A couple of excellent posts by Tonio Kruger – one about movies, old and new and the lack of realistic (or any) Hispanic characters.

I also like movies that are older than me. I like newer movies too. I just like good movies, or even bad ones if they’re entertaining enough. Hollywood is in the business of making money. They like to pretend that they’re doing good work for humanity and there are movies that make you think but the movie business is first of all about making money and that makes them quite cowardly in the “doing our bit for the good of humanity” department. They don’t mind taking on causes if they happen to be popular ones that are guaranteed to do well at the box office. And no I’m not criticizing anyone for wanting to make money. I am criticizing them for pretending that it’s not mostly about money.

The other excellent post is also about stereotyping, in particular the stereotype of Hispanics as non- computer users. The only thing I have to say is in response to the last sentence of this paragraph:

Yet for a long time, the media promoted the notion that the use of computers was not a Hispanic thing. Indeed, prior to 21st century shows like American Family and Ugly Betty, the only recognition that we can use computers came from a mention in an old X-Men comic book written back in the 1980s which showed a Hispanic schoolchild doing homework on a home computer. And even that example couldn’t help undermining its credibility by having the child’s relatives refer to each other as “we Hispanics”–instead of, say, “we Mexicans” or “we Puerto Ricans” or even “we Americans” like most of the real-life Hispanics I know do.

You know what’s funny? I recently heard somewhere that it is not politically correct to refer to people from Mexico as “Mexicans”. We’re supposed to say “Hispanic”. Now, on one level I can understand that because not everyone who has brown skin and speaks Spanish is from Mexico. They might be from Costa Rica, Panama, Argentina or any of a number of Central and South American countries but if you happen to know that the person you’re talking about is, in fact, from Mexico what is wrong with saying “Mexican”?

White liberals who have had little or no contact with the groups they’re trying to protect make up rules for how the rest of us should talk and once they’ve made up their minds how it should be they won’t listen to anyone, not even the very people they’re trying to help. I wish they would just shut up, get out of the way and let Hispanics (and Native Americans and Asians everyone else) do the talking for themselves.