The Shallow Multiculturalist Popularity of “One Day at a Time”

When liberal multicultural politics continue to dominate film, TV, and other media, we miss the people and issues both “at the margin and at the center.”

People across the United States continue to make a fuss over the cancellation of Netflix’s Cuban-American remake of Whitney Blake and Allan Maning’s One Day at a Time (or ODAAT), celebrating the show for its “punchy one-liners” and “approaching almost every character in merry good faith.” The show discusses issues of mental health, gender and sexuality, substance ab/use, immigration, racism, and even gentrification, often in evocative ways that many feel have few comparisons in present-day film and TV. Nonetheless, ODAAT fell short in numerous regards, and despite (or perhaps, indicative of) support from “progressive celebrities,” these issues should be highlighted as they are emblematic of broader problems with the politics of representation in popular shows and movies today.

From the start, the Alvarez family members, led by mother Penelope (played by Justina Machado) and her mother Lydia (played by Rita Moreno), are white or mestizx. None of the Latinx characters in the show (with the exception of the character played by Judy Reyes) is Black, Indigenous, or another person of color. As Rachel Palay recently wrote for Blactina, the racism and colorism involved in representing Latinxs as primarily white or white-perceived has a long history in Latin American television and film, particularly through telenovelas. Many Black, Indigenous, and Afro-Indigenous Latinxs (including the author of this article) see ODAAT’s lack of racial representation as a serious problem because it continues harmful rhetoric that marginalizes discussions about racism within the Latinx community and what it “means” to be Latinx, especially in Latin America where approximately 130 million people of African descent live. While the Alvarezes live in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, the racial dynamics of diaspora and home communities are related and cannot be overlooked.

Janel Martinez, multimedia journalist and creator of the popular Afro-Latina digital space Ain’t I Latina?, took to Twitter to voice how unrelatable the show was for her, expressing this problem should not be portrayed as a mere oversight but as an intentional action. ODAAT had no obviously Afro-Latinx relatives as main characters and almost no Afro-Latinx representation at all, as previously noted. With the growing movement in support of broader Latinx representation from outlets like Ain’t I Latina?, Blactina, and HipLatina, the logics of these actions must be interrogated because they are often replicated in story framings and characters’ lines.

For instance, in Season 2, Episode 1 “The Turn,” Moreno’s (who is a white Puerto Rican woman) character, in response to granddaughter Elena’s “struggle” with being “perceived” as white (she’s a white Colombian y’all), bemoans, “Why are you so mad? Cubans are white!” After little pushback from Penelope, she continues with “Saying we’re white, Brown, Black: that’s besides the point…” before finishing the conversation with her on-screen daughter. This episode was a great opportunity to discuss the differences between race, ethnicity, and nationality as well as the history of the terms Latino/a/@/e/x, but instead, the characters misrepresent Cubans as “mostly white” and “descended from Spaniards,” when the country itself is predominantly of African-descent and proudly embraces its Afro-Amerindian roots. This is one of many common and insidious tropes of blanqueamiento, the policy and political economic practice of many postcolonial Latin American countries to “improve the race” (mejorar la raza) by symbolically or “biologically” altering their populations towards the supposed ideal of whiteness.

The fact that Lydia’s characterization of Cuba goes relatively unchallenged speaks to the continuing hegemonic narrative of U.S.-based white Cubans— largely conservative Republicans— who left the island and its majority Black populace to seek “refuge” in Miami and other U.S. cities during the Cuban Revolution. As members of the island’s capitalist and land-owning classes, these white Cubans, faced with the seizure and redistribution of their land and wealth after the eventual deposal of U.S.-backed right-wing dictator Fulgencio Batista, would not benefit from the revolutionary transformation of Cuba that paved the way for greater social, racial, political, and economic justice and equality. Yet we are continually made to believe that the depictions of Latinxs in U.S. film and TV, like those in ODAAT, are actually representing the “diverse” experiences of Latinxs when actually, as we see through this U.S.-exceptionalized Cuban-American account, they are particular class and racial characterizations that do not reflect even a plurality of Latinx experiences.

While much can be said about ODAAT’s coverage of crucial social and political topics, its portrayal as a show that speaks to Latinxs and about the experiences of Latinx families is, at best, misleading. With expanding genres, outlets, writings, and media focused on the diverse class, racial, cultural, linguistic, political, and geographic dimensions of Latinxs, understanding ODAAT as a very narrow slice of this community is important when describing its role in Latinx media portrayals more broadly. For many marginalized Latinxs— poor, peasant, Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ folks at the center of our people’s histories and revolutionary struggles— it is unacceptable to go along with mainstream liberal multicultural politics of representation that promote only specific kinds of Latinx representation and encourage the rest of us to support these simplified narratives “for representation’s sake.” Our stories are out there and it’s time we build the people power behind their dissemination that our ancestors, our communities deserve.