Latina in America

Growing up is always hard to do, but it is especially difficult when your name is María de la Soledad Teresa O’Brien, you’re the daughter of a black Cuban mother and an Irish and Scottish father from Australia, and you live in an almost all-white Long Island suburb. Just think of the explaining you would have to do on the first day of school.

Partly because O’Brien struggled as a teenager to simultaneously navigate her mother’s Cuban influences and the difficulties of growing up as a first generation Latina in the U.S., she decided to film her third documentary about race relations. CNN Presents: Latino in America follows CNN’s Black in America series in exploring the lives of millions of people who are linked by race and distanced by wealth, region, gender and age.

It seems fitting that someone who is so ethnically diverse should tell this story—after all, O’Brien has won recognition for her achievements from Irish American, Hispanic, and African American publications. And it is clear that reporting and producing the documentary has brought her closer to her own Latina roots, which she concedes she has connected with only distantly through the successes and failures of others or through the prism of a journalistic lens.

O’Brien’s mixed identity shows in her sense of journalistic neutrality when covering Latino issues: She seems equally foreign to and interested in understanding both Latinos and those who fear a “browning of America.” But sometimes a controversial story told by someone who is intent on looking for many nuances—and who works for a major TV network—can lose its punch in favor of political correctness. For instance, O’Brien sidesteps a question about CNN colleague Lou Dobbs, who has enraged immigration reform advocates and Latino leaders across the country with his obsessive blaming of America’s economic ailments on immigrants. She also says she doesn’t know if the coverage of a hate crime is ultimately a “positive story or negative story,” as if reporting on intolerance against Latinos could be a two-sided issue.

After a two-week back-and-forth with the CNN anchor’s publicist, PODER finally tracked O’Brien down on her whirlwind tour to hype her new documentary days before it was scheduled to air on October 21. The phone crackles and O’Brien’s distinctively peppy voice emerges from the other end of the line. As the interview starts—we only have 20 minutes—O’Brien begins speaking freely and in rapid bursts, but pauses often in mid-sentence when trying to find the right word.

[PODER Enterprise] What is the documentary Latino in America about?
[Soledad O’Brien] For our purposes it really was a look at the experience of being Latino once you come to the United States. What happens to you once you get here? What happens to your goals, your dreams, your desires, your children, your identity? All of those things are what we really wanted to explore. It’s about a group of people loosely connected and yet very connected.

[Pe] In the documentary you talk to a number of Latino celebrities—Eva Longoria Parker, George Lopez, and others. What was the reason for showcasing their lives so prominently?
[SO] For me, in order to show the image of Latinos, one of the great ways to do it is through [their portrayal in]the media... So certainly I think it’s really interesting to be able to look at somebody like Lupe Ontiveros and see what roles she played, and how somebody who is really brilliant kind of gets stuck in some of these roles. I think that’s pretty interesting. She would talk about how she’s played the maid 100 times and yet now has had the opportunity to play other roles, but it’s been 30 years in the business. Is that a good or a bad? The bad is that she’s had to struggle for 30 years; the good is that it’s changing. So, even that is a mixed bag, but that is why we wanted to talk to them. For George Lopez to be able to move the ball when it comes to media images, I think it’s really critical.

[Pe] Those are the good stories you tell. You also tell stories of bigotry and hate crimes. Having traveled the country, do you see a rift being opened between Latinos and non-Hispanic whites?
[SO] I think that there is definitely some level of fear going on. I think that is definitely the case. I look at the case in Shenandoah where we covered this hate crime, which is a sad and terrible tragedy. An absolutely terrible story, and yet these are exactly the kinds of stories that in the newsroom we fight to tell because they go completely unreported, and there is no sense that somebody’s death meant anything.
That’s a very sad story but I don’t know if it’s a positive story or a negative story. It’s just a story about a town where people who felt they didn’t have a lot of opportunities became incredibly angry. I definitely sense a real fear about the “Browning of America”—you hear that a lot—and there are certain places where you do sense that fear. Which is so bizarre to me because Latinos have been here for so long. It’s such a mixed bag. For some people in certain parts of the country, Latinos have been there forever. And in other places where there is new immigration and waves coming through it has led to deaths.

[Pe] What role does the news media have on this rift, particularly people who take a confrontational stance against immigration like your CNN colleague, Lou Dobbs?
[SO] As a journalist, my answer to that question is: So what I do when I cover that story is tell it with nuance and tell it fully. I will not, not cover that story. I will not say, ‘Well you know, let’s just spin this whole thing to be positive. Let’s not tell education stories because when 71 percent of the kids are dropping out that’s a bummer, nobody wants to hear that. Let’s not tell the story of a young man who’s been murdered, because that’s a downer.’ My job is to tell the stories realistically and hear from all sides. And I think that in some cases in the immigration debate, what you get is just one side and it’s a bunch of yelling, when actually you can have a nuanced conversation, and you can have a nuanced conversation that doesn’t even involve the immigration debate.
[Pe] The 2010 census is expected to show the Latino population has grown exponentially. What do you think policy makers should be looking at as the No.1 issue facing Latinos in America today?
[SO] The really huge issue is that there are American citizens who are being underserved in the nation’s public schools. That’s a humongous problem. If you have a 71 percent dropout rate among Latinos that’s a huge, huge problem for the nation, not just Latinos. You cannot have this dropout problem, especially when you’re talking about the fastest growing demographic. Those are native-born children, a lot of those kids who are dropping out. That to me is the absolute red flag that I think sometimes is lost in the immigration debate... People are so upset and hot under the collar that they forget right in front of them a story about Americans and how education is failing them.
 
[Pe] As a person who has done multiple documentaries about race, what advice do you have for those, who like you, have some explaining to do about their background?
[SO] Every so often I’ll have somebody say to me, ‘Well you’re not really back, or, you’re not really Latina.’ And I guess it always throws me for a loop because I feel like, what does that even mean and who’s the person I appeal to? Who’s the person doing the decision-making? I used to get asked about that all the time, but luckily I had a mother who used to tell me, ‘Listen, don’t let anyone tell you you’re not black or don’t let anyone tell you you’re not Latina.’ And that was very helpful for me because I think as a kid I never really questioned it. It was not even up for debate. It wasn’t even an issue.

[Pe] How do people work through some of those identity problems?
[SO] What I see in younger people is that they’re very interested in exploring their roots and considering themselves Latino. I see it in tons of people who don’t speak Spanish—and don’t speak Spanish because their parents didn’t teach them Spanish—who are now, like me, going back and trying to learn Spanish, and like me, teaching their kids Spanish because they don’t want their kids to go through what we went through. I see that as very hopeful in terms of reclaiming your identity and thinking about who you are and where you come from. That’s a good thing.