For the last sixteen years she has carried me from point A to point B and back with nary a complaint or shop stop – one of the fabled 1992 Toyota Camrys, a car built to reach A and B about a million times.
I adore her but to be truthful, she is getting on in years and it shows. The moon roof leaks so she can’t go to carwashes or ride the rains and the air conditioner stopped working years ago – turning her into a toaster oven on wheels in the summer heat.
I’ve never had a new car and would love to get something with the full spread of amenities and safety features, good tires, nice sound (not a cassette deck) and yes, oh please, some A/C.
Yet by doing so, I’d expose my success to ‘judgment’ and that is not a fun, pleasurable state to ride around in – not to mention all the trouble that comes with it.
You see, I am a Hispanic American, born in San Juan, who ended up in the Midwest. But more importantly, I am a successful Hispanic American and therein lies the rub.
A long time ago, long before I was old enough to understand it, someone wise told me to be very weary of success. “People see a white man driving a nice car and they say ‘he must have worked hard,” he told me. “But they see a Hispanic or Black and they think, ‘he must be a drug-dealer.’”
I thought it funny at the time but when, after many years of struggling, I finally became successful, his words rang in my head like the time chime of the Old North Church in Amsterdam.
The reality is that for any successful Hispanic or Black it is prudent, even wise to hide or disguise our success because revealing it invites scrutiny. You don’t get ‘praise’, you get ‘suspicion’ and the inevitable “he’s dealing drugs” – something I was victim to from my own “friends.”
To represent and justify this concept, all one need do is travel with me.
I travel considerably for my work and because it is a ‘public transport’ I cannot hide success as I can with my car – I travel in first or business most of the time, thus I am ‘exposed’, the consequences becoming abundantly clear.
Starting from check-in through security and onto the plane, everyone along the way assumes I am an Economy class traveler and thus attempts to usher me accordingly. I am almost always told this is the “First Class line, sir” or “we are boarding First Class only” – someone goes out of there way to single me out and check my documents.
By enjoying my success publicly, I don’t fit in to expected norms or conventional wisdom about young, Hispanics – my presence and success disrupts the ‘order’, causing ripples in the social waves, exposing me to all the suspicion that comes from not fitting into the racial or class picture we have painted for ourselves.
And so every time I travel, I’m reminded why I sweat in my car all summer by choice – the alternative comfort, even safety, is just not worth the abuse it would invite. I live in one of the most affluent cities in Minnesota – driving around in a nice car would only invite the local and state police to pull me over regularly – as they did three times in the month after 9/11.
I know now that it would be no different than the airlines – they would go out of their way to make sure I am in the ‘right class’ or right car in this instance. Or right class.
And I too am a perpetrator, finding myself judging by sheer societal instinct – again, by the assumptions of the order, an order we understand and follow on a subconscious level.
Truth is I don’t think the airline is full of racists, these are good people essentially. It is something deeper, something traditional and long and devoid of merit or reason but still prominent even into the twenty-first century and on display daily in your local airport or jail or school or car or Presidential campaign.
For us in the constant crosshairs, the best we can do is tone it down and not be the rappers and the athletes and the thugs that have helped ruin success for many minorities by overindulging in their own financial vanity.
And for many, that starts by going out and getting the right car – an old Toyota Camry perhaps? I would suggest 1992; it was a very good year.
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“First Class Only, Sir”
I love my car.
For the last sixteen years she has carried me from point A to point B and back with nary a complaint or shop stop – one of the fabled 1992 Toyota Camrys, a car built to reach A and B about a million times.
I adore her but to be truthful, she is getting on in years and it shows. The moon roof leaks so she can’t go to carwashes or ride the rains and the air conditioner stopped working years ago – turning her into a toaster oven on wheels in the summer heat.
I’ve never had a new car and would love to get something with the full spread of amenities and safety features, good tires, nice sound (not a cassette deck) and yes, oh please, some A/C.
Yet by doing so, I’d expose my success to ‘judgment’ and that is not a fun, pleasurable state to ride around in – not to mention all the trouble that comes with it.
You see, I am a Hispanic American, born in San Juan, who ended up in the Midwest. But more importantly, I am a successful Hispanic American and therein lies the rub.
A long time ago, long before I was old enough to understand it, someone wise told me to be very weary of success. “People see a white man driving a nice car and they say ‘he must have worked hard,” he told me. “But they see a Hispanic or Black and they think, ‘he must be a drug-dealer.’”
I thought it funny at the time but when, after many years of struggling, I finally became successful, his words rang in my head like the time chime of the Old North Church in Amsterdam.
The reality is that for any successful Hispanic or Black it is prudent, even wise to hide or disguise our success because revealing it invites scrutiny. You don’t get ‘praise’, you get ‘suspicion’ and the inevitable “he’s dealing drugs” – something I was victim to from my own “friends.”
To represent and justify this concept, all one need do is travel with me.
I travel considerably for my work and because it is a ‘public transport’ I cannot hide success as I can with my car – I travel in first or business most of the time, thus I am ‘exposed’, the consequences becoming abundantly clear.
Starting from check-in through security and onto the plane, everyone along the way assumes I am an Economy class traveler and thus attempts to usher me accordingly. I am almost always told this is the “First Class line, sir” or “we are boarding First Class only” – someone goes out of there way to single me out and check my documents.
By enjoying my success publicly, I don’t fit in to expected norms or conventional wisdom about young, Hispanics – my presence and success disrupts the ‘order’, causing ripples in the social waves, exposing me to all the suspicion that comes from not fitting into the racial or class picture we have painted for ourselves.
And so every time I travel, I’m reminded why I sweat in my car all summer by choice – the alternative comfort, even safety, is just not worth the abuse it would invite. I live in one of the most affluent cities in Minnesota – driving around in a nice car would only invite the local and state police to pull me over regularly – as they did three times in the month after 9/11.
I know now that it would be no different than the airlines – they would go out of their way to make sure I am in the ‘right class’ or right car in this instance. Or right class.
And I too am a perpetrator, finding myself judging by sheer societal instinct – again, by the assumptions of the order, an order we understand and follow on a subconscious level.
Truth is I don’t think the airline is full of racists, these are good people essentially. It is something deeper, something traditional and long and devoid of merit or reason but still prominent even into the twenty-first century and on display daily in your local airport or jail or school or car or Presidential campaign.
For us in the constant crosshairs, the best we can do is tone it down and not be the rappers and the athletes and the thugs that have helped ruin success for many minorities by overindulging in their own financial vanity.
And for many, that starts by going out and getting the right car – an old Toyota Camry perhaps? I would suggest 1992; it was a very good year.
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