REPRESENT.

by Maria Budet
Courtesy of Zubination

When I was a junior in college I took a class called “Sexual Diversity and Social Change.” The class broke down gender identity and roles, challenging you to look at their social constructs and think about if (and how) the notion of gender could be organized differently.

In this small class of about 15 to 20 people, I was the minority, a one woman wolf-pack; I was the lone heterosexual. Gay, lesbian, bisexual — even a male-to-female-pre-op-transgender-lesbian — and me. A Miami Cubanita immigrating to an ivory tower, I had imagined a wide array of situations where I might feel like a minority; this scenario was nowhere among them.

But there I was, the lone voice for straight people everywhere. “What do straight people think about X?” “How would this happen if heterosexuality allowed for Y?” “Why did the straight girl cross the road?” You could hear a pin drop as 30+ eyes turned to me, waiting expectantly…

gulp

double gulp

I was ill-equipped. I could barely answer those questions for myself, much less for a cast of thousands! Furthermore, I wasn’t exactly representative — many of my closest friends have always been gay, and I was taking a class no other straight person had signed up for. But there I was, a pubescent oracle whose words weighed heavy with responsibility. The situation forced me to really think before I spoke, despite myriad caveats and clarifications that led me to start most of my answers with “I don’t know about everyone else but, in my experience/opinion…”

As Hispanics, we often find ourselves in similar situations. We don’t feel it here, amid the walls of our Coral (Gables) tower that lives in Spanglish, where hugs and kisses flow like cafecito and the “Cuban Word of the Day” is not just a Facebook page but a part of your last conversation. But oftentimes we are one of very few Latinos in the room, empowered to demystify our collective story. There’s a power that comes with that voice… And, as Voltaire (and I think Spiderman) taught us: “With great power comes great responsibility.”

In a boardroom, and in the hallways of corporate America, it is often challenging for us to separate that personal part of our “knowing” — our own stories — from the facts that drive our business decisions. Not to say that the personal doesn’t have a place in our strategies; it’s often that understanding that serves as the starting point for us to connect to our consumers, as ingrained in us as our ability to roll our rrs. For many of us, it’s at the core of the passion that drives us to get it
right.

To get it right, though, we have to make sure we remember who we’re speaking for. In many situations, we are not our consumer – we might be better educated (or not), more or less acculturated, older or younger, married or single – the variables are endless. We are connected, but we aren’t always the same.

As Hispanics speaking for and about Hispanics in the U.S., our voices speak louder than others sometimes… Let’s make sure we are telling the right stories when we have the opportunity to be heard.