<p>There&#39;s been <a href="http://theartfulflower.blogspot.com/2007/08/rainbow-connection-part-1-hump-day-hmm.html">lots</a> of <a href="http://web.mac.com/quioguesperber/iWeb/daddyinastrangeland/blog/C0886C93-F4A7-45CF-AE6A-83787E174A62.html#comment_layer">talk</a> around the <a href="http://citymama.typepad.com/citymama/2007/07/putting-pr-peop.html">blogosphere</a> regarding <a href="http://www.blogher.org/marginalization-marketing">race</a> and <a href="http://theartfulflower.blogspot.com/2007/08/is-internet-rainbow-connection.html">ethnicity</a> and <a href="http://tere-tere.blogspot.com/2007/08/race-ethnicity-it-matters.html">whether it matters</a>.&#0160; I&#39;ve been meaning to write about a million other things, but my thoughts keep coming back to this topic.&#0160; </p>

<p>First, a confession.&#0160; I have an MBA and I had a great career and now I get to stay home with my kids and try my hand at writing.&#0160; I&#39;m privileged - I know that - so this isn&#39;t a post about how life is so hard because I&#39;m Hispanic.</p>

<p>I like being Hispanic.&#0160; I like it a lot.</p>

<p>Unfortunately, that doesn&#39;t mean that I don&#39;t meet my share of idiots.</p>

<p>So, back to the MBA.&#0160; When you&#39;re in business school there&#39;s an embarrassment of riches when it comes to career coaching and jobs and just plain old opportunity.&#0160; Companies basically wine and dine you for two years and sometimes they hire consultants to pick the &quot;cream of the crop&quot; for them and then they fly them out to a central location where they meet you and offer you jobs, jobs that sometimes come with salaries in the six digits.</p>

<p>It&#39;s not a bad deal.&#0160; Especially if you&#39;re not switching careers, which I wasn&#39;t.&#0160; I had left a brand management job in a glamorous though not well-paying field with the goal to do the same job in a less-glamorous but better paying company.</p>

<p>Since I already had brand-name experience on my resume and the school had awarded me a full-tuition fellowship my name was always on the invitation lists for marketing jobs.&#0160; (I think some of my classmates hated me.&#0160; I would have.)</p>

<p>One time, one of these hiring consultants invited 15 of us to come in for practice interviews and resume reviews.&#0160; He would pick up to five of us and fly us to Chicago to meet with his clients (Big Brand-Name Consumer Goods Companies).&#0160; </p>

<p>I was on the list.</p>

<p>The day of my interview, if you&#39;d just let me brag a little here, I nailed it.&#0160; </p>

<p>&quot;I&#39;d like to offer you a spot on the Chicago trip.&#0160; You&#39;re smart, you know marketing and you present yourself very well.&#0160; &#0160;My clients would love to meet you.&quot;</p>

<p>&quot;Thanks!&quot;&#0160; I said.&#0160; I gave myself a mental high-five.</p>

<p>&quot;There&#39;s just one thing that needs to be fixed on your resume.&quot;</p>

<p>&quot;OK.&quot;&#0160; I took out a pen so I could write on the copy of my resume I had put on the table between us.</p>

<p>&quot;I think you should take out the last sentence in the &#39;Skills&#39; section&quot;</p>

<p>I reread the &quot;Skills&quot; section.</p>

<p><em>SKILLS</em></p>

<p><em>Experience analyzing AC Nielsen data.&#0160; Working knowledge of French.&#0160; Fluent in Spanish (native speaker).</em></p>

<p> &quot;I know that &#39;working knowledge of French&#39; is a bit awkward, but I don&#39;t want to misrepresent my skill level...&quot;</p>

<p>&quot;No,&quot; he interrupted, &quot;you shouldn&#39;t say you&#39;re fluent in Spanish.&quot;</p>

<p>Now I was confused.&#0160; I&#39;d never heard of such a thing - paring down my resume?&#0160; If anything, in business school we were taught to brag as loudly and as often as possible.&#0160; </p>

<p>&quot;Why?&quot;</p>

<p>&quot;Because you&#39;re an excellent candidate and we don&#39;t want people to get the wrong impression.&quot;&#0160; The bastard said this while looking right at me.</p>

<p>What impression would that be?&#0160; That I&#39;m Hispanic and therefore couldn&#39;t possibly be &quot;smart&quot; or &quot;an excellent candidate&quot;?</p>

<p>I stood up and gathered my things.&#0160; &quot;My background is an asset.&#0160; I&#39;m Hispanic.&#0160; If you or your clients have a problem with that...&quot;&#0160; I was so angry I was about to explode.&#0160; &quot;This interview is over.&quot;</p>

<p>I left the room and marched over to the Career Services Office, where I instantly filed a complaint.&#0160; Now that I&#39;m older and wiser I only wish that I had sent an email to the heads of human resources at his client companies so that they could learn what a <em>tremendo comemierda</em> was representing them.</p>

<p>So yes, ethnicity matters.&#0160; As long as people ask you to deny the essence of who you are in order to be accepted, it matters.&#0160; As long as &quot;Hispanic&quot; is shorthand for &quot;poor&quot; (<em>i.e. Hispanic neighborhood, Hispanic worker, Hispanic mother</em>), it matters.&#0160; As long as Lou Dobbs and his friends look like they&#39;re going to throw up every time they say &quot;Hispanic&quot; it will continue to matter.</p>
