On September 23, PBS will air the first episode of The War, a 15-hour documentary about World War II. Directed by the award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns, The War focuses on how World War II affected "four quintessentially American towns" in Alabama, Connecticut, Minnesota and California. Because of its focus, though, the film has come under fire.
Outraged that The War did not touch upon the contributions of Latinos in World War II, one Hispanic interests group, "Defend the Honor," demanded that the film be modified to meet their wishes. According to the organization's website:
Latino organizations and leaders called on Ken Burns and Florentine Pictures to meet with a representative cross-section of the national Latino leadership to explain in detail the changes they have made to the film, how they plan to include the Latino experience in their future projects and how they plan to include Latinos on the Florentine team. They also call on PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger, as well as WETA-TV’s CEO and president, Sharon Percy Rockefeller, to explain the measures that will be taken to assure that such a gross exclusion of the Latino community does not occur again in their current and future programming, and how they will supplement The War with other programming and activities to include the Latino experience, in particular with the educational programming.Burns announced that he would extend the film to include twenty-eight minutes of interviews with Latinos. He also tracked down a Latino producer to join his film team. But this fluffing-of-the pillow was evidently not enough. Marta Garcia, the co-chairman of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, still felt Burns had some explaining to do:
"[Ken Burns] must bring closure to this issue by paying the Latino leadership of this country the respect, respeto, of meeting with us to explain himself and his future relationship to the Latino community.”In the view of "Defend the Honor", the newly-added material still did not "address the unique WWII Latino experience." Iván Román, the executive director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, added that the new material had to "speak to the Latino experience" and "be meaningful". Agustin Blazquez, founder and president of Uncovering Cuba Education Foundation (UCEF), went as far as to call PBS's attitude towards Latinos "arrogant."
For the record, over 16 million men served in the U.S. military during World War II; all but 250,000 to 500,000 were non-Hispanic, meaning the "Latino experience" accounted for a paltry 1.5% to 3.1% of all soldiers in uniform:
Therefore, in terms of ratios, for every two hours of viewable content in Burns' film, Hispanics should get about 2 minutes.
Of course, nitpicking about how much screen time is "deserved" is not the point; the point is, Burns could not decide what he wanted his own film to focus on. There are already thousands of documentaries about the war out there, and Burns wanted this one to concentrate on the war-time experiences of small-town America. Instead, he was forced to change his film to focus on something else just because the Latino lobby wanted it that way.
As a soft-spoken, boomer-aged New Englander known for his documentaries about "minorities" in baseball, music and the law, Burns is probably the last person who would have ignored the Latino lobby. Ultimately, it was his choice not to do so. But imagine the firestorm if he, or anyone in his position, had refused to re-open and re-edit the film?
Quite possibly, they would have risked the loss of their broadcasting agreement. We can say this with near certainty because the broadcaster, PBS, seemed just as determined to kowtow and kiss the Latino lobby's behinds; in response to the tensions its upcoming broadcast lineup will include a documentary called The Borinqueneers, which focuses on the Puerto Rican 65th Infantry Regiment during the Korean War. PBS also said that Brown is the New Green: George Lopez and the American Dream, a film by Phillip Rodriguez, will air on September 12 - nearly a week before The War is scheduled to debut. According to PBS, Mario Barrera's The Oral History of Latino World War II Soldiers will also be shown in the coming weeks. But that's not all: PBS has said that it will offer "special programming" for Hispanic Heritage Month, from September 15 to October 15, and films about Diego Rivera and Hector Garcia have been added to the PBS lineup (Rivera was a popular Mexican painter and muralist, and Garcia fought for the rights of Mexican-Americans in the United States).
As a public broadcast network, PBS is dependent on government funding for the arts as well as private donations. Therefore, there would be a certain risk for the network to not cater to the Latino community. Incidentally, this risk is only growing: according to a recent report, Hispanic TV households are the fastest growing in the US, at 4.4%. This may help to explain PBS' decisions; however, note how easily the Latino lobby was able to manipulate the situation to their liking and get the network to focus on them. Imagine this same sort of subversion occurring on a political, even governmental level. Perhaps that is a look into the future - a future filled with ethnic tensions, conflict, favoritism and pandering. In some ways, we are already there. Wake up, America.
