Debunking Latino Stereotypes: Pulitzer Prize Winner Héctor Tobar Illuminates the Complexities of Latino Identity

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Author Héctor Tobar is not surprised by the recent spat of measures to restrict diversity and inclusion efforts in education. “There are a lot of people who are threatened by Latinos when they are assertive and self-confident,” he said in an interview recently. And so they’re trying to keep us in our place, to belittle us. These campaigns are happening so that young Latinos don’t grow up thinking of themselves as people who matter.”

The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and scholar rebukes such thinking with his latest book, “Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of Latino.” In it, Tobar explores what it means to be Latino in the 21st century — by reflecting on his past, visiting his parents’ homeland and taking a road trip across the United States.

“We are not seen as people who are central to the American story. We are seen as the supporting cast, like this inconsequential supporting actor,” Tobar said. He points out that it is Latino labor that keeps the country functioning and that is essential to industries such as construction and agriculture — and that it was largely Latino workers who built the infrastructure of the American southwest.

As he strives to illuminate the Latino experience, he acknowledges that the construct of “Latino” is artificial and complicated. “Latino is the most open-ended and loosely defined of the ‘non-white’ categories in the United States,” Tobar writes. “As such it can feel like the transit lounge of American identities, one where people come and go with relative ease.”

The son of Guatemalan immigrants, Tobar, 60, was raised in East Hollywood, California. He grew up among Eastern European, Mexican and Central American families. His godfather was an African American activist, while James Earl Ray (who later assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.) lived in his neighborhood— right next door.

His family’s presence in such a setting, Tobar writes, was completely natural: “Across the United States, Latino people inhabit places that are never far from Black struggle and the history of white supremacy.” Tobar hopes that his book will help young Latinos understand the complexities of the worlds they inhabit.“A lot of us as Latino people grow up with the erasure of ourselves from most of the mainstream media,” he said.