Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Lesson in Invisibilization, Unlocking Doors with Keys, and Other Cardinal Sins By Charles C. W. Cooke
Ninety-seven percent of Hispanics in the United States disfavor the term “Latinx.” How, I wonder, must they feel reading the rest of this remarkable Washington Post piece, which, taken in its entirety, may be the silliest thing ever published in a major newspaper.
The gist of the article is that the actor, composer, and director Lin-Manuel Miranda has committed a sin against dark-skinned Hispanics by making a movie, In the Heights, in which they are underrepresented. Or, at least, I think that’s the gist. It’s hard to tell when every sentence reads like this:
The deprioritization of lived and racialized experiences in favor of a nonexistent mono-cultural “Latinidad” has no function beyond fantasy. How can we honor those who came before us and risked everything to exist despite the challenge of erasure?
Good question. I’ll get back to you on that one.
And this one:
Why highlight a Black Latinx population if your interpretation needed to erase a large portion of the Blackness to tell it?
This one, too:
Are we willing to let them be sold out so that White Latinxs can use our keys to open their own doors?
From what I can grasp, these “White Latinxs” are real meanies. When they’re not selling out Washington Post contributors so that they can use their keys to open their own doors — or, worse, keeping them “out of sight, our stories invisibilized, our narratives minimized” — they’re committing unspeakable acts of racial separatism, such as . . . speaking Spanish:
White and light-skinned Latinxs who use their access to Spanish, as a first or second language, as a distancing mechanism from their Whiteness.
It’s not entirely clear what those “White and light-skinned Latinxs” are expected to do about this most serious of quandaries. Should they speak Spanish and risk “invisibilizing” their Whiteness? Or should they not speak Spanish, in favor of speaking, say, English — a far more problematic language? The authors never say.
Still, I’m sure Lin-Manuel Miranda will know what to do. Sure, he’s dealing with people who think that a Puerto Rican guy who turned the American Founders into a non-white rap collective is “part of the larger project of White hegemony and domination, maintained through racism, colorism and classism.” But, if his apology is anything to go by, he seems to comprehend what he needs to do next time to avoid falling into this trap. “I’m truly sorry,” Miranda said last week. “I’m learning from the feedback, I thank you for raising it, and I’m listening. I promise to do better in my future projects.”
Damn straight, buddy.
To some people, this whole incident might seem like a bunch of unhinged and inchoate nonsense that is being peddled by a bunch of opportunistic, self-obsessed, mediocre frauds. But, with respect, the sort of people who think like that do not yet realize how important it is for “racialized people in White societies” to “continue challenging the systematic decisions that make predominantly afrodescendant communities more white-washed fodder for white-centering Latinxs.”
So keep going, guys. The stakes are high, and there are literally dozens of people relying on you.
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