This week, Farai Chideya talks with Representative Veronica Escobar about Covid and immigration in her district of El Paso. Gina Pérez of the Texas State Board of Education explains how continued cuts to school programs inspired her to take action. Our political contributor Errin Haines brings updates from the political world, and business contributor Ruth Umoh analyzes Black homeownership. Medical student Nia Buckner explains why she and other students updated the Hippocratic Oath, and entertainment contributor Casey Mendoza reflects on the representation of Latinos on television. Plus, journalist Paola Ramos goes looking for the meaning of “Latinx."
EPISODE RUNDOWN
1:35 Representative Veronica Escobar describes the impact of Covid in her district of El Paso.
4:42 Rep. Escobar explains how the pandemic has laid bare the inequalities that exist in the country.
10:46 The incoming Biden-Harris Administration will be crucial in addressing immigration in border towns like El Paso, Rep. Escobar explains.
13:24 Gina Pérez sits on the Texas State Board of Education on behalf of District One in Texas and explains how Covid is impacting education in her district.
15:31 Pérez describes why she first got involved on the State Board of Education.
19:30 The Covid update breaks down the issues rural communities might face distributing the vaccine.
22:26 Medical student Nia Buckner explains how her and other students intend to confront racism within the medical field.
24:42 Buckner explains the importance of understanding patients’ outside lives when treating them inside the clinic.
26:27 Errin Haines talks about the significance of Deb Haaland being nominated for Secretary of the Interior in the upcoming Biden-Harris Administration.
27:55 The Biden-Harris Administration is on its way to breaking records if all 25 women who are nominated are confirmed to cabinet level positions.
31:20 Haines says civil rights leaders are looking for “real systemic change and not just kind of the incremental change” that has been happening in American politics.
32:13 Ruth Umoh explains the disparities between Black and white homeownership in the U.S.
34:15 Discriminatory policies have historically prevented Black people from being able to buy homes and accrue wealth, Umoh states.
36:37 Umoh looks back on the financial commitments made by corporations in the wake of George Floyd protests, and says that they’re a step in the right direction, they are “a drop in the bucket” for many of these companies.
38:08 Our SPEAK callers share why self-care is important to them during the pandemic.
39:19 Paola Ramos discusses her new book, Finding Latinx: In Search of the Voices Redefining Latino Identity.
40:56 Ramos digs into her own history to try to understand the systemic discrimination against Afro-Latinos among Latinos in the U.S., and abroad.
42:53 Ramos says President-Elect Biden will have to keep his promises to the Latinos who voted for him, or there will be important consequences for the Democratic party.
43:53 Entertainment contributor Casey Mendoza speaks about Latino representation on TV.
47:12 Mendoza goes over the films added to the National Film Registry this year, and how they show a growing understanding in entertainment about the importance of people of color in film.
Farai Chideya:
Thanks for listening and sharing Our Body Politic. As you know, we’re new and creating the show with lots of input from listeners like you. So I want to ask you a small favor: after you listen today, please head over to Apple Podcasts on your phone, tablet, laptop--or anywhere you listen--and leave us a review. We read those because your ideas matter to us. Thanks so much.
This is Our Body Politic. I'm the creator and host, Farai Chideya. The year is winding down, but the news is nonstop. This week, we have two guests from El Paso, a city where I've spent time as a reporter and from other places around the nation. As someone who's been to 49 of the 50 US States, it gives me a lot of satisfaction to stay connected to the nation during this pandemic through our shared community here on air. I also talked to our new entertainment business contributor, Casey Mendoza about Netflix Selena, and writer Paola Ramos explains how she dug deeper into Latino identities for her new book. Our weekly COVID update goes into the vaccine and how it might play out in rural communities and impact people of color. But first, I'm excited to share another revealing conversation with leaders from across the political spectrum this week, the view from Texas.
El Paso experienced a truly devastating surge in COVID cases last month. The Washington Post described funeral homes overwhelmed with bodies and how the convention center had to be turned into a field hospital. El Paso was also a border town with its neighbors, Ciudad Juarez just to the South in Mexico, and it's been essentially ground zero for testing recent immigration policy. US Representative Veronica Escobar is a third-generation El Pasoan and the first woman to represent her district. She's also one of the first two Latinas from Texas to serve in Congress. She's been fighting both the pandemic and the latest immigration policy on behalf of her community. Representative Escobar, I'm so delighted to have you on the show.
Veronica Escobar:
Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be with you.
Chideya:
My heart goes out to the residents of El Paso during this pandemic, which has hit you especially brutally, and especially given that the region is 80-plus percent Hispanic and the pandemic has hit Hispanic Americans so hard, I just wonder what you are seeing and witnessing in your community.
Escobar:
Well, first and foremost, thank you so much for your kindness. I really appreciate it. To answer your question, what we are seeing today is... While our numbers feel like they're getting a little bit better, we are still at really crisis levels in terms of our hospitalizations, in terms of ICU beds deaths. We have a death almost every hour in El Paso, and it is incredibly tragic. I think what has compounded the tragedy is that it did not have to be this bad. Many of us warned from the very beginning that vulnerable communities, Black and brown communities and communities where there are many frontline workers would be the most vulnerable. So that meant that there needed to be a strategy specific to communities like mine. There needed to be a robust testing, tracing, mitigation. There needed to be plenty of aid provided, financial and otherwise to communities like mine.
What we saw at the national level from The White House was really no strategy whatsoever. That then was compounded by the governor of Texas, whose strategy was to take away local authority and to reopen the state as quickly as he could. The number of deaths that we have had to live through and see and the number of people who have lost family members, the number is tragically and unnecessarily high.
Chideya:
What do you want to see the incoming Biden-Harris administration do for communities like El Paso around the pandemic?
Escobar:
My hope is that they keep the promise of "building back better." The coronavirus pandemic has exposed something that many of us have seen our entire lives, which is a chasm of difference in resources and opportunities between the haves and the have-nots in our country. Part of the struggle for communities like mine, and I'll use El Paso as an example, because we are in a state that limits access to education and limits access to healthcare, communities like mine have added obstacles in front of us. So it is much harder for families to break out of poverty when you have a state that really limits your opportunity to resources and limits your opportunity to a pathway to the middle class.
So my hope is that the country has seen and understood the depth of that chasm and that the Biden administration uses all the resources at their disposal, legislative administrative executive orders, you name it to truly build back better and to create a country that is more equitable and just for everyone. It's going to be a challenge because we have a very slim majority in the House of Representatives. We don't know what's going to happen in the Senate with the Georgia elections. I'm a Democrat. My hope is that we have Democratic victories in both of those races and that we have a path for reform and investment in these next 12 months, these post-COVID pandemic 12 months.
Escobar:
That window is narrow for us because House of Representatives members run every two years. You're legislating for one year, and then boom, you're in the middle of an election the year that follows. The 2022 elections are going to be critical to maintaining our majority and really to changing history. Because as we know, historically, the president's party loses seats in the House of Representatives during the midterm. So we've got to do everything we can to prevent that so that we continue to work on building back better. The work is enormous. The tasks are monumental. We have to do this for our country, but we've got limited time to do it in.
Chideya:
I want to pivot a little bit to issues about the border and migration. You have been tireless in speaking about these issues and taking trips, leading trips to detention centers and to the border. What are you focused on as you speak to people? Also again, the incoming Biden-Harris administration, because President Obama was not considered by many to have the best policies and was called by some the deporter in chief.
Escobar:
I was among those who called him the deporter in chief because I felt as though while I am absolutely understanding of the need to enforce laws, and I am not someone who believes in open borders, I have really yet to meet anyone who is for open borders. I would be of course among the first, because I represent El Paso among the first to say we need to do everything possible to keep our communities safe. I live here. I grew up here. I'm a third-generation El Paso and a third-generation fronteriza, raised my children here. Of course, I want to save the community. But as you mentioned, the militarization of the border has really been shocking. The abhorrent policies aimed at immigrants at some of the most vulnerable immigrants, children, small children, it's been shocking and horrific and I think will be one of the darkest moments of American history, this era of anti-immigrant cruelty.
But what I believe is going to happen is that we are going to continue to see those migration patterns continue. The reason for that is what we warned the country, Donald Trump hasn't solved anything. He never bothered to address root causes. He never bothered to work collaboratively with the leaders in our hemisphere to understand how the climate emergency is fueling some of this, how America's own dependence on drugs is fueling some of this, how our own past activities have fueled some of this migration.
So we finally have a president who wants to get to the bottom of it to create humane solutions, but again, it's that limited window of opportunity. So these next 12 months will be pretty critical. I've had some really wonderful conversations with Alejandro Mayorkas, who is hopefully the Biden administration secretary for the Department of Homeland Security. So we need incoming Secretary Mayorkas to work closely with border communities like ours, to work closely with NGOs, to also work on reforming the Department of Homeland Security, install good people who are solution driven and who have compassion in their hearts, and we need a Biden administration that not just depends on legislative action but is willing to use executive orders in order to right the wrongs of the last four years and create a path for humanitarian relief going forward.
Chideya:
You gave the Spanish language response to the State of the Union this year. What did you focus on, and how did it feel to be doing that?
Escobar:
We chose to deliver the response from El Paso. It was important to me that I'd be in the community that has been on the receiving end of the Trump administration's cruelty and in the face of that, that we deliver hope and that we deliver resilience. I talked at the very end about seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time as a young woman and the incredible hope and pride that I felt in seeing the Statue of Liberty. When you read the Emma Lazarus poem, the Emma Lazarus poem is not about cruelty. The Emma Lazarus poem is not about leaving people out. It is in fact about welcoming the stranger and the vulnerable and those in need.
So in my closing to that speech where I talked about all the policies that have been important to us and all of the legislative work we've done in Congress, at the very end, I talked about how El Paso is the new Ellis Island, and that if we want to hang on to who we are in that symbol of that gorgeous Statue of Liberty, it's on us.
Chideya:
Representative Escobar, thank you so much for this time.
Escobar:
Thank you. This was so wonderful. Such a privilege.
Chideya:
That was Representative Veronica Escobar of Texas's 16th congressional district.
Coming up later this hour.
Errin Haines:
Seven legacy civil rights organizations met with President-Elect Joe Biden, Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris and Incoming Senior Advisor Cedric Richmond, and they all were really pushing him to uphold his commitment to addressing racial equity, which he mentioned on the campaign trail and which he said during his acceptance speech was a priority for him.
Chideya:
Leadership in the political sphere takes many forms. We just heard from Congresswoman Escobar who represents El Paso on Capitol Hill. My next guest also represents her community of El Paso, but on the state level. Gina Pérez sits on the Texas State Board of Education on behalf of District One, which covers El Paso down to Laredo. I wanted to ask her about how the pandemic was impacting education, especially among the students of color she represents. The topic turned to lack of access to broadband, which Pérez herself is impacted by. A quick heads up. We recorded this interview old school, on a phone line. Welcome to Our Body Politic Gina.
Gina Pérez:
Thank you so much for the invitation.
Chideya:
In many parts of the country, there have been teachers and principals who've died of the pandemic, and there's also just so many kids who don't have broadband access and are trying to do their homework on their parents' cell phones. What are you seeing among the kids in your district?
Pérez:
Well, a large portion of my district is one of the areas of Texas that broadband was never invested into, and the infrastructure simply doesn't exist. So part of it may be economic and perhaps lack of resources. But where I live, it's geography. So my two young children can not access their teacher virtually, and they're doing everything on paper.
That's the situation for a lot of our kids. While I think my kids perhaps will be okay, emerging bilingual, English learners, children in special education, for them, an eight months educational loss can be the equivalent of six to eight years. The truth is a whole bunch of them may not recover. The people who are going to pay the price are people of color, people in low wealth communities and young kids.
Chideya:
You are part of this incredibly powerful elected body, the Texas Board of Education. What's its significance? What are you tasked with doing? What are the things that you care about?
Pérez:
I will start with why I love it. So I was teaching students in juvenile probation, and Texas decided that it would be prudent for them to cut five and a half billion dollars out of public education. So programs like mine, well, they were simply erased. When programs like that are erased, again, the brunt of the impact is faced by young children of color and marginalized disenfranchised communities, which is a great deal of District One.
So I decided that rather than fighting with the people who didn't have the power to change it, I would go sit at the table and make those changes. Primarily, our largest duty and obligation is to write the standard and this mandate, what teachers have to teach and what students have to learn. Then we determined the high school graduation requirements, and I think the largest, most serious obligation is the oversight of the permanent school fund, which is the largest public endowment in the nation. This is a generational wealth to ensure that public schools maintain their existence, and we keep doing our very best so that every child has the opportunity to receive an effective, free public education.
Chideya:
What are the things you'd like to see done on the Texas Board of Education, and how are you pushing for things that you really believe in?
Pérez:
Right now, what we're looking at is revising the science standards. I would really love to see my colleagues acknowledge that number one, climate change is real, and climate science is absolutely something that we need to study. But because of the makeup of the board, I don't believe that's going to happen. What is very sad about the process that we use to do this is almost always these standards live for 10 years. But there are occasions when they live longer. For example, we haven't reviewed health for almost 24 years. So the health education I received in high school is what kids are still receiving today.
Chideya:
Before we wrap up with you, how do you think... I mean, this is such a time of crazy change in the country. We're in a pandemic. We're in what some people have called a female recession, where women and especially women of color, and within that, especially Latinas are facing huge challenges in the job market. What do you want for your kids? And when I say your kids, I mean your two kids, but also all the kids you represent.
Pérez:
One thing I know about Latinas, one thing I know about Chicanos on the border is that in the face of any and every obstacle and regardless of the setbacks that we repeatedly faced, we are resilient, and we are strong fighter. I hope that at the very least, I can embody that.
Chideya:
Gina Pérez. Thank you so much.
Pérez:
Thank you so much for the invitation and for allowing me to share what it's like, not only in El Paso and in Texas, but being a woman of color in a political position. Thank you so much.
Chideya:
That was Gina Pérez of the Texas State Board of Education. Coming up later this hour.
Nia Buckner:
We can not be the best physicians that we can be and offer the best standard of care if we're not mentally well, if we're not physically well, if we're not spiritually well.
Chideya:
Each week we bring you the latest news from the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic. More than 300,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 since the virus reached the United States 10 months ago. That's more than all of the deaths of American forces in battle in World War II, according to an NBC news data analysis. More people died of COVID-19 in just one day last week than during the 9/11 attacks. The statistics are even worse for communities of color, which had been more vulnerable to the virus. Our weekly update is a way to try to put that in perspective.
This week's news is big. A vaccine has finally dropped, and the first Americans have had their shots. They won't be fully protected until they've had a second dose in a few weeks. Health officials say 100 million people, mostly essential workers will get the vaccine by the end of March. Not all of them are ready to take it. A new survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that only 62% of Black Americans would be willing to get a vaccine at this stage compared to over 70% for whites and Hispanics. That mistrust is rooted in atrocities like the decades long Tuskegee experiment, in which US public health service officials offered Black men with syphilis-free health treatment, then deliberately withheld treatment in order to observe the effects. Many medical professionals of color say they need to be vaccinated early to show their communities that it's safe.
Sandra Lindsay:
I understand that based on the history they have mistrust in the medical system. As a nurse, my practice is guided by the science. I believe in science. What you should not trust is COVID-19 because you don't know how it will affect you.
Chideya:
That's Sandra Lindsay, the very first person in the United States to get the vaccine speaking on MSNBC. She's the director of critical care nursing at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, and she's also a Black immigrant from Jamaica. Rural areas have specific challenges. Officials and healthcare workers in rural communities work with underfunded, public health systems and struggle with poor communications infrastructure. That means basically they just have a hard time getting the word out. Doctors in rural areas are also expressing concern that their communities won't try to get a vaccine.
President Donald Trump among others has sewn distrust of the medical community. For what it's worth, I personally plan to get the vaccine, but like so many of us not considered high risk, I may not have access until the spring or even early summer. Until then, I'll be keeping myself safe with masks and social distancing, as long as I have to, even though it all gets tiring. We've taped our next two shows ahead of time so we can break for the holidays. There will be so much happening with COVID during that time, and we'll be sure to catch you up on where things stand in the new year.
Despite the doom and gloom of a lot of our health reporting this year, there are some small rays of hope. At the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, first year students were tasked with creating their own Hippocratic oath. That refers to an ancient document written by philosopher and physician Hippocrates about ethical choices doctors make. Some of the most famous are to do no harm, to protect a patient's privacy, and to pass medical knowledge down to the next generation. But these new med students want to do more. Nia Buckner is one of those first-year students at the university of Pittsburgh.
Buckner:
So as you can imagine, we're living in a time that's unprecedented as far as racial disparities, as well as living in a global pandemic. Our medical school administration gave us the task to one, build comradery and then two to define who we are as physicians and who we aspire to be. When it came to constructing our oath, we wanted to make sure that it framed the times that we were living in.
So starting off with beginning our medical journey in this the COVID-19 pandemic and then also recognizing and acknowledging that we are in the middle of a national civil rights movement that is reinvigorated by the killings of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, we wanted to make sure that those aspects were there because granted yes, we are not the first class to write our own oath, but the predicament and the time period that we are has a very specific timestamp that we wanted to make sure that those who read our oath, not only could it be timely, but it's also timeless in the essence that the values that we put forward in the oath could be acknowledged five years, 10 years from now and still hold the importance.
Chideya:
So what's in their oath.
Buckner:
So a couple of those values that we added was making sure that we talked about patient wellbeing or even physician wellbeing, where we can not be the best physicians that we can be and offer the best standard of care if we're not mentally well, if we're not physically well, if we're not spiritually well.
Chideya:
The new oath makes specific references to patients' backgrounds, including socioeconomic status and how that should be factored into patient care.
Buckner:
So one of the paragraphs that we included in our oath says that I will prioritize understanding each patient's narrative background and experiences while protecting their privacy and autonomy. But we also have to understand that what happens outside of the clinic also has an important influence on our patient. So yes, they may be from the same ethnic group, but social economic status, or they might have the same experiences, but how have those experiences affected their life events and their trajectory and then also the treatment that we provide them. If we have a single mom that has a child that is ill and they're not able to go to their doctor's appointments, it's not a matter of fact during the week that they don't want to take their child to the doctors.
But if they're a single mom and they're the number one breadwinner in the family, trying to take off work is not an option for them. So making sure that we understand the specifics about our patients and making sure that we pull in their personal lives and their social lives into their care so that it's more well-rounded.
Chideya:
Buckner says the response to their oath has been invigorating for her and her classmates.
Buckner:
We really just wanted to make sure that what we believed and how we felt about medicine was expressed and was heard and holding ourselves to a standard. So we read this two years from now, and it's like, "Yeah, me in the past knew what was up, and I got to hold myself to that."
Chideya:
That was Nia Buckner, medical student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, possible future pediatrician or OB-GYN. Good luck, Nia.
It's time for sipping the political tea, our weekly deep dive with Errin Haines, editor at large at The 19th and political contributor at Our Body Politic. Hey, Errin.
Haines:
Hi, Farai.
Chideya:
So we are that much closer to 2021.
Haines:
Oh, man. Yeah.
Chideya:
But not there yet.
Haines:
Not there yet.
Chideya:
So all sorts of exciting, transformative, and sometimes terrifying things are still happening in the final days of 2020. One of the things that's transformative is that Representative Deb Haaland, who is Laguna Pueblo has become the first native American to be appointed secretary of the interior in the incoming Biden-Harris administration. How much of a landmark is that, and also, how is the sort of cabinet stakes going?
Haines:
If she's confirmed, she would be the first native American secretary of the interior. Really, this just kind of goes with the theme that President-Elect Joe Biden has mentioned that he expects to have, the most representative cabinet in US history. I was just looking at a story from FiveThirtyEight earlier this week mentioning just this point. So far, the president-elect has chosen 11 people of color for cabinet level posts and has said that he's also nominated 10 women if you include Deb Haaland compared to nine men to serve in these positions.
So that would break the record if they all get confirmed for the most women ever to serve in the 25 current cabinet level positions. This could also raise the possibility according to FiveThirtyEight that Biden's cabinet could be the first in American history to include at least as many women as men.
Chideya:
Well, last week we talked about President-Elect Biden's meeting with Black civil rights leaders, and someone taped that meeting, even though it was supposed to be off the record. The audio was leaked, and The Intercept had secured some of it and put it into a podcast. Let's take a listen to a little bit of that tape.
Clip:
And so we would ask you to lend your power to try and pass the George Floyd justice and policing act. You have the power to call for a national database on police misconduct.
Chideya:
You talked with some of the people involved. Can you tell us a little bit more about the story that you did about this range of voices?
Haines:
Sure. So I reported on that meeting last week with seven legacy civil rights organizations, including four women who lead those organizations who met with President-Elect Joe Biden, Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris and Incoming Senior Advisor Cedric Richmond, and they all were really pushing him to uphold his commitment to addressing racial equity, which he mentioned on the campaign trail and which he said during his acceptance speech was a priority for him and the idea that he really sees racial inequality as among the four crises that he and Vice-President Elect Harris will confront when they take office next month.
So we know that Black voters were central to Biden and Harris's nomination and then key to their general election victory. So they are pushing not only for representation in his government, but really to be serving at the highest offices and to have real proximity to the president to really have a real impact on shaping policy going forward.
Chideya:
Do we think at this point, in just the span of a week since we talked last time that there may be some mitigation of concerns that Black civil rights leaders have had or not so much yet?
Haines:
Potentially, I think you saw the pick of Lloyd Allen to lead the department of defense who would be the first Black person to ever have that role. I think that-
Chideya:
Some people are pushing back because he hasn't had the length of distance from his military service that it requires a waiver, basically. There's so many things.
Haines:
It does require a waiver, but that waiver was granted to President Trump's first defense secretary General Mattis, who had also not been-
Chideya:
Yeah, absolutely.
Haines:
... out of military life for long enough per that waiver. So I mean, it's not as if there's not precedent for that. Listen, the treasury secretary nominee, Janet Yellen had a racial equality round table, she and Wally Adeyemo, who is the deputy treasury secretary nominee spoke with that online civil rights movement, Color of Change, Black to the Future Action Fund. They certainly continued to also push the importance of dealing with inequities and looking for real solutions and really tracking data to build the kind of infrastructure to deal with inequality.
So the proof for all of these groups, what they told me is that they're looking for results and action and something that's going to lead to real systemic change and not just kind of the incremental change that has been all too common when folks talk about wanting to confront systemic racism in this country.
Chideya:
It's always great to talk to you. Thanks, Errin so much.
Haines:
Thank you.
Chideya:
That was Errin Haines, editor at large at The 19th and political contributor here at Our Body Politic. Coming up next.
Casey Mendoza:
Selena was one of the few shows that came out this year that was Latino created and Latino led according to a recent report from Nielsen. That's pretty rare.
Chideya:
This is Our Body Politic. I'm your host, Farai Chideya. Every couple of weeks, I sit down with Ruth Umoh, diversity and inclusion reporter at Forbes and our business and finance contributor to talk about the latest economic news. In this week's business segment, what we call, show me the money we break down Black home ownership in America. Hey, Ruth.
Ruth Umoh:
Hi, Farai. How are you?
Chideya:
I'm doing great. So let's talk about home ownership. You recently hosted a panel about Black home ownership, and let's start with, what are the numbers on Black home ownership today?
Umoh:
In the earlier stages of the pandemic in particular, Black homeowners were more likely than white homeowners to report that they'd either missed or deferred their mortgage payment due to the pandemics financial impacts. But overall, the numbers on Black home ownership are a bit disheartening. We know from US Census Bureau data that Black Americans still have the lowest rate of home ownership compared to any other racial ethnic group.
We're also seeing that even in cities like Washington DC or Los Angeles, which are typically considered more progressive, they have bustling economies, more job opportunities and a relatively large Black presence, there is still a significant homeownership gap of around 20% to 25%.
Chideya:
So how does home ownership fit into the intergenerational wealth gap between whites and Blacks?
Umoh:
Well, I think you hit the nail on the head, Farai. Unfortunately, Black home ownership still lags behind that of their white counterparts. In fact, the home ownership gap between both races is wider today than it was 50 years ago. So you're completely right that home ownership is about far more than just having a piece of property, right? Which is why it is traditionally been a central factor in the wealth equation, homes, they typically appreciate and value.
As you build equity in your home, it offers protection against crises. Now, when we look at Black Americans in particular, they've historically been excluded from home ownership, thanks to years of unjust policies and a bevy of discriminatory practices by banks, real estate agents and the like. So we see the longstanding results of that today. We're about 40 years out after the passage of the Fair Housing Act. The 2008 recession was about 12 years ago, and still many Black families are out of the opportunity to create generational wealth by purchasing a home and then passing it down to their kids.
As a result, we see this racial chasm, if you will, in wealth. The couple estimates from the 2016 show that the median white household has a net worth of nearly $200,000, roughly 10 times the net worth of the median Black household, which is around $20,000.
Chideya:
These questions over the federal role have often been put in the hands of the HUD secretary, the secretary of housing and urban development, who's a member of the cabinet. President-Elect Joe Biden just selected Representative Marcia Fudge for that job. She had told Politico before her nomination that Black politicians, she was afraid, were often relegated to positions like HUD that had less power than the agriculture secretary, which she also was considered for. But nonetheless, she is coming in as the HUD secretary. What role do you think HUD could play in improving Black home ownership?
Umoh:
It's going to take a bold, actionable, and transformative agenda to address the racial wealth gap and the homeownership gap. So while I understand why some would lament, designate in a role that seems lower on the totem pole of cabinet positions to Black people, I do think that it offers a critical opportunity to reverse course into and do years of unfair housing policies. We'll also need policies that enable Black households to later on transition to higher valued homes over time, which again could substantially increase their wealth accumulation in the long term.
Chideya:
Now, let me shift a little bit. You have spent the year following racial equity pledges made by corporate America in the wake of George Floyd's death and then marches for justice. Where are we now?
Umoh:
Since June of this year, corporations have pledged billions, that's billions with a B of dollars to racial equity initiatives. The money is still rolling in. But many of these corporate commitments are over a three-year to five-year time span. So we likely won't see some of the core results for some time. In the short term, however, we can expect to see them make good on certain immediate promises, like placing cash deposits into Black led and Black serving financial institutions, which are then reinvested directly back into the communities in which they operate.
But it's also important to remember that while we're being inundated with these lofty high price pledges to do better on the diversity and equity front, which I think is commendable, these financial commitments are a drop in the bucket for many of these companies. Apple, for instance, pledged $100 million to racial equity. But it made $55.3 billion in profit last year. It's really about the public and their employees holding the leadership accountable to some of these monetary pledges.
Chideya:
Ruth, always great to talk to you. Thank you.
Umoh:
Thank you and likewise.
Chideya:
That was Our Body Politics business and economics contributor, Ruth Umoh.
Each week, we give you a prompt to respond to. We love to hear from listeners, and we set up a platform called speak to hear your thoughts and feedback. This week I want to know, how would your day be different if you spent as much time on community, family, creativity, and wellness, as you do on working.
We've gotten many responses from listeners. You're telling us about taking care of yourself better and prioritizing rest, self-care, and wellness, especially because of the pandemic. One listener wrote in to say they were actually spending too much time with family and not enough on professional fulfillment. I'm definitely working on self-care. That's mental, physical, spiritual, but I'm still turning to ice cream as comfort food, and dealing with that is just going to have to wait. Rome wasn't built in a day.
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Latino, Hispanic, Latinx, they're all names for the same 60 million plus people in the US population. Paola Ramos just published Finding Latinx: In Search of the Voices Redefining Latino Identity. She's a host and correspondent for Vice News and a contributor to Telemundo News and MSNBC.
Previously, she worked on Hispanic outreach for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and on president Barack Obama's reelection campaign. Finding Latinx examines multiple Latino identities around the country and across racial communities.
Paola Ramos:
When you talk about Latinos, you never talk about us in the Midwest. You barely talk about us in the South, right? So I very much wanted to go to South Carolina, to Iowa, to talk to people that we never did in the political environments. Right? So when I was in Arizona, many times I had gone there, and then I had talked to dreamers. But I went there to talk to trans folks and to indigenous migrants that had just crossed. When I went to Texas, I typically had gone and focused primarily on immigration while I went to figure out what was going on with the HIV crisis that's happening at the border and what was going on with Latinas that were fighting for their reproductive rights.
Same thing in Florida. I go, and every time I go, I just talk about Cuban Americans. But I wanted to see the flip side. Know what does it mean to be an Afro-Cuban in Miami that I grew up and that I barely even had encountered.
Chideya:
Ramos, who has Mexican and Cuban parents says she was challenged to expand her own understanding of the Afro-Latino identity and the historical barriers to power that this racial group still faces.
Ramos:
To understand a little bit of my own ignorance, I wanted to understand where the erasure starts. Obviously, the erasure starts historically on the other side of the border. So when I was in Mexico, and which is where half of my family is from, I started having conversations with some Afro Mexicans who obviously were educating me and telling me that their own census started just recently in the past two years, started in counting am Afro Mexicans in Mexico.
So again, the question is, if you're not even recognized in your own place of birth, and then what does it mean to migrate into the United States? Once you step into the United States, you're criminalized. You're not just invisible, but then you're criminalized by two systems, the immigration system and the criminal justice system. Socially, suddenly you become too Black to be Latina, too Latina to be Black, which is almost every conversation I had with the community was a little bit of that.
Chideya:
Though Ramos admits truly Finding Latinx is not possible, she did find shared experiences among a new generation of US Latinos
Ramos:
In every entry that I did, every single one, I'd say there was this undertone of pain, right? There was this younger generation that had seen the older folks normalized pain or normalized trauma or sort of be okay with their moms making less money than their bosses or than white folks. But then the other layer was that that same generation that grew up with that is pretty much revolting against that, right? They're rejecting that normalization. They're rejecting that past. To me, that's a lot of what we saw culminating the election. It's people that were voting, I think for themselves and as a rejection of that past, more so than I believe for any candidate.
Chideya:
We asked the Ramos to imagine what advice you'd give the incoming Biden-Harris administration to keep and grow the supportive Latinos who voted for them.
Ramos:
Biden has made clear promises. He's made apologies. But he made a very clear promise that he would, and within the first hundred days, at least push for a bill that would create a pathway to citizenship. That's the same thing we heard in 2008 with President Obama. When he had both chambers, control of both chambers, he didn't do that. So the first thing is you don't have the ability to not keep your promise, because I do think the long-term damage that that would mean for Democrats and to not abide by that promise I think could be extremely, extremely, extremely damaging.
The Latino vote for Joe Biden was a huge leap of faith. A lot of people were very hurt, and to not keep that promise, I think will have huge long-term effects.
Chideya:
That was Paola Ramos, the author of Finding Latinx: In Search of the Voices Redefining Latino Identity.
As you just heard, defining what it means to be a Latino in the US can be difficult, and that includes the portrayals on TV. So I wanted to know more, and I invited our newest contributor, Casey Mendoza to talk about the representation of Latinos in film and television. She's a reporter for the video platform, Newsy, an expert on all things entertainment and pop culture. Hey, Casey.
Mendoza:
Hi.
Chideya:
So we are here to chop it up about entertainment, and let's start with Selena, the series on Netflix. What's the public's response?
Mendoza:
Yes. So there is kind of like what I call a rose and a thorn to the public's response. The rose is that Selena: The Series was one of the most watched titles on Netflix after it was released. Now, the thorn is that the reaction is really negative, unfortunately. The public response from both audiences and critics wasn't very positive on rotten tomatoes. Specifically, it had an average audience score of 41%. The biggest critique was just that, even though the show is called Selena: The Series, and even though it was heavily marketed as a show that would feature a Selena, the character herself was very sidelined into a supporting role and turned it into this perfect daughter trope that seemed to have very little agency of over her career. For fans of the musician, that's really disappointing.
Chideya:
Let me ask you this, Casey. What does this say about the representation of Latinos in television? Has the fact that streaming media produces so many shows made representation better overall?
Mendoza:
Selena was one of the few shows that came out this year that was Latino created and Latino led. According to a recent report from Nielsen, that's pretty rare. Hispanic and Latino actors make up about just 5% of the share of screen across all TV platforms, and that percentage is the percentage of time that Hispanic and Latino actors appear on screen as recurring or main cast characters. That statistic is even more disheartening for younger Latino women. Their share of screen is closer to about 2.5%. So to see that lack of representation still to this day, even after calls for more diversity on screen is again disheartening.
So your second question about streaming is where things get a little more optimistic. For my story about Selena, I spoke to a researcher from Nielsen who described streaming as the sort of playground for diversity, both in talent and storylines. Even beyond Selena on Netflix. There's dramas like On My Block, which is one of the few series on TV right now that tells the story of an Afro-Latina teenager. On Disney+, there's a show called Diary of a Future President, starring Gina Rodriguez and Tess Romero.
Even in terms of non-US and non-English language programs, there are also shows like Elite, which is a teen drama centering around class struggles in Spain. That's gained a pretty big international following. So there are bright spots that shows this growing representation of Latinos in television, even though right now, there's still a lot of room to grow.
Chideya:
Now, Casey, speaking of diversity in all the shows we enjoy, the Library of Congress chose the 25 movies that it's adding to the National Film Registry every year. This year it included, what do we know about female directors and directors of color?
Mendoza:
Yeah. So I love this question because every year, the additions to the National Film Registry, they're very telling of our values as a society. I want to highlight what the librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden said specifically, which is with the inclusion of diverse filmmakers, we are not trying to set records, but rather to set the record straight because the film industry has these blind spots of long ignoring or failing to acknowledge work from these women filmmakers and people of color.
Chideya:
So even though the focus shouldn't be on setting records, how did things stack up this year?
Mendoza:
Yeah. So this year broke records in terms of admitting female directors and directors of color. One filmmaker that I really wanted to highlight because it goes back to this point about representation of Latinas in Hollywood was the induction of Lourdes Portillo and her film, The Devil Never Sleeps. She's been doing this work of telling stories from countries like Nicaragua, Argentina, and Mexico for years.
So it was very exciting to see her work acknowledged alongside other women and women of color who have been creating film since the 1920s or the 1940s, filmmakers again, have never been brought to my attention.
Chideya:
Can you name for us to go out on one other person or a film that stood out to you from the list?
Mendoza:
Of course. So this was a groundbreaking year, nine movies directed by women were inducted into the Library of Congress, including two movies from the '80s directed by Black women. One of the ones that really stood out in my head was the film, Illusions by director Julie Dash. This was a student film that confronted Hollywood racism from 1982. But I think that induction really shows an important focus on talking about representation and talking about the racism that filmmakers of color had to endure in the industry for years.
Chideya:
Wow. That's really great to know because I'm not that up on films, and I've never heard of this one, but Julie Dash did Daughters of the Dust, which is one of my favorite films of all time. So to know that this film by Julie dash was just inducted, Illusions is really exciting, and I'm going to look it up. Thanks so much, Casey.
Mendoza:
Thank you.
Chideya:
That was Casey Mendoza, entertainment business contributor for Our Body Politic.
Thank you so much for joining us here on Our Body Politic. We're on the air each week and everywhere you listen to podcast. Our Body Politic is presented and syndicated by KCRW, KPCC, and KQED. It's produced by Lantigua Williams & Co. I'm the creator and host, Farai Chideya. Juleyka Lantigua-Williams is executive producer. Paulina Velasco is senior producer. Cedric Wilson is lead producer and makes this episode. Original music by Kojin Tashiro. Our political booker is Mary Knowles. Our producer is Priscilla Alabi. Michelle Baker and Emily Daly, are assistant producers. Production assistance from Mark Betancourt, Michael Castaneda, Zuheera Ali, Sarah McClure, and Virginia Lora.
Credits:
Funding for Our Body Politic is provided by Craig Newmark Philanthropies and by the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, empowering world-changing work.
Chideya, Farai, host. “Black Homeownership Rates in a New Light, Rep. Veronica Escobar on Leading El Paso Through the Covid Crisis, and Latino Representation on the Small Screen.” Our Body Politic, Diaspora Farms LLC. December 18, 2020. https://our-body-politic.simplecast.com/