "Talking about immigrants living the American dream in a positive way in a campaign could be difficult even though there is nothing more American than coming to this country and succeeding."
It's not difficult at all for Raja Krishnamoorthi, who is running for Illinois Comptroller in the Democratic primary.
"I am an immigrant," the former deputy state treasurer told me on the day he officially announced his candidacy near his hometown of Peoria. "I was born in India and was very young when I came here. This country has given my family everything, and people feel really good hearing about my story."
Krishnamoorthi said he's aware as he travels the state that he might have to respond to a heated cross-examination about how Illinois is outsourcing tech jobs to places like India. But he's not worried about double-edged swords. He exudes a palpable American folksiness -- just call him Raja, he says -- that is the antithesis of foreign.
"Despite what's swirling in the greater immigration debate," Krishnamoorthi said, "people still want to hear that it is possible to reaffirm the highest values of our country and attain the classic American dream."
In politics, as in life, The American Dream -- haunting, prophetic, or sweet -- is recurring.
