Perception #2- Hannah Nelson-- Latino Single Story

It's fascinating to find that a culture so diverse, a culture so full of beautiful things can be looked upon through single eyes. The Latinos of America are targeted as this culture. Many American's today perceive Latinos as people who come to America illegally to do one thing: Work the low jobs of America. 

I searched artifact after artifact to see how social media perceives the American Latino culture and I continued discovering people's single story of them as "the low life," doing no job that other Americans want to do.  I solely searched key terms "Latinos working" in the Google search bar and these were the top stories that pulled up.

We are accustomed as Americans to view Latino men in the field. We are accustomed to thinking and perceiving them in a way as doing the hard work that  only "illegals" can do, or that the reason they are there is because they have little or no education. I think this comes from the messages that we learn at grade school every day. If you don't have an education, you will have a bad future job. This meme was sent out through my family on Thanksgiving Day as a joke, because there is this single story perception that all the food that was on the table came from latino workers. 

The quote below comes from Kasich, who was running for office, which prooves of the single story created by America today. Here he was trying to reach out to the Hispanics of the country, but he refers to them in a way that gives them only one story. 

“A lot of them do jobs that they’re willing to do and that’s why, in a hotel, you leave a little tip, you know,” Kasich said last week in an attempt to praise Hispanics and reach out to them."“I've always said that Hispanics are such a critical part of the fabric of the United States,” Kasich told host Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press." ( Kasich View on Latinos)

Kasish gives the single story of Latinos working the low-life jobs and us "so fortunate" Americans should "tip" them out of gratitude. A tweet was sent out by Adrianne Airhart speaking in the same tone as Kasich, showing that only a latino would be doing the job as a waiter and serving us Americans. 
These perceptions have included as looking upon this culture as nothing but too dumb people. 


I have found this single story to be so limiting. My husband owns a company where he builds and manufactures his product himself. Who do you think his workers are? Yes, they're all latinos. But they aren't what they stories make them out to be. All the men and women that work with him are smart, educated, and have given everything to come to America, so that they're children an have a better life. One of the men has a masters in business and owned a very well off company in Venezuela. Another woman graduated a university studying science. Two other men were known to be extremely smart businessmen with high incomes. They were only working this job because they were first needing to learn a second language before they could start searching for other work.

I conclude that I know that there are many latino workers in lower income, harder labor type work, but it isn't because they aren't smart, or don't have an education. Many of these men and women come from their countries deciding to leave everything just to live in a land known to help them receive "The American Dream." I think it's sad that we give them the single story because they have done so much to get here and try to work up to what they were where they came from. I hope that I do not look upon them every giving them the single story.