Shit White Girls Say to Latinas

By: Amy Ketner

Want a good laugh? Watch this video.

Why is it so funny?  The answer is two-fold: first because the white girl shows her ignorance, but second because her performance is, sadly, accurate.  I frequently hear white people say these things to Latin@s, and I’m not even Latina, so I know I don’t hear the half of it.

These stereotypes and moments of ignorance highlighted in the video demonstrate the ways in which race is a social construction¹, meaning it is not biological, stable or exact, but rather created by those in power through means of law, science, media, and more.  The opening liner shows this immediately: “Are you Spanish?  I can’t even tell you’re Spanish.”  First of all, the girl she is talking to is not Spanish, but rather Ecuadorian, though the white girl never seems to understand that there is a difference.  Once we can get beyond that, we must wonder, what is it that makes a person “look Spanish” (or perhaps she was trying to say Latina or Ecuadorian)?  What are the markers that of authenticity² that determine ones race in the eyes of society?  Do Latin@s frequently “pass”² for being white or other races?  What about the Latin@s who are black or other races?  How does our society categorize this group of individuals?  When someone does not fit neatly into a certain racial category based on their looks and performativity², it often makes us uncomfortable.

However, once one finds out about the race/origins of a person, sometimes that person is made exotic.  There could not be a clearer example than in this video when the white girl says: “Oh you’re from Ecuador? How exotic!  We don’t have a lot of those here.”  She blatantly states that the Latina’s origins are exotic, which is a form of racism called exoticism³.  Shohat and Stam state that this racism makes the “other” out to be not something to be disdained as in traditional racism, but rather something fascinating and intriguing.  The white girl even said “we don’t have a lot of those here” meaning that the Latina’s roots are a rarity here, and dehumanizing an entire race of people by calling them “those” as if things.

This exoticism is also illuminated when the white girl asks her Latina friend if she would ever date a white guy, participating in miscegenation⁴.  This falls under the exoticism category as well, for she points to white guys and sticks out her tongue and acts bored, yet tries to encourage a her friend to be attracted to a Latino.  By calling white guys boring, she is inadvertently suggesting that Latino boys are more interesting and attractive, and this is exoticism. 

Hegemony⁵ comes into play in several ways, such as when the white girl, a woman of the agent racial group, assumes that the Latina would know someone who can fix her car, mow her lawn or repair her roof - jobs that she presumably does not want or know how to do.  These jobs are manual, exhausting, and low-paying, therefore they are often left to the marginalized of society to do.  In addition, they are jobs that can often be done without citizenship papers, and so many undocumented migrants find work in these positions.  Hegemony, or cultural domination, is shown here because it has become common sense in society that people who are less deserving do those jobs, which means people of lower classes and without papers get stuck with them.  When the white girl asks the Latina if she knows anyone who can do such jobs, she is giving into this common sense because she assumes that since her friend is Latina, she will know people – perhaps even her own brother – who can do these jobs.  She is associating her friend’s Latino race with a job she refuses to do.  This affirms her power over the Latino race, her hegemony as a white person.

The rest of the video is full of stereotyping, such as the assumption that the Latina friend likes Tequila, tacos and chalupas, knows how to dance like Shakira, and has a Latino friend who is a gangbanger.  Stereotypes are parasitic in our society.  When backed with power, they allow certain groups to maintain cultural domination.  These groups perpetuate the images of what kinds of jobs certain categories of people should occupy, what language they should be allowed to speak (“Can you like not speak Spanish with your friends around me?  Rude!”), what they should look like, and so much more. 

It is this stereotyping and prejudice, faced by both foreign nationals and Latinos born in the US, that causes tensions in our society.  I have spoken to many Latin@s from other countries who have told me they would not want to live in our beautiful country because discrimination is so prevalent.  This saddens me greatly.  Our country has so much to offer, but clearly also a long way to go.  We need to break down these stereotypes so that one day this video is funny for one reason only: because the white girl is so ignorant, not because she is ignorant and because the video rings true.

I will end by using the white girl’s words, but rather than challenge the Latin@s with them as she did, I use them to challenge those who hold such stereotypical views of Latin@s.  Friends, “I’m sorry but this is America”.  Let’s work past these stereotypes, prejudices and discrimination and work toward equality for all, regardless of origin, race, language, or citizenship status.

Works Cited:

 ¹ Michael Omi and Howard Winant. “Racial Formation,” Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. New York: Routledge, 1994. 53-76.

 ² American Culture 311: Race and Mixed Race Lecture. 29 October 2012. Professor Alsultany.

 ³ Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, “From Eurocentrism to Polycentrism,” in Unthinking

Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (New York: Routledge, 1994). 18-25

 ⁴ American Culture 311: Race and Mixed Race Lecture. 22 October 2012. Professor Alsultany.

 ⁵ James Lull, “Hegemony,” in Gail Dines and Jean M. Humez, Eds. Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Text Reader, 2nd Ed. London: Sage Publications, 2000. 61-66.