White Americans learn what it's like to be marginalized
The article is set at a poultry plant in Fredericksburg, Pennsylvania -- precisely the kind of hard, dirty and smelly job that Americans usually won't do. There, we meet two exceptions -- 20-year-old Heaven Engle and her boyfriend, 25-year-old Venson Heim. They don't speak Spanish and don't feel they have to learn it. They skipped college and work in low-skilled jobs for $13-$17 per hour. And they're both annoyed that they're surrounded by Latino co-workers who don't speak much English.
"The everyday experiences that have long challenged millions of black, Latino and immigrant Americans -- the struggle to understand and be understood, feeling unseen, fear of rapid judgments -- were beginning to challenge them, too," McCoy writes.
Engle and Heim are now, he writes, "coming to understand what it means to be outnumbered."
Gee. What does that feel like?
"I swear to God, if they don't say anything in English, I'm going to freak out," Engle said at one point of her Latino co-workers. When she hears one of them say the word "gringa," she thinks they're talking about her. And they probably are.
"They don't give a rat's ass about people with white skin," Heim whined as he contemplates a future where whites find themselves in the minority and get paid back because, as he told McCoy, "we haven't been the nicest race."
The NAHJ complained that the story was "incomplete" because it didn't include the perspective of those Latino workers who are supposedly all over the chicken plant. NAHJ President Hugo Balta said it contributed to "the polarization of the Latino community as the others."
That's the least of the problems with this story. Nuance, context and reality checks are valuable. And if a newspaper is going to play with cultural dynamite, it ought to be more careful with it.
As for white folks who feel displaced, I want to help. As a Mexican-American who has spent much of his life feeling like an outsider, I can get you through this scary time. Here are five survival tips:
-- Don't see yourself as a victim.
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