The Accidental Hispanic

I visualize a completely different Hispanic, one that is more rather than less and that is valued

Let me say right off the bat that there are a couple of things that no one should be proud of: where he was born and how tall he is. You had no say in either. I have never met anyone who said, I chose to be born in whatever place, or I decided I was going to be 68.

I never set out to be Hispanic either. Actually, when I was growing up, and beyond, I wasn’t even conscious that there were Hispanics. I grew up partially in Puerto Rico and went to school at the Academia del Perpetuo Socorro, where I was surrounded by Puerto Ricans and Cubans with a couple of Colombians, a Swede, a Finn and a couple of blonde Americans thrown in for good measure.

We later moved to Spain and, in my senior year, at the American School of Madrid, we spoke something like 12 or 14 first languages in my class alone. We had a bit of everything: Filipinos, Americans, Colombians, Peruvians, Spaniards, Taiwanese, Puerto Ricans, another Finn and one Colombian who spoke Swahili it was the first time in my life that I had ever seen some of those nationalities as well as the first time that I had heard some of those languages being spoken.

The summer I graduated from high school, my best friend, Mike, and I, bought our Inter-Rail passes, a backpack and decided to see the world. We spent 6 weeks traveling through Europe and made it all the way to Istanbul. By then I spoke French well (in addition to English and Spanish) and Mike spoke German well (as well as English and Spanish, of course). We did that three years in a row and visited just about everywhere in Europe except for Finland and Iceland. The year after, we borrowed a yacht and, with another friend, spent a week sailing around northern Africa.

My work, too, has taken me all over the place and I’ve been lucky to have met four amazingly intelligent people who, willingly or unwillingly, have been huge influences:

Juan de la Cierva, who, among other things, invented the lens that cancels vibrations in cinematography, won an Oscar in 1968, invented one of the early missile guidance systems and is a genius. The definition of what a creative thinker is. Taught me how to let my imagination fly.

Paco Carrera Villar, my psychology teacher and the guy who guided my thesis. Brilliant thinker, he completely redesigned the branding and marketing for SEAT. Very analytical yet creative. Taught me how to think critically and objectively.

John T. Greening, the director of strategic planning of the now-defunct DMB&B, who allowed me to collaborate on the final version of Darcy’s Strategic Planning handbook. He had a tremendous knack for synthetizing complex problems into manageable chunks.

 Roger Godbeer a thoroughly unlikeable guy whom I liked. He was the Global Media Director for Colgate, analytical to the extreme, I learned how to handle complexity from him. He put the finishing touches on Paco’s and John’s influence on my own thinking.

Thanks to all four and their take-no-prisoners style, I had a rock-solid foundation for my own brand of thinking (and I don’t mean only work-related thinking).

So, all in all, I have visited around 50 countries, lived in 8 cities, picked up a 4^th language (Portuguese), worked with dozens of really intelligent people and accumulated 5 million miles on American Airline alone. I have yet to meet a freaking Hispanic. So, I really hope this year’s Hispanic Heritage Month is our last.

If you think about it coldly, what has being Hispanic meant to us?

For me, personally, and this is something that I found only in the United States, it has meant blatant discrimination in the advertising agency world. I have been to lots of interviews where I’m told, right off the bat, sorry, but we don’t have a Hispanic division. Never mind that my SAT Score in English was higher than the guy in front of me (Top 1%). In his mind, I’m Hispanic, therefore suitable only for Hispanic marketing or advertising.

I’m sure that hundreds of Spanish-speakers in the ad agency world have faced that discrimination on a daily basis.

For 53 million self-described Hispanics, it has meant outright discrimination in almost every aspect of their lives. So much so that Hispanics in general are now brown and even Hispanics have debates about whether you are white or Hispanic, never understanding that you can be both.

For the millions who try to enter the U.S. in search of a better life, it has meant death squads at the border. If those millions were Icelandic blondes instead of brown skinned Mexicans or Central Americans, you can bet your sweet bippy (as Rowan Martin from Laugh-In used to say) that they would be welcomed with open arms.

And we are ignored. In contrast to the African American market which has fiery leaders like Al Sharpton, the Hispanic market has failed miserably in creating political leadership that furthers its agenda. It has failed miserably in furthering two items that should be in its agenda: Immigration reform and minimum wage reform.

So, I am convinced that the Hispanic heritage has not served us well.

We need to reboot.

I propose that we drop Hispanic as a term and use Multicultural exclusively. I am truly multicultural and, in contrast to my country of birth and my height (5’6”) both of which I did not influence at all, I feel proud of being multicultural. I know my way around Hong Kong, London, Mexico City and New York equally as well.

What would multicultural mean to this loose us?

• Inclusion rather than exclusion:Integration into the mainstream of the U.S., with its higher salaries and better working conditions without losing your national identity
• Expansion rather than contraction:If we can understand two cultures, we can understand three, or four and, as the world around us becomes more complex and surgically segmentable, we are better prepared to understand those complexities than someone who is uni-cultural.
• Addition rather than subtraction:If you speak two languages, you have huge advantages over people who speak only one in anything that is international and, face it, we are not becoming more and more international. We already are.
• The end of the acrid debateof are you really Hispanic if you don’t speak Spanish? you can be multicultural and speak only one language though in all honesty, if you don’t speak both you are missing a lot.

So, I visualize a completely different Hispanic, one that is more rather than less and that is valued rather than discriminated against.

The beginning of an action plan:

1. Get money: Forget about political clout, evidently it is not going to happen. Get financial support from concerned CEO’s and owners of businesses. Prefer those companies that contribute; avoid those that don’t.
2. Hire a PR agency: Don’t get it pro-bono. Money talks. Unless there is money on the desk, your project doesn’t make it to the top of the desk. The PR agency’s task:
   • Begin shaping the national discourse, from Hispanic to Multicultural, from an ethnic group to a plus group

1. 1. • • Blanket the Multicultural approach on the media: Television, cable, print, online, mobile, billboards doesn’t really matter much, get all you can. A friend of mine, Floyd The Rock Artist told me that the secret to his growth was that, at the beginning, he would appear anywhere, in any media, in any program.
        • Mind the broken windows. Use the same tactics that changed Negros to black to African American pursue the new terminology aggressively.

3. Accelerate English and Spanish education: The only way we are a plus is if we deliver on the plus, thus, don’t lose your Spanish if you want to keep it, but make English a priority so that we have a body of real, honest to goodness, bilingual, bicultural, added value people.

4. Hire an attorney.Every time I mention Al Sharpton, Hispanics and especially Cubans go crazy. They really don’t like the guy (I do) but, face it; he’s driven a lot of cases into the public agenda. Hire lawyers to do the same. Let’s leverage the law to our advantage. You see or hear of a case where Multiculturals are being discriminated against, send a lawyer. Hire beginning lawyers, that way they get experience and we get them for less.

5. Find a leader: Every successful movement has a leader. The only two modern movements without a leader (Occupy and Anonymous) have not been successful at all. Their common point: they do not have a leader. They have an agenda, they have a vision, they have the manpower to carry out their vision, but no leader. Lesson: get a leader.

If anyone uses Hispanic he/she will be seen as outdated, old, biased and racist Multicultural is the new African-American.

Related articles:

Hispanic Heritage Inspiration Celebrated

A Hispanic Leader In Innovation- Video Series

Medicine was his dream. Helping the poor was his passion.

Hispanic Heritage- A Wise Man’s Life Story Lives On