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Last June, the Puerto Rican Day parade in New York was followed by sexual assaults upon women by various groups of young men made up of Blacks, Whites and Latinos. Some policemen were criticized for not paying attention to the women who reported assaults. A few of the police defended their apathy by saying Puerto Ricans would have complained if any arrests were made.
Unfortunately, because the media decided to run with the story given by those very few bad cops, the entire department was stereotyped as apathetic and intimidated by "political correctness" run amok. Puerto Ricans were stereotyped as feeling above the law and opposed to basic law enforcement and personal responsibility. People seemed to accept that Puerto Ricans, for some reason, did not want criminals punished for their crimes. The facts of that day are that many good police officers enforced the law over 3,000 times in a crowd of 2.5 million. This is typical for any large carnival atmosphere. There were also hundreds, if not thousands, of good Puerto Ricans celebrating their heritage with an emphasis on human rights in Vieques and the activist, lawyer and scholar, Pedro Albizu Campos.
NBC decided to reinforce the stereotype of lawlessness with a recent episode of Law & Order named "Sunday in the Park With Jorge." Law & Order is famous for basing their stories on real life events that are "ripped from the headlines." The National Puerto Rican Coalition (NPRC) tried to tell the network the episode was offensive and did a disservice to the community. They were refused a meeting with NBC's Broadcast Standards and Content Policy Division and were told that Latinos "shouldn't worry about it" because it met the network's litmus test. The episode uses the "wildings" that took place after as a backdrop to a fictional murder. They have since apologized and said the episode will never air again. Producer Dick Wolf has denounced the censorship by saying, "The show reflects real life."
Real Life has good Latinos too
In real life, there are Puerto Ricans who respect the law, who work with and for law enforcement. In fact, the man Puerto Ricans were celebrating that day was a lawyer who graduated from Harvard. The second dedication of the parade was made to draw attention to what they believe is a violation of international human rights laws in Vieques.
However, in Wolf's "real life", "ripped from the headlines" episode, there was not a single Latino who came forth willingly about the crime or supported full and complete punishment. All of the Latino characters were either criminals, someone who tried to avoid reporting crime (even when they were a victim), or someone who tried to cover up another Latino's crime. Some who weren't criminals were witnesses who had to be threatened or convinced to testify. Even the murderer's lawyer regresses to a sniveling race baiter when the prosecutors refuse to lower the charge. About his Afro-Brazilian client, he says, "You guys finally got the defendant you wanted. Even though the kid's not Puerto Rican, he looks like he could be Puerto Rican. I mean Brazil is still Latin America right?"
The sexual assault victim who came forward, the people who reported the crime and the man who submitted his tape of the parade were all (by TV standards) non-Hispanic white. Latinos are presented in this episode as an oversensitive community that shuns personal responsibility and consequences of actions and has no sense of the rule of law. As one of the characters says of the events in the park, "It was the suspension of civilization." None of them came down on the side of the law and punishing the criminal willingly.
¿Are we overreacting?
In 1998, NBC also refused to hold discussions before a bad episode of Seinfeld where they burned the Puerto Rican flag. That episode was followed by protests and threats of boycotts. NBC is one of the many networks with an absurdly low representation of Latinos on their network (comparing population percentages to numbers of characters or actors). When Seinfeld burned the Puerto Rican flag during the Puerto Rican Day parade, Puerto Ricans were labeled as oversensitive and the protest was trivialized as opportunistic.
In this country, Congress has made an annual tradition of trying to amend the Constitution to make it illegal for anyone to burn the US flag. At the opening of this year, United States Representative Jo Ann Emerson submitted a statement to Congress in support of the amendment.
NBC finally made the connection, thanks to the protests, that people die for what flags represent. Burning a symbol during an event celebrating those values evokes strong emotions. Why else would US Senators and US Representatives wish to make such an act illegal in one of the freest countries in the world? Both the flag and the parade are sacred symbols of Puerto Rican heritage. Latinos are subject to the same emotions and values as any other American, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that a symbol of their ancestral values and heritage is cherished. It shouldn't be a surprise that passions run high when it's burned or defamed for amusement.
Last Year, Will and Grace, another NBC show, aired a less offensive episode just as the "Brown Out" boycotts were getting underway to protest the lack of Latinos on the network. One of the characters called Shelley Morrison's character, a Latina maid, "tamale" for comic effect. The slur was overdubbed with the word "honey" once, but has aired in re-runs with "tamale" since then.
Censorship is still bad, but..
Isn't censorship bad? Of course. But the fact is, every time we turn on television without remorse, we're endorsing censorship of one of the most used mediums of communication and art. Everything that airs on network and cable television or on radio has to pass a standard of censorship. Every word that is said passes FCC censorship standards.
Everyone knows this, yet there is no movement to lift the shackles of censorship from television. Producers who use public airwaves are expected to have some kind of social responsibility. That's why we try to curb violence in entertainment and provide educational television. We also try to stay away from some of the degrading art forms that became part of our culture. African-Americans are still recovering from the minstrel and Black Americana tradition in art and entertainment. That image war was, for a time, lost. It's still being fought today. One episode might not change the face of the world, but if we ignore it just because it's a television show - that might change the world. Censorship isn't something to be cherished, but it's an expectation we have of television. Even the police watch their image in the media and regularly protest unflattering portrayals in music and movies.
"Sunday in the Park With Jorge" was an episode that cast the entire Latino community as having some degree of contempt or apathy for prosecuting criminals. That is not part of our culture. Next year's parade will either take place with healed relationships or with hypersensitivity and overreaction.
Raising tensions surrounding the largest annual parade in the country has the potential for disaster. Exploring the events that happened after the parade is responsible. Many civic groups have started addressing attitudes towards women in the community to prevent the abusive treatment of women during massive events and in every day life. Frankly, it would have been more relevant if NBC had explored the attacks that took place on their Special Victims Unit version of Law & Order that concentrates on sex crimes. But they still would have had to present realistic image of Latinos - an image that includes Latinos who respect the law. Promoting a negative stereotype that may raise tensions in a volatile environment, however, is irresponsible. Especially when it involves the desecration of another cultural icon, the parade, once by the criminals and then again by NBC.
According to the National Puerto Rican Coalition, NBC is taking the following actions:
If you missed the episode, read on. I've summarized the episode, scene by scene and have pointed out the problems that many have noticed.
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