A few weeks ago, in the context of leadership succession at a large labor organization I spent several years working for, I saw an interesting, if embarrassing, SM post. The author was a reform group within the organization seeking to democratize and inject some energy into the ankylosed bureaucracy that, in theory, defends the rights of 1.3 million people but has become a cesspool of back-room deals, personal monetary enrichment, and cronyism. 

It was a repost that showed a current leader who was not a favorite nine years ago but is a favorite now or whatever… same backroom deals in the land of opportunistic power hoarding. The caption was, “This is the guy who called Dora the Explorer to his only Latina staffer in front of a room full of people.”

The accusation may sound outlandish, defamatory even if not corroborated, and particularly hard to believe if it wasn’t that I lived it myself. There was a time when that person would amuse himself and his entourage by making me repeat the phrase “must get Moose and Squirrel,” like asking a monkey to clap. I wasn’t even sure what it meant or why; it only mattered that it made my masters laugh, and like a good monkey, I clapped. 

Now, there are two things to note here. One is that the frat boy’s behavior wasn’t in isolation. His closer entourage was primarily white men in their 50s from the heartland, but occasionally, “my people” from the Comms department (mostly white women with higher education) joined the party. One had my accent worked out and could imitate it with hilarity. The other thing is that I can hardly play the victim here. I was aware that I was the butt of jokes for the group. And I allowed it because I was in the inner circle. That was my entrance fee to the inner circles of power. And for sure, I saw that circle as friends. Friends that promptly stopped talking to me and gossiped behind my back when it became convenient, maybe, but that was a lack of judgment on my part. So, I am not necessarily ready to join the MeToo moment. I am comfortable knowing I am not part of it anymore.

Yet, I realized that most of my experiences with racism in the United States occurred in my professional experience in that organization. Of course, there is the law of large numbers. There is the fact that I spent seventeen of my twenty-three years in the U.S. working there.

But indulge me for a moment. I started there in 2004 in the comms department. I was hired as a bilingual comms specialist, but the bilingual part was vital. I was expected to produce as much in Spanish as in English. I was a relatively new English speaker. It was gutsy to go and apply for that position, and I was surprised they hired me. I was even more surprised when I got there and learned that people in the building nicknamed the department “Greg’s Angels” (a play on the 70s show Charlie’s Angels) because of the Director’s (Greg) penchant for hiring young, beautiful women. 

The situation was that we produced two publications regularly. A newsletter for members that came out quarterly, and a newsletter for locals (I think monthly). My job was to create content for both, although only the member publication had stories in Spanish. On one occasion, we were reviewing the mockup for one of them, and we were making the final reviews before sending it to the printer. And just as we had given the green light for printing, we discovered some typo, minor shit, but a typo. My direct supervisor and I, let’s call him Bob, were the only ones reviewing in the office late at night. Bob was livid that we had just sent a publication with a mistake. He turned to me and said, half joking and half seriously, “It’s because of your god-dammed broken English” (it wasn’t a language mistake). We both told the joke repeated times, although every time, it was less funny for me than it was for Bob.

A few months later, I was transferred to field work as I needed to move back to Denver to be close to my daughter. On my first field assignment in a meat packing plant in rural Illinois, I met a white coworker who questioned my presence by saying straight to my face, “I am just not sure about this kind of token promotion.” The promotion part was news because my paycheck didn’t reflect such, but the token was more painful. Of course, in retrospect, I realized that was probably true. I was, in fact, a token that white people in charge were using to pretend inclusion.

Over the next fifteen years, it was just tiring, without even mentioning the microaggressions. There was this white dude who always claimed that his family had “a century of service” to the organization, which was a euphemism to describe that his daddy and brothers leeched from members’ dues in several locals and the International. He described nepotism as “joint years of service.” But anyway, that insecure dude had very thin skin, and every time we disagreed, he would mock my accent like a five-year-old. It was just mildly annoying because I knew that if that was his response, it meant he had nothing real to say.

Then there was the older white guy, local union president in Idaho, who swore he only mocked me because he loved my accent. He was cartoonishly dumb and once genuinely asked me what I would prefer to be called so that he didn’t call me Mexican because of the ugly racial connotations. It was an episode of “The Office” replayed in real life in that unscripted moment. I would say it was unique if it wasn’t that more recently, in the purportedly more sophisticated organization I work for, the idiots in charge fired the consultants halfway through the workshop and did their own “privilege” training with equally tragic comedic results. 

Campaign work, though, was another beast. It is even hard to say what is the most racist state I have worked in, as they all have their own stories. But Arizona is the closest to taking first prize, if only because I have it recorded for posterity. You can listen to that jewel here (and wait for the “you are not a Mexican, you are a Mexican’t).

And let’s not forget the racism of daily life, like when a couple of young white women decided to call the police on my daughter and me at the waterpark in northern Denver metro. Why would a middle-aged Mexican be in a water park with a young white girl? The most frustrating part of it was not having to endure the public humiliation of proving kinship but having to tell the story and hear every single white person (except two, and only two honorable mentions, coworkers Tyler G. and Peter D.) react with “well… it is a good thing someone cares,” and shit like that.  We never set foot in that place again. And I am not sure who those girls think they saved, but I am sure it was not my daughter, especially not from me.

So, do I think it is possible that this old frat boy said such thing as he is accused of? Let’s put it this way, a now retired Mexican American president from a Texas local union who use to head the Latino caucus of the organization told me that when they started the group, this very same dude told them that he would start a white constituency group in the union as well. As in, “If you Mexicans (is not Mexican only) can band together, we should too.” And the fact that this Texas guy retired with a half-million-dollar salary and most local leaders in that group also pay themselves handsomely doesn’t make the accusation any less accurate (I just don’t see them as better people than their white counterparts). The frat boy mentality is rampant in that organization, regardless of the decrepit Italian man who can’t finish leaving or his not-soon-enough retired Secretary-Treasurer. The difference is that their inner circle, who can witness their racism first-hand, is different, less critical, and more loyal to power.

Yeah, that is the organization I worked for. That is the American way. I believe every single part of it. And I am happy to no longer belong (if I ever belonged) to that society. In my last years in the United States, I applied for a position with the AFL-CIO. The first thing they sent me back “before proceeding” was a questionnaire for me to tell them how I am disadvantaged, racially and otherwise. It was incredibly liberating to write back saying I was not interested in padding their minority numbers so that they could feel better about themselves. And that was it.