美国国家公共电台 NPR There's An Immigration Gap In How Latinos Perceive Discrimination

 

NOEL KING, HOST:

And now, a story about what happens when two people experience the same thing. One person sees the experience as discrimination, the other does not. According to a new survey from NPR, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Latinos born in the U.S. are more likely to say they've experienced racial discrimination than Latinos who came to this country. NPR's Adrian Florido has the story.

ADRIAN FLORIDO, BYLINE¹: Valery Pozo's parents left their native Peru for Utah 30 years ago. She was born in Salt Lake City that same year. She's lived there her whole life in a mostly white neighborhood. She remembers about a decade ago when immigrants in the area were on edge because agents were conducting immigration raids across the city.

VALERY POZO: And my mom was at a soccer game with my brother, and a parent asked my mom if she was illegal. And to me, that's clearly a racist² question and a racist assumption.

FLORIDO: Her mom saw it as a harmless comment, but Pozo was furious.

POZO: I said, here we are kind of just like any other family, playing soccer. And I remember pointing that out, like, no matter what we do, we'll always be seen as other or different. And her saying, well, it's kind of a hot-button issue, and it's in the news.

FLORIDO: Pozo says it's always been like this in her family. She notices subtle ways that the white people in her community - nice as they may be - remind her family that it doesn't truly belong. Her mom thinks she's making a big deal about it.

POZO: Because, for her, she's not from Salt Lake. I don't think she would ever say she's a Utahan, even though we've lived here 30 years. So I can see how that might be a difference in how she perceives things versus³ how I perceive things.

FLORIDO: That difference is why Pozo says her mom didn't see any point in being interviewed for this story. She's never been subjected to discrimination, she said, so what was there to say? NPR's survey found that Latinos born in the U.S. were nearly twice as likely as immigrant Latinos to say that someone had used a racial slur⁴ against them or made negative assumptions or comments toward them because of their race or ethnicity.

EMILIO PARRADO: You know, that's not an unusual finding.

FLORIDO: Emilio Parrado is a sociologist⁵ at the University of Pennsylvania. He says there are so many possible explanations for this gap in perception. One, he says, is that U.S.-born Latinos may actually experience more discrimination. As they gain education, better pay, better jobs, they come into competition with the dominant⁶ racial group.

PARRADO: And so it's in that competition that the dominant group reacts with discrimination.

FLORIDO: Another way to explain why immigrants report less discrimination...

PARRADO: So when you ask immigrants that first arrive, they don't understand race relations in the U.S. With Latinos, it's very clear because there are no Latinos in Latin America. You're Argentinian. I'm Argentinian. You're Chilean. You're Colombian.

FLORIDO: But in the U.S., many non-Latinos don't see those distinctions. They just see Latinos not from here. Parrado says immigrants may start to notice they're treated differently but not really know why.

PARRADO: Immigrants tend to think that it's their own fault. It's because they don't know the rules. It's because they don't know English. But the children of immigrants, they know that they come from ethnicity and not from the behavior of immigrants.

FLORIDO: Karina Ramirez understands this. She grew up in the States.

KARINA RAMIREZ: I currently live in West Palm Beach, Fla.

FLORIDO: She says she's been followed around in fancy department stores and thinks it's because she's Latina. Her mother, Fabiola Hidalgo, has had similar experiences but didn't think it was because of how she looked. She remembers one time when she was waiting in line at a bank.

FABIOLA HIDALGO: (Speaking Spanish).

FLORIDO: When it was her turn, a white man cut right in front of her despite protests from the bank tellers⁷. Hidalgo says she stayed quiet, but back in her car, she cried.

HIDALGO: (Speaking Spanish).

FLORIDO: "I felt like the lowest person in the world," she said. And yet, she said she didn't pay much more attention to it. She'd just arrived in the U.S. She didn't speak English and assumed she must have done something wrong. Her daughter, Karina, gets emotional hearing her mother tell the story.

RAMIREZ: I got sad for a second.

FLORIDO: How come?

RAMIREZ: So when she started telling me about, you know, these instances that she lived, it's almost like, again, you know, I wasn't there to stand up for her, to defend her.

FLORIDO: Ramirez says she now feels like it's her responsibility to point out the ways that racism⁸, even subtle discrimination, affect her mother's life. Her mother says that thanks to her daughter's lessons, she's learning, and unlike before, is starting to speak up. Adrian Florido, NPR News.

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 racist   

n.种族主义者，种族主义分子

参考例句：

• a series of racist attacks 一连串的种族袭击行为
• His speech presented racist ideas under the guise of nationalism. 他的讲话以民族主义为幌子宣扬种族主义思想。

3 versus   

prep.以…为对手，对；与…相比之下

参考例句：

• The big match tonight is England versus Spain.今晚的大赛是英格兰对西班牙。
• The most exciting game was Harvard versus Yale.最富紧张刺激的球赛是哈佛队对耶鲁队。

4 slur   

v.含糊地说；诋毁；连唱；n.诋毁；含糊的发音

参考例句：

• He took the remarks as a slur on his reputation.他把这些话当作是对他的名誉的中伤。
• The drug made her speak with a slur.药物使她口齿不清。

5 sociologist   

n.研究社会学的人，社会学家

参考例句：

• His mother was a sociologist,researching socialism.他的母亲是个社会学家，研究社会主义。
• Max Weber is a great and outstanding sociologist.马克斯·韦伯是一位伟大的、杰出的社会学家。

6 dominant   

adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因

参考例句：

• The British were formerly dominant in India.英国人从前统治印度。
• She was a dominant figure in the French film industry.她在法国电影界是个举足轻重的人物。

7 tellers   

n.（银行）出纳员( teller的名词复数 )；（投票时的）计票员；讲故事等的人；讲述者

参考例句：

• The tellers were calculating the votes. 计票员正在统计票数。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The use of automatic tellers is particularly used in large cities. 在大城市里，还特别投入了自动出纳机。 来自辞典例句

8 racism   

n.民族主义；种族歧视(意识)

参考例句：

• He said that racism is endemic in this country.他说种族主义在该国很普遍。
• Racism causes political instability and violence.种族主义道致政治动荡和暴力事件。