Apartment Hunting

So the whole gist of this blog and of what I'm trying to get across is what it's like to be foreign in a place where I don't look foreign.

Over the past two weeks, Mindy and I have been looking for an apartment for us to move into for the first time. It's been very stressful and I'm glad it's over—we're both excited about living in a high rise right on Lake Shore Drive. So that's good.

But as September got closer and closer and we didn't have a place yet, we both started getting a little antsy. We were sending a ton of emails to a bunch of different places and we usually didn't hear back. I don't like talking on the phone, so I was happy to send email after email telling people that we were looking for an apartment.

Here is what I've learned:
- Saying you are engaged and the both of you are moving in together is a HUGE plus. They love it and it'll give you a better chance to get the apartment.

- People may or may not be racist. I never felt this way until weeks went by and my emails went unanswered. Then at the end of every email I sent I got a queasy feeling when I signed my name, "Thanks, Carlos P."

I began to feel a little queasy—now I was a full-fledged Hispanic. Forget about what I look like, how I was raised, where my mother is from—Carlos P is as Hispanic as they come. The reason I didn't write out my last name is because Portocarrero will just scare everyone away.

I felt awful and wanted Mindy to send all the emails from then on. Instead I began to call everyone and leave messages: "Hello, I'm calling because I'm interested in the apartment you listed on Craigslist on Lake Shore Drive. Ummm, I'm just wondering if it's still available I guess and when my fiancee and I could come see it. Ok, thanks, and have a good day. Bye bye."

Now here was a Carlos that is fully American. No trace of an accent, not even of a second-generation Hispanic. And the calls began flooding in, all but a few returned my calls.

I haven't really been able to think about it since I was so focused on just getting a place at whatever cost, but via email there was nothing I could do about how people perceived my name and what it meant to them. Now it's got me thinking about other places where my name is out there and not much else, like my resume.

It's a worrying thought and it makes me question myself about it. If I was subletting my apartment and got an email from a Rodrigo or a Jose Miguel, would I feel any different towards them compared to other applicants? I can't lie and say it wouldn't, but I would also judge every single applicant by their name, their words, what they're like on the phone, if they can spell or not in their emails.

I just read a bit in the book Freakonomics where a correlation was found between how Hispanic contestants were treated in the game show The Weakest Link. In the show, contestants want to have strong competitors in the early going (to accumulate more money) but weaker players towards the end (so they can win the accumulated money). Turns out that black people weren't treated any differently (that is, they were voted off just about the same as non-black players that were good or bad competitors). According to the book, it's because people don't want to appear as racist. But when it came to the elderly and Hispanics, players showed a different feel.

Older contestants faced "taste-based discrimination, which means that one person discriminates simply because he prefers to not interact with a particular type of other person." In other words, "contestants . . . simply don't want the older players around."

Hispanics face taste-based discrimination. This means that "contestants seem to view Hispanics as poor players, even when they are not. This perception translates into Hispanics' being eliminated in the early rounds even if they are doing well and not being eliminated in the later rounds, when other contestants want to keep the Hispanics around to weaken the field."

Sounds horrible, despicable, racist, doesn't it? It is what it is and complaining about it won't change people's perceptions. This is one of those things that just has to take it's course until one of two things happen: It finally "wears off" as people become more familiar with Hispanics and realize they have nothing to fear. Or we enter into a politically correct phase where the fear of offending or seeming to be racist keeps people in check.