I had serious reservations about the Steven Spielberg version of the film classic West Side Story. Rumors of
wokeness haunted the new movie from the first casting call through to its dismal opening weekend. I expected to wince throughout, but Spielberg did something brave and unexpected. He gave the Jets a rationale for their existence and their resistance.
The 1961 original did not. As a 14-year-old living in a “transitional” neighborhood very much like the one the Jets and Sharks inhabited and not far away, I fully identified with the white gang, the Jets. My friends, even my black friends, did as well. Despite our affection for our homies, we had a grudging respect for the Puerto Rican gang, the Sharks. Their guys were arguably cooler, their girls hotter.
Missed by liberal observers, then and now, is that vestigial urban whites saw Puerto Ricans, not as another “race,” but as another ethnic group, no more alien than Italians were to Irish or Irish were to Germans in generations past. Like Tony, we would definitely date their girls if they’d have us. The absurd racial delineation for “Hispanics” would come later.
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