Media

You know who Joe T. Hodo is, the hilarious satirical character whose Frack U video went viral in Mexico late last year. Last week, Hodo (played by Gregory Berger) was invited to appear on Mexico’s Milenio TV. Berger sent us a clip of Hodo’s appearance, and yes it is hilarious, because you don’t really know […]

Editor’s Note: A previous version of this piece was published on Dr. Rodríguez’s blog. Nate Cohn in The New York Times opened a racial pandora’s box with his article on the whitening of Latinos. He received responses from a number of interested observers of Latino issues—from Latino Rebels to academics such as Amitai Etzioni and Manuel Pastor. Today […]

We got the following tip via an email from a follower who said, “WTF.” Looks like the city of Coachella in California (home to Coachellafest) is going on a massive appropriation binge for Día de los Muertos, with the creation of Día de los Muertos USA. We guess organizers forgot about the whole Disney social […]

As they say: put something up on the Internet and someone will be bound to eventually find it. Such is the case of the initial presentation about race and identity presented in the first week of May at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, the same presentation which prematurely and erroneously concluded […]

“These will be the final words that I speak in public before I cease to exist.” So begins the moving communiqué from Zapatista leader Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos. In the newly-released statement (available here in English), Marcos gives a brief account of the Zapatistas’ history, which he has had a leading role in since the armed […]

We got this from @hispanictips. Apparently, Korean pop star Hyorin of the group Sistar is getting all Latin in a new ad campaign for “Maté Tea of the Sun,” owned by Coca Cola. (Yes, we know that it is not “maté” in Spanish, it’s “mate.”) Here is some of the translated copy to English: Hyorin […]

Like our founder wrote last week, quoting Spiderman, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Such is the case about about The New York Times and how writer Nate Cohn irresponsibly reported news from a study he never actually read. Now MSNBC’s Chris Hayes decided to go all-in with Cohn’s piece and the results were disastrous. […]

“The Obama Administration has an unprecedented opportunity to usher in significant progress using its executive authority at a time when public opinion on Cuba policy has shifted toward greater engagement with the Cuban people while continuing to pressure the Cuban government on human rights.” So states an open letter to President Barack Obama, signed by […]

“I got so much trouble on my mind, refuse to lose.” — Chuck D There is not much more to add about why the now infamous “More Hispanics Declaring Themselves White” piece by The New York Times’ Nate Cohn was so problematic. Not only for what the post proclaimed, but also the fact that, according to […]

Now, you can read this or this if you really want to dive into why this whole Latino/Hispanic Census White silliness is so complicated, just watch this:

Yesterday, The New York Times’ “Upshot” blog announced the following to the world: “More Hispanics Declaring Themselves White.” The piece, written by Nate Cohn, included the animated image of a figure shifting from silver grey to ivory white and this lede paragraph: “Hispanics are often described as driving up the nonwhite share of the population. […]

UPDATE, 8:15pmET, May 22, 2014: I had an email exchange with one of the study’s co-authors today, and she wrote me that Cohn’s inferences about the data were his and not her research group’s conclusions. She also wrote that the study was still not public, nor was it finalized. Read more here. In the ongoing […]

This afternoon, Boston’s Spanish-language El Planeta newspaper tweeted the following to us: @latinorebels Boston Herald insists on using backward yellow journalism to cover immigration #WTF http://t.co/ooVTUATv3S … … — El Planeta (@elplanetaboston) May 21, 2014 The link lead to an editorial written in Spanish, where El Planeta lambasted today’s front page of The Boston Herald: […]

The following video is raw, but speaks for itself. It has gone viral, having been deleted from Facebook, but eventually showing up on YouTube. It happened on May 20 in Salinas, California. It shows two police officers chasing what appears to be an unarmed man. Eventually the police officer fire shots at the man, killing […]

We don’t need to be on a cup. That’s not the point. The point is actually a box. A school district in Arizona can box up and physically remove from classrooms seven books in a Mexican-American studies program, and then place the rest on a watch list of literature not to be taught. The point is the […]

NUEVA YORK, NY – The Memorial Day weekend will be transformed into an art and culture celebration in Manhattan’s Lower East, where the Loisaida Festival will bring together theater companies, poets and musicians, in a celebration of the performance fusions that evolved at iconic venues such as the New Rican Village, in the 1970s and […]

It appears that Slate’s new obsession with maps is doing anything and everything to avoid talking about the obvious. Last week it was all about a viral language post which didn’t even stop to acknowledge how mainstream Spanish has become. This week Slate and Ben Bratt are trying to replicate viral love by focusing on […]

Maybe just maybe some networks are starting to listen. This week, ABC announced that it would be picking up “Cristela,” starring the very talented Cristela Alonzo. Despite some silly headlines by the Hollywood press (“Cristela Alonzo Brings Mexican-American Humor And A Laugh Track To ABC’s Lineup”), let’s just say this: there is now a TV […]

Yesterday our news feeds were burning up with a piece published by Slate about the many languages spoken in U.S. households. The article, written by Ben Blatt, went viral because it visually confirmed that yes, the U.S. is really a multilingual society. However, it is Blatt’s first map that really floored us, and even though […]

[View the story “#YoApoyoLaCarpaVillera: Support for Buenos Aires Hunger Strike Grows” on Storify]

If you haven’t read “The Unbearable Whiteness of Liberal Media” by Gabriel Arana yet, you need to. Like right now. Arana’s piece is perhaps one of the most honestly tragic commentaries about why media still suffers from a major diversity issue. It is a topic our own founder continues to write about, and to be […]