RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR.: Latinos have nothing to apologize for. So why can’t they stop?

Being Latino means always having to say you’re sorry.

Last call, folks. Is there any Latin person in America who hasn’t apologized for something? Andale! Step right up. You could miss your chance to grovel — whether or not you’ve actually done anything wrong.

Just look at the wince-inducing public apologies by a pair of successful Latino actors and producers who caved in to the Twitterati.

Their sins? They had the temerity to speak their minds and share their own personal visions, however incomplete. They also defended one another, and put in a good word for the concept of thinking for oneself.

There’s no place for that in Hollywood. In an industry where perception is everything, some people put such a high premium on being perceived as “woke” that they will sacrifice their self-respect to be thought of as such.

Trouble is, many Latinos in Hollywood don’t exactly have a surplus of self-respect to begin with. They’ve traveled a long and hard road in a TV and film industry that never progressed beyond black-and-white.

Every decade or so, someone breaks through in this business. This is a short list, but playwright/producer Lin-Manuel Miranda and actress/producer Rita Moreno — both of whom are Puerto Rican — are on it.

The apology telenovela started when Miranda was accused of slighting Afro-Latinos by leaving them out of the new film adaptation of his Broadway hit musical, “In The Heights.” His critics say that, in telling the story of Washington Heights, a multi-colored neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, Miranda failed to give sufficient airtime to Afro-Latinos.

As for what constitutes “sufficient,” the color committee will get back to you on that after they’ve established some guidelines.

Miranda quickly — in my opinion, a little too quickly — fired off a statement on Twitter saying: “I hear that without sufficient dark-skinned Afro-Latino representation, the work feels extractive of the community we wanted so much to represent with pride and joy. In trying to paint a mosaic of this community, we fell short. I’m truly sorry.”

As a Mexican American writer who’s been knocked around, I’m proud of Miranda for all that he has accomplished, both in Hollywood and on Broadway. So his apology hit me like a gut punch.

I took another jab from Moreno. The 89-year-old EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony)-winning actress defended Miranda during an appearance on CBS’ “The Late Show with Steven Colbert.” “Can we talk for a second about that criticism about Lin-Manuel? That really upsets me,” Moreno said on the show. “You can never do right, it seems,” she said. “This is the man who literally has brought Latino-ness and Puerto Rican-ness to America. … I mean, they’re really attacking the wrong person.”

Just one day later, after taking criticism of her own, Moreno tweeted her own version of an apology: “I’m incredibly disappointed with myself … I was clearly dismissive of Black lives that matter in our Latin community. It is so easy to forget how celebration for some is lament for others.”

No mas. Miranda is a content creator. As such, he has the right — no, the duty — to create content through the snapshots in his brain. He can never cover the whole gamut of the human experience. No one writer can do that. His job is to tell his story. Anyone who wants to tell a different one can do so.

Still, Latinos are often non-confrontational by nature. So we tend to be easy targets. We usually don’t even raise our voices, let alone raise a ruckus.

White men don’t have to hold their tongues. So it took one to rescue Miranda from his critics, who have been operating at the height of sanctimony. Bill Maher was just the white man for the job.

“I mean he’s a Latino making a Latino movie with a Latino cast,” the host of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” said on his show while discussing Miranda. “Not good enough. Nothing is ever good enough for these people. They’re like children. … People are going to have to stand up to these bullies, because that’s what it is, bullying.”

Good for Maher. When confronted by bullies in the woke mob, Miranda and Moreno should not have debased themselves. They should have stood their ground. As it is, it feels like Latinos have all taken a step backward.

And, may I ask, who is going to apologize to us for that?

Ruben Navarrette’s email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com. His podcast, “Ruben in the Center,” is available through every podcast app.