Ilan Stavans: PBS and its latest sins of omission
[Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His latest book is "The Disappearance." His meditation "On Love" will be published in the fall. ]
IS PBS REALLY a network for and by the people?
A 14-hour miniseries by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick devoted to World War II is scheduled for this fall. Almost no one has seen trailers of it but it has already been causing controversy.
Apparently, Burns, the veteran producer of similar projects dedicated to jazz, baseball, and the Civil War, left out Latinos and Native Americans. The exclusion has caused uproar among artists, intellectuals, and scholars.
Their response is sensible: After all, the Great War is, in historical terms, the first major military event in which Hispanics participated, sacrificing their lives like millions of other Americans. The sacrifice came at a time of domestic unrest, particularly in California and other parts of the Southwest, where events like the Zoot Suit Riots heightened the enduring racism against Mexicans.
The Great War, as it is often called, came after the Depression. Unemployment was rampant and Hispanics were not spared from it. Strong anti-immigration also made life for Spanish-speakers difficult. Approximately 500,000 individuals were deported in the '30s. But then the fight in Europe created a surge for jobs connected to the military industry. The Bracero Program, signed between the United States and Mexico, sought to become an answer by allowing temporary workers to fulfill the need.
In other words, Latinos provided substantial domestic help, but thousands enlisted as well. In fact, it is estimated that 350,000 Hispanics served in the armed forces between 1940 and 1946. There were also valuable contributions to the National Guard and to the infantry and artillery divisions. And Puerto Rican women served as linguists in the Women's Army Corps. Aboriginal people also participated in record numbers.
Isn't that enough for Burns? It was an important moment for Latinos and Native Americans to express their patriotism. It is enough to look at recruits in the community today to realize the extent to which the numbers have climbed exponentially....
It is time for PBS to recognize that America is made of millions of TV viewers with diverse, heterogeneous interests, each of whom is as American as those who came from Europe with the Mayflower and onward until the early days of the 20th century. In numerous bastions of the nation, the white population is smaller than the sum of multicolor immigrants coming from Asia, India and Pakistan, Africa and the Americas.
We need a new model of public broadcasting that isn't paternalistic. To keep on perceiving ethnic people as an appendix to our country's past is not to recognize the dramatic transformation we've undergone in the last 25 years.
Burns's omissions ought to serve as a referendum. The United States needs a public broadcasting system that truly serves its ample public, not only the shrinking white audience.
Read entire article at Boston Globe
IS PBS REALLY a network for and by the people?
A 14-hour miniseries by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick devoted to World War II is scheduled for this fall. Almost no one has seen trailers of it but it has already been causing controversy.
Apparently, Burns, the veteran producer of similar projects dedicated to jazz, baseball, and the Civil War, left out Latinos and Native Americans. The exclusion has caused uproar among artists, intellectuals, and scholars.
Their response is sensible: After all, the Great War is, in historical terms, the first major military event in which Hispanics participated, sacrificing their lives like millions of other Americans. The sacrifice came at a time of domestic unrest, particularly in California and other parts of the Southwest, where events like the Zoot Suit Riots heightened the enduring racism against Mexicans.
The Great War, as it is often called, came after the Depression. Unemployment was rampant and Hispanics were not spared from it. Strong anti-immigration also made life for Spanish-speakers difficult. Approximately 500,000 individuals were deported in the '30s. But then the fight in Europe created a surge for jobs connected to the military industry. The Bracero Program, signed between the United States and Mexico, sought to become an answer by allowing temporary workers to fulfill the need.
In other words, Latinos provided substantial domestic help, but thousands enlisted as well. In fact, it is estimated that 350,000 Hispanics served in the armed forces between 1940 and 1946. There were also valuable contributions to the National Guard and to the infantry and artillery divisions. And Puerto Rican women served as linguists in the Women's Army Corps. Aboriginal people also participated in record numbers.
Isn't that enough for Burns? It was an important moment for Latinos and Native Americans to express their patriotism. It is enough to look at recruits in the community today to realize the extent to which the numbers have climbed exponentially....
It is time for PBS to recognize that America is made of millions of TV viewers with diverse, heterogeneous interests, each of whom is as American as those who came from Europe with the Mayflower and onward until the early days of the 20th century. In numerous bastions of the nation, the white population is smaller than the sum of multicolor immigrants coming from Asia, India and Pakistan, Africa and the Americas.
We need a new model of public broadcasting that isn't paternalistic. To keep on perceiving ethnic people as an appendix to our country's past is not to recognize the dramatic transformation we've undergone in the last 25 years.
Burns's omissions ought to serve as a referendum. The United States needs a public broadcasting system that truly serves its ample public, not only the shrinking white audience.