I have developed a strong bias about Hispanics.

Monday, March 05, 2001

I have developed a strong bias about Hispanics. It happened when droves of them came to Austin to work on roofs damaged, as ours was, by hail last May. They made a lot of people nervous. Even suspicious. More: distrustful. Stories were told about what kind of people these were. Nonsense, I thought. But I watched. I watched roofing crews, many of them entirely Hispanic, work on roofs in our neighborhood and around town. It was the same story everywhere.

They talked in a language I couldn’t understand, despite having studied (Castillan) Spanish in high school and having lived in Central America. At least they talked so fast I couldn’t catch it. They descended on houses in packs, swarmed over roofs as ants devouring a crumb, and were disappeared as quickly as they had appeared.

Stories were they didn’t do the work right. They cheated! Lock up your valuables! You can’t find them later! They were from out of town. I couldn’t determine which was felt to be the more suspicious: that they were from the Cities or from Iowa. Of course, these were stories and they never came to me directly from anyone claiming these things. But you wonder.

When I finally convinced our insurance company (not an easy task) that ours was indeed not the only house for several blocks around that did not need a new roof, a crew arrived. Wouldn’t you know it: Hispanic. Then I found out, and this is where and how my bias developed.

They are great guys and did a remarkable job. They worked here as I had seen them work everywhere: fast and well. No goofing around, and certainly no laziness. They lived up to and demonstrated anew the growing reputation they had earned for themselves. I baited you, of course, by writing as if all the rumors were bad. Some were rumored bad, but the more roofs the men did the more positive and appreciative comments I heard.

I talked with the local roofing firm who had subcontracted with our crew and learned its management had inquired into their work history elsewhere, so that they came to Austin as a proven thing. The firm trusted them and so did we. By the time they finished their work, they had become our friends. I waved to them on other jobs, but they never waved back. They had their noses to the shingles.

I suppose it’s too much to say that every Hispanic works this way, because they can’t be that much better than we Anglos. But these did – all of them. They deserve that much honest credit.

A bias, of course, is a leaning in some direction. Initially, there seemed to be about town a bias against the Hispanic crews, formed from ignorance. Their work quickly turned the bias in their own favor. It is now a positive bias; if another Hispanic crew should arrive, many of us would presume upon our experience that it would be excellent.

This, I confess, is my bias about Hispanics.

Wallace Alcorn’s column appears Mondays