What is wrong about what Tom is saying is that it is ridiculous and ignorant. I'm Hispanic. My grandfather arrived in the US in 1901 from Cuba. He learned to speak perfect English and he kept his perfect Spanish. He was involved in setting up the Centro Español social society, that provided healthcare and preserved Hispanic culture in Tampa. Today this place is the celebrated center of Ybor City. His son, my dad, was Robert Lado, a linguist and the founding dean of Georgetown University's School of Languages and Linguistics.
I can tell you from experience that nearly every Hispanic in the United States and millions upon millions not in the United States are trying to learn English. They may not have the opportunity to do it in a formal classroom, but they are trying to do it.
What Brokaw is saying is false and aggravating. My dad was a published academic author in both Spanish and English. He was completely bilingual as my grandfather was before him. Me, unfortunately, not so much in either language. For me racism raised its ugly head several times in my life and to protect myself I tried to distance myself from my Hispanic culture and identity. Tom would say that I have fully assimilated into the culture. which is cruel and wrong. I know I lost something very valuable when I felt forced to abandon my culture of origin. Today Tom Brokaw would probably have a hard time identifying me as a Hispanic in a lineup, or if he talked to me, or by the music I like to listen to, or the close I wear. However, I am 100% Hispanic, and now am trying to undo the damage and reconnect with my culture and language.
His bigoted statement hurts so much. My dad dated a fellow American woman while a professor at the University of Michigan. Her father didn't allow them to continue to date because he told his daughter, "you can't go out with that Mexican." My dad wasn't Mexican, her dad, however, was certainly a racist. Too bad for her because my dad went on to become the director of the University of Michigan's fabled English Language Institute, and he would go on from there to Georgetown University to grow their linguistics program into the School of Languages and Linguistics. If you ever wonder why Scandinavian countries speak English so well it is because they fully implemented my father's, a Hispanic American's, methods. The Scandinavian countries got together and honored my dad with, "Scientific and Humanistic Dimensions of Language: Festschrift for Robert Lado" on his 70 birthday. Please understand, bigotry and racism are ignorance, and nothing more.
My family wasn't an exception, in our community, it was the rule. The problem is that once assimilated it is hard to identify us as "Hispanic." We become like all the rest of America.
The Irish were once characterized as having heavy facial figures and thought of as short tempered and quick to get into fights. Then they saw John F. Kennedy and the perception changed. It was the same for Italians.
I went to little Italy in New York, into an old Italian store. This old man came in and struck up a conversation with the storekeeper in Italian. I tried to have a conversation with him and he struggled to speak English. When he left I turned to the store keeper fully expecting for him to tell me that the old man just got off the boat from Italy, but before I could speak the store keeper volunteered that he had arrived in NY as a very young man, but in this insular Italian community he didn't need to speak English, so he never really learned. I understand how this could be the case. My grandmother never really learned to speak English because in her community of Ybor City / West Tampa everything she needed was provided to her from people who also spoke Spanish. However, all her kids and her husband spoke both English and Spanish. One of her sons reaching the pinnacle of American English teaching. She, however, was born in the 1800s and understood the economic necessity of her coming to America, but she missed her home country and her family still there terribly. She then, as is now the case again for a large number of Hispanics coming to America, needed to escape violence and terror and a stagnant and collapsing economy.
The world's former European shit-hole countries that sparked the great migration to the United States with starving, dirty, poor people that traveled in steerage that filled up the slums of New York and other American big cities have given way to sporadic waves of people from countries around the world that find themselves in crisis. Now it is these new country’s people taking the wrenching, painful and arduous journey here for largely the same reasons.
We have always taken them in, in the past. We did this because in a generation or two we knew and know that they will be virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the population as I am. We know that they will contribute to the cuisine, ...or do you think that tacos, salsa and José Andrés came from some northern European country. They will contribute to music, ...or do you think that Jerry Garcia, Carlos Santana, Ricky Martin, Gloria Estefan and Camila Cabello are the special stylings created by cleverly disguised people from Liverpool. ...They will contribute to art, to business, to science, to sports, to academics, etc. etc. etc. You just need to give them time.
We also know that the ignorance that Tom Brokaw displayed above is an ignorance fixed in time to now. Eventually, there will be a Hispanic version of JFK that will come to the consciousness of America, and all the bigotry based stereotypes of Hispanics of generations passed will be forgotten in an instant. Just like no one thinks of Irish-Americans as apes and Italian-Americans as rats anymore.
The problem is that Hispanic immigration is happening in the present and not in the past. When my grandfather came Hispanic immigration was relatively small as compared to the immigration coming from other destitute European countries, also it was focused largely on Florida, which at that time was mostly undeveloped. Prior to that time Hispanic immigration came in the form of territories and states forming around indigenous populations living in former Mexican and Spanish territories. The actress Eva Longoria's family had the state of Texas form over top of them as the US Mexico border changed after the Mexican-American war. Many of the old Spanish vineyards, missions and towns were annexed into the United States when California was formed. … Or do you believe northern Europeans came to California and named all of the cities with Spanish names, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Mission Viejo just for fun. Be that as it may, now is the time when the great migration from Latin American countries is happening.
In a generation a large number of those people that Tom Brokaw is referring to as “brown” now, he won't even know as anything else other than Americans. They will, I suppose, be pooled in with "white" people if their skin color is light, or “black” people if they have African roots or are dark complected, or they may be labeled “Hispanic” if they present more of their Native American genetic origin. Please recognize that the Irish were never “The Irish Ape” that somehow assimilated and became the Kennedys and therefore “white.” Italians were never rats that acculturated into the Cuomos of today and again became “white.” When you really think about it there are no "white" people. All of us come with our own immigrant histories. And that racism, bigotry and discrimination are the children of ignorance coupled with arrogance.
This is what Hispanic looks like:
Louis CK (Louis Székely) — father from Mexico, lived in Mexico for a time (if blond he would be me)
Bruno Mars (Peter Gene Hernandez) — Puerto Rican father and Filipino mother
Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi — Born in Chile adopted by Italian Americans
Cameron Diaz — Father of Cuban descent, Tampa, Floridian from Ybor City (origins equal to mine)
David Blaine — Magician from Brooklyn of Puerto Rican and Russian descent
Jessica Alba — Mexican American father
Vanna White — Biological father was Puerto Rican
Maxwell (Gerald Maxwell Rivera) — R&B artist, Puerto Rican father, Haitian mother
Charlie Sheen (Carlos Estevez) — Grandfather was born in Galicia, Spain (mine too)
Rita Hayworth (Rita Cansino) — Father from southern Spain
Nicole Richie — Adopted daughter of Lionel Richie, biological father was Mexican
Sammy Davis, Jr. — Mother was Cuban, but he would claim that she was Puerto Rican (???)
Raquel Welch (Jo Raquel Tejada) — Father was Bolivian
Carmelo Anthony — Father Carmelo Iriarte was Puerto Rican of African, Hispanic, Native descent
Ryan Lochte — Mother was Cuban
Reggie Jackson (Reginald Martinez Jackson) — Puerto Rican descent
Kelis (Kelis Rogers) — Singer, Puerto Rican / Chinese mother
Anthony Quinn — World famous American actor was actually born in Chihuahua, Mexico