BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield. For many Americans, the debate about immigration, more specifically south-of-the-border immigration, conjures up images of young Mexican men gathered on neighborhood street corners waiting for day labor. Even beyond those images, a conversation about Mexican-American culture is, for most of us, likely to remain to remain stuck in stereotype and cliché. No one knows this better than Gustavo Arellano, a reporter for The OC Weekly in Orange County, California. For more than a year, Arellano has written a column called "Ask a Mexican" in which he answers questions from readers ranging from thoughtful to profane. Gustavo, welcome to On the Media.

GUSTAVO ARELLANO: Thanks for having me, Bob.

BOB GARFIELD: Okay. First of all, "Ask a Mexican," Gustavo? It sounds like a minefield of all sorts of racial politics and God knows what all.

GUSTAVO ARELLANO: It's meant to be inflammatory, and the column runs with a picture of the stereotypical Mexican that's been in the mind of Americans for 150 years, that of a fat male with a sombrero, a gold tooth and a moustache.

BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS]

GUSTAVO ARELLANO: And we're doing that specifically to engage readers into challenging all the stereotypes that are out there about Mexicans.

BOB GARFIELD: Did this begin as a gag, a serious enterprise? How did it all come to pass?

GUSTAVO ARELLANO: What happened was my boss saw a billboard of a Mexican radio deejay wearing a Viking helmet with his eyes crossed. He comes back to the office and tells me, “I saw the greatest billboard ever, this man looks as if he could answer any questions about Mexicans. Why don't you start a column called ‘Ask a Mexican’ where you'll field questions from readers?” And we were only supposed to do it as a one-time-only gag, because we had to fill the news hole that week. So I wrote a question. I made it up for myself. It was, “Dear Mexicans, why do Mexicans call white people gringos?" And I responded, “Mexicans, don't call gringos, gringos, only gringos call gringos, gringos. Mexicans call gringos, gabachos.”

BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHING]

GUSTAVO ARELLANO: And we thought – [OVERTALK]

BOB GARFIELD: Which I gather is true - gabachos is the term of our -

GUSTAVO ARELLANO: Absolutely. So we did it one time. We figured, okay, it's a joke, people will laugh and that's it. The week it published, we received an overwhelming response – 50/50 both amongst Latinos and whites, or gabachos, that they liked it or they thought it was racist. More surprisingly though, we actually started receiving questions from people. And they still keep coming in every week, about 15 to 20 questions a week.

BOB GARFIELD: What have you learned doing "Ask a Mexican"?

GUSTAVO ARELLANO: I learned that we remain the perpetual "other" of the United States. "Ask a Mexican," I view ultimately as an indictment of the American mind and how it, for whatever reason, cannot accept Mexicans ever becoming Americans. The fact that this column exists truly is a joke, and the fact that I have to answer these questions is ridiculous. That said, I will answer these questions to confront all of those stereotypes and really the pitiful nature of the American mind that cannot accept Mexicans being in this country. And I don't think they ever will. We're always going to remain the perpetual “other.”

BOB GARFIELD: Now, as you set out to explode these stereotypes, I gather you found, you discovered a sort of paradox. There's the one stereotype of Mexicans as extraordinarily hardworking people desperate to earn a living in the States and send money back to their families south of the border, the most motivated immigrants. And then there's the other one of the lazy, shiftless fat guy in the sombrero picking his teeth and getting ready for yet another nap. Which trumps the other?

GUSTAVO ARELLANO: As you could tell with the Sensenbrenner Bill and all the legislation that's trying to crack down on Mexicans coming in to this country, ostensibly to work, the image that's really out there is that of the hardworking Mexican, the hardworking Mexican that works so hard, in fact, that he's going to ruin American society.

BOB GARFIELD: Here's a kind of a ticklish one. There are a bunch of Mexican and Latino and Latina media personalities and writers and columnists operating in this country, but you suggest that they often trade in the very stereotypes that you're out to debunk.

GUSTAVO ARELLANO: A lot of these Latino columnists in daily newspapers across the country, they do use stereotypes, but in their case, they're all positive stereotypes. So they do stories about the immigrant woman who came here to this country as a single mom but yet she's making it; or the illegal immigrant college student who has no funds and can't apply for financial aid, but nevertheless he's working five jobs and so forth. I think sure, those stories exist, but if you want to have a nuanced view of a society, you need to talk about the good and the bad. If you only talk about the bad, you get nothing. If you only talk about the good, you get nothing. You need to talk about the good and the bad. And I really don't think a lot of Latino journalists want to talk about the bad, because they feel they have the responsibility to only talk about the good. But, in doing that, it's really a disservice to Mexican or Latino society or culture, or especially in the depictions of Latinos in the media.

BOB GARFIELD: All right, Gustavo. Now, I want to "Ask a Mexican."

GUSTAVO ARELLANO: Okay.

BOB GARFIELD: If you had one idea that you can impart to white America about Mexico and its culture and its people and the illegal Mexican immigrants living here, what would it be?

GUSTAVO ARELLANO: I would give them the example of my father. He came to this country illegally in 1968 in the trunk of a Chevy with three other men. And now, you know, he became a citizen, and now he's against illegal immigration. If that's not assimilation, I don't know what is.

BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS] All right. Well Gustavo, thank you very much.

GUSTAVO ARELLANO: Thank you, Bob.

BOB GARFIELD: Gustavo Arellano is an investigative reporter, food critic and author of the column "Ask a Mexican" for The OC Weekly.