Carlos Cortes: Giving a Multicultural Experience to a New Generation

At first, blooming where he was planted was really difficult for Dr. Carlos Cortes. After all, the roots of his family tree were cemented in ethnic and religious chaos from the very beginning.  Cortes’ father was a Mexican Catholic, who came to the United States at age eleven when his well-to-do family had to flee during the Mexican Revolution.

By contrast, his mother, Florence Hoffman Cortes, was born in Kansas City, Mo.. Her parents were working class Jewish immigrants from the Ukraine and Austria.

For the record, his parents met while his mother was a student at the University of California-Berkeley and his father, who also graduated from college, was working as an auto mechanic during the Great Depression. Upon her graduation, the two married and moved to her hometown, Kansas City.  With class, ethnicity and religious differences, there were plenty of land mines in the multicultural battlefield of the Cortes home. 

“My dad taught me Spanish; my mother and grandparents taught me Yiddish.  I was the only one in the family who could understand and speak both languages.  However, we all spoke English” Cortes said.  Of course, speaking more than one language is an invaluable skill today.  But it was a different story in the racially-segregated and religiously insensitive Kansas City of the post-World War II years. 

His mother raised him as a Reform Jew.  Secretly his father took him to Catholic mass. They celebrated the Jewish High Holy Days and Passover, but also celebrated Christmas rather than Hanukkah.

The Cortes family ate kosher foods from time to time, but to keep the peace, “we didn’t keep kosher and didn’t display religious symbols in the house.” Cortes’ parents even argued about which Boy Scout troop he should join. Eventually, he was placed in the Congregationalist Church troop instead of one run by the Jewish Temple.  And, he wasn’t allowed to have a Bar Mitzvah.  When Cortes became a teenager, religious lines were drawn in the sand.  His father would mentor him more in the Mexican tradition while his younger brother, Gary, would be influenced more by their mother as a Reform Jew. 

My Name is Carlos.

Like too many multicultural children, Cortes had to fight for his identity in school.  He recalls one incident on the first day of class after transferring to a new high school.  His teacher called him “Carl.”

I told the teacher my name was Carlos. [The teacher] said that the school records had my nickname listed as Carl.  When I insisted that he call me Carlos, he sent me down to the headmaster’s (principal’s office).  But when Dad was called over to school, he vigorously insisted that they call me Carlos, after which they did.”

His upbringing even influenced his professional choice.  Cortes is a Professor Emeritus in History at the University of California, Riverside. His primary area of research is diversity, communication, and media and he also travels all over the world teaching people how to embrace multiculturalism. 

“I think that being raised in this culturally mixed situation has helped me better understand intergroup relations and the significance of culture in people’s lives.  In a globalizing world, I think this is an enormous advantage.  Not that others can’t learn about these things, but living the multicultural experience in my own home has probably given me—and others like me—some insights that can only come from experience.”

To explain the family’s multicultural heritage to his daughter, Alana, Cortes initially wrote about his family experience. His work ultimately turned into a one-man play entitled, “A Conversation with Alana:
One Boy’s Multicultural Rite of Passage.” As a fellow in the Harvard Management Development Program in the summer of 2007, I watched this seasoned veteran with gray and white hair, deep brown eyes
and wiry arms captivate a hushed audience for an hour.  His performance is compelling and definitely leaves a lasting impression. 

And academic and theatrical credentials are not his only claims to fame.  Cortes is a consultant for the popular kid’s shows, “Dora the Explorer” and “Go, Diego, Go!,” one of the few kids programs that star brown characters. He started as one of several cultural consultants on the show eight years ago, but over time was raised to the position of Creative/Cultural Advisor for the two series.

“I advise the executive producers about the cultural dimensions of the shows, write comments about each script, and do lots of other related assignments.”

Cortes is also an accomplished author. His books include The Children are Watching: How the Media Teach about Diversity (Teachers College Press, February 2000) and The Making and the Re-making of a Multiculturalist (Teachers College Press, August 2002)

Indeed, he is blooming where he is planted.