By October 15, the heritage-month graphics will have done their rounds. We will have been celebrated, spotlighted and thanked for enriching America. Wonderful. Now let’s discuss the budget.
We deserve the celebration. I happen to like seeing our people recognized, our work appreciated, our stories told with some understanding of who we are. Keep the applause coming. I would also like to know when being essential to the economy becomes a reason to invest in us with the same enthusiasm used to sell to us.
Our economic contribution runs through the businesses we build, the work we do and the purchases we make. There is money to be made with us, and plenty is already being made from us. I would like the people presenting our buying power in boardrooms to explain how much of that enthusiasm survives when a Latino-owned company sends them a proposal. If our presence helps make a market worth pursuing, our talent deserves a serious place in the budget.
To me, too much brand marketing to Latinos still feels 20 years behind. A brand can overindex with Latino consumers and still have substantial room to grow. Congratulations on the benchmark. Have you actually reached the market’s potential, or have you gotten comfortable with what you already know how to sell? Understanding the difference requires people who know the audience, along with the authority and resources to do something with that knowledge.
A campaign that needs our faces, music, humor and credibility should have money for the people providing them. If the proposal includes deliverables, deadlines and the right to use somebody’s work, it should include a serious fee. Exposure has yet to become an accepted payment method for rent. Believe me, our landlords remain remarkably unmoved by engagement.
Black and Brown content creators and influencers know this conversation well. Research has documented unequal pay and longer waits for paid partnerships, while Latina creators have reported feeling underpaid and underrepresented in campaigns. Some are negotiating a fee that barely respects the work. Others are still trying to get considered. If you can recognize the value of our culture when you need a campaign, you can put some effort into finding and paying the people creating it. Expand the roster. Read the proposals. Give someone outside your usual circle a paid assignment. Then give them another one when the work is good.
And this goes well beyond a sponsored post.
The economy already depends on us
Our work in construction, agriculture and hospitality helps make ordinary life possible for people who may never stop to think about who built their home, grew their food or kept the hotel running. We are embedded in the daily functioning of this country. Anyone comfortable enjoying the results should be willing to take an interest in the pay, safety and dignity of the people producing them. How does work become essential while the person doing it remains so easy to overlook?
Latino families have driven the country’s net growth in homeowner households, while ownership within our own community has struggled to keep pace with new household formation. Think about what that means for everyone making a living from the housing market. Families investing in a home support work far beyond their front door, yet the opportunity to own one remains out of reach for too many of them. Surely the industries depending on those families can bring some of their ingenuity to making ownership more attainable. Admiring our ambition should come with a willingness to help it go somewhere.
Put the money behind the mission
Our cultural organizations deserve better than having to wonder whether they can afford to continue the work we keep asking of them. The funding struggles described by Latino arts and culture groups in the NORC–NALAC survey make that question difficult to ignore. What exactly are we celebrating if our commitment to preserving culture does not extend to the people and institutions doing the preserving?
We ask people to preserve culture, develop talent, build trust and help hold communities together. Then we admire their resourcefulness, as if performing miracles on an inadequate budget were a sustainable business model. I would prefer to see what they could accomplish with breathing room, paid staff and support that lasts longer than the announcement.
In my work with NAHREP, I have seen Gary Acosta put serious effort into creating paid opportunities. He gives contracts to Latino creatives and businesses, large and small, and I have seen the Herculean fundraising behind that work. I am speaking from my own experience here, and these views are my own.
Brands, government, foundations and investors can help make that work sustainable. Commission creators throughout the year, fund staff and operating costs, and make contracting accessible to smaller businesses. Pay on time. A small company should not have to finance a large company’s campaign while waiting to be paid for completing it.
Investors who say they are looking for opportunity should be willing to look beyond the people who already know how to reach them. The scarcity of venture funding reaching Latino-owned businesses deserves more curiosity than another conversation about our potential. Open the applications, pay for pilots, offer development grants and explain how decisions get made. A founder should have a fair chance to be considered without first exhausting every personal resource trying to secure an introduction. If you want to discover talent, make it possible for talent to find you.
I know some of you are sick of reading and seeing the same numbers. Believe me, I am sick of it, too. Enough with repeating the data and recycling the talking points. I have no desire to become some suited, unattached, vampiric parrot, reciting our value while the people creating it keep waiting to get what’s theirs. The numbers should move us to act. Who gets the contract? Who gets the funding? Who gets a chance to build?
And, please, let’s look at where our own money goes.
Buy from our vendors and shop at our stores. Give qualified Latino realtors a chance to earn your business. Hire our filmmakers, editors, photographers and production companies. Buy clothes from our designers and hire our stylists, including Arturo Castañeda, whose work spans design, manufacturing and personal styling. Compliment the work. Pay for it, too. The people making us look good have expenses of their own.
Consider Blended Sense, a company with Latino and women founders that connects businesses with local creative professionals for video and photography. A business needs content, a creative team has the skills, and a paid assignment puts both to work. These connections deserve business as well as recognition.
Hire Latino strategists, too. Yes, that includes me. My practice, azul., brings strategy and media production to this work. Understanding an audience, shaping a message and turning an idea into something people can use are skills worth paying for. I believe in getting our people paid, and I am comfortable being one of those people.
Let’s also retire the community discount requested before anyone reads the proposal. Our people have payrolls, equipment costs, rent and families. Negotiate a scope you can afford, and respect the work required to deliver it. Supporting someone should give them a better chance of staying in business.
I have written about sharing resources without hoarding opportunities. A recommendation, collaboration or introduction can help someone whose work deserves a wider audience. Look beyond your group chat. Someone with an idea may be working a second shift, editing after their children fall asleep or building without a warm introduction. If investing in ourselves never reaches them, how wide have we actually opened the door?
Donate to community organizations whose work you value. Sponsor conferences and business networks, including AVANCE Global and NAHREP, and support the businesses participating in them. Sponsorship can help an emerging entrepreneur attend, commission a local production team or connect a small vendor with a buyer. Then ask what the investment accomplished and who had an opportunity they would not otherwise have had.
Practice the fairness we demand
All of this also requires us to look inward. Wherever we build, whatever our title, we owe people a clear understanding of expectations, decisions, compensation and credit. Transparency does not require handing over trade secrets. It requires enough honesty for people to understand what they are agreeing to and how their work will be valued. Preaching empowerment while exploiting the people doing the empowering is hypocrisy, however beautifully it photographs.
I despise hierarchies, especially the little rituals that remind people how far beneath someone else they are supposed to stand. I also understand that responsibility, skill, wisdom and temperament matter when deciding who should lead, make a decision or be accountable for an outcome. Some structure is necessary; a pecking order of human worth is a choice. Human dignity does not increase with a promotion. People with less power deserve more consideration, especially when speaking up can cost them their livelihood. They are not expendable bodies, or a supply of genius to be extracted for the comfort of a favored few.
We need to keep reviewing how our managers treat the people under them, and how we treat people ourselves. Who gets credit? Who gets heard? Does someone have to endure humiliating rituals to belong, or flatter the right ego before their idea becomes worth considering? These are questions for all of us. Favoritism does not become fair because we happen to like the people benefiting from it.
And we have to care for the people doing the caring. Help the helpers, including the ones who cannot introduce you to anybody important. They should not have to become useful to your ambitions before their exhaustion or well-being matters. If our idea of community only has room for people who can get us into a better room, we need a bigger idea of community.
The humble giant was never asleep
People call us a sleeping giant. Sleeping? We have been building homes, growing food, running businesses and doing work that sustains communities far beyond our own. Our contribution does not stop at the edge of a Latino neighborhood. Our work is part of this country’s heart and soul. Our spending and ingenuity help fuel its future. We deserve to thrive in the economy we help sustain.
Perhaps they mistook humility for sleep. The humble giant is in fighting mode now: building companies, creating platforms, commissioning work and opening doors. We will defend our people, but defense cannot be our entire strategy. Creating opportunities has always been my approach. It is why I brought LUCIR back. There are people to reach, ideas to develop and work to be done. Not just to survive but to thrive.
Hispanic Heritage Month ends. The work continues. Celebrate us, hire us, fund the organizations, buy from our businesses and back the ideas that can grow. Keep circulating opportunities and make room for people who have never had a seat. Brands and investors can build with us now or spend the coming years catching up. We will keep building without waiting for fickle support.
Everyone eats. Everyone thrives. Everyone shines.
We’ve got a world to (re)build and a lot of work to do.
Juntos y quizás revueltos, too.