www.sun-sentinel.com

An Orange County teacher's letter sparks debate over their role in Central Florida.

Victor Manuel Ramos
Sentinel Staff Writer

August 29, 2005

Hispanics who don't speak English should be deported. They're taking jobs from Americans. Their children are burdening our schools.

They should all get back on their boats and go back to wherever they came from.

Those are not the words of Jan P. Hall, the fifth-grade Sadler Elementary schoolteacher accused of belittling Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Haitians, Middle Easterners and others in a letter to members of Congress.

The comments come from Central Florida residents who have bombarded the Sentinel with several hundred calls, e-mails, letters and online postings since the Orange County School Board suspended Hall last week.

The letter became the latest flash point to divide Central Florida as demographic changes have created a vibrant Hispanic market whose visibility has taken many older residents by surprise. From the cultural to the political, the changes seem to be happening quickly.

Earlier this year, oldies fans were incensed when one Clear Channel Communications radio station switched to Puerto Rican salsa.

Last month, the federal government filed a lawsuit against Osceola County, where Hispanics make up more than a third of the population, charging that the county's at-large election system discriminates against Hispanics. A group of mostly Hispanic residents also has sued Kissimmee on similar grounds.

The letter attributed to Hall seemed to open the floodgates of discontent. Hispanics were horrified at the letter's hurtful words, while non-Hispanic voices rose not only to support the First Amendment right of free speech but also, in many cases, to agree with the letter's divisive contents.

Backlash to diversity

"If a person of color says bad things about white people, it is opinion," noted one posting signed "Learn English" at an OrlandoSentinel.com bulletin board last week. "If a white person [says] something bad about a person of color it is 'racism.' We WHITE people are the MINORITY in Florida. Where are our groups to fight for OUR rights?"

The majority of Floridians are non-Hispanic whites, but Hispanics are now Florida's largest minority group.

The backlash to diversity is typical of times and places in which people work their way through significant demographic changes. Some historians and social scientists hold that nativist views -- often based on real issues as well as imagined fears -- are not any different from attitudes held against Italian, Polish, Irish and German Catholic immigrants of past centuries or the anti-Asian sentiments of the late 1800s and the early 1900s.

"This is a process in which groups are seeking power and control over their lives," said Robert Adelman, a sociology professor at Georgia State University. "And, because there is a perception that many immigrants, particularly Latino immigrants, have entered the U.S. illegally, many Americans complain about, and fight against, immigrants entering the education or health-care systems."

Yet Central Florida's predominant Hispanic group consists of Puerto Ricans, who are U.S. citizens at birth. The letter's call to close the borders on immigrants would not apply to Puerto Ricans in any case.

The battle about language, however, drives much of the debate.

Diana Andrews, a 32-year-old office worker from Kissimmee, was among those who wrote to support the teacher. America should wake up, she stated, because tensions will escalate, and "we'll end up having a war within this country."

Andrews said she is not speaking out of hatred.

"I've noticed a lot of other cultures that talk down about Americans and can't stand white people, but yet they are here working, taking jobs and getting a better life for themselves," Andrews said. "I can't get certain jobs because I am not bilingual. That's discriminatory to me."

Slow transition

Because of the sheer size of the Hispanic community, today's newcomers do not renounce their culture to assimilate -- a process that can take two or more generations.

"Hispanic growth in Orlando is going at a dizzying speed," said Luis Martinez-Fernandez, director of the Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies Program at the University of Central Florida. "A Hispanic person can come here and hold on to the consumer lifestyle of the United States without changing his cultural values and belief system. That transition does not happen so fast."

Cesar Perales, president of the New York-based Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, said the tensions are catching the attention of national groups. His organization met this week with Orlando attorneys willing to volunteer time to represent Hispanics. The group joined petitioners in the Kissimmee lawsuit.

"For some time we have been hearing about the need for us to work in Central Florida," Perales said. "The letter . . . is representative of the issues and the sense that long-standing residents of Central Florida, the Anglos, if I can use that term, truly resent and don't understand the new Latino community."

It's a tension that will last until Hispanics are welcomed as full partners in shaping the Central Florida reality, said Samuel Lopez, 58, a Puerto Rican activist who leads the United Third Bridge civil-rights advocacy group in Melbourne.

"Anyone who thinks that the problem is going to be over if the teacher is fired is wrong," Lopez said. "It's not over. It's just the beginning."

Many of those who speak publicly, such as liberal radio personality Jim Philips, are emphatic in saying that they are not racists or xenophobes. It's the right to speak up, even at the risk of offending, that's at stake. Others agree with the letter's sentiments but say they would have expressed their thoughts differently.

Conservative radio personality Doug Guetzloe says the issue has fired up his listeners more than any other has.

"There is an outrage out there," Guetzloe said. "The firestorm from the Puerto Rican community pales compared with the firestorm created from trying to breach what we view as her constitutional rights . . ."

Assimilation tops the concern of Michael Phillips, 51, a real-estate appraiser in Orlando.

"The majority of American people are pro-immigration. The concern is we are not controlling immigration," Phillips said. "I am happy for anyone who wants to come, citizen or otherwise. Come as an immigrant, pass through the system, but they need to assimilate."

Losing 'who we are'

To experts such as Evelyn Luciano-Carter the idea of assimilation is misguided. The Maitland consultant on cultural issues, who is of Puerto-Rican ancestry, said expecting people to forsake an established culture and embrace another set of values is too much to ask. Instead, she said what will likely take place is acculturation, a blend of cultures over time.

"Assimilation forces us to lose something of who we are," said Luciano-Carter, 48. "Who identifies the foreigner in a nation of immigrants? What makes you American? Isn't it the fact that you are white, blue eyes and blonde? Isn't that what is being said?"

Eric Gonzalez, a Puerto Rican artist, looks at the controversy and the growing tensions with mixed feelings. As someone who arrived in Orlando in 1974, when the metro area had fewer than 50,000 Hispanics, Gonzalez is a community pioneer. He remembers a time when area Latinos had to drive all the way to the one club in Casselberry where they could dance salsa.

By Orlando standards, Gonzalez, 52, is an old-timer in this community. He condemns prejudice but realizes that Central Florida's diversity, which includes more than 464,000 Hispanics, might intimidate some non-Hispanic old-timers who fear the demographic shift.

"We have contributed to some of these perceptions," Gonzalez said, adding that newcomers should "learn the social rules here. Instead of being ambassadors of our ethnic background, we become more of a cause for fear."