Great Plains Talk: Constructing Nebraska’s Good Life through (Im)migration
Center for Great Plains Studies
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05/16/2025
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Thomas Sanchez, Associate Professor, Dept. of Sociology & Anthropology and Acting Director, Office of Latino and Latin American Studies (OLLAS) at UNO, will speak on immigration in the Great Plains in a talk titled: "Constructing Nebraska’s Good Life through (Im)migration: From Scottsbluff to Schuyler." This presentation explores the presence, history, and social experiences of immigrants, mostly from Latin America, in Nebraska, with an emphasis on the towns of Scottsbluff and Schuyler. Scottsbluff is one of the first towns in the state with large numbers of Mexican (im)migrants and Schuyler is one of the most recent. This presentation tells their stories while placing them in a larger social context. It details the positive contributions that migrants made and continue to make, as well as the problems they face.
This talk corresponds with "The Journey: Documented Items/Undocumented Souls" a photographic and tactile exhibition at the Great Plains Art Museum.
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- [00:00:00.240]so nice to see you all on this beautiful day welcome to the Center for Great Plains Studies
- [00:00:06.160]my name is Margaret Jacobs I'm the director here for the last five years
- [00:00:11.280]and we're delighted to host this evening's event with our speaker Thomas Sanchez
- [00:00:18.560]before we begin i would like to acknowledge that the Center for Great Plains Studies
- [00:00:25.040]is part of the university of nebraska lincoln which is a land-grant institution
- [00:00:29.760]and the unl campus is on land that was seated under duress by the Otoe-Missouria tribe
- [00:00:36.000]to the u.s government in two treaties in 1833 and 1854. salt deposits from salt
- [00:00:44.000]creek in the lincoln area also brought tribes from all over the region including the
- [00:00:49.760]pawnee ponka omaha dakota lakota kiowa cheyenne arapaho hochunk and sack and fox and iowa
- [00:00:59.520]peoples please take a moment to consider the legacies of more than 150 years of displacement
- [00:01:06.800]violence settlement and survival that bring us here today
- [00:01:11.600]the center is working closely with the Otoe-Missouria tribe to reconnect them with their homelands here
- [00:01:21.040]in southeast nebraska and we are also endeavoring to support the revitalization and resurgence
- [00:01:27.280]of other indigenous cultures
- [00:01:29.440]and tribes on the great plains the land we currently call nebraska has always been
- [00:01:34.720]and will continue to be an indigenous homeland
- [00:01:37.360]so this evening's talk complements our current exhibition
- [00:01:43.760]the journey documented items undocumented souls and this is a photographic and tactile exhibition
- [00:01:53.200]here at the great plains art museum the museum has been collaborating with the nebraska
- [00:01:59.200]commission for the blind and visually impaired and with tactile images
- [00:02:04.240]to bring this exhibition to lincoln if you haven't had a chance to see it i hope you'll be able to
- [00:02:10.480]see it this evening if there's time or come back and visit us soon
- [00:02:15.600]i also want to mention this talk is part of our long-standing paul olson lecture series
- [00:02:22.720]we do this every semester we've done it for decades and decades
- [00:02:27.440]and paul is
- [00:02:28.880]an amazing man who helped found the center for Great Plains studies almost 50 years ago
- [00:02:34.640]so we're very grateful to him for his stewardship and leadership
- [00:02:39.520]our speaker this evening is tomas sanchez dr thomas sanchez he's an associate professor
- [00:02:47.760]in the department of sociology and anthropology at the university of nebraska omaha and he's a
- [00:02:54.240]faculty member of the office of latino and latin american studies or OLLAS
- [00:02:59.280]at uno dr sanchez earned his phd in sociology from unl in 2005
- [00:03:06.000]and i know the former chair of sociology is here to celebrate his research focuses on
- [00:03:15.760]ethnic identity formation and the incorporation of latino immigrants to new destinations places
- [00:03:22.880]like schuyler nebraska which he will be speaking about this evening so welcome
- [00:03:28.080]uh tomas we're really delighted to have you here
- [00:03:30.800]so i have to have my timer so that i leave time for you to go see the exhibit
- [00:03:48.240]i was talking about time in scott's bluff it was this art exhibit
- [00:03:53.120]and i think they planned on me speaking about 30 or 40 minutes like i'm going to do today
- [00:03:57.920]but i i was younger and i was less experienced and i spoke for like an hour
- [00:04:02.240]and then when i was done they rushed everybody out and closed the museum
- [00:04:06.560]so um i want to uh thank um let's see where i am slide with yeah i want to thank uh paul olson
- [00:04:15.680]and i'm going to talk a little bit about paul olson in a minute here and the center for great
- [00:04:19.360]plains studies for inviting me here to talk tonight and i want to thank you all for coming and
- [00:04:24.480]hopefully i can make it worth your time before i get going on my on
- [00:04:27.840]my talk i want to thank these four people who really inspired me and and did things for me
- [00:04:32.880]when i was an undergraduate all here all you know veterans of unl lincoln dr ralph grahella
- [00:04:38.720]passed away in 2020 and there's where paul olson comes in paul olson didn't interview me i didn't
- [00:04:44.880]interview he did grahella did interviews he didn't send it to me but it was forwarded to
- [00:04:49.680]me by somebody else that ralph grahella had passed away and he was saying that ralph had
- [00:04:53.920]contributed mightily to the english department at unl
- [00:04:57.520]and that having a memorial was impossible at that time because of covid but maybe we could have one
- [00:05:03.040]later um so i i now i was aware of paul olson before that but i thought that was a good thing
- [00:05:08.480]um ralph grahella was in english dr ralph vigil was in history and um the thing i'll say about
- [00:05:17.440]ralph vigil is he was a character well mostly good but he was a character dr marty ramirez
- [00:05:24.800]um is still a friend and a colleague
- [00:05:27.440]um and still inspires me today when i think of chicanos in nebraska i think of marty ramirez
- [00:05:34.320]he gave me a lot of good advice along the way and and gave me good guidance and then finally
- [00:05:40.240]dr miguel caranza i had a class with him and i knew him as an undergraduate he was in sociology
- [00:05:45.600]but i only had one class with him and i didn't know him well uh he knew my my brother and my
- [00:05:51.920]brothers and sisters better than he knew me but when i came back from graduate school i went into
- [00:05:56.160]sociology and and
- [00:05:57.360]uh miguel ended up being my dissertation chair and uh again you know got to know him better
- [00:06:03.680]going to conferences with him dinners and different kinds of things like that that we do
- [00:06:08.480]in academia uh real quick introduction a little bit about myself i'm from scottsbluff nebraska
- [00:06:16.320]i was born there and graduated from scottsbluff high school in 1984.
- [00:06:20.960]my degrees all three of my degrees are from unl but my first degree my bachelor's degree was in
- [00:06:27.040]criminal justice so technically it's from uno but i did all my coursework here in lincoln
- [00:06:32.320]and then i came back i was out of i was out of school for four years enjoying life the school's
- [00:06:38.560]fun too but it was fun um being being 23 years old and having a bachelor's degree and nothing to do
- [00:06:43.760]right so i i lived in long long beach new york four blocks from the beach and went to the beach
- [00:06:48.880]every day um i came back to school in 1994 got my masters and i must come back in 93 got my
- [00:06:56.720]masters in 95 and then my phd eventually in 2005. today i'm going to talk about immigrants in scotts
- [00:07:03.600]bluff and western nebraska and immigrants in schuyler but you'll see as i go through the talk
- [00:07:09.760]how i define immigrants and it's not maybe not the way that a lot of people think about it but the
- [00:07:15.040]way academically that it's been defined and i think the way that some people think about some
- [00:07:20.080]people who are more ignorant think about it and i'll get to that and then finally hopefully i get
- [00:07:26.400]the cost and the value I think I'm gonna look more at the value as opposed to the
- [00:07:31.800]cost of immigrants and immigration so Nebraska as a state has a long history
- [00:07:40.080]of immigration my immigration from Czechoslovakia Ireland Germany Russia
- [00:07:46.620]Mexico most of Nebraska history I had to think about this when I was when I was
- [00:07:53.700]when I was preparing this most of Nebraska history that we hear about it
- [00:07:58.800]deals with immigrants right but this is only Nebraska history after Europeans
- [00:08:03.720]came so if we look at the history of Nebraska really after Europeans came
- [00:08:09.540]it's all about immigrants because everybody that's in Nebraska now was an
- [00:08:14.760]immigrant as opposed to that history before I was watching the History
- [00:08:18.040]Channel a number of years ago and they had this it was the history of Texas and
- [00:08:21.300]the history of Texas started in 1880
- [00:08:23.700]1848 I started in 1836 the year of the Alamo right and I'm just I'm like this
- [00:08:29.940]is the History Channel there's thousands of years here at least hundreds that
- [00:08:34.500]they're that they're moving out so I don't want to do that with Nebraska this
- [00:08:39.120]is the probably can't see this very well but this is the slide of the foreign
- [00:08:42.660]born people in Nebraska the red is Omaha the green is Nebraska really I'm looking
- [00:08:47.700]at the green it goes up to 2008 and 5.5 percent of the state was foreign-born in
- [00:08:53.340]2023 Nebraska's foreign-born population was 7.7 percent so it's up slightly
- [00:08:59.520]nationally let's see next slide nationally again you can't see it's very
- [00:09:04.500]well but nationally it's up also about the same it was about 12 percent in 2008
- [00:09:11.580]and it's about it's nearing 15 percent now one of the things you can see here
- [00:09:15.420]is the numbers are much much higher than the percentage because the number of the
- [00:09:19.180]population grew during that time also I'm going to
- [00:09:22.980]talk briefly here about immigration European immigration to Scotts Bluff
- [00:09:29.740]Nebraska in the early part of the 20th century the first sugar beet factory of
- [00:09:34.980]the region was built in Scotts Bluff in 1910 Mexicans and I specifically use
- [00:09:41.520]Mexicans here in places when I'm doing this research they say Hispanics but
- [00:09:46.420]Hispanics didn't exist in 1910 right and one thing is max didn't exist - everybody
- [00:09:52.220]here
- [00:09:52.620]that was from that we might consider his fact they were Mexican they have a
- [00:09:57.300]Mexico so that's why I specifically use Mexicans Mexicans joined German Russian
- [00:10:02.580]and Japanese for markers and came to replace them by the 1920s the Hispanic
- [00:10:10.060]population of Nebraska saw a rapid increase from 290 people in 1910 to
- [00:10:16.780]two thousand six hundred eleven people in 1920 and the number kept growing to
- [00:10:22.260]1628 in 1930 this last expansion coincided with the decrease of German
- [00:10:29.540]and Russian workers in the beet fields caused by strict limitation on German
- [00:10:34.320]migration following World War one and then during this period the sugar beet
- [00:10:39.720]industry recruited Mexican origin workers for the beet fields in Nebraska
- [00:10:43.800]I use Mexican origin because for example my father's family came here came here
- [00:10:51.060]came to Scottsbluff
- [00:10:51.900]work in the beet field there from Texas right they weren't technically Mexican
- [00:10:55.740]but Mexican origin that's why I use that term see if I can find way back to
- [00:11:01.260]where I was in 1942 the Mexican farm labor supply program also known as the
- [00:11:07.900]Rossetto program allowed employers in the u.s. to contract Mexican workers for
- [00:11:12.420]seasonal labor after this deal an average of sixty two thousand Mexicans
- [00:11:17.660]a year entered the US from nineteen forty two to nineteen
- [00:11:21.540]forty seven however the Rossetto program did not have a significant
- [00:11:26.140]impact impact on Nebraska as Rossetto labor was direct directed mostly towards
- [00:11:31.200]Arizona California and the Northwest it appears also that the Midwest
- [00:11:36.840]experienced higher rates of suspicion and discrimination against Mexicans
- [00:11:41.760]following World War two I've read a lot of stories and a lot of books about
- [00:11:45.780]Mexicans in the Midwest and there's always someone that uses the stereotypes
- [00:11:51.180]and says things like they always had knives or they always carried and used
- [00:11:57.600]marijuana right I have known and know a lot of people that were in Scotts Bluff
- [00:12:03.360]during that time and none of them that I know of carried knives or used marijuana
- [00:12:07.560]so so there's that stereotype there that is just a stereotype that doesn't have
- [00:12:13.060]any true to it Nebraska failed to attract larger numbers of Hispanics also
- [00:12:18.000]due to the period of Mexican economic prosperity
- [00:12:20.820]from 1946 through 1976 however in 1980 a great jump occurred when the Hispanic
- [00:12:27.360]population of the state grew over 300 percent this increase came about due to
- [00:12:32.760]new labor opportunities from the transformation of the meatpacking
- [00:12:37.140]industry due to new Technologies as well as the economic the Mexican economic crisis of the 1980s
- [00:12:43.080]um so as can be let me see I'm I'm not very good at PowerPoint so if I miss the slides
- [00:12:50.460]just say hey you need to turn the slide um that's not the next slide that I want okay that's going
- [00:12:56.700]to be seen from the previous passage immigration is almost always about labor needs so when
- [00:13:02.160]European immigration slowed significantly during World War I and deprived the U.S of European labor
- [00:13:08.100]the U.S turned to Asia and Mexico turned to Asia first right I shouldn't say that they were both
- [00:13:16.020]happening at the same time we have these timelines of history and we want to put things
- [00:13:20.100]differently but all these things were happening at the same time as European labor was still
- [00:13:24.300]coming over right the the first uh U.S law that banned immigrants based on national origin or
- [00:13:31.920]ethnicity was the Chinese Inclusion Act in 1882. there were still Europeans coming at that time
- [00:13:37.320]right so we're bringing in Chinese and then Japanese and then Koreans and then Filipinos
- [00:13:44.400]and as those numbers started to grow people in the country said oh there's too many Chinese no
- [00:13:49.740]don't know anymore and then there's too many Japanese and then so they just kept doing that
- [00:13:54.060]at the same time Mexicans are coming north and crossing the border for the labor needs of the
- [00:13:59.400]United States for the last 100 plus years the majority of immigration to the state of Nebraska
- [00:14:04.860]and to the country as a whole has been from Mexico and that is mostly what I'm going to talk about
- [00:14:11.340]today I'm going to talk about Mexican and Hispanic labor but let me take a step back and ask the
- [00:14:18.240]question how do we define
- [00:14:19.380]an immigrant the definition that you see here is from the government right the term immigrants
- [00:14:26.160]also known as the foreign-born refers to people residing in the United States who are not US
- [00:14:31.980]citizens at birth this population includes naturalized citizens lawful permanent residents
- [00:14:38.040]and certain legal non-immigrants persons student or work visas those admitted under
- [00:14:44.340]refugee status or asylee status and persons illegally regarding residing
- [00:14:49.020]in the United States so there's the government definition and there's why I say it's kind of
- [00:14:54.720]cloudy who's an immigrant who is not right because what I'm talking about today is not
- [00:14:59.640]the legal definition of citizens or immigrants and I'm going to talk about immigrants and not
- [00:15:03.840]citizens as much but I'm really looking at how immigrants are treated by society by the
- [00:15:12.660]government by the institutions in society education religion work labor force health care
- [00:15:18.660]all those kinds of things and how they treat other people so I'm not looking at specifically
- [00:15:23.040]the government definition and I'm not looking at you know those legal definitions of citizenship
- [00:15:28.980]and immigrant and you can see kind of how messy these can get these definitions can get if we
- [00:15:34.380]look at it that way immigration the definition of immigration is also affected by how people
- [00:15:39.960]are treated by the institutions that I just mentioned it is not the economist it's not
- [00:15:45.420]either or who is an immigrant who is not
- [00:15:48.300]right 68% of Latinos born are born in the United States 68% of Hispanics or Latinos
- [00:15:55.620]so let me let me go back here real quick I use the term Latino for the most part but
- [00:16:00.300]when I'm talking about census data the census uses Hispanic so I'll use Hispanic when I
- [00:16:05.520]talk about census data they're more or less interchangeable okay not exactly but for the
- [00:16:11.780]purposes of this talk they're interchangeable so 68% of Latinos are born in the United States
- [00:16:17.940]but many of those are seen as immigrants and they see themselves that way also most
- [00:16:24.300]of my Latino students at UNO were born in the United States a lot of them born in Omaha to
- [00:16:29.640]parents who were immigrants that were not their parents were not born in the United
- [00:16:33.660]States but those students live an immigrant life their first language was Spanish they
- [00:16:39.320]learned English when they went to school these are these are not people that that
- [00:16:42.780]speak English poorly these are university students right but their first language was Spanish
- [00:16:47.580]they grew up with Mexican Guatemalan Salvadoran and other Latin American customs and traditions
- [00:16:53.640]and US customs and traditions right so they grew up with both which you know loving the
- [00:17:01.100]US and loving some of the Mexican traditions I can't think of anything more satisfying or
- [00:17:06.140]better than than having both of those those things in my life their experiences are
- [00:17:11.020]immigrant experiences but they're not seen as immigrants I'm a third generation United
- [00:17:17.220]States in just like many other people my age in Nebraska when I talk to people who are my
- [00:17:22.980]age I'm always surprised at people whose whose ancestors are from check again Czechoslovakia
- [00:17:29.100]and Germany or Ireland and their grandparents came from Europe just like my grandfather came
- [00:17:34.560]from Mexico right the current president's grandfather came from Germany Friedrich came
- [00:17:41.040]from Germany a little bit earlier than my grandfather Presidio came from Mexico but we see how
- [00:17:46.860]the current president is seen by people not as an immigrant and I'll tell you a little story a
- [00:17:52.380]little bit later of how I am seen as an immigrant even though I've never felt that way so because of
- [00:18:04.240]my light skin I have a great deal of public interaction when I was and I put this word
- [00:18:09.040]in quotation marks accused of being from somewhere else I'm sure if I had darker skin that this would
- [00:18:15.240]happen so many times that it would have been worse for me I'm sure if I had darker skin that this would
- [00:18:16.500]happen so many times that it would have been worse for me I'm sure if I had darker skin that this would
- [00:18:16.740]be memorable to me and I know this from talking to people mostly my students who are darker it's
- [00:18:22.440]that whole question where are you from and I always ask people is this is this a negative
- [00:18:27.720]question and so no no they're just making small talk but when when they say where are you from and
- [00:18:33.300]someone says I'm from Bellevue or I'm from Lincoln and then they go no where are you really from
- [00:18:39.120]that's the question right there right that's the question that gets people so in terms of this where
- [00:18:45.840]are you from the question let's see if this is yeah this is the next one my immigrant experiences
- [00:18:52.260]so I'm living in Schuyler doing my dissertation research there and I'm driving this car that I
- [00:18:58.260]had just bought it wasn't a new car but it was new to me and I'm driving I'm teaching for my graduate
- [00:19:04.080]my GTA in Lincoln and I'm driving back to Schulyer and I noticed that the battery gauge is going down
- [00:19:10.320]going down going down and I said well you know what I just have to drive as far as I can and I'll see
- [00:19:15.180]how far I get and right about the crossroads if you know that area of the state highway 30 and
- [00:19:21.020]highway 15 it's where you turn north to go to David City the car dies right there and I look
- [00:19:26.060]in the rearview mirror and I kid you not there's this big sign that says batteries for sale
- [00:19:31.340]I'm like how lucky it's about a quarter mile maybe half mile back big enough close enough
- [00:19:38.380]that I can see the sign so I go by the battery very nice guy he um he
- [00:19:44.520]he drives to my car your batteries are heavy he puts the battery in connects it takes the old
- [00:19:48.920]battery out puts it in my car and we go back to his his house and I write him a check and he looks
- [00:19:54.840]at the check and he says Sanchez you speak pretty good English and I'm thinking in my head no I
- [00:20:03.000]didn't think of this in my head I thought in my head I told him I said I do speak pretty good
- [00:20:07.720]English the only language I speak which is not totally true but I learned Spanish in college I
- [00:20:13.860]grew up speaking Spanish so it's true enough and he says no no no I know you speak pretty good
- [00:20:19.380]English but where are you from I'm from Scotts Bluff and when I when I'm in Omaha and I tell
- [00:20:24.300]people I'm from Scotts Bluff they always think I'm talking about Council Bluffs so I said I'm
- [00:20:28.440]from Scotts Bluff you know way out in the west end of the state goes yeah yeah I know I'm from
- [00:20:31.440]Scotts Bluff where are you from I'm from Scotts Bluff no but where were you born I was born in
- [00:20:37.680]Scotts Bluff where's your dad from oh my dad's from Texas where's his dad from
- [00:20:43.200]all right he keeps going well my grandfather's from Mexico and he kind of sighs and he doesn't
- [00:20:49.560]say it but he kind of implies like see I knew you were from somewhere else right I mean look at me
- [00:20:55.920]do I look like I'm from do I sound like I'm from somewhere else nobody saw my last name
- [00:21:01.320]so that's that the idea of the Latino is that the always ever immigrant the next two sentences came
- [00:21:07.560]when I first started at UNO and there was this person um very very
- [00:21:12.540]very nice person but he asked me a couple questions we were a racquetball buddies that's
- [00:21:16.800]the only way I knew him and one of them he said he says before coming to UNO had you taught anywhere
- [00:21:22.740]else in the United States and again in my head I'm thinking God this is I I haven't taught anywhere
- [00:21:29.280]else but the United States right and then he asked me something about what is it like teaching in
- [00:21:34.920]English and I said well since I can't teach in Spanish you know there were just such odd questions
- [00:21:41.880]but it was his understanding and actually this guy was politically very conservative but he asked
- [00:21:48.540]questions and he did so respectfully he asked some questions that I thought wow these are kind
- [00:21:53.220]of ignorant questions but you know that's the nature of questions right so I actually appreciated
- [00:21:57.240]interacting with him and and some of the interactions that we had so narratives change and
- [00:22:04.380]immigrant narratives have changed drastically in the short 59 years I have been on the serve
- [00:22:08.940]I have seen stereotypes
- [00:22:11.220]of Mexican immigrants in particular go from the lazy Mexican the manana Mexican to the hardest
- [00:22:19.380]worker in the bunch right I know that my students now they don't know about that old stereotype of
- [00:22:24.960]the lazy Mexican a lot of students that I like that you want to know they work they work their
- [00:22:30.180]part-time jobs and the people that they work with them are immigrants so they see how hard they work
- [00:22:34.500]they know that they come to work every day that they don't take sick days right and they uh they
- [00:22:40.560]work for for not that much money there was this this young man in Schulyer who I interviewed and he
- [00:22:46.860]got a job in construction and he said the first day that he went there he was just working his
- [00:22:52.320]butt off it's not the way he put it but that's the way I'll put it and after an hour it wasn't
- [00:22:57.720]even the whole morning or the whole day his co-workers who were a mix of of Anglo and and
- [00:23:02.820]Latino workers they told him slow down right slow down we have plenty of time to do this work but
- [00:23:09.900]that's that that Mexican work ethic right get this job done so that we can move on to the next one and
- [00:23:14.940]that's what he told me that that's why they do that so the narrative of the immigrant has also
- [00:23:20.940]changed and I'm going to talk now about the immigrant as a stranger right this is Suzanne
- [00:23:26.880]O'Beller's definition she says talking about immigrants as strangers defines a linguistic
- [00:23:33.600]formation that defines all Latinx people regardless of citizenship citizenship
- [00:23:39.240]status as foreign and illegal at the societal and official levels marking them primarily as
- [00:23:45.540]strangers in the United States in the end immigrants whether defined or simply as seen
- [00:23:52.000]by the general public are all strangers and theirs exists what Suzanne O'Beller says right
- [00:23:58.200]here right to some people in the state of Nebraska I have become that stranger right
- [00:24:03.220]that story where are you from which is really not to use the same word but really strange
- [00:24:08.580]to me because I grew up in Scott's Bluff it's almost in the middle of the country right and
- [00:24:14.640]it's this very conservative place and I'm not talking about it's also politically conservative
- [00:24:18.820]but I'm not talking about that kind of conservative I'm just talking about that you know keep your
- [00:24:23.320]head down do your work don't bother other people kind of conservative now it's a little bit of both
- [00:24:28.680]I always loved being from Western Nebraska you know I was telling people that's God's country
- [00:24:33.540]out there now I don't see it as much my parents died so I don't go out there as much
- [00:24:37.920]and politically it's hard to go out there for me because people feel more comfortable expressing
- [00:24:44.460]their prejudice and expressing they're just they're they're they're they're ignorance really
- [00:24:49.380]so I don't enjoy it as much but still being thought of that stranger being thought of
- [00:24:54.100]somewhere else was really weird to me growing up so a little bit more on the immigrant to stranger
- [00:25:01.320]there's George Zimmel he's a famous sociologist had to get the sociology in there and he says
- [00:25:07.260]the unity of nearness and remoteness involved in every human relationship is organized in the
- [00:25:13.400]phenomenon of the stranger the strangers are part of every group and foreign to it at the same time
- [00:25:18.480]now a lot of people think of strangers as as as people you don't know but they're not strangers
- [00:25:24.380]because you don't know you don't know of them you don't know about them right he's talking
- [00:25:28.500]about strangers within your orbit and I and I see I saw this oftentimes in Schuyler and
- [00:25:36.600]I don't want to get too far ahead of myself so I'll talk about that in a minute it's also also
- [00:25:42.480]along the same line with with George Zimmel the stranger like the poor and like the sundry inner
- [00:25:48.960]enemies is an element of the group itself his position as a full-fledged member involves being
- [00:25:54.860]both outside it and confronting it and it reminds me of these people in Schuyler many of whom have
- [00:26:01.440]been there now for 35 years they really started the population really grew it in 1990 they've
- [00:26:06.400]been there for 35 years but this they're still seen by some people in the community as quote
- [00:26:10.300]unquote newcomers or as foreigners right they've been there they've had children their children has
- [00:26:16.240]have had children but they're still seen as strangers I have students in Schulyer when I'm doing
- [00:26:22.220]my research and you know I lived there from 1998 to 2000 and went back and did my interviews in 2003
- [00:26:28.280]and those young people that were there now are my students now I have students occasionally from Schulyer and I
- [00:26:36.200]always I always take them after class and I tell them if you need any help with anything I'm your
- [00:26:40.700]person because of how people treated me when I went to Schulyer I want to I want to give that back
- [00:26:45.680]to them so let's see so let me move on now so so so the immigrant is stranger all Latinos as
- [00:26:54.860]immigrants and I want to go back now and say why am I talking about Scotts Bluff why am I talking
- [00:27:01.220]about Schulyer all right Scotts Bluff is one of the first towns with large numbers of Mexican
- [00:27:06.000]immigrants and Schulyer is one of the most recent and I use immigrants this way because as I said
- [00:27:12.600]my father's family and a lot of other people they weren't really immigrants they were migrants they
- [00:27:17.240]came from Texas they came from Kansas Washington California to work sugar beets and in western
- [00:27:23.620]Nebraska that's why I use it that way there weren't people who were immigrants but most of
- [00:27:27.180]them were actually migrants Scotts Bluff has had a Latino population of about 30% for decades
- [00:27:35.800]right fairly large minority and I'll get to Schulyer in a second but to illustrate some of
- [00:27:42.040]the real differences between Scotts Bluff and Schulyer in terms of how long people have
- [00:27:45.980]been here in terms of things like assimilation the former population in Scotts Bluff is twelve
- [00:27:50.800]twelve it's twelve point seven percent around twelve percent and Schulyer at 64 percent and so
- [00:27:56.860]this really speaks to the assimilation in Scotts Bluff things like excuse me language education
- [00:28:05.600]political participation right of those kinds of things that I really see in Scotts Bluff I remember
- [00:28:11.060]my wife you know we live in Omaha so there's tienditas those stores little markets all over
- [00:28:17.860]Omaha and when we first when I first took her to Scotts Bluff to meet my family she said where's
- [00:28:22.880]the tienditas and there there actually are some now they've come back but there weren't any at
- [00:28:29.600]the time there was that aisle in the supermarket that had ethnic foods but for the most part
- [00:28:35.400]people in Scotts Bluff didn't need those specialty products right now it's changed a little bit but
- [00:28:41.160]that's another lecture for another day so so Schulyer population grew 1,300 sky was
- [00:28:52.640]Hispanic population again that's what the sentence used that's why I've changed the
- [00:28:56.020]Hispanic here grew one thousand three hundred seventy seven percent one of the largest growths
- [00:29:00.480]in the country at the time I was in a conference in Washington DC and someone found out I was
- [00:29:05.200]from Nebraska and they started talking to I didn't know about this and they started
- [00:29:09.980]talking to me about this tremendous growth in towns like Schulyer and Lexington South Sioux
- [00:29:13.940]City and then I said oh I gotta go and look at some of that stuff so that's kind of you
- [00:29:20.020]know it's funny to me that that's why I ended up doing my dissertation but I heard about
- [00:29:24.340]it someone from Minnesota I don't even know from but I heard about it somewhere else Schulyer
- [00:29:31.840]let's see back to Schulyer officially by the census seventy-one percent of the population
- [00:29:35.000]is 75% Hispanic which we know that's an undercount the census always undercounts people right
- [00:29:39.380]in this case it's got to be an undercount it's amazing to me that somewhere in Nebraska
- [00:29:43.580]has and it's it's a small town I don't know what it is now it's probably seven thousand
- [00:29:47.240]people maybe six but it's 71% Hispanic to me that's just kind of amazing in Nebraska
- [00:29:54.020]one of the things I want to I want to switch gears here a little bit it's a little bit
- [00:29:59.160]of an aside but I want to talk about age because the median age and if you remember when I
- [00:30:04.800]remember the median is in the middle it's not the average right so we're 50% are older
- [00:30:09.360]50% are younger the median age for white people in Schuyler is 58 for Hispanics it's 23 right
- [00:30:18.040]the median age for white people in Nebraska is 40 for Hispanics is 24 and if you're looking
- [00:30:23.360]at you know demographics is destiny and the future for Nebraska is brown if not already
- [00:30:29.280]those are the people that are in the grade schools those are the people that are going
- [00:30:31.960]to be coming up this is the future of our state
- [00:30:34.600]whether we like it or not and some of us do like it and some of us don't right that's
- [00:30:40.860]the future of our state um back to Schulyer another thing on age nationally is nationally
- [00:30:49.700]the most common age for white people in the nation is 58 the most common age for Hispanics
- [00:30:56.040]11 11. so there's more 11 year olds than any other age and for Hispanics for white people
- [00:31:03.400]is 58
- [00:31:04.400]that those demographics right and not it's not just about who's here now but who's going
- [00:31:09.560]to be having children nobody 58 well let me rephrase that 58 year olds should not be having
- [00:31:18.420]children
- [00:31:19.420]whether Hispanic or white but that's that future that that we're talking about um yeah
- [00:31:26.640]so these demographics these immigrants coming into Schulyer are positive for Schulyer I remember
- [00:31:32.640]seeing on a news program
- [00:31:34.200]on NBC or something like that and they're interviewing the mayor of Schulyer his name
- [00:31:37.460]is David Reinecke he was the mayor for like 25 years he just I say retired he didn't run
- [00:31:42.360]again for a while but I remember him saying that um Schulyer could be a dead
- [00:31:48.740]town like all these other towns around us but immigration enlivened the city immigration
- [00:31:54.600]made it work um and to give you a little bit of comparison I remember talking to teachers
- [00:31:58.860]I didn't do formal interviews with them but I was talking to these teachers and one teacher
- [00:32:02.220]said you know the Hispanic parents
- [00:32:04.000]they just they just don't get involved they just won't do anything and the other teacher
- [00:32:07.460]said man the Hispanic parents will do anything if it don't like they want to help their children
- [00:32:12.900]with math homework they'll learn the math first and then we'll do the the help them
- [00:32:17.620]with it you know what the difference was one teacher spoke Spanish the other one didn't
- [00:32:22.600]that was the difference right there I remember in Schulyer telling them um you know maybe you
- [00:32:27.500]might have to cancel football so you can so that you can have your teachers learn Spanish
- [00:32:33.800]I think they wanted to run me out of town I think they wanted to run me out of town
- [00:32:38.360]they didn't but um they weren't they weren't keen on me talking about those kinds of things
- [00:32:45.540]so who are these immigrants who are these strangers right there are people that live
- [00:32:49.060]next door and I'm going to talk a little bit about my experiences growing up in Scotts
- [00:32:53.400]Wolf and and the main group that I remember was the Germans from Russia right and so you
- [00:32:58.960]had in in the in the little barrio that I grew up in you had Germans from Russia and
- [00:33:03.600]then Mexicans coming in and moving into those houses and moving into the jobs in the sugar
- [00:33:08.580]beet fields and at the sugar factory so I remember the vast majority of people in the
- [00:33:13.980]neighborhood had they were there were Mexicans right the Benitas lived next door the Morales
- [00:33:19.380]Alfred Delgado they were all Mexicans except there was these these little these few houses
- [00:33:25.060]you know when I started it must have been mid 70s there was like four or five people
- [00:33:33.400]they were all old they had names like Steinmiller and Schlottauer Mrs Cook I remember Mrs Cook
- [00:33:39.700]was the last place the last paper I delivered every morning and she oftentimes had like
- [00:33:44.160]cinnamon rolls or cookies ready you know as I came at six or six thirty in the morning
- [00:33:49.360]but there are these old people a number of them died in the four and a half years that
- [00:33:53.220]I delivered papers there they were some some of them were single some of them were couples
- [00:33:57.840]and their houses always smelled their houses smelled like cabbage
- [00:34:03.200]broccoli and it wasn't something that I was used to I could smell in the morning sometimes
- [00:34:08.680]when I was delivering their paper but of course when I went to collect the money I could smell
- [00:34:12.960]it then now I smell that you know on Saint Patty's Day I smell it at my house because
- [00:34:18.500]I cooked corned beef and cabbage and that's what that smell is but it was so foreign to
- [00:34:22.820]me and it was so it wasn't a pleasant smell for me I'm not sure I like it now but I do
- [00:34:28.660]like cabbage and I do like broccoli now so those were some of the people that that lived
- [00:34:33.000]next door and down the street there was this old woman they were all old her name was Liz
- [00:34:39.560]Keller this is the house she lived in and I want to show you that house because this
- [00:34:44.440]was the company housing that all the Germans from Russia lived in and then the Mexicans
- [00:34:50.540]moved in and the Germans from Russia moved out or died and the Mexicans moved into these
- [00:34:54.900]houses but now it's going up in the 70s Liz Keller lived in this house at this point nobody's
- [00:34:59.560]living there right this this house was abandoned when I took that picture
- [00:35:02.800]I remember her backing off her Model T Ford there was this big long driveway she would
- [00:35:08.140]back it all the way up and then drive down the street I remember my brother Albert telling
- [00:35:12.720]me a story also about interviewing her I think it was in grade school but it might have been
- [00:35:16.960]in middle school and her telling him about after World War II the poor treatment that
- [00:35:22.460]she got in Scotts Bluff after the war being spit upon being told not to speak German and
- [00:35:28.380]I raised this because we see similar things happening today this is not an but this is
- [00:35:32.600]this is an old story right but we see similar things happening to different kinds of people
- [00:35:38.000]today I'm going to show you a couple more of these houses again this was the company
- [00:35:43.020]houses this this is the other side of this Callers house this person this house right
- [00:35:48.520]here was our next door neighbor Alfred Delgado and this yellow house is the house I grew
- [00:35:53.660]up in the house I grew up in was was added to it wasn't like that it was added to when
- [00:35:59.060]my family moved in and then while we lived there we
- [00:36:02.400]added to it again so it had been it had already been added to but most of them were these
- [00:36:07.040]little houses that have uh Liz Keller's house only had one room
- [00:36:11.620]some of them had two rooms but but her house only had had one room here's some other ones
- [00:36:16.600]this is just down the block these houses still exist
- [00:36:19.320]and most of them still exist just like this right they're now filled with
- [00:36:24.720]mostly Mexican but there's also immigrants there from other parts of
- [00:36:28.680]Latin America Honduras is one of the other places that I that I knew of
- [00:36:31.740]people being from again that house where you can see this one I thought was and I
- [00:36:36.960]didn't get a great angle on it but you can see how skinny that house is how
- [00:36:40.680]thin the house is again these are the houses that the Germans from Russia
- [00:36:44.160]lived in first and then the Mexicans moved in and the Germans from Russia
- [00:36:48.040]either moved out or retired there a lot of them became farmers so let's see I
- [00:36:57.540]see immigrants in Schuyler and they're treated by parts of that society and how
- [00:37:03.260]they're treated by parts of that society I haven't been there in a few years but
- [00:37:07.160]when I was there in the early 2001 you could you know I told people you could
- [00:37:11.360]move to Schuyler and do a Spanish immersion in Schuyler you could exist
- [00:37:15.820]there and not speak English for days
- [00:37:17.760]I know because I did and my Spanish wasn't that good at the time it improved
- [00:37:23.520]in Schuyler because everywhere I went there were people speaking Spanish I
- [00:37:27.060]remember approaching people that spoke English and I was kind of relieved
- [00:37:31.240]because my head was hurting from speaking Spanish and I'm only saying
- [00:37:34.740]this because I can imagine how Spanish speakers feel having to speak English
- [00:37:38.700]all the time and think about what you're gonna say and think about how to say it
- [00:37:42.860]Hispanics make up 71% of Schuyler but I have only seen
- [00:37:47.480]I haven't looked recently and I didn't look for this talk but I've only seen
- [00:37:51.500]one Hispanic on the school board or the City Council right so even though they
- [00:37:55.360]make up 71% of the town there's few Hispanics in formal positions of power
- [00:38:00.040]accountants lawyers teachers school board members they're not there going
- [00:38:04.600]back to Scottsbluff the first Hispanic City Council member in Scottsbluff was
- [00:38:09.680]in the 90s this after four decades of 30% they've been being 30% Hispanic
- [00:38:17.200]so those positions of formal power they're just not there I see Latinos
- [00:38:22.680]treated like strangers and their stake in making the community better for
- [00:38:26.920]everybody is ignored they are not allowed to be in these formal positions
- [00:38:31.640]of power no police officers firefighters accountants doctors lawyers school
- [00:38:35.440]teachers on and on and I say allowed in quotation marks because some of its
- [00:38:38.980]self-censorship there's what my dissertation topic was on people that
- [00:38:42.920]said you know what I could do that job but that's really a job for an American
- [00:38:46.920]and they didn't mean an American they met a white person when they said I'm
- [00:38:50.360]an economy so there was a bit of self-censorship the thing about Schulyer
- [00:38:55.680]that was most profound is that the surrounding area is replete with Czech
- [00:38:59.640]polka or German polka and I heard a lot of complaint from the older white
- [00:39:04.960]residents there about the Mexican music and how loud it is I sometimes said
- [00:39:09.900]sometimes didn't but sometimes said you know if you listen to it you might
- [00:39:13.140]enjoy it right because it's the same thing I went to check polka
- [00:39:16.640]dances and not in Schulyer and I can't remember the town a little bit north of
- [00:39:20.060]there I love them I had fun I learned how to dance polka and the Mexican
- [00:39:23.780]dances in Scotts Bluff right but but similar kinds of things there the other
- [00:39:28.400]thing about Schulyer is the immigrants there are mostly from rural communities
- [00:39:31.520]right and so that's why that's the reason why they like Schulyer and so I've
- [00:39:36.400]always said that they have more in common the native-born white people have
- [00:39:40.760]more in common with the immigrants than they do from someone from New York City
- [00:39:43.860]but because they're not citizens because they're
- [00:39:46.360]strangers they don't get to know them in that way they don't get you know
- [00:39:49.940]intimate in that way to figure out those commonalities today's immigrants are
- [00:39:56.160]you know what I'm running out of time so I'm gonna skip that part immigrants are
- [00:40:01.120]good for our country they do the work that no one else wants to do and they do
- [00:40:05.600]it cheaply which is not good for them but it's good for those of us that like
- [00:40:09.480]to eat that like to eat but like to eat meat or vegetables whether fresh frozen
- [00:40:16.080]or canned or have elders in nursing homes or children who need daily care or
- [00:40:22.080]houses built painted or roofed or yards that need to be mowed mowed houses
- [00:40:28.260]cleaned and so on there are also doctors nurses and college professors I realize
- [00:40:33.300]that most of the immigrants that I'm talking about today are workers but you
- [00:40:37.580]know I go I'm at the University there's plenty of college professors there from
- [00:40:40.920]India I go to the doctor and the doctors often times from India or China the nurses are
- [00:40:45.800]oftentimes from the Philippines so there's a number of different immigrants
- [00:40:49.160]but I'm talking mostly about what we call working-class immigrants they're
- [00:40:54.380]good for our state they do the work at pig farms in Platt County they keep up
- [00:41:00.500]our population so that we don't lose a congressional seat they're good for our
- [00:41:04.460]universities they and their offspring attend and they are told that they keep
- [00:41:08.960]going to the University of students they commit far fewer crimes than their
- [00:41:12.440]native-born counterparts across all categories
- [00:41:15.520]and few of them have been convicted of 34 felonies almost none of them and I
- [00:41:20.660]say this because this research is robust it wasn't done in just one place at one
- [00:41:25.240]time there's research has done all across the country over decades that
- [00:41:29.200]show that immigrants can commit far fewer crimes than any other group in the
- [00:41:33.080]country right so whatever people have been telling us it's lies it just it's
- [00:41:40.060]just flat out lies not having this population would negatively affect the
- [00:41:45.240]communities they had have inhabit by missing the economic and cultural
- [00:41:49.120]contributions that Latin American immigrants make to the state and the
- [00:41:53.040]Omaha area in 2019 for example oh yeah the office of Latino Latin American
- [00:41:58.080]Studies research found that spending by Latin American and Caribbean immigrants
- [00:42:02.460]generated 981 million dollars and supported 7354 jobs in the state
- [00:42:09.560]immigrant labor in the construction food services and animal slaughtering and
- [00:42:14.280]processing
- [00:42:14.960]sector in the Omaha metro area alone generated 7.9 billion dollars and 37,000
- [00:42:22.960]271 jobs 7.9 billion dollars not million billion and 37,000 jobs if all
- [00:42:30.980]undocumented immigrants in Nebraska estimated to be about 30% of immigrants
- [00:42:35.300]in Nebraska were to be deported and there's not counting family members
- [00:42:38.900]there's just the immigrants themselves Nebraska would lose an estimated 43
- [00:42:42.440]million dollars in state and local taxes every
- [00:42:44.680]year 43 million we have a budget deficit imagine taking 43 million more out of
- [00:42:50.180]that right and it's not just state taxes but local taxes the executive decisions
- [00:42:54.700]related to immigration will have significant effects for the future of
- [00:42:58.360]Omaha and the state previous instances of mass deportation have ended with
- [00:43:03.100]families shattered have had important effects on local economies and the lies
- [00:43:07.780]of state the lies of those who stay behind but today is not the first time
- [00:43:12.280]the federal government enforcement of immigration
- [00:43:14.400]has affected the state in 1998 the INS it was still the INS at the time they
- [00:43:21.640]started this thing called Operation prime beef and eventually became
- [00:43:24.780]Operation Vanguard and what this what they were going to do is they're going
- [00:43:28.260]to be more humane so instead of going to meatpacking plants and doing raids where
- [00:43:32.040]they took buses and rounded up 200 people they subpoenaed the records of
- [00:43:36.180]the meatpacking plants and then they said we're gonna make an appointment
- [00:43:42.200]with people who
- [00:43:44.120]whose papers are suspect and find out if they're you know if they're here if they
- [00:43:47.820]have permission to be here this is that in Schuyler there was 302 people out of
- [00:43:52.580]1,800 people at the plant that had suspect papers okay so they made
- [00:43:57.200]appointments for them a week two weeks later two people showed up for those
- [00:44:01.860]appointments and those are people that they had correct paperwork it just
- [00:44:05.660]hadn't caught up to the INS yet 300 people left 300 workers right that's 300
- [00:44:10.760]heads of households that's 300 people plus all their
- [00:44:13.840]their families who are not spending money at the supermarket who are not
- [00:44:17.340]paying rent at houses and on and on and on I was on the 1999 governor's task
- [00:44:22.480]force for immigration enforcement and our recommendation was for the
- [00:44:27.100]Republican governor Mike Johans to ask the INS not to enforce immigration in
- [00:44:31.680]the state of Nebraska because it was destroying the economy at the time the
- [00:44:35.780]price of beef had been low for a long long time and it was just starting to
- [00:44:39.100]come up and then operation Vanguard comes in and all of a sudden the
- [00:44:43.560]plants don't have workers right so this is one of those those instances of that
- [00:44:49.820]if it affects all of us economically these instances have also meant large
- [00:44:54.900]numbers of immigrants leaving the US on their own volition out of fear and even
- [00:45:00.480]cases of US citizens being being deported excuse me the Nebraska Chamber
- [00:45:05.340]of Commerce and Industry a pro-business organization that has not traditionally
- [00:45:09.720]been in favor of increased immigration as more recently
- [00:45:13.280]recognized the role that immigrants played and the need that the state has
- [00:45:16.340]of attracting the working-age population in 1922 the chamber began conversations
- [00:45:22.340]with Omaha together one community you might have heard of OTOP to create a
- [00:45:25.940]more welcoming environment for immigrants and to address labor
- [00:45:29.360]shortages in the state in 2024 more than 60 organizations from various sectors
- [00:45:34.880]including labor unions hospitals banks and livestock producers came together to
- [00:45:39.720]form the Nebraska Alliance for thriving communities
- [00:45:43.000]their goal is to create a unified voice advocating for state and federal policy
- [00:45:47.800]changes that expand work opportunities for immigrants in the state this
- [00:45:52.780]alliance demonstrates how different sectors are recognizing the significant
- [00:45:56.980]role played by immigrants in sustaining Nebraska's economic growth Brian Sloan
- [00:46:01.540]president of the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce and Industry during a
- [00:46:05.020]presentation of this alliance at the Nebraska Capitol stated we don't see a
- [00:46:09.400]solution to Nebraska's workforce problem without immigration
- [00:46:12.720]reform and without our communities being successful and welcoming these people
- [00:46:17.460]into the communities so it's not about the brain drain right it's about
- [00:46:23.120]bringing people to the state like people that live in Schulyer who like living
- [00:46:27.940]there like they enjoy it I remember asking people from El Salvador one time
- [00:46:32.720]what do you like about Schulyer and they said "porque esta calma, tranquilo" and you don't
- [00:46:37.720]have to speak Spanish no it's calm it's relaxed right they like living there
- [00:46:42.440]Latino and Latin American immigrant communities have been a central part of
- [00:46:45.740]the social fabric of Nebraska for more than a hundred years and this time they
- [00:46:49.980]have made significant contributions to Nebraska and continue to do so there's
- [00:46:54.860]not a time to create barriers to Latinos and Latin American immigrants but to
- [00:46:58.640]welcome them at the city county and state level we need to further support
- [00:47:03.080]Latinos and Latin American immigrants who already live here and welcome new
- [00:47:07.100]ones recognizing that Latino history is Nebraska history as representative
- [00:47:12.160]bacon mentioned that the inauguration of the Nebraska Hispanic Hall of Fame he
- [00:47:17.200]quote many Latino leaders untold stories deserve to be highlighted and
- [00:47:21.760]celebrated I want to end by thinking like I didn't I didn't I didn't think my
- [00:47:32.200]family before because whenever I talk about it might get choked up so think my
- [00:47:38.400]family when immigrants and sort of
- [00:47:41.880]grits who work hard so that I don't have to and thank you to the office of
- [00:47:45.720]Latino Latin America Studies for providing a space to do research on
- [00:47:49.800]immigrants and thank you all for coming tonight
- [00:47:54.040]43 minutes I was told I had 45 so questions are there questions
- [00:48:11.600]and if there's no question that doesn't hurt my feelings just means I did a
- [00:48:15.140]really good job explaining so earlier you spoke about some of these
- [00:48:20.600]communities where Latinos or immigrants or children of immigrants don't hold any
- [00:48:24.800]of those positions of authority even though they've been there for you know
- [00:48:28.820]decades or whatnot why do you think that is and what can be done to to change
- [00:48:33.140]that or to get them into those positions yeah yeah so again a couple things and I
- [00:48:37.820]think some of it is the is the reception that they
- [00:48:41.320]have there again I use a loud in quotation marks because a lot of times
- [00:48:48.000]it's self-censorship I remember in Schulyer talking to people and they would
- [00:48:51.160]say you know there's this job and I can do that job and I'm qualified for that
- [00:48:56.080]job but that job for my medic on or not necessarily related to jobs but other
- [00:49:02.000]things like they didn't want to go they didn't think was their place to go talk
- [00:49:06.100]to the school the teachers in the school because of things that were happening in
- [00:49:10.420]the school
- [00:49:11.040]so some of it is coming from outside the you know again language trips me up
- [00:49:18.780]here because I don't want to say mainstream community because if you're
- [00:49:21.480]71% of the population you are the mainstream community right but that
- [00:49:25.660]community there that that keeps them out of there and then some of its comes from
- [00:49:30.660]within of people not feeling worthy or not feeling valued to do that and one of
- [00:49:35.280]the things that we can do is you know I haven't I haven't talked to
- [00:49:40.760]students that I've had from Schuyler to see if they plan on going back to Schuyler
- [00:49:45.140]to practice professionally there whatever they're doing but I'm gonna
- [00:49:49.700]have to start doing that because that's where I see that value coming that
- [00:49:54.680]people could do jobs like that right going and I can think of one person in
- [00:49:59.840]particular from Schuyler is trained to be a speech pathologist
- [00:50:03.240]surely they need speech pathologist in Schuyler and the surrounding area where
- [00:50:07.880]it doesn't have to be just Schuyler.
- [00:50:10.480]I don't know if that answers your question that's my shot at it.
- [00:50:16.800]Other questions?
- [00:50:40.200]Audience Member: And I'm wondering if you can speak to some of those that I heard, what
- [00:50:46.960]you think works well and then my shameless plug is I heard the AADP and if you want to
- [00:50:52.760]sign a mission statement for the union at UNL, talk to me.
- [00:50:57.460]No, I love it.
- [00:50:58.460]I was in 2010 or 2012, I don't remember exactly.
- [00:51:03.140]I was the president of the AADP at UNL so I'm very familiar with the union.
- [00:51:09.920]Yeah, in terms of retention, it's similar kinds of things that we're looking at with
- [00:51:16.060]jobs, right, is the climate that the university puts forth.
- [00:51:21.880]I'm teaching for the first time a class called Latino Sociology, first time I'm teaching
- [00:51:26.280]it this semester.
- [00:51:27.280]We had this, this morning, we had this conversation about, you know, the students said, "I wish,"
- [00:51:35.160]I'm not sure if they said, I'll say the administration.
- [00:51:38.880]I wish the administration...
- [00:51:39.640]The administration would just come out and say, "We're going to continue Latino studies
- [00:51:43.720]or we're not going to continue Latino studies."
- [00:51:45.900]But we've heard really nothing.
- [00:51:47.980]Now part of that is the president of the University of Gold has, probably not him personally,
- [00:51:53.200]right, but his people have informed the chancellors of the separate campuses not to make statements
- [00:51:59.360]that everything's going to come from his, from his office.
- [00:52:02.760]But until the basketball team made the NCAA tournament, we didn't, I didn't hear anything
- [00:52:07.640]from the chancellor.
- [00:52:08.640]And then I got this email.
- [00:52:09.360]I said, oh, she's finally going to say something.
- [00:52:11.280]And it was go out and support the basketball team.
- [00:52:15.480]So I think a lot of it is, you know, it starts from the top, and we haven't seen that leadership.
- [00:52:21.460]Another part of that is when I started there in 2000, there was about 350 Latino Hispanic
- [00:52:29.440]students at UNO and about 12 Latino professors.
- [00:52:34.200]Now there's, I want to say, 2,800 Latino students at UNO.
- [00:52:39.080]And about 10 or 12 Latino professors.
- [00:52:42.120]And that's counting professors from Latin America.
- [00:52:45.700]Again, this is another talk, but there are differences there.
- [00:52:49.720]And I'm always the first person to say, you don't have to be Latino to teach Latino students.
- [00:52:55.600]You don't have to be black to teach black students, those kinds of things.
- [00:52:58.920]But it does make a difference when that person, the leader in the room, I don't want to say
- [00:53:04.220]looks like you, because I don't look like a lot of them, but has similar experiences,
- [00:53:08.220]can talk about things.
- [00:53:08.800]Even simple things, like telling stories about heating tortillas on the comal.
- [00:53:15.700]Those are things that they can relate to and they go, oh, this person's not just like us,
- [00:53:20.080]but similar.
- [00:53:21.240]So I think hiring more Latino faculty, part of the problem is a lot of the faculty that
- [00:53:27.560]we've had in the last four or five years, they've been here for a year or two and then
- [00:53:31.420]left.
- [00:53:32.420]Some of that had to do with COVID.
- [00:53:33.420]If you can imagine going to a campus and you're there in your first year, but you can't go
- [00:53:38.520]talk to people, and you can't go interact with people, I might get bored and leave too.
- [00:53:43.920]But there's some other things going on there that it's just not welcoming for people.
- [00:53:50.200]I think that's part of it.
- [00:53:51.200]It's not the total solution, but I think that's part of it.
- [00:53:54.380]There are other things, some really good things going on there.
- [00:53:57.200]The Dreamers Pathways Scholarship is a privately funded, it's for undocumented students who,
- [00:54:02.140]if you don't know, can't get federal financial aid, and there's, I don't know, dozens of
- [00:54:08.240]students on that scholarship.
- [00:54:10.320]The Thompson Learning Community, otherwise known as the Buffett Scholarship, that's the
- [00:54:15.200]reason we have, that's the reason UNO is 17, 17.8% of UNO is Hispanic/Latino, is because
- [00:54:21.640]of Thompson Learning Community.
- [00:54:23.360]So thank you, Warren Buffett, and Officebreaking, and all those kinds of people.
- [00:54:30.300]There was another question?
- [00:54:31.300]Yeah, right here.
- [00:54:32.300]Yeah, thank you, first thing, for the talk.
- [00:54:33.300]I was thinking about a few components of the things that you talked about.
- [00:54:37.960]One of the things that you brought up, particularly one, your kind of changing feelings towards
- [00:54:43.440]going to Scottsbluff.
- [00:54:44.440]And I will preface this saying that I also do research in Scottsbluff with the Japanese
- [00:54:51.280]American community.
- [00:54:52.280]Okay.
- [00:54:53.280]Yeah, a long community there of Japanese farmers, farmers, workers, yeah.
- [00:54:54.280]100% of those histories intersect.
- [00:54:55.280]And so I was also thinking about this notion of kind of rurality and this rural-to-rural
- [00:55:06.280]migration.
- [00:55:07.680]And how this complicates the kind of national imaginary of what rural America is, right?
- [00:55:12.400]Because rural America is supposed to be the carrier and the ideals of the nation, which
- [00:55:16.980]are largely white, which are largely Protestant, which are largely of a certain kind of person,
- [00:55:25.680]right?
- [00:55:26.680]But Sky River disrupts that, Scott's blood disrupts that, right?
- [00:55:31.320]And so I'm wondering how you grapple with that, not only in maybe your personhood, but
- [00:55:37.400]your own research or your ideas or thinking and teaching, right, how these changes, particularly
- [00:55:43.300]in the last 10 years, might have influenced that, that's lighting the forces, if I would
- [00:55:51.340]say.
- [00:55:52.340]Yeah.
- [00:55:53.340]Yeah.
- [00:55:54.340]Well, part of my individual personal growth was realizing that a lot of these Hispanic
- [00:56:00.980]immigrants, a lot of immigrants from Latin America, were from rural places.
- [00:56:06.200]I just never thought of that.
- [00:56:07.120]I never thought of them as being from that.
- [00:56:08.340]I don't know why.
- [00:56:09.340]I always thought of them, "Oh, you're from Mexico City."
- [00:56:11.200]Almost none of them are from Mexico City.
- [00:56:12.860]Right?
- [00:56:13.860]And I didn't realize this until I was, when I lived in Omaha, I mean, I saw it somewhat
- [00:56:18.440]from the research, when they felt comfortable in Schulyer, they liked Schulyer, they talked
- [00:56:21.840]about not having to lock my doors and being able to leave the keys in the car and all
- [00:56:25.440]kinds of stuff in this small town, but I remember talking to my neighbors in Omaha, and I remember
- [00:56:30.600]them one time, and I don't know how this happened, because they didn't speak English, and my
- [00:56:35.080]Spanish wasn't that great.
- [00:56:36.840]But somehow, they might have said, someone might have said in English, they said, "You
- [00:56:40.400]don't know how to work a horse?"
- [00:56:43.240]And I said, not to them in my head, I'm thinking, "Work a horse?
- [00:56:48.400]Who speaks like that?
- [00:56:50.280]Who talks like that?
- [00:56:51.280]You know who talks like that?
- [00:56:52.380]People who work horses."
- [00:56:53.380]And that's when I realized, they're from these little ranchos near Guadalajara or Guanajuato
- [00:56:59.980]or wherever they're from, they're not from cities.
- [00:57:06.560]When we're talking about differences and we're talking about things like gender and
- [00:57:11.680]age and race and ethnicity, education, whatever it is, I think the rural-urban dynamic gets
- [00:57:21.540]left out of that.
- [00:57:24.000]Even in Nebraska, right?
- [00:57:26.720]Most of our population is not rural, but most of our state certainly is.
- [00:57:31.640]And so I kind of forgot your question, but...
- [00:57:36.280]I don't know if I forgot it or just didn't have a really good answer for it.
- [00:57:42.580]But yeah, I think bringing that back into the equation with research and just having
- [00:57:48.180]people realize that a lot of people from Latin America are from small rural places, not from
- [00:57:54.040]cities.
- [00:57:55.040]They're not urbane in that way.
- [00:57:57.260]There's another question back here.
- [00:57:59.160]I wanted to start with a brief comment, not on the last speaker, but before next.
- [00:58:06.000]I'm a professor here at UNL and we recently had a Supporting Effective Educator Development
- [00:58:16.040]grant pulled by DOGE because it was supporting diversity ostensibly, and that included actually
- [00:58:22.880]two Grow Your Own students from Schuyler, so students from Schuyler going back to Schuyler
- [00:58:28.860]to teach.
- [00:58:29.860]We're working madly to try to come up with alternative ways for folks with those aspirations
- [00:58:35.720]to continue on.
- [00:58:36.720]So that's the editorial part.
- [00:58:37.720]But the thing that strikes me, because to your point, Schuyler has been substantially
- [00:58:42.720]Latino for 30 years and so too has Lexington, not as old as Scott's Club, not as old as
- [00:58:52.600]Rhode Island, I don't know if it's Grand Island, I'm from Rhode Island.
- [00:58:58.440]But why is it that at a county level, at a municipality level, there hasn't been really
- [00:59:05.440]a successful Latino sort of aggregation of political power by way of the vote, and is
- [00:59:12.960]it, I mean I realize that folks who come, who are foreign and born, can't become voters
- [00:59:18.880]absent a long and convoluted pathway through green card and citizenship and so forth, but
- [00:59:23.640]to your point that we have a second generation, third generation, and fourth generation, what's
- [00:59:28.000]blocking, and I buy the idea that maybe a lot, but this is the question, what's blocking
- [00:59:35.160]for participation or the success of having it?
- [00:59:38.120]Yeah.
- [00:59:39.120]The first thing that came to my mind, it's not the whole answer, is that people always
- [00:59:44.000]ask why Latinos don't vote, and in terms of racial ethnic groups, Hispanics, Latinos vote
- [00:59:49.760]in lower numbers, but also young people don't vote.
- [00:59:53.920]18 to 24 year olds is a group that votes less than any other group, and there's a lot of
- [00:59:58.160]people in Schulyer that are 18.
- [01:00:00.340]So my first answer to that is the age, and that's not just true in Schulyer, that's true
- [01:00:04.880]nationally.
- [01:00:06.800]There was, I don't think this is still happening, but a number of years ago, maybe it was eight,
- [01:00:11.960]10 years ago, there was a million Hispanics turning 18 every year in our country.
- [01:00:16.880]I don't think it's quite that high, but it's still a lot.
- [01:00:19.020]So those demographics are starting to catch up.
- [01:00:21.280]But I think also from research that I did there and talking to people again, like I
- [01:00:25.140]said earlier, they don't feel worthy.
- [01:00:27.640]They don't feel like that's part of their community.
- [01:00:30.420]Even after being there for 30 to 35 years, they're still strangers.
- [01:00:34.040]They don't feel...
- [01:00:34.600]That's where they're supposed to be.
- [01:00:38.500]I've seen in Schuyler, I can't remember the name, but this development group that's trying
- [01:00:46.340]to grow things like that, but they've been around for 10 years or 15 years.
- [01:00:50.840]They haven't had a lot of luck.
- [01:00:54.000]Those are some of the things.
- [01:00:55.000]Another thing that adds in there is that the people in Schuyler, the immigrants, are from
- [01:01:01.400]Mexico and they're from different states in Mexico.
- [01:01:04.320]They're from Guatemala, and some of them are indigenous and some of them are Latino from
- [01:01:09.280]Guatemala.
- [01:01:10.280]They're from El Salvador, Peru, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and they don't always get along, right?
- [01:01:16.720]So we think of, and I tend to think of like, oh, there's this Hispanic group in Schuyler,
- [01:01:21.120]there's this Latino group in Schuyler, but at times there's animosity within the group.
- [01:01:27.000]One of the things that I looked at in my research, my hypothesis was that the Latinos in Schuyler
- [01:01:34.040]are a huge Latino community because it's too small.
- [01:01:36.580]Like Chicago has the Mexican section and the Puerto Rican section, and I'm not sure there's
- [01:01:40.380]a Cuban section, but it's big and they don't always get together and come together as Latinos.
- [01:01:45.180]I figured in Schuyler, they would have to because it's so small.
- [01:01:48.860]And that was true to some degree and not to other degree.
- [01:01:51.820]People told me, so there was a community in Schuyler, Latino community, as opposed to
- [01:01:56.480]the white English speaking community.
- [01:01:58.800]But then when you broke it down back into the Latino community, the Guatemalans complained
- [01:02:02.820]about the Mexicans.
- [01:02:03.760]And the Mexicans complained about the Salvadorans and vice versa.
- [01:02:07.460]And they always preface that with, we like each other, we get along.
- [01:02:11.580]One of the things that the Guatemalans and the Salvadorans said about the Mexicans, we
- [01:02:14.540]like the Mexicans, but they party too much.
- [01:02:18.040]And they invite us to the parties and we go.
- [01:02:20.940]But they'll have a one year old birthday and they'll have a keg of beer.
- [01:02:25.400]And I'm thinking back to my daughter's one year old birthday and I'm like...
- [01:02:29.920]But so it's not always like one group that's...
- [01:02:33.480]That's all together in that way, just like Latinos nationwide, right?
- [01:02:38.160]There's differences.
- [01:02:39.160]So I think that a number of those things go into why that hasn't happened.
- [01:02:45.120]Yeah.
- [01:02:46.120]Yeah.
- [01:02:47.120]Thanks.
- [01:02:48.120]I'm from Schulyer and one of the things in growing up, it was very clear because...
- [01:03:03.200]I was in Schulyer, first of all, it was a pure white community, you know, black, there was
- [01:03:09.720]one black family that came in and out of it, and it was small, no Latinos.
- [01:03:16.340]There were two churches, there was a German Catholic and there was a Czech Catholic church.
- [01:03:23.040]St. Mary's and St. Augustine's.
- [01:03:24.040]St. Mary's and St. Augustine's, and as I grew up, there was a lot of prejudice against
- [01:03:32.920]the Catholic Church from a religious perspective. That the German Catholics and the Czech Catholics
- [01:03:39.160]did not get along. The Czech Catholics had a big seminary which they moved north of Stardom.
- [01:03:46.160]It's beautiful.
- [01:03:47.160]Yeah, I've been there. It's a beautiful place.
- [01:03:50.160]And so that prejudice was there. And in the church that I grew up in, several of the church
- [01:03:58.160]members were really anti-Catholic, German Catholic. They weren't anti-Catholic. They
- [01:04:02.640]weren't anti-Chet Catholic. So part of our school, we used to have debates and arguments
- [01:04:10.520]about that. But that prejudice has been there in the white population. And it's still there.
- [01:04:16.520]It hasn't gone away. It's gone under, so to speak. And I don't have any answers to that.
- [01:04:25.520]But I wonder how much the religious aspect, but like nationally, a lot of Latinos and
- [01:04:32.360]the American people, they're not going to be able to get out of the country. And I'm
- [01:05:02.080]And there, when he walked in, he was told by the Latino manager of that huge packing plant, that you're white, you need to stay out of all of the conflict. Because there were a lot of drugs being sold, and there were black workers and Latino workers, and Native Americans. And there were murders, and there were all kinds of things going on.
- [01:05:26.080]So, to me, it's kind of like there's a religious aspect to all of this, too, that fits in that I don't have. Is there much research on that?
- [01:05:35.080]No, well, so I ran into, I'll get to the religious aspect in a minute, but I remember listening to my colleague talk to this woman in Schuyler.
- [01:05:43.080]I was scrambling, writing notes. It wasn't a formal interview. But she started off with, and she was, I want to say she was Czech, maybe.
- [01:05:51.080]But she started off with those Germans. Those Germans, they're so obstinate, right?
- [01:05:55.080]She's talking about the Germans. And then she was on, oh, and then in the 50s, they would, they would hurt the term she used.
- [01:06:02.080]They would bust in Negroes from Omaha. Right. She didn't like that.
- [01:06:05.080]And then now the Hispanics are here. And at one point she said, you can see them on Friday lined up at the liquor store to cash their check.
- [01:06:11.080]And then they spend all their money on liquor and then a couple of cents there.
- [01:06:14.080]And they don't spend their money here. They send it all home.
- [01:06:18.080]Now, it wasn't a formal interview, but I'm thinking, like, do they spend all their money on liquor or do they send it all home?
- [01:06:24.080]In terms of the religious thing, yeah, there's St. Mary's and St. Augustine's, and they're like two or three blocks away from each other.
- [01:06:31.080]You wouldn't think that a town that small would be able to support two Catholic churches, but it goes back and it's long-standing.
- [01:06:38.080]I remember talking to this woman. She was probably in her 30s, and I don't remember which church she belonged to,
- [01:06:44.080]but she still had those prejudices against the other church, so I believe it was St. Augustine's that started,
- [01:06:53.080]you know, it started with a Spanish Mass on Saturday, and then it was a Spanish Mass on Saturday,
- [01:06:58.080]and one on Sunday, and a Mass in English on Sunday.
- [01:07:01.080]When I went to Mass there in 2003 or 2004, it was all in Spanish, and the priest spoke Spanish.
- [01:07:12.080]He spoke English, but not very well, okay?
- [01:07:15.080]I remember going to this, it was the, I want to say it was the 100th, maybe 125th anniversary of the church.
- [01:07:22.080]I think it was the old, I think it was the 100th anyway.
- [01:07:24.080]And so there was all these tables with white people at the front, and then three or four tables with Hispanics in the back.
- [01:07:31.080]And this priest went up there.
- [01:07:33.080]Another priest spoke first, but this, he wasn't Mexican.
- [01:07:36.080]I don't remember where he was from.
- [01:07:38.080]But he went up there, and he spoke in English.
- [01:07:41.080]I was horrified, right?
- [01:07:43.080]Because the people there, because first of all, his English was terrible.
- [01:07:46.080]You couldn't understand him.
- [01:07:48.080]But there was Hispanics there.
- [01:07:50.080]He wasn't speaking to them.
- [01:07:51.080]And it was just interesting that he wanted to, I guess, impress the other people there, you know, in terms of that religious aspect.
- [01:08:01.080]I haven't seen a lot of research, but I did run into it a little bit when I was there in Scotland.
- [01:08:06.080]But definitely the history of ethnic animosity, right, between the Germans and the Czechs, and then later the Irish and whoever came in first.
- [01:08:17.080]So in writing my dissertation, that's kind of where I start.
- [01:08:20.080]I don't start with the, for lack of a better word, white-Hispanic kind of divide.
- [01:08:24.080]I start with some of those other divides and then lead up to where we are 20 years ago and still in a lot of ways today.
- [01:08:34.080]So the professor back here talked about some Doge elimination of program money.
- [01:08:41.080]Has something similar happened at UNO as well?
- [01:08:44.080]I'm sure it has, but not with Latino Studies yet.
- [01:08:49.080]We're keeping our fingers crossed.
- [01:08:51.080]We're really trying to stress that we are not a diversity, we're not a DEI program.
- [01:08:57.080]We're an academic program.
- [01:08:59.080]I was going to say whether people buy it, but that sounds like it's not true.
- [01:09:04.080]And it is true.
- [01:09:06.080]So we haven't seen anything yet.
- [01:09:08.080]But we have, you know, the administration has gone through OYAS, for example,
- [01:09:13.080]and they've done this with all the programs and they take out certain things.
- [01:09:17.080]They're just looking for words.
- [01:09:18.080]You probably heard this ridiculous thing where they took the Enola Gay off the Defense Department website
- [01:09:24.080]because it had "gay" in it, right?
- [01:09:26.080]So they're doing stuff like that.
- [01:09:29.080]And the only thing that's happened with Latino Studies with OYAS so far
- [01:09:33.080]is that a lot of our previous talks, presentations, have been archived.
- [01:09:38.080]They used to be on our website, and they took them off the website and then archived them
- [01:09:42.080]because they had certain words in them that, you know, this is this whole thing of
- [01:09:47.080]nobody's threatened anything from the federal governments.
- [01:09:50.080]They're just capitulating before anything even happens.
- [01:09:53.080]And I understand. People are afraid, and I understand that.
- [01:09:59.080]I mean, we're talking about tens of millions of dollars at UNO, at UNL.
- [01:10:04.080]So I understand that they don't want to stick their neck out because it might get chopped off.
- [01:10:09.080]But yeah, nothing's happened yet.
- [01:10:16.080]We still have three-plus years to figure out if that's going to happen. Yeah?
- [01:10:20.080]I'm from South Sydney. I'm also a Thompson scholar.
- [01:10:23.080]And I think every immigrant has their own definition of immigrant.
- [01:10:28.080]But how would you describe, as a Latino or Hispanic, the definition of immigrant?
- [01:10:37.080]Wow, that's a tough question because I don't know that there's a definition, right?
- [01:10:45.080]And then there's kind of the stereotype of immigrants or migrants, and then there's updated stereotypes of them.
- [01:10:53.080]And so I don't know that I have one solid definition of what that would be.
- [01:10:59.080]It's just so very, they're just so heterogeneous, right?
- [01:11:03.080]I mean, we're talking about people from Mexico and Latin America, but also today, people from Russia and China and all over the world.
- [01:11:11.080]And all those people have different experiences.
- [01:11:14.080]And I alluded to just very briefly in my talk, you know, most of who, when people think of immigrants, they think of kind of the people I'm talking about today.
- [01:11:21.080]The people that went to Schulyer to work in the meat packing plant and in agriculture, and the people that went to Scottsbluff to work in the beet fields and in agriculture.
- [01:11:28.080]But there's a lot of other professionals that come from, not necessarily from Latin America, they come from Latin America too.
- [01:11:34.080]And I know that because a lot of my colleagues from Latin America, when they first come to UNO, they think they're white.
- [01:11:43.080]And then somehow, somewhere along the way, they figure out, they get taught, however you want to put it, that they're not white.
- [01:11:52.080]They have accents. And that's that difference between Latino professors and Latin American professors.
- [01:11:58.080]Most of the people from South America, they grew up with privilege. That's why they're in the United States. That's why they're studying here.
- [01:12:05.080]And I'm learning, the more I learn about some of them, they grew up with money, right? And most people that I know
- [01:12:12.080]grew up working class from Mexico and from other parts of Latin America, they grew up in the United States.
- [01:12:17.080]Now those are all stereotypes. I'm a sociologist, right? So we deal in generalizations.
- [01:12:21.080]So there's always going to be exceptions to those kinds of things.
- [01:12:29.080]I'm getting kind of tired.
- [01:12:32.080]Let's give him a hand.
- [01:12:34.080]Thank you.
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