Question authority of authorities’ question
The police and 911 dispatchers need to find a better way to ask for physical descriptions of alleged perpetrators. Pronto. In a multicultural society with a steadily increasing rate of mixed racial and ethnic marriages, the standard “white, black or Hispanic?” question doesn’t work, particularly in the case of Hispanics. And the responses can create havoc as we have seen in the recent tragedy in Florida, where George Zimmerman, a self-identified Hispanic, shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an African-american young man.
Hispanic, or Latino, is NOT a race. It’s a cultural/ geographical identifier for people of Latin American background. I could post here pictures of 20 different Hispanic individuals and anyone would be at a loss to visually identify more than half of them as “Hispanic.”
Here’s the thing: You can be black and Latino. You could be white, blond and blue-eyed and Latino. You could be Amerindian and Latino. You could be any shade of brown and Latino. You could even be Chinese and Latino, since many Latin American countries have had large populations of Chinese immigrants for close to two centuries.
Many North Americans tend to have an image of Latinos based on what they see on television, what I call the “G&J.LO identikit.” If they perceive any resemblance to Jennifer or George López, they immediately assume the individual in question is a Latino, but anyone with those looks could be something totally different, like Italian or Greek or Bosnian or Syrian.
I couldn’t count how many times I’ve begun to speak Spanish to the man behind the counter at a bodega in East Harlem, where I live, only to discover that the man was actually a Palestinian or a Pakistani. None of them, however, looked anything like George Lopez, but I thought I knew better. One of them, in fact, looked just like my cousin Fernando.
The “white, black or Hispanic” question is also unfair in another sense: Coming from the mouth of a figure of authority, it gives the impression that other easily identifiable groups, such as Asians or Native Americans, never commit any crimes. This is America. Shouldn’t members of every group be considered suspects based on their physical appearance equally?
The question can also cause a weird culture shock when you are reporting a crime being committed and had never heard the question before. Many years ago I had to report an attempted breaking-andentering. I was rather scared by the banging on the back door while I was calling 911 a few steps away. I thought the first thing the dispatcher would ask would be the address, but no, it was: “Are they white, black or Hispanic?” It made me so angry that I yelled into the phone, “What the hell does that mean? I’m Hispanic and I’m the one being robbed!”
The question should be dropped sooner rather than later. Perhaps a better way for a visual description that may lead to a quick arrest would be to describe whether the suspect is tall or short, fat or skinny, young or old and what they’re wearing … but that is another column.
doloresprida@aol.com