Olmos vs Lopez? Does it matter?

By Victor Landa, NewsTaco

I’ll go straight to the point. Edward James Olmos thinks Jennifer Lopez hasn’t done enough for the Latino community. He said so in an interview on Univision. He also said Lopez hasn’t invited him to dinner at her house. The story has been reported across the internet, and as much as I try, I can’t get past “who cares?”

So why write about it?

It strikes me as banal. But in a strange way it also echos the Latino identity conversation that we’ve been having for at least three decades. Esther Cepeda wrote a terrific piece about it this week, and in the 1970’s Chicano theologian Virgilio Elizondo wrote a prophetic book – The Future is Meztizo – that takes strands from Vasconcelos, weaves them through the barrios of San Antonio, Texas, and ties them with Teilhard de Chardin’s ideas of humanity evolving toward a shared consciousness. Yeah, there’s been deep navel-gazing …

The Olmos-Lopez thing is more like topsoil in comparison – ground to grow opinion and clicks. But just like Latino identity is a matter of perspective, so is the measure of support for the community. Who gets to be the arbiter? Does it have to do with the proximity of a live microphone, a published book … a website? In other words, who is Olmos to call-out Lopez? And who is Lopez to do or not do for her community?

They’re celebrities, and Latinos aren’t above celebrity worship.

They’re also Latino celebrities, and in some circles we hold our celebrities to a standard measured against how much they give back. Somewhere in those ideas is a seepage of the question of Latino-ness. Is JLo Latino enough because she does or doesn’t give back? Is Eddie Olmos Latino enough to criticize?

If you scrape away the topsoil you see it doesn’t really matter.

But if Eddie calls JLo tomorrow and invites her over to his place for a beer and arroz con pollo …

[Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.]

 

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