The Star Snubs Latino Veterans

Let’s start this post with a little background . . . This is a joke site. Nearly every day I scan KC headlines and make fun of the news. Sometimes I make people laugh, sometimes I annoy them and every so often I offend. But I frequently caution that readers shouldn’t take anything on this blog too seriously. The same can’t be said of KC’s daily newspaper.

Recently, The Star featured a photograph of Mexican-American Veterans with the caption, “Oh Say Can You See.” Undoubtedly, this was an allusion to a lame grade school joke about a kid going to a baseball game and sitting on top of a flag pole:

A kid named Jose goes to the ballgame without a ticket. When he gets there, the tickets are sold out. He sneaks in and climbs the flagpole and watches the game from there. When he gets home his dad says "How was the game?" Jose says "Fine, Dad, but I had to sit on the flagpole because I didn't have a ticket." "Could you see from up there?" "Oh ya. Everybody was nice about it, too. They all turned around and said 'Jose can you see?'" (Link)

Clearly, some bored caption writer at The Star believes that Mexican-American Veterans deserve to be honored with juvenile humor rather than respect.

This offhanded caption is telling in much the same way that drunken remarks often reveal true feelings. This snide caption says (in so many words) that even Latinos who have served this country are to be regarded with no more distinction than any other Hispanic with a commonplace name.

The caption writer might have been more honest if he or she would have simply written, “They all look the same to me.” And in the end, this sentiment is all too representative of The Star’s boilerplate, fill in the blank coverage regarding local Latinos. Latinos in KC are either portrayed as being somehow involved in a hat dance or they are the subject of sappy reports regarding the hardships of undocumented workers. Ironically, the typical neglect of local Latino issues in the pages of The Star is almost welcome when faced with their stereotypical reporting.

Still, a question lingers in my mind: Am I being too sensitive about this off handed slight? Then I think that there’s no way that The Star would publish something similar to this regarding African-American Veterans. And even more than thirty years down the line, making a local white Vet angry will earn you a face full of tobacco juice. No, The Star should know better and their careless snub of Mexican-American Veterans is indicative of their shoddy coverage of KC’s Latino community.

There is more to Latinos in KC than Cinco De Mayo and the restaurants on the Boulevard but you wouldn’t know this by reading the The Star. Dos Mundos and The KC Hispanic News provide the only real insight into the lives of local Latinos but that kind of ghettoization still leaves the larger readership of The Star with gross misconceptions regarding an ever increasing segment of KC’s population.

Time and again The Star has failed to provide decent coverage of Kansas City’s minority communities. Their failures are made clear not only with a one-sided outsider's view regarding people of color in this town but also with their ineptness in dealing with topics in which race plays a factor.

Every now and then The Star makes half-hearted gestures at inclusion. However, looking at the new multi-million dollar facility that will soon house the publication it’s clear that providing decent reporting on all of KC’s citizens is not nearly as much of a priority as maintaining a local news monopoly.

But still, there’s a chance that The Star will claim ignorance. The caption writer may contend that the reference was unintentional. In any event, my complaints stand. Let The Star prove their concern for KC’s Latino community with more local Latinos employed in their offices and a more accurate view of the Latino community in their pages. Until this city’s largest daily paper offers a more thorough view of the people of color in this town, the only joke worth laughing at is their coverage.