Musically, CBS' 3 1/2 -hour broadcast on Feb. 8 reflected what Times pop critic Ann Powers called “the great wide mess of styles and sounds that fill the marketplace,” including artists as dissimilar as Neil Diamond and Lil Wayne. But while Latino musicians were represented within that mishmash, they were noticeably absent from the presenters' ranks.
Should the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences -- or, for that matter, the Oscars or the Super Bowl halftime show -- be striving to include Latinos, in proportional numbers, in all aspects of their broadcasts?
It's a question, obviously, that cuts to the essence of how Americans perceive themselves and their popular culture in relation to equal opportunity and other weighty societal matters. Conventional wisdom holds that the era of ethnic- or sexuality-based identity politics ended somewhere between the crossover of hip-hop's influence to mainstream pop and Barack Obama's inaugural address.
But even if we've stepped into some glorious new era, it would be naive to think that Americans of various ethnicities have stopped scanning music, movies, TV shows and sporting events, searching for signifiers of their (hopefully) growing acceptance and social status.
