Esther J. Cepeda

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Welcome to Esther J. Cepeda's archive of columns published by The Washington Post Writers Group and other publications. 

 

Follow Esther on Twitter: https://twitter.com/estherjcepeda

 

 

 

Changing the world -- one playing card deck at a time

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

PORTLAND, Ore. -- What do children with leukemia, trees in deforested regions of the world, and kids in the remote rural communities of Nepal and Kathmandu have in common?

They all have very young benefactors who eat, breathe and sleep playing cards -- and who care deeply about making the world a better place.

These dudes who champion such a wide range of causes are barely out of their teens or 20s, and many of them look like they've stepped out of an ad for skateboarding gear. Yet they spend hours on YouTube learning about cardistry, which is the art of making playing cards dance and somersault in the air.

It was breathtaking recently to see 400 or so of these young men looking like their hearts were in their throats as they watched a short film starring their cardistry heroes, Portland native Sean Oulashin and James Milaras, the Australian founder of the playing card design shop Joker and the Thief.

Milaras and Oulashin's documentary "Cardistry Was Here" is a 20-minute pitch for helping the vulnerable women and children of Nepal through educational programs, community development projects and, yes, teaching the kiddies how to make 52 playing cards jump, flip and twirl.

"A fellow entrepreneur asked me to think about what I could do for the community, and the next thing I know, I'm connected to someone who knew about Friends of Himalayan Children, which helps kids whose lives are affected by the gambling problem in Nepal," Milaras told me. "It seemed like an amazing opportunity to change the negative perception of playing cards in that community and help combat multigenerational gambling addiction by giving the kids something creative and fun to do with playing cards."

We spoke at the end of his presentation here at Cardistry-Con, a three-day gathering of playing card prestidigitators convened by Art of Play, the online curiosity shop, which is itself committed to sustainable printing practices and donates 1% of its income to planting trees in Africa, Asia and the Americas.

"Cardistry Was Here" showed Milaras and Oulashin delighting children with their card acrobatics and teaching them how to manipulate cards. It had such a visceral effect on the crowd that, immediately after the show ended, the pair raised almost double the amount of money they asked for to help fund more playing card decks, video tutorials, and underwriting for Friends of Himalayan Children's myriad education efforts.

"It was amazing, truly inspiring to see the kids' happiness and their ability to almost instantly establish a small community of their own within our larger cardistry community -- linking us all together," Oulashin told me.

The idea of giving children a community in which to grow also motivated Cameron Toner and Nate Lex, the co-owners of the Indiana-based Organic Playing Cards Company. They decided to partner with the Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation, an organization that helps kids and their families fight childhood cancers.

Toner and Lex explained to the Cardistry-Con crowd that their first, banana-themed card deck "Peelers" inadvertently helped raise awareness of the extinction of the Cavendish banana.

"Ever since then, we were looking to up that to the next level," Toner told me. "We want to spark the feeling of lifting each other up and also bringing others in to our cardistry community, and then having that community have a greater impact on the world."

Lex continued, "We have the fruit theme, and when we got to lemonade and lemons, we knew we wanted to partner with Alex's Lemonade Stand [Foundation]. ... it seemed like a good partnership because these are kids who don't have a lot of ability to go out, meet new people or be physical. And we can raise money, we can go visit these kids, see them in person and actually teach them cardistry."

Though Los Angeles native Ilia Dickey doesn't know how to handle a deck of playing cards, her son has been card-obsessed since fourth grade. She's starting a nonprofit dedicated to promoting awareness of social causes around the world through cardistry.

"It was cardistry that boosted my son's confidence and his ability to do better in school," Dickey told me during a break in the cardistry presentations. "And I'm super excited about how conscious this group is -- there's a lot of kindness, people are trying to share information. It's almost all about the greater good, that sense of community and belonging."

Hot take, nonprofit organizations: If you want young people to buy into your charity's mission, pair it with something they're passionate about. The graceful art of cardistry could be your inroad to a lifelong donor for any cause that pairs well with playing cards.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda Check out her card collection on Instagram at @estherjcepeda

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

Cardistry transforms deck of cards into performance art

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

PORTLAND, Ore. -- What is cardistry?

I thought I knew.

It used to be that I'd describe cardistry to people as the choreographed manipulation of standard, poker-sized playing cards into beautiful, shifting shapes and patterns using hand movements like packet cuts, shuffles and fans.

But that was because I had only seen it performed and explained on YouTube. Sure, the flourishes, hand springs and acrobatic card moves are mesmerizing and impressive on video. But after stepping on to the dance floor of the historic McMenamins Crystal Ballroom here last weekend while attending the fifth annual Cardistry-Con, I now understand that it is a true performance art form.

You really have to see it live to believe that anyone would pour so many hours of hard work mastering intricate flips, pops, slides, fans and springs with 52 pieces of colorful paper.

But ohhhhhhhh such paper.

Because I have limited card-handling skills, low visual-art creativity and only an astronomically small fraction of the time necessary to practice the moves, my primary interest in cardistry is the playing cards themselves.

We're talking packets of truly breathtaking visual design -- everything from vibrantly colored abstract modern-art themes to calm expressionist motifs. Some designed to be fanned and create varied geometric designs, and others just single colors, made to be extra catchy to the eye when flipped over to its face.

There are high-end luxury decks made with thick, crushed paper, rimmed with foil and designed with ornate filigrees and other gothic design accents. And there are whimsical playing-card decks whose tuck cases look like juice boxes, complete with nutrition facts printed on the back.

Nathan Lex, co-creator of the Organic Playing Cards line, described the design aesthetic this way at the conference: "So that moms would pick them up at Target and think they're cute and then share them with their friends, but also so cardists would recognize them as something special."

This kind of inclusive mindset was apparent throughout the conference -- an ethos that I had not expected going into what I had initially thought would be a boys-only event.

It's true: Cardistry seems to appeal to a very specific slice of the population, mostly tattooed young men who, in their slouchy backpacks, oversized trucker hats and Vans skateboarding shoes, look like they'd be up for vandalizing your car.

But I was neither the only female, nor was I the oldest of the nearly 500 attendees. I met many parents who had accompanied their children -- some as young as 8 -- to the conference. Some people came from as far away as New Zealand and Brazil so that their kids could fling, slide, toss, launch and fan cards with the rest of us geeks who love making 2.5-by-3.5-inch pieces of pretty paper perform intricate and acrobatic ballet moves.

"I brought my son here because he's crazy about cards, and he doesn't have any friends at home to share this with," one mom of a high school junior told me. "It's been amazing to watch him be around other people who love the same thing."

Love.

Love came up over and over again throughout the three-day jam session and buying frenzy that was sponsored by Dan and Dave Buck, skilled cardists and owners of Art of Play, the online curiosity shop.

I stood in a ballroom packed largely with self-described socially awkward loners -- who were busily sharing tips, helping each other refine their shuffling technique and giving encouragement. All the guys (for now, there are but few female cardists) were incredibly supportive, quick to teach a move and instantaneous in their helping to pick up after the inevitable dropping of cards all over the floor.

By the end, after watching a boatload of incredible cardistry videos and talking to several parents who felt that their kids' social skills and concentration in school had been enhanced by intense practice of cardistry moves, I sat and watched a 60-something dad who was there with his teen son.

Days before, he told me he'd never picked up a deck of cards other than to play card games. During the very last presentation, he was intensely concentrating on a custom-designed deck, awkwardly trying to sybil cut and swing it.

"I think I'm going to learn how to do some moves and surprise him," he told me.

And I left Cardistry-Con, thankful that another student had been inspired and welcomed into the cardistry community.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda Check out her cards on Instagram @estherjcepeda

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

 

Trump and Pelosi show us why women of color struggle to succeed

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- People of color know Nancy Pelosi.

She's every executive who hired them because their "unique" viewpoint was sorely needed at her organization, but then ignored every new suggestion.

She's every mentor at a new workplace who suggested that it would be best to learn how things were done and try not to rock the boat.

She's every manager who bristled at expertise about their own community, target audience or demographic slice and suggested that the prevailing wisdom was more reliable than their lived experience.

Yeah, we know Nancy.

Pelosi diminished the Squad -- made up of freshman congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.; Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.; and Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass. -- by dismissing their social media clout.

For people of color -- and women, in general, for that matter -- getting dissed like that is par for the course.

It's been maddening to watch the whole situation play itself out -- from Pelosi's slam to President Trump capitalizing on Democratic discord by suggesting that the three U.S.-born and one naturalized citizen congresswomen "go back" -- because it has felt so terribly familiar.

Trump trotting out the perennial slam -- you're a foreigner, go "back" to some other country -- was to be expected.

And Pelosi ultimately responding to it all by simply waving away the whole mess with a terse, "Let's not waste our time on that," is also typical.

All "that" is a tailor-made case study on why women of color struggle to succeed in workplaces dominated by white people.

Nothing against white people -- they, like any other group of people used to being in positions of authority or seniority over others -- don't usually know they're belittling others. It's not like most people of any race or ethnicity wake up in the morning hoping to trivialize someone else's existence.

Yet, it happens.

And it's why most corporations, nonprofit organizations and other systems, like America's public schools, can usually do OK at recruiting diverse talent, but really stink at retaining them.

"It's clear that the factors preventing women of color from advancing at work are quite different from those holding white women and even men of color back," wrote diversity and inclusion experts Zuhairah Washington and Laura Morgan Roberts on the Harvard Business Review's website. "These include microaggressions, double standards, and unconscious bias to name a few. A 2006 survey of employees from five large U.S. companies found that women of color are most likely to experience workplace harassment among all groups. They are often held to a much higher standard than their white and male peers and presumed to be less qualified despite their credentials, work product or business results."

Washington and Roberts conclude that women of color receive less support from their managers and are less likely to have bosses who promote their work contributions to others, help them navigate organizational politics or socialize with them outside of work.

This leaves women like me and like the ladies in "the Squad" -- but who don't have millions of Twitter or Instagram followers -- without informal professional networks, meaningful mentoring and the workplace sponsorship that others may take for granted.

Fixing this problem to ensure that talented, ambitious women of color persist in their chosen professions, meaningfully diversify workplaces and pull others up behind them isn't easy. It is achievable, though.

First and foremost, recognize the problem. What's happening between these freshman legislators and the white power structure in Washington is more than just a juicy political soap opera. It's emblematic of how people of color finally make it into rarified spaces only to be told to shut up and go back to wherever they came from.

Second, commit to combating unconscious biases. We all carry stereotypes, biases, understandings and assumptions about others. There's no need to beat yourself up about them or feel guilty, just acknowledge that they exist, and understand that they guide your behavior.

Lastly, understand your privilege. Everyone has privilege -- and don't assume it's just about skin color and income level.

An individual who grew up in poverty might have the privilege of excellent health. Someone with a visible physical disability may have grown up in a loving, two-parent household.

The examples are nearly endless, so let's make all of this simple: When you're interacting with a person of color, ask yourself, what would Pelosi or Trump do in this situation? Then, make a better choice.

 

 

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

Democrats: Ignore Rural America at your own peril

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

BRODHEAD, Wisc. -- This week I've tooled around the south-central Wisconsin towns of Orfordville, Monroe, Footville and Oregon, shopping at the Piggly Wiggly and Blain's Farm and Fleet, eating burgers at the North Side Pub and Grill and taking in a Beloit Snappers minor-league baseball game.

Being in the country is beautiful, with tons of wide-open spaces, green pastures and picturesque farms filled with horses, cows and goats.

The people are, of course, Midwestern nice -- I hadn't expected to be the only brown face in nearly every single one of these settings, but no one hesitated to smile or greet me warmly.

This is how it's done in the rural Midwest. Despite differing viewpoints on how to tackle climate change or worries about residential well-water pollution from massive concentrated animal-feeding operations (CAFOs), there's not a lot of fulminating.

Sure, you can hardly get away from Fox News playing in the background at virtually every diner, bar and auto repair shop. But there's tranquility and the unhurried pace necessary to do what few Americans in big cities can afford to do: put it all in a perspective that's open to whatever it takes to maintain a culture of quiet and a focus on nature's bounty.

This is exactly what the One Country Project is hoping to capitalize on as it seeks to rebuild trust and respect between coastal elite decision-makers and the people in rural communities who have to live with government policies.

Helmed by former Sens. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., and Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., the One Country Project is attempting to reopen the dialogue between rural communities and the rest of the country to develop more inclusive policies.

To start, the organization conducted something of a "listening tour" of Iowa, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by analyzing social-media traffic from Feb. 15 to May 15 to identify the most regularly discussed social, economic and political issues. The most salient topics were farming, climate change, education, health care, immigration, abortion and women's issues.

What they also learned is that rural folks are, understandably, scared about the future of farming culture -- due in no small part to what One Country's analysis calls "an underlying feeling of 'disrespect' toward farmers and the agricultural economy from their fellow Americans."

But despite feeling dissed even though they feed the country, their self-interest is slowly driving an open-minded attitude toward the contentious and partisan issue of climate change. One Country found that -- though the majority of the social-media conversation was basically neutral -- the amount of discussion declaring or implying belief in climate change (19%) was nearly double that of language surrounding climate skepticism (10%).

The need for solutions that prevent future floods and farming disruptions "points to the possibility that there is a chance to reach rural voters with a discussion of reasonable responses to climate change."

Not surprisingly, immigration was also found to be a much-talked-about issue. How couldn't it be? I'm pretty sure I hardly saw any brown faces while I was out and about being a tourist in rural Wisconsin, probably because they were all toiling away on the farms. Some estimates say about half of all workers on Wisconsin farms are undocumented immigrants.

Still, social-media comments revealed a bias towards limiting immigration, preventing crime and vilifying the Democratic Party's more tolerant positions on undocumented migrants.

This in particular was worrying, because One Country found that "Democrats are characterized as lacking a solution and not acknowledging the fact that rural Americans believe there is an emergency at the southern border. Interestingly, there is also a strain of discussion portraying Democratic positions as being driven by opposition to President Trump rather than by a committed stance on the issue overall."

This is an area where Democrats will continue to struggle as long as they lack a unified voice on immigration matters.

And if they keep painting rural Americans with the broad brush of intolerance, backwardness and hatred instead of trying to engage those populations with real issues that hit close to home -- such as the need for year-round visa programs for workers in nonseasonal industries like dairy -- they'll just keep widening the political chasm.

One Country heard rural residents speak loud and clear: Americans, especially Democrats, aren't listening to people in the flyover states.

They'd better start.

Continuing to make such a large portion of voters who represent key voting constituencies feel left out is, for Democrats who want a change election, perilous at best -- and stupidly disastrous at worst.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

Don't bicker about terms, vote to keep kids out of cages

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- What's worse than a humanitarian crisis at the southern border that is eerily and despicably reminiscent of our forced internment of Japanese Americans during World War II?

That very few people know what's going on. And that even fewer care.

For many, the hazardously crowded conditions at southern-border detention centers, the recent deaths of adults and children in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, and President Trump's tweet last week promising to deport "millions" of immigrants living in the U.S. without permission simply fall by the wayside in favor of click-bait news catnip.

After all, why talk about the parallels between now and the time when Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized people of Japanese descent to be rounded up and put in prison camps? Did you know, by the way, that the group included anyone who was even remotely Japanese? If you were even one-sixteenth Japanese -- i.e., you had one great-great grandparent from Japan -- you could be sent to an internment camp.

It's infuriating to now hear semantic arguments on cable news over whether Latin American migrants at the U.S. border are in "concentration," "internment" or "prison" camps.

These frivolous spats effectively overshadow the tough-to-stomach reality that migrants are being penned in cages and locked in freezing-cold holding cells -- that is, when they're not fenced in under bridges and made to sit on the ground in 100-plus degree weather.

Reports about migrant detention centers have told of sickening conditions -- overcrowding, incidences of sexual abuse, rotten food, insufficient water, poor or no medical care for emergency situations, filthy bathrooms -- that are ripe for creating mass outbreaks of illness and violence.

But some people seem untroubled by the conditions, preferring to fret over the politics that have created them.

Eladio Bobadilla, an assistant professor of history at the University of Kentucky, put it this way in a recent post on the Latino Rebels website: "[Conservative] commentators are wrong, both historically and morally. Not only is it historically accurate to call these detention centers concentration camps, but the uproar reveals a curious and cruel irony: Conservatives are more outraged by the terms used to describe the detention camps than they are by the conditions inside them."

Typical.

The Trump administration has thrived by creating an alternate universe in which lies are facts, objective truths are suspect and real people's lives are mere collateral damage in the war against the left.

And a disturbing share of the country is just sort of accepting it. Not that this apathy is new.

You need only look to newspaper archives from the 1930s to see that we've always turned away from horrors with a yawn.

In 1933, neighbors near a campsite in Suffern, New York, that was being inhabited by Nazi sympathizers complained to their town's zoning commission. The neighbors weren't as upset by the swastikas painted on the visitors' cars as they were by the fact that the group was being rowdy and walking around naked in view of the church next door.

None of us is immune to being blind to the suffering of large groups of people in favor of worrying about our own health, our own homes and jobs and kids' educations. Very quickly, the specific awfulness of what a bunch of unknown foreigners at the border are going through can be subsumed by the also-overwhelming problems of America's crumbling infrastructure, the scary changes in our climate and a potentially bloody conflict with Iran.

So what do we do? We shut it off. We shrug and figure that someone else will worry about it.

This is exactly what our president wants.

This is exactly what the Republican legislators -- who carry Trump's water and stand by him as migrants are tortured for the purposes of firing up attendees at campaign rallies -- want.

And the Democrats?

With nearly two dozen people who think they can win the presidency in 2020 just by being "not Trump," there's not a lot of hope for a concise response to our country's challenges from Democratic organizations.

It's on us -- concerned individuals.

Outraged that some on the right appear more worried about terminology than human suffering? Register to vote.

Horrified that Gestapo-like tactics may be used to remove countless immigrants from their communities? Join an organization that will help other people, especially those in marginalized communities, get registered to vote.

And when the election comes, stop telling yourself that no candidate is good enough and your vote doesn't count anyway.

It will.

Anything less is tantamount to agreeing that what we call the people being caged and abused is more important than their agony.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

Mental Health Needs of LGTBQIA+ go beyond Pride month

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Perhaps overlooked in all the colorful Pride Month celebrations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning (LGBTQ) population is the toll that the difficult past and often-uncertain future take on the mental health of people who aren't straight.

To put it in perspective, 39% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past 12 months, 71% of them reported feeling sad or hopeless for at least two weeks in the same time period, and 71% reported experiencing discrimination due to their sexual orientation or gender identity, according to The Trevor Project's inaugural National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health, which was released earlier this month.

The California-based Trevor Project, which provides crisis-intervention and suicide-prevention services to LGBTQ people under 25, undertook the largest survey of LGBTQ youth mental health ever conducted.

"Better understanding the mental health experiences of LGBTQ young people is a major step in addressing their significantly higher risk for attempting suicide," said Amit Paley, CEO and executive director of The Trevor Project, in a statement.

For both young and not-so-young LGBTQ people, there's typically a long road of first understanding one's self, then asserting a gender identity or sexual orientation, and then coming out over and over again to family, friends, co-workers, etc.

Under the very best of circumstances, it's not as easy being LGBTQ as it is often portrayed on TV and in films. And this is not the very best of circumstances: We live in a country in which the president -- despite tweets to the contrary -- seems to be working diligently to strip LGBTQ people of civil rights as well as access to serving in the military and obtaining health care, and who knows what else.

And, not surprisingly, the effects of trauma, anxiety or depression hit LGBTQ people of color harder because of cultural stigmas and a lack of access to mental health resources.

It's an issue that affects all people of color, even those with reliable health insurance coverage.

Over the past few months I've sought help for my own anxiety and depression, and to work through the challenges of being a married, middle-aged mom of two who has been coming out to my family, friends and co-workers as queer.

It has not gone well.

Thank goodness I was not in an all-out crisis when I sought help; it took days to find a therapist close enough that I could make it to appointments, coordinate with their office for insurance paperwork and actually get on the schedule.

And then the therapist and I didn't click.

I made it through two sessions, both of which left me in tears, and I canceled all my future appointments.

Now, I don't believe that a non-Latina therapist wouldn't be able to relate to me, necessarily, but my impression was that this particular therapist -- an older, affluent Caucasian lady who kept asking me why I hadn't done this and why I hadn't done that -- couldn't possibly understand my life, my family or my mindset.

For people diagnosed with depression, 64% of Latinos, 59% of African Americans and 69% of Asians -- compared with 40% of whites -- do not seek treatment, according to a 2008 national study. As a reason, the minority groups cite difficulties with accessing care and their expectation of low-quality care.

It's heartbreaking to imagine someone -- much less a young person, an uninsured person or anyone without lots of education, time and resources -- who is experiencing a depressive or anxious episode also having to go through the daunting rigmarole of dealing with health care bureaucracies just to access therapy.

And we would expect them to also try to find a LGBTQ-inclusive health care provider? Or perhaps a professional of their own background who can uniquely understand where they come from and how they exist in their communities? It's nearly unthinkable.

Meanwhile, we wear rainbows and march with Pride in general support of it being OK to be LGBTQ in 2019.

Cool. Do that. And then take action -- literally any action. Read up on LGBTQ issues. Or donate a few bucks to any organization, like the Trevor Project or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, to help them keep supporting so many vulnerable people.

There's no better way to celebrate your LGBTQ friends, family and acquaintances during Pride Month -- and year-round, for that matter -- than to actively give your support.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

IF YOU'RE INTERESTED IN LEARNING MORE ABOUT ESTHER'S COMING OUT:

- NBC LATINO ARTICLE BY RAUL REYES: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/i-m-queer-prominent-latina-syndicated-columnist-esther-cepeda-shares-n1023371

- ROBERT FEDER'S CHICAGO MEDIA COLUMN: https://www.robertfeder.com/2019/07/08/robservations-114-years-chicago-defender-ends-print-run/?fbclid=IwAR11C-1WfCJrupZkbe4fI5Y1NzlT-seg1sVcjIU-TPgYMx4BZiAtoWYjP2w

 

 

 

Do Computers Help Kids Learn? It's Complicated

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- As a teacher who's been around to witness schools "go 1:1" -- meaning one laptop, iPad or Chromebook per student -- I can attest to the dystopian sight of full classrooms of young children with their eyes glued to glowing screens.

Those first weeks of the transition to technology are harrowing. I watch every moment that used to be spent with math manipulatives like dice, playing cards or actual books now replaced with interactive Google slides and electronic books that read aloud to students.

At the end of the day, the kids blink their dried-out eyes, rub their faces and stretch their necks just like 40-year-old "knowledge economy" cube dwellers at any tech company.

I'm in awe of how technology has changed our lives for the better in countless abstract and concrete ways, but it hurts to see kids who can barely read, write or do simple math -- this almost always describes my low-income students -- skip over foundational skills because "Google Docs has a spell checker" or you can type in simple math equations into a search bar and get an instant answer.

I'm not saying that the sky is falling, but when the rich -- especially elite tech workers - are opting out of smartphones and tablets for their children and are organizing to ban screens in their schools, we need to pay attention.

They are the vanguard of a class of highly educated people who recognize the dangers of allowing developing young minds to learn primarily, if not exclusively, digitally. This is happening just as middle- and low-income schools across the nation finally are able to access funds to outfit each student with a digital device. Some call this easing the so-called digital divide; some call it a form of social justice to create digital-first future citizens.

But do the ends actually justify the means? And if the "ends" are literacy, numeracy and civic involvement, do digital devices actually help get kids there?

As ever: It depends.

"When teachers use computers or tablets to teach, we don't find that there's a gain in knowledge or an actual impact on standardized test scores," said Helen Lee Bouygues, the co-founder and president of the Reboot Foundation, a Paris-based organization advocating for developing critical thinking skills in children and others. "And what our analysis shows is that in younger ages, in third and fourth grade, in all subject matters, there was no benefit to using technology to learn. And in reading we found a negative benefit."

The Reboot Foundation's new report is titled "Does Educational Technology Help Students Learn? An analysis of the connection between digital devices and learning." It answered this question by using data from the 2017 U.S. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as "the Nation's Report Card," as well as from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) test, which evaluates student achievement in more than 90 countries.

On average, the study found that "the students who reported low-to-moderate use of school technology tended to score higher on PISA than non-users, but students who reported a high use of technology tended to score lower than their peers who reported low or no use of technology."

The analysis also found evidence that, even after controlling for students' wealth and prior performance, the results were consistent across the international math, reading, and science assessments.

The U.S. numbers were mixed.

The NAEP data analysis found that "using computers to conduct research for reading projects was positively associated with reading performance." But using computers for general practice of such skills as spelling or grammar produced little evidence that the technology helped. Plus, even where learning technology did boost scores, low to moderate usage showed better results in performance, whereas high usage had a negative effect on scores.

"We found that when you're using the technology for very specific purposes, it can have a benefit," Bouygues said.

Unfortunately, this is not how I've seen technology rolled out at elementary and high schools. I've seen kids become experts at finding games and music while struggling to learn how to use the basic functions of word processing.

And I hear a lot of teachers bellowing: "I can see what you're looking at on the internet! Yes, even at home!"

Sigh.

The data aren't fantastic, but I choose to remain hopeful.

Educators will eventually work out the bugs because they want the best for their students.

With a little training they'll turn the tide, because they understand that the 1% might be able to give up their children's electronics, but everyone else's kids still need to access pictures of the Taj Mahal -- because they won't be visiting it over spring break.

 

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

A talk with Theresa Thorn, author of It Feels Good to Be Yourself: A Book About Gender Identity

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- What I like best about the new children's picture book "It Feels Good to Be Yourself: A Book About Gender Identity" is that there's no sad child who magically overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to have a happy ending.

As a teacher for grades K-4, I read a lot of picture books with important messages about respect, understanding the people around us and just being nice to others. Usually when a book wants to teach kids about interpersonal distinctions, it doubles down on differences before illustrating how similar all humans are.

In contrast, "It Feels Good to Be Yourself" is light. Matter-of-fact. Positive. And as ultra-diverse as the city of Los Angeles, where author Theresa Thorn lives with her husband and three children, one of whom is a transgender girl. Thorn is also co-host of the "One Bad Mother" podcast and co-author of the parenting book "You're Doing a Great Job! 100 Ways You're Winning at Parenting."

"It Feels Good to be Yourself," which is beautifully drawn by Atlanta-based illustrator and comic artist Noah Grigni, introduces us to Ruthie, an adorable brown-skinned, brown-eyed transgender girl. "That means when she was born, everyone thought she was a boy. Until she grew a little older -- old enough to tell everyone that she's actually a girl," Thorn writes.

From there we meet Ruthie's friends, who are cisgender ("everyone thought he was a boy, and as he grew older, it turned out everyone was right -- he is a boy"), nonbinary (which "can describe a kid who doesn't feel exactly like a boy or a girl") or have other ways to say who they are.

We learn that "whether you feel like a boy, a girl, both, or neither, or if you describe yourself another way, that is your gender identity. Your gender identity might match what people thought you were when you were born. Or, it might not."

Now, is this really the sort of thing that young children need to be exposed to?

Absolutely.

I work in a public-school district that has multiple students in early grades who are transitioning, or already have, to affirm their true gender identity.

Plus kids see and hear about various gender expressions ("which clothes you wear, how you style your hair, how you walk and talk" in popular music, on TV shows and even in the books their teachers read to them in school.

"I think there are a pretty good number of children's books that deal with gender identity at this point," Thorn told me in an interview. "A lot of them were really nice, but what I felt was missing was something that could clearly lay out the concept of gender identity in a better way."

Thorn walked the fine line of creating a book that was too informational and, therefore, short on a narrative arc that entices children to stay engaged through to the end, and one in which the terminology threatened to derail the flow of the story.

And once that was perfectly maneuvered, Thorn had to ensure that she was not inadvertently including judgmental language.

"I didn't want to say 'most people are like this, but one kid is like that,'" Thorn said. "With our own kid, when she transitioned, we never said 'You're different.' We said, 'There are lots of people like you.'"

With other books her family owns, Thorn says she's had to circumvent story lines about being ostracized or bullied. "I just skip over them. I don't need her thinking about this, there's plenty of time for her to confront that. I didn't want her to start out thinking she's the outsider."

This will be less likely among children in the same age group as Thorn's daughter.

I've taught in low-income schools that are majority African American and Hispanic, as well as affluent schools that are majority white. In each, the young students just accepted that different people have different feelings about their bodies -- and any number of ways they like to dress or express themselves in those bodies.

It's older people -- teachers, administrators, grandparents and other family members -- who might be similarly understanding if they just comprehended the vocabulary around gender identity.

Buy a copy of "It Feels Good to Be Yourself" for family members, friends or other adults who, at heart, just need a simple way to learn about a newly visible portion of our population.

My favorite passage will clarify any confusion: "No matter what your gender identity is, you are OK exactly the way you are. And you are loved."

 

 

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

Reparations for slavery will benefit everyone in our country

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- In the spring of 1995, I sat in a stuffy classroom studying "Literary History of England, from Beowulf to 1800," while overlooking Southern Illinois University's iconic Pulliam Clock Tower.

I was on the verge of boiling over. Somehow, the lone Hispanic (me) and the lone black person in the tiny class were engaged in a shouting match over reparations for slavery.

Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., had just introduced a bill for a commission to study reparations proposals for African Americans and, apparently, it was such a hot topic that it made its way into our classroom discussion on "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight."

Though I can't remember the student's exact words, they ran along the lines of blacks being owed by the U.S. for the forced labor and suffering of their slave ancestors. I felt targeted, because I had been braver in expressing my opinion than the handful of my white peers nervously sitting out the whole conversation.

"Why are you looking at me?" I shot back at my classmate. "My parents came to this country in 1973, long after slavery ended. They don't owe anyone anything!"

Thank goodness I'm no longer as young and ignorant as I was in 1995.

I think it's appropriate that the issue of reparations has now come back into the national debate. Several of the 2020 presidential candidates have embraced the idea of using federal funds to acknowledge and compensate those affected by the ongoing legacy of slavery, including discrimination and white supremacy.

Yes, in case you hadn't realized it from the bounty of research on the black-white gap in educational attainment, gainful employment, homeownership, health outcomes and a dozen other data points -- this legacy lives on.

Randall Robinson, author of the book "The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks," argues that acknowledgment of the nation's debt to African Americans for slavery, subsequent segregation and continued exploitation would help heal our country's racial divide. "It's foolish to argue that the past has nothing to do with the present," Robinson was quoted as saying in 2001 in the Congressional Quarterly. "There's a reason why so many African Americans are poor: It's because a terrible wrong occurred in our history that produced a lasting inequality."

The question of whether reparations would actually help African Americans improve their social and economic status is hotly debated, but the question that really fires people up is who should have to pay.

I've done a 180 since college on the matter. Of course recent immigrants, Latinos and everyone else who thinks that they did not participate in slavery needs to sign on to the reparations movement.

I have believed this for a while now because, in the case of immigrants, if you adopt a country as your home, you have to take on their victories and their shame. But I now believe there are two more arguments in favor of vigorous support of reparations.

First, all people living in the United States today enjoy the nation's relative wealth, infrastructure, technological advancement, etc. -- all of which were built on the back of slave labor.

And if your skin is, by cosmic lottery, white, you benefit from societal preferences that are so ingrained in our culture that the reams of statistics I've quoted in this column over the years doesn't even begin to convince you -- the beneficiary -- of those preferences.

The second reason to support the reparations movement is that there is a ripple effect when the most vulnerable people in our communities get a boost, indicating that society values and honors the sacrifices their ancestors made.

If blacks get some sort of federally funded investment in their well-being, it will almost surely lift up the low-income Latino, Asian American, white and other people who live alongside them in blighted communities with bad air quality, dirty water, poorly performing schools and few jobs.

"Just, generally, we all do better when we all do better," said Maria Bautista, campaigns director for the New York-based nonprofit Alliance for Quality Education. "We haven't addressed the harm this country has done to African Americans and what that means for black communities today. We're seeing the outcomes [of the legacy of slavery] in terms of education, housing, criminalizing communities. When we start to address and repay the debt we owe to the African American community in this country, we can start towards justice for everyone in this country."

Reparations shouldn't be a controversial topic. Healing America's original sin stands to benefit everyone, not just those who are owed our apology.

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Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

Why isn't Julian Castro getting as much attention as Beto O'Rourke? Bias

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Why aren't I as sick and tired of Julián Castro as I was of Robert Francis "Beto" O'Rourke in March and as I am now of media-flavor-of-the-month, Pete Buttigieg?

I want to have Castro fatigue. I want to snark online about the glamour-shot treatment he got on the cover of whatever influential magazine the East Coast reveres most at the moment. I want his appearances on late-night TV shows to be the stuff of breathless news reports for days.

I want to be able to pass no newsstand, click on no news website and walk by no TV without seeing Castro giving a speech or rolling up his shirtsleeves.

This isn't because I have any sort of interest in Castro -- he's fine. I have no beef with him.

To be honest, most people here in the heartland are not already invested in the 2020 presidential campaign. The stampede of candidates is overwhelming and baffling even to those who are already following the horse-race coverage of who's up or down in the polls.

The reason why I want Castro to start taking up space in the public's mind is because it's annoying how the media anoints "hot" candidates -- even if the ardor only lasts a fleeting moment -- and they seem to never be female or people of color.

On paper, Castro checks so many boxes. He's young, he's Latino, he has as much experience as Beto and Mayor Pete, he can appeal to the right with his strong religious beliefs.

But even Castro's time as a former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development can be read as problematic.

"Consider ... his relationship with Hillary Clinton, his time in politics, and I think compared to the two others mentioned, Julián Castro is considered to be a part of the establishment that needs to change," journalist Shahrazad Maria Encinias told me, via Facebook, echoing the sentiments of other journalists I reached out to in order to discuss Castro's campaign.

And, for that matter, many think that, despite Castro's resume, there's not a lot of "there" there.

"I have worked for three elected officials and volunteered on several campaigns," another Facebook pal, Shelli Romero, told me. When I consider Castro, I think of him as young and inexperienced. And I don't know what he has accomplished -- maybe he has accomplishments, but he does not talk about them enough. I don't know who would be identified as his base. I have not heard concrete issues that would cause me to associate with him. ... I am not sure what issues to identify when it comes to Castro."

The Twitter account for the PBS documentary "Ruben Salazar: Man in the Middle" chalked it up to Castro being a little unrelatable: "His handlers have reduced him to role of competent functionary, endorsed by elite institutions. Perhaps a function of white supremacy that they are obscuring any personal, idiosyncratic aspect of his experience -- or maybe the guy is just that niño bueno ("good boy") robotic."

Still, others were more forceful about perceived media bias. One of my Twitter pals declared that the problem is: "Racism against Mexicans. It's as simple as that. Julian has more national experience that Pete."

Even President Trump feels Castro is no threat to his reelection campaign -- we know this because Trump hasn't blessed Castro with a snarky moniker or signature put-down.

Writing on the Latino Rebels blog, theologian Melissa Cedillo noted a disparity: "Castro is bringing his religion to the main stage and embodying Mexican-American faith in a way that not been seen before." Yet, Cedillo writes, "White Christianity often dominates the political narrative when it comes to faith." Are progressives "more comfortable hearing about faith from a white man than a Latino man?"

It's difficult to imagine that attractiveness, skin color, height and other cues and markers of social class and ethnicity don't play into the lack of coverage for Castro.

It's unknown whether the media has declined to breathlessly cover the young, Latino candidate's every move because more people aren't excited about him or if Castro is not breaking through because he just can't get the camera crews and news site bloggers themselves excited.

It's a shame that Castro may end up as another example of the way that, at this American moment, Latinos' prospects for success are likely limited by our complexions, hair color and surnames.

 

 

 

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Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

My abortion story, like so many others, is complicated

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Being a woman frequently means not having much of a voice. Using it to protest or advance policy can mean bearing one's soul, detailing one's most intimate moments or divulging the most terrifying, violent or shameful events of life.

Often for nothing.

Just ask Christine Blasey Ford. She stood up to protest the nomination of a man who allegedly acted without honor to be one of the arbiters of justice in the nation's highest court. Where did it get her?

For that matter, before Blasey Ford was threatened, doxed and subsequently driven from her home and into hiding, there were countless women who bared their souls as part of the #MeToo movement. Their hope was to bring about lasting change by describing how powerful men who abuse their influence, access and authority impact women's lives.

No dice. Sure, there are some foundations doing the work of attempting systemic change against sexual harassment (and a few grass-roots organizations helping working-class women who face daily abuses). But not that much has changed since Harvey Weinstein and other prominent men in positions of power were held to account for their own alleged sexual misconduct.

But what will become of the less-famous women who have taken to social media, op-ed pages call-in radio shows and neighborhood coffee shops to share their saddest traumas?

In recent weeks, a raft of state legislatures have passed bills that effectively ban abortion after a pregnancy reaches six weeks. And, cheering from the sidelines, some on the right are attempting to paint women who undergo the procedure as careless, joyful or sadistic. Pushing back against this tide, many women have been compelled to stand up and admit publicly to the horrible assault, tragic birth defect, failure of a birth control method or simple accident that led them to need an abortion.

Heartbreakingly, it seems like the flood of painful stories about abortions that ended what could have been life-ruining pregnancies will have no end.

Here's mine: I've never had an abortion.

In fact, the one time I was offered an abortion, I turned it down.

And that decision nearly killed me.

In early 2000, during my second high-risk pregnancy, a second-trimester ultrasound showed severe abnormalities that immediately led to an amniocentesis. I then underwent several other highly specialized tests designed to tell whether our daughter was going to have a debilitating disability or even live long enough to be born.

The diagnosis determined that the baby would either die in the womb or be born with multiple abnormalities that would pain her for what would be a very short life hooked up to loud machines. The chances that medical therapy or surgery could deliver a healthy infant were astronomically remote. At the time, the extreme long-shot try for a severely cognitively or physically disabled living child seemed like an infinitely better alternative to the recommended abortion.

(Now that I work with students with profound disabilities and see how parents struggle, it no longer seems like my child's life could possibly have been as joyous as I imagined it.)

Our daughter's birth revealed how profoundly ill she had been in the womb for the months we dragged her life out and I've never fully recuperated from the pain and guilt of knowing I could have ended her suffering much sooner.

My vitals crashed during the cesarean section I required in order to give her the chance to live long enough for her father and I to meet her. Had I not been at a wealthy community's top-tier hospital with elite high-risk obstetricians, I'd most likely be dead. I'd have left my other not-yet-2-year-old son motherless.

But I had a choice.

Most women of color don't have those kinds of resources available to them even though they are disproportionately likely to have high-risk pregnancies, unforeseen pregnancy complications and higher postpartum complications and deaths.

In a New York Times op-ed last week titled "Pregnancy Kills. Abortion Saves Lives," Dr. Warren M. Hern wrote: "Pregnancy itself poses a 'serious health risk' -- including the risk of dying and losing all bodily functions. A woman's life and health are at risk from the moment that a pregnancy exists in her body, whether she wants to be pregnant or not."

The "pro-life" stance too often disregards the mothers of fetuses. Call the draconian early-term abortion bans what they are: anti-choice and potentially pro-death for women.

And those who've had their lives saved because of an abortion should be the next wave of stories highlighted in the media.

 

 

 

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Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com. Follow her on Twitter, @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

Chicago's first gay, black, female mayor offers hope for us all

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Well, we finally did it, America. The muscular, broad-shouldered city with the glory-days reputation of being hog butcher for the world inaugurated its first gay, black, female mayor.

On Monday, Lori Lightfoot, a former assistant U.S. attorney, was sworn in alongside her white wife, Amy Eshleman, and their 10-year-old daughter, Vivian.

It was a fitting tableau of a family that, though likelier found on Chicago's liberal North Side, still represents important constituencies in all corners of the city: mothers who struggle to make it in a town that is rapidly becoming too expensive to live in, LGBTQ folks who are searching for both equality and a visible example of accessing power, and children of color who must navigate the complexities of adoption.

It's not a moment too soon.

Chicago has been dominated by white, male mayors who have wielded what people around these parts call clout, doling out business and personal favors to the heads of neighborhood fiefdoms in return for get-out-the-vote operations that virtually ensured long-lasting tenures.

And where has all of it led the city? Budget shortfalls, pension overruns and stunning inequalities in massively under-resourced public schools and neighborhoods vs. wealthy enclaves with tony private schools. It has reinforced the perception of murderous lawlessness on the South Side and chic, safe affluence on the North Side. Plus it has given the city a taste for taking on big projects like signature museums and architectural gems while neglecting a housing crisis for the poor and middle-income residents.

Such long-standing and deeply entrenched challenges won't be magically fixed by the mayor's skin color, cultural competence or preference in romantic partner.

Yet ... what has been overshadowed in all the mentions of her making history with her demographics is the fact that Lightfoot overcame her skin color, culture and sexual identity to leap over the inevitable gatekeepers to achieve her professional goals.

Lightfoot somehow barreled past or sneaked around the myriad expectations that come with being a poor person and a gay woman of color. She earned a law degree and subsequently spent an award-winning career in law enforcement, first as a litigator and then in oversight roles at one of the city's most highly visible organizations, the Chicago Police Department.

The impact of her accomplishment is all the more impressive when we look at the research on everything from students clocking higher academic gains from teachers whose background fits theirs, to older patients faring better when cared for by a doctor whose race or ethnicity fits their own.

The two-thirds of Chicagoans who are not non-Hispanic white are left with a small bit of hopeful expectation that a mayor who has circumvented so many racial and gender thickets might finally provide the attention and investment necessary for them to thrive again.

The adage "you can't be what you can't see" is another way to say that a big idea or identity isn't possible, on a mass scale at least, until you see it with your own eyes.

Now Chicago's first black, woman mayor is openly gay and loves a mixed-race nuclear family of women. It's breathtaking to imagine how many people -- of all races, ethnicities, ages, genders and identities -- she and her spouse and child will inspire.

Make no mistake about it: Lightfoot will mess up. She'll make ham-handed mistakes.

She'll fail to heroically, single-handedly fix the problems that her predecessors have created and subsequently mismanaged for decades.

But right now -- at a moment in our nation's history where there seem to be few people of color entrusted with the power and prominence to make lasting and positive changes -- Lightfoot has two opportunities.

The first is to demonstrate, again, that black women (and by proxy, other women of color) are ultra-competent winners who can get the job done long after we're done celebrating their demographic attributes.

And the second, and most important, is that Lightfoot has the potential to demonstrate to Chicago and the rest of the country that strategic investments of money and other resources into hitherto overlooked communities have the potential to repair and rebuild a rapidly diminishing middle class.

Those who stand to benefit -- and really, it's all of us -- wish her well.

 

 

 

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Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

If technology helps the real 'you' come forward, go for it

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- I don't need the Snapchat gender-swap filter to show me what I look like as a man -- I can just look at any picture of my dad at my age and voilà.

But posting opposite-gender pictures using the filter was all the rage last week.

And even in this age of gender exploration, some young people who grew up in a world where it's OK to question every facet of their identities had complaints: Everything from condemning jokes about how many people were going to realize they were transgender to outrage that Snapchat was enabling the trivialization of what is a difficult journey in a trans person's life.

Rose Dommu encapsulated it perfectly in her post on the website of "Out" magazine -- "This filter is literally an instant transition, and the humorous way I'm seeing it shared is ... not cute. My Twitter mutuals don't go with me to every painful laser hair removal appointment ... don't shove a needle full of estrogen into their thigh twice a month ... They don't understand the pain and endurance required for trans people to get themselves even close to their ideal presentation -- so no, I certainly don't want to look into my phone screen and see what some app developer has decided the most perfectly feminine version of me is. Nor do I want to see memes poking fun at the very real violence trans folks face."

The cynic in me was revolted that Snapchat, whose 2017 IPO basically went nowhere because the service had become nearly irrelevant, was riding high on a wave of publicity that included breathless news coverage of instances in which someone fooled their parent or a potential love interest on dating platforms. All without the context of the physical violence, poorer health outcomes and high death rates that transgender people face.

But more importantly: Does creating an instantaneous and idealized version of the self as the opposite gender help or hurt individuals questioning their identities, or in the process of affirming their gender? Or anyone who chooses to enhance their faces with the many, free or cheap augmented reality apps that are readily available to use with their smartphones?

Past research has a story to tell.

As far back as 2007, the researcher Nick Yee, along with researchers at Stanford and the Palo Alto Research Center popularized the Proteus Effect, a phenomenon in which people behave in ways that correspond with avatars -- digital representations of the self -- that project an idealized version of the self.

In their paper "The Proteus Effect: Implications of Transformed Digital Self-Representation on Online and Offline Behavior," Yee and his co-authors found that people who were given taller avatars in an online game negotiated more aggressively than users given shorter avatars. They found that "both the height and attractiveness of an avatar in an online game were significant predictors of the player's performance."

More importantly, behavioral changes that started in the virtual environment transferred to subsequent, real-life, face-to-face interactions.

Jeremy Bailenson, a professor of communication in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford, recently found much the same when investigating interactions in augmented reality. In this case, the simulation was created by wearing goggles that layer computer-generated content onto real-world environments.

When people interacted with a virtual person, they appeared to be influenced in similar ways as to when they had a real person physically next to them. Subsequently, their interactions in the real, physical world changed after the virtual experience. For example, people avoided sitting on a chair they had just seen a virtual person sit on.

"We know from the phrases 'Dress for success' that the way you represent yourself is important, and not just to others," Bailenson told me. "We infer how to act based on our own identity, we use self-perceptions to take cues from ourselves. We know that if people are using these representations [such as avatars and images of the self] often, that it does change how they act. The question is how we'll change when identity is fluid and we're beaming ourselves everywhere constantly."

Bailenson said he doesn't use any social media and was clear he has no easy answers for the gender-swap app conundrum or any other instance of projecting a highly stylized image of the self. We need more research, especially as the technology becomes faster and cheaper.

But I say to anyone out there looking to transform: You are beautiful. If you feel technology can help the "real" you come forward, you may just be on to something.

 

 

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Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

Poor kids with great grades don't do better than middling white students

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Over the past few years, I've taught at schools that were low-income, terribly under-resourced and majority-African American and Latino. I've also taught at affluent, majority-white schools with nutritionally balanced lunches and laptops for every student.

What I've come to learn is that in all of these schools, the one factor that should move the needle of student achievement -- teacher quality -- only supports a woefully inadequate status quo.

My students who attended school in a building with ancient pipes that leached lead into the water fountains and with glue traps that were scattered around the school so that mice could die painful public deaths usually had teachers with their hearts in the right place. But the teachers also had low classroom-management skills or academic subject-matter expertise.

The few true believers with skills -- teachers who were there to prove that low-income kids could perform as well as their well-resourced peers in neighboring districts -- tended to burn out and leave for greener pastures relatively quickly.

In contrast, affluent schools -- where the "whole child" is considered, enrichment programs are built into test-prep-driven schedules and the calendar is marked with countless bells and whistles like field trips and special-learning activities -- attract the best-performing and most highly qualified teachers.

This staff tends to stay even if the money isn't great, because there's a lot of professional development, parents are highly involved and the student body tends to be stable and homogenous.

What would happen if we yanked all the great teachers out of high-performing schools and swapped them with middling- to low-performing educators whose professional goals were merely to make it to retirement?

Maybe not much.

As if we don't have enough research to prove that the rich keep getting richer while even the poor who manage to pull themselves up by their bootstraps get poorer, new data out of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW) says that all the things we think matter in education take a back seat to socioeconomic status.

"The most talented disadvantaged youth don't do as well as the least-talented advantaged youth," says the CEW report "Born to Win, Schooled to Lose: Why Equally Talented Students Don't Get Equal Chances to Be All They Can Be." It adds that a child from a family in the highest quartile of socioeconomic status (SES) who has low test scores in kindergarten has a 71% chance of being in an above-median SES at age 25. However, a child from a low-SES family with high test scores has only a 31% chance of reaching above-median SES by 25.

And, of course, this effect is magnified depending on race or ethnicity.

Black (51%) and Latino (46%) 10th graders with math scores in the top half of test takers are rewarded for their effort and persistence by being more likely to earn a college degree within 10 years than their peers with math scores in the bottom half, but they're still less likely to earn a college degree than white (62%) or Asian (69%) 10th graders with math scores in the top half.

"To succeed in America, it's better to be born rich than smart," said Anthony P. Carnevale, director of CEW and lead author of the report, in a press release.

It's hard for teachers to navigate the public-school teaching industrial complex in search of meaning. No matter how poorly or well they educate their students, the well-to-do kids are going to fall up into the comfort their families can provide and the low-income students will struggle to find a future.

If that's the case, then we might be looking at the issue of equity in education the wrong way.

Never mind desegregating schools -- you can have majority-Latino and African American schools with incredibly high academic achievement. They get that way with money -- which can buy excellent teachers, resources for parents, extracurriculars for students and cash for going on college visits and granting loan-free higher education.

The only thing money can't buy, however, is the end to systemic racism and inequality.

You could pour cash into the excellent education of every Hispanic and black child in America and they'd still get left behind by a system that preferentially values whites' long-standing wealth and far-reaching social capital.

Until we recognize and address that disparity, money will be an inadequate method of boosting students of color -- the fastest-growing portion of our population.

 

 

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Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

When social media prevents, instead of encourages, violence

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- It's a story as old as time itself: If you want to protect yourself from predators, get big and scary. Even the great horned owl fluffs up its feathers, and the puffer fish swells its spiny skin to ward off attackers.

So, too, it goes in the social media age -- a time in which we condemn peers for attempting to portray their lives as more glamorous and exciting than our own for the sake of retweets or likes. But some people are now using their virtual identities to create barriers to violence.

Many who grow up in unsafe neighborhoods -- where gangs set shifting boundaries that, when crossed, could have mortal consequences -- have found that social media can provide an effective security system against being victimized. All it takes is some props and bluster.

On Chicago's South Side, for instance, gang-associated young people often use what Stanford sociologist Forrest Stuart called "fabricated displays of bravado" to mitigate conflicts by presenting themselves as scarier and more violent than they are in real life.

These online images could include, for instance, guns and other weapons that don't actually belong to the people displaying them. Or they could post pictures of crowds of people who aren't really part of their social group.

In his paper "Code of the Tweet: Urban Gang Violence in the Social Media Age," published last month in the journal Social Problems, Stuart outlines how a virtual stand-off can often replace real-life conflicts.

"Contrary to common belief, the majority of social media challenges remain confined to online space and do not generate offline violence," Stuart told the Stanford News Service. "Sometimes that gun a young man posts on social media is actually a part of his attempt to not use that gun. If he can convince everybody at his school, for instance, that he is well-armed and well-backed by a gang, then maybe he can walk home safer. Maybe somebody will think twice about challenging him."

Not surprisingly, gang-associated youth might use social media to not only seem tougher than they are, but also to publicly undermine the authenticity of their rivals' performances of toughness, strength and masculinity.

"They are fighting each other not over territory but over who can prove to be the most authentic person," Stuart said. "On social media, they use all these different ways to challenge the authenticity of somebody else. They're trying to show the public that their rival isn't nearly as hard as he claims he is."

Some techniques for doing so include "cross referencing," in which young men publicize images proving their rivals were embellishing their toughness. They also engage in "calling bluffs," which is exactly as it sounds -- they dare their rivals to attempt an act of violence, and if the challenge isn't accepted, that unwillingness to engage in violence is amplified.

Another technique called "catching lacking" -- this one believed to be the likeliest to spur violent retaliation -- involves confronting a rival when he is with family or in another setting in which violence wouldn't necessarily be expected, and then recording and disseminating footage of the target not taking the bait.

While all of this is notable social science in and of itself, the value of Stuart's ingenious study is to show that there are methods to the madness of the streets -- and they're often employed to prevent bloodshed, not exacerbate it.

It's a distinction that needs to be better understood. Not only by the police officers who patrol America's most violent neighborhoods, but by the computer programmers who create the algorithm-powered databases that try to quantify and predict how likely someone is to commit a crime.

An ex-convict, for example, might act tough on social media in order to avoid imperiling his probation with an attack by a rival yet have this precaution misinterpreted by court personnel who mistakenly overestimated the relationship between his aggressive posts and his desire to engage in offline violence.

Stuart warns against law enforcement reading too much into social-media posts, suggesting that nuanced and contextualized analyses of virtual activity should be the norm instead of assuming that there is a direct correlation between performative violence on social media and real-life violence on the street.

Pro tip: Keep your eyes wide open on social media -- and don't believe everything you see on the internet.

 

 

 

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Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

What would Jesus do about immigration? Show compassion

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Although we live in a country where organized religion is mostly out of vogue, there are still plenty of people who are familiar with the teachings of Christ -- and who can't square them with how supposedly God-fearing Republicans inhumanely view migrants and refugees at the U.S. border.

"The rejection of Christian teaching on this issue [of immigration] is pretty much a job requirement in the Trump administration," noted Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson in a piece citing examples of Republican hypocrisy on the issue. "Evangelicals insist on the centrality and inerrancy of scripture and condemn society for refusing to follow biblical norms -- and yet, when it comes to verse after verse requiring care for the stranger, they don't merely ignore this mandate; they oppose it."

But are we painting Christians with too broad a brush?

That's certainly the opinion of the Evangelical Immigration Table, which bills itself as a broad coalition of evangelicals who advocate for immigration reform that is consistent with biblical values.

Members include Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals; Shirley Hoogstra, president of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities; and Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. They want to make sure their fellow Christians know that it is both possible and practical to use the Bible as a guide in approaching immigrants and immigration policy.

"We have the science and the technology to both have a secure border and to have legal immigration -- we can do both," says Anderson in one of the group's videos, which is titled "Pro-Security, Pro-Compassion."

In that same video, Jo Anne Lyon, the global ambassador for the Wesleyan Church, says, "Yes, secure the national borders, but we want borders that are secured, not closed."

Another of the organization's videos is titled "Making Things Right: Establishing a Path Toward Legal Status." It advocates giving citizenship to immigrants who are currently living in the shadows. "[An] earned legalization process, paired with improvements to border security, is supported by more than two-thirds of American Evangelical Christians according to a poll from LifeWay," Hoogstra said.

Along with the videos, the Evangelical Immigration Table released an e-book titled "Thinking Biblically About Immigrants and Immigration Reform." It suggests that the Bible -- which the e-book calls the "ultimate authority" for evangelical Christians -- should be a guide not just for policy, but personal encounters:

"While applying biblical principles to public policy inherently requires some prudential determinations, biblical teachings about how to interact with immigrants themselves leave less space for differences of interpretation: We're called to love our neighbors (Luke 10:27) and to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19), regardless of where we land on public policy."

Driving its point home, the e-book starts off by underscoring how many of the most prominent Bible characters were themselves immigrants, forced across borders just to find food. It goes on to cite numerous passages showing that vulnerable groups of people, like immigrants, were "objects of God's particular concern."

This would be the precise moment for the cynic to engage in finger-pointing and recriminations about the many ways and times that Bible verses are taken out of context (or not) to delegitimize particular groups, such as gay, lesbian or transgender people.

But to what end?

These evangelical Christians, who feel they've been miscast or misrepresented, are clearly trying to extend an olive branch not only to their detractors but to those who might find solace in the Bible and are ambivalent about the immigration issue.

These videos are nicely produced, and the e-book is a fine resource that is also humane. It calls for a "bipartisan solution on immigration that respects the God-given dignity of every person, protects the unity of the immediate family and establishes a path toward legal status and/or citizenship for those who qualify and who wish to become permanent residents."

Ultimately, however, while enlightened evangelical Christians preach about the Bible to fellow Christians, they need to also contact elected lawmakers who dehumanize immigrants or stand with a president who wants to be even harsher to the women, children and men who arrive at our border fleeing political turmoil, violence or economic freefall.

It's not enough to preach to the choir on the issue of immigration.

Evangelical Christians, please take an outspoken leadership role and help cool the heated rhetoric in far-right, anti-immigrant camps. Especially with those who put the power of their political pulpit toward dehumanizing immigrants and those who care about them.

 

 

 

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Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

Hurry up and provide meaningful sex education to boys

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Recently, I had to comfort a student over a situation in which she and another girl were competing for the attention of a boy in their class. There were tears, drama, recriminations and some revenge fantasizing involving passionate language. They were 9-year-old third-graders.

In September, I had to talk to my students about not swapping speculation over who were boyfriends or girlfriends with whom. These were my first-graders.

My sons are now grown and, thankfully, after years of awkward conversations about hygiene, interpersonal relations, birth control, sexually transmitted diseases and vaccinations, we can have relaxed, factual conversations about such topics when the need arises.

I sure don't remember having to broach those issues in primary school, but I'd have to reconsider that if my kids were young now -- childhood innocence ends so swiftly these days.

Despite similar rates of sexual activity among both male and female adolescents, males are twice as likely to have their first sexual intercourse before the age of 13 -- or seventh grade -- according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Pediatrics.

The study's findings underscore that male identities are associated with their experiences and that their "age at first sexual intercourse is associated with identifiable systemic barriers in communities, such as racial segregation and neighborhood disadvantage," according to Laura D. Lindberg, Isaac Maddow-Zimet and Arik V. Marcell, authors of "Prevalence of Sexual Initiation Before Age 13 Years Among Male Adolescents and Young Adults in the United States."

Although, as with every other marker of well-being, boys of color in this country are at higher risk for the downsides of an early sexual debut, this turns out to have far more to do with their mothers' education level -- a proxy for a family's eventual level of education -- than with race, ethnicity or even geography.

The authors underscore that young men, especially young men of color, need comprehensive, culturally informed sex education before their first sexual encounter -- preferably from a health-care practitioner -- starting in middle-school or earlier.

This is a tall order. And, according to the authors, best practice calls for comprehensive sex education to start at least by kindergarten in the schools. The gold standard is for medical practitioners to set time alone with young patients in office-visit settings to address confidential care -- including sexual health -- starting in early adolescence.

Unfortunately, this is radical.

Citing numbers from the National Institutes of Health, the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress (CAP) estimates that "only about half of adolescents receive school instruction about contraception before they first have sex. Only 20 states require information on condoms or contraception, and only 20 states and the District of Columbia require sex and/or HIV education to be medically, factually and technically accurate."

In an era of "helicopter" parents who hover around through college and first jobs, "steamroller" parents who clear the path for their kids, anti-vaxxers and ideological home-schoolers, it seems likely that, according to the authors, most males will start having sex before receiving sex education. (Some parenting styles are associated with higher incidences of depression and anxiety, which in turn, are associated with early sexual debut.)

"Broad cultural scripts about masculinity and sex hold that men should start having sex early and have sex often. For young men of color, particularly black males, racist stereotypes of hypermasculinity may also contribute to expectations of early sexual initiation," the study authors wrote. "Yet research highlights that males in early and middle adolescence do not necessarily follow such scripts, and a later transition to first sexual intercourse may be valued. Understanding males' wantedness of the sexual experience may be particularly important for interpreting early sexual activity."

Decent sex education that includes explicit training in pregnancy and STD prevention and is delivered with cultural competency for the students involved is rare. And the situation is only getting worse under the Trump administration.

"While the American public is demanding ways to tackle teen pregnancy and other issues such as unhealthy relationships, the federal government is reducing access to critical intervention tools -- an important one being comprehensive sex education," wrote Sarah Shapiro and Catherine Brown on the CAP website. "Sex education across the country is being underutilized and even misused."

Now is the time to reach out to young boys and ensure that they have an adolescence with culturally appropriate mentoring and meaningful sex education -- especially in a government led by a man who has made crude comments about women and has boasted of sexually grabbing them without their consent.

 

 

 

 

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Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

Students of all ages deserve a loan bailout

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., proposes eliminating up to $50,000 in student debt for borrowers who make less than $100,000 per year, giving up to 42 million Americans what amounts to a second lease on life.

Philip Klein, the executive editor of the right-leaning Washington Examiner, opposes Warren’s idea. In a column with a headline saying that debt forgiveness “would be a slap in the face to all those who struggled to pay off their loans,” he wrote that the plan “would be tremendously unfair to those who have been struggling for years to pay off their student loans.”

With two undergraduate degrees and the debt of four master’s degrees between us, my husband and I have been paying nearly $1,000 per month on our student loans for more than a decade. We have about $110,000 left to pay, and, if we’re lucky, we’ll be done in 2033.

But even if we don’t get to benefit from Warren’s proposal, we should help those who can. Why — after my husband and I have gone without so much for so many years — should young people get a pass when they financed school tuition for degrees that don’t guarantee decent jobs?

There are so many reasons.

Well, first there’s the fact college used to be relatively affordable to someone willing to work throughout. In 1973, one year’s tuition at an in-state public school was $2,175 — not nothing, for sure. In fact, if you run this number through an inflation calculator, you’re looking at about $12,450 in 2019 dollars. But the actual average cost for the same schooling today is $33,300.

Then there’s the reality that it isn’t just spoiled rich kids who would likely be getting a bailout. Most students who take on the responsibility of student loans to pay for college are of modest means or truly have nothing to put toward their post-secondary education.

 

 

And know they almost surely all got “student-loan counseling” — I recall mine being a seven-minute video at the financial aid office — and were asked to sign a complex contract that attested to their understanding that they needed to pay back all the money with interest. But when you are raised with the understanding college is the be-all and end-all to life and you will die destitute without it, you sign and hope for the best.

How about the numerous predatory “higher-education institutions” who hard-sold people — usually those who would be the first in their families to attend college — on overpriced degrees with little use in the competitive job market?

 

From Trump University to an alarming number of culinary institutes and beauty schools, millions of people have been baited with the promise of high-paying jobs in return for exorbitant tuition and fees that, like any other student loans, could not be discharged in bankruptcy. And not only young people just starting out were drawn in to taking on college debt; many older people who attempted to get extra training after a job loss were also caught up in taking on hefty loans.

A lot of people like me who have the privilege of being able to afford a home, safe transportation and many of life’s comforts are wrong in believing that the beneficiaries of loan forgiveness are spoiled millennials who’ve always been given the world on a platter and will become monsters if they get away with not paying for school.

In truth, the constant chorus preaching that college is the only worthwhile path to a stable future convinced everyone so thoroughly that millions of moms, dads, aunts, uncles and grandparents find themselves in debt they took on to ensure their own employability or that of their young loved ones.

The Federal Reserve reported that Americans older than 50 owed more than $260 billion in student debt in 2018, up from $36 billion in 2004. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says that nearly 40 percent of borrowers 65 and older are in default.

Almost no degree guarantees a decent job these days. Yet society still pushes that lie. As a result, our economy will never thrive with so many people under the boot of predatory education lending and collection.

These kids and seniors need a bailout, and if that means an “unfair” figurative slap in the face to those of us who aren’t in default, we’re at least in the best financial position to take one for the team.

 

 

As ever, Latino vote up for grabs

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Wasn't the 2016 presidential election the event that taught us to distrust polls? Didn't almost everyone get it wrong, eroding the public's trust in both journalism and their fellow citizens, who made electoral choices that seemed to go against their own self-interest?

Welcome to the 2020 campaign season, which is already making me -- and probably many others -- want to tear my hair out.

It's because I'm looking at new poll numbers from Latino Decisions, the nation's (perhaps not incorrectly) self-proclaimed "leading polling and research firm on Latino Americans." But instead of fearing that the numbers are wrong, they seem frighteningly on-target.

Twenty-five percent of all the Latino registered voters who were polled have not only heard of President Trump but also have a very or somewhat favorable impression of him, according to the Spring 2019 national poll.

Twenty percent say that the president and Republicans are doing a good job of reaching out to Hispanics.

Seventeen percent say they will be voting for Donald Trump in 2020, and another 3% are undecided but leaning toward Trump.

Twenty-seven percent either strongly or somewhat agree with Trump's February decision to declare a national emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border and redirect money meant for military and disaster relief to build a border wall.

I was also mildly surprised to see how the registered Hispanic voters who were polled reacted to potential democratic presidential contenders. They did not jump at the Latino candidate, former housing secretary Julián Castro, as a top choice.

They weren't set on fire by Kamala Harris, a leader in the Latino-majority state of California and a woman of color who has come out strong against the Trump administration's treatment of migrants at the border.

Nope. It's Biden, with 59 percent favorability.

Or "Tío Joe," as in "Uncle Joe," a moniker that was supposedly used in a top-secret Spanish-language TV ad designed to be released when he officially declares the week after Easter, according to Politico.

He's followed very closely by Bernie at 58 percent favorability -- that would be the socialist Bernie Sanders who's been a millionaire since 2016.

And after Sanders, the list of the top three most favored candidates is rounded out by, drumroll please: former Texas congressman Beto O'Rourke, at 48 percent, the non-Latino guy with the Hispanic nickname.

Oh boy.

If these are startling revelations, then you just haven't been paying attention.

Latinos were never the monolith that the mainstream media portrayed them to be. There's no denying they are an increasingly diverse population in the United States, one that no longer counts language, country of origin, geographic concentration or immigration status as a unifying common denominator.

This is also shown clearly in what Hispanics ranked as the most important issues to them in the Latino Decisions poll, which echoed decades of prior research. Even in this time of Trump-induced humanitarian crises at the border, the issue of protecting immigrants' rights rates only a third-place spot, overshadowed by the high cost of health care and the desire to see wages and income improve.

But we shouldn't underestimate the fact that these are the thoughts of Latinos who are already registered to vote and thinking ahead about the presidential race, which is still more than a year away. They may skew more conservative or be outliers because of their political interest at this early stage. Or the sample size of the poll could simply be too small.

We don't know what a Latino voter who registers close to Election Day cares about because we're still pretty far out from November 2020 for the average person's interest in politics to kick in.

And when it comes right down to it, history tells us that not enough of the 32 million Hispanics who will be eligible to vote in 2020 will be registered and then show up at the polls. (In the 2016 presidential election, Latino turnout was 47.6 percent, about the same as in 2012.)

If Democrats want to be competitive with Latino voters, they need to provide what Hispanic grassroots organizations across the country have consistently said they need -- money and resources to invest in voter registration and get-out-the-vote organizing.

Without the proper investments, Latinos might have lackluster turnout, furthering a track record of not seeming too invested in their government.

And what a shame it would be for eligible Latino voters to again be kept on the sidelines of a presidential election because slick ads with pandering and sometimes unintelligible Spanish translations are more palatable to fund than the education of a whole new generation of voters.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

Unauthorized immigrants help prop up U.S. economy

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Whenever I see a viral video of a racist person harassing a Spanish speaker with brown skin because they seem "illegal," I comfort myself with the vivid image of millions of Latinos watching the spectacle with bafflement as they fan themselves with a stack of $100 bills.

It's not silly.

People act like unauthorized immigrants are the biggest pox upon the Great American Experiment, but the fact is that immigrants pour billions of dollars into the tax coffers of local and state governments every year. In fact, they paid an estimated $11.7 billion just in 2014, according to the Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy. This includes an estimated $1.1 billion in state income taxes and $3.6 billion in property taxes.

Federal taxes can be added on top: The IRS estimated in 2015 that 4.4 million income-tax returns came from workers with no Social Security numbers, resulting in $23.6 billion in income taxes. This, of course, doesn't include payroll taxes or the taxes paid by immigrants who work on someone else's Social Security number.

For years, it's been an open secret that unauthorized immigrant workers are propping up the Social Security retirement trust fund and Medicare systems -- even though they can't access benefits from either of those programs.

Most people don't know that there's been a system in place for unauthorized immigrants and other foreign-born people to get Taxpayer Identification Numbers with which to file income taxes since 1996.

Moreover, schemes to legalize immigrants have often hinged on requiring them to prove they have a track record of paying their taxes. This has, at least in part, resulted in a windfall for the government.

You also have to stop to consider that unauthorized immigrants represent but a small percentage of all the Latinos in our country -- as a whole, all immigrants represent only about a third of all Hispanics.

And make no mistake: Latinos have money. They also have property.

"Over the past decade, Hispanics have accounted for 62.7% of net U.S. homeownership gains, growing from 6,303,000 homeowners to 7,877,000, a total increase of 1,574,000 Hispanic homeowners," according to the 2018 State of Hispanic Home Ownership report from the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals.

This same report calculated that the median household income for Hispanics rose to $50,486 in 2017, accounting for the largest increase in income (3.7%) among all racial or ethnic population groups.

As if this weren't enough, we're just sunnier about our finances than almost anyone else. In a recent analysis of national survey results, Florida Atlantic University found that 67% of Hispanics said they are financially better off today than a year ago, and 74% said they'd be better off over the next year. Meanwhile, 59% said they expected the country as a whole to experience good business conditions in the upcoming year.

Only people with a vested interest in a business would forecast economic conditions for the year ahead, folks.

None of these numbers fits with the impoverished, downtrodden and marginalized people you might imagine if your only exposure to immigrants is what you see on cable TV.

But, alas, well-to-do Hispanics who are the third or fourth generation in a family to attend a good college -- or who are simply successful in life without having been traumatized at the border or otherwise harmed -- are not of great interest to lots of people in the mainstream media who have the power to tell stories about middle- and upper-class Latinos.

To borrow the tortured cliché about how Hispanic voting power is a "Sleeping Giant," many Latinos are unaware of the strength they wield in the marketplace as well. And, alas, so far they are unable or unwilling to transform their considerable economic clout into the kind of political power that stops prejudiced people from attacking those who "look" or "sound" like an unauthorized immigrant.

Don't let ignorance get you down, though.

Remember: There are way more Latinos who have the capacity to use fistfuls of hundred-dollar bills to cool themselves than there are close-minded bigots who think they're entitled to harass someone just based on the color of their skin or their ability to speak a second language.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group