Hispanic Fanatic

In the interest of maintaining a connection with readers of this blog (or at the very least, creating the illusion of one), I’m posting my responses to one of those cheesy “getting to know you” mass emails that inundate our inboxes. Despite my disdain for such chain-letter methods of communication, perhaps there are a few insights to be gleaned from my answers these queries. I’m supplying just a few choice responses:

3. What did you have for breakfast?

A power bar

6. Any piercings?

One

7. Eye color:

Latino brown

8. Place of birth:

New York City. Although I am proud to be a Midwest guy, part of me will always consider NYC a sort of spiritual home. And it has the best pizza in the world.

9. Favorite food:

Pizza. See above.

12. What is your favorite CD at the moment?

This implies that I still listen to CDs, rather than furiously downloading stray songs from my youth off the internet. I am building massive playlist upon playlist, stuffed with one-hit wonders and obscure tunes that let me know that Gen X still breathes.

14. What kind of car do you drive?

A 10-year-old economy model that is, even as I type this, plotting a new hemorrhage or dropping a vital component or sighing into general obsolescence.

16. Ever been to Africa?

Not yet

17. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would you go?

Italy

20. Favorite brand of clothing?

Have we become so consumerist that we identify with the companies behind our cheap jeans and our tattered jackets and our t-shirts baring ironic slogans, all in the vain hope that it says something about us? Sorry, but I don’t even know who makes my shoes.

21. Where would you like to retire?

Santa Barbara, California

22. Favorite time of day?

8:58 pm, but I don’t know why.

24. Favorite sport to watch?

Baseball

25. What fabric detergent do you use?

Once again, who has such immutable brand loyalty that they have a favorite detergent? That’s just obsessive-compulsive.

26. What characteristic do you despise?

Irresponsibility, which can take several forms. Basically, do what you say you’re going to do. I’m especially pissed if I’m the irresponsible one.

28. Ever been toilet papering?

Yes

30. Been in a car accident?

Four times, including recently. Although only one was my fault, and that was twenty years ago. Really, you can look it up.

33. Favorite restaurant:

Imperial Pizza in Manhattan.

37. Favorite drink:

Wine, which may be a bourgeois answer, but there it is. For the record, I’m also quite fond of beer, so don’t revoke my common-man cred just yet.

42. Which store would you max out your credit card?

The consumerist orientation of this chain-mail continues unabated.

43 What do you most often when you are bored?

I have not been bored since 1985, and I have no plans to ever be bored again.

44. Bedtime:

Between 10 pm and 2 am.

47. Favorite TV show:

Twin Peaks. This was easily the greatest show in the history of television, even though it ran for only thirty episodes. It was just too beautiful to live, I guess.

48. Last person you went out to dinner with:

My lovely and patient wife.

50. What are you listening to right now?

The hum of the computer, which is a cross between a soothing drone and an angry buzz. Either way, the haunting sound has something profound to do with my mortality.

51. What is your favorite color?

Arterial-blood red

52. Lake, ocean or river?

Lake

53. How many tattoos do you have?

One

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been dealing with car problems as of late. In short, my decade-old deathtrap is finally headed for the scrap heap. What was the final blow? What incident pushed the aging metal and chrome over the edge and into oblivion? I can’t be sure, but I think getting sideswiped a few weeks ago finished the car off.

I always did have a bad feeling about that one particular intersection. It may be hyperbole to call it the most dangerous stretch of asphalt in my city, but it always made me nervous.

I drive through it on my commute home from work, and whenever I got past it safely, I gave a prayer of thanks to my Mayan ancestors… ok, that part really is hyperbole.

Nevertheless, it’s a precarious crossroads. And the other evening, my paranoia justified itself (as it often does) when some dickhead plowed into my car as I was driving through the intersection.

I had the right of way when the guy in the minivan tried to turn left in front of me. He succeeded only in whapping the side of my car.

I was, to put it delicately, fucking pissed. I motioned for him to pull over, and he nodded and turned as if to go around the block and circle back. Five minutes later, two things became simultaneously clear: He wasn’t returning, and this was a hit-and-run.

My only witness was a dyslexic good Samaritan, a woman who claimed to have noted the guy’s license plate but had jotted down four digits too many. So I just drove home in my dinged car. When I told my wife that the guy had panicked and driven off, she said, “Maybe you scared him when you got angry.”

I hadn’t considered that. Here was this frazzled Anglo in a minivan who had broadsided an obviously furious Hispanic. For all he knew, I was going to get out of my car and knife him. Perhaps he thought I was riding dirty (Latino variation), or maybe he figured I was a Hmong gang member because you never can tell the differences among all those dark people, especially at night. The funny thing is that I was probably more Italian at the moment, with the wild hand gestures and agitated facial contortions.

In any case, I have to wonder if he would have pulled over and exchanged insurance information if I had been blonde.

But why do I have to even consider these things? It’s not enough that he jacked up my rates and took off. It’s not sufficient that he put the kibosh on my car. Now I have to ponder whether or not I’ve been stereotyped and slurred. This is the way your mind works when you’re not in the majority, whether you want it to or not.

Either way, I can’t prove a thing. My only satisfaction is that I know his car was more damaged than mine was. His headlight popped off, after all.

So I imagine him speeding home to the suburbs with one beam flickering, his mind racing to get his story straight for when his wife asks what the hell happened to the minivan. I can only assume that he will wipe the cold sweat from his brow, embrace his wife in sweet relief, and say, “I had to run away, honey. The guy was Hispanic or something.”

Yesterday marked the 40^th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King. Media coverage of the event featured numerous “what if he had lived” scenarios, ignoring the fact that so many racists had the man marked for death that he had about as much chance of getting out of the 1960s alive as I do of walking my dog in the Mariana Trench.

King set such high standards of spiritual clarity, personal courage, and captivating intelligence that even white supremacists had to admit their theories of racial inferiority had a glaring exception. How else could a Klansman explain this guy?

Hispanics, of course, don’t have a King equivalent. When cultural leaders are listed, we usually get Cesar Chavez. It sounds like he was a great leader and principled individual, but let’s be blunt. Chavez simply does not have the moral authority or historical impact of Martin Luther King. Maybe it’s an unfair comparison, but one was a Nobel Prize winner who gave one of the most stirring speeches in history, inspired millions of people to action, revolutionized American culture, was martyred for his cause, and got an official holiday named for him. The other won marginal rights for people who pick lettuce. Both have streets named for them in many cities, although in most cases, these roads pass through shady parts of town and change names back once they leave the hood or barrio.

To be fair, there is no Martin Luther King of the gay-rights movement either, or an Asian American of such stature, or so on. King was the pinnacle of social leaders.

And now, perhaps we are past the point in American history where any one person can become a powerful symbol and instigator of change. We’re too entrenched or cynical or hyperinformed to yank people onto a pedestal and leave them be.

But just in case we aren’t, is it too much to ask that the next icon be Hispanic? 

As promised, I will now respond to the comments for my post from a few days ago, which addressed illegal immigration. Charles had some sympathetic words for the undocumented, while Rogerg believed illegal aliens hurt American workers.

But it was Zeezil who really went to town on this subject. In fact, I suspect that s/he has cut and pasted this rant many times across the internet, because I refuse to believe this particular manifesto was typed up exclusively for the Fanatic.

In any case, Zeezil’s dizzying array of stats, quotes, and accusations are simply too numerous to analyze on a point-by-point basis. If you like, see his book-length comment for yourself. I will react to only a select few of Zeezil’s ideas that captured my attention.

S/he is correct that it is not inherently “racist, bigoted or xenophobic” to want to stem the tide of illegal immigration. No doubt, most of the advocates for a closed-door policy have none of these toxic attributes. People who do have these traits, of course, have an easy straw man in the illegal immigrant, but that is beside the point.

So we’ll give Zeezil that fairly non-controversial point. But I was struck by his/her exclamation that “illegal aliens, their facilitators and benefactors” are the true bigots. I don’t know what definition of “racist” Zeezil is using, but it’s bizarre to claim that anyone who proposes a path to citizenship for an illegal is being xenophobic. If so, it is the best reverse psychology ever. Similarly mystifying is the assertion that “political power is the real reason” some people are less inclined to kick out every undocumented worker. I find it hard to imagine a less influential political force than a ragtag coalition of bleeding-heart liberals and poverty-stricken individuals who can’t even vote. This is not exactly a major lobbying force.

In addition, Zeezil refers to the “children of illegals” costing us a lot of money. Regardless of whether or not this is true, we must parse that phrase for its more complicated meaning. The “children of illegals” can, in many cases, be called something else: citizens. This is because, of course, anyone born in the United States is automatically a citizen, regardless of parentage. There are movements underway to change this, and I’ll have something to say about that in a future post. But for the foreseeable future, it is the law of the land, enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, no less.

Speaking of kids, Zeezil also brings up the tragedy in Minnesota, where an illegal immigrant crashed into a school bus and killed several children. This is undeniably horrifying. It is, however, also irrelevant to the main debate, unless no children have ever died in car accidents caused by U.S. citizens.

This anecdotal evidence, along with a casual mixing of percentage and whole-number stats (apples to oranges, as it were) is designed to show that illegals are to blame for, well, just about everything. This demonization is part of the problem I bemoaned in my original post.

The funny thing is that I’m not violently opposed to some of Zeezil’s points. I say as much in my initial post that immigration is a brutally complex problem that defies easy solution, and we will likely have to adopt a mixture of conservative and liberal ideas to resolve it. However, fear-mongering and questionable evidence are not going to help the situation. So I hope we can move the debate to a higher, more logic-based level.

I’ve gotten a number of responses to my previous post, which was about the immigration problem. While I would love to attack or congratulate each person who commented, I can’t squeeze in the time right now. You see, I’m having that most American of crises (car trouble) and have to concentrate on maintaining the wheels. Let me point out, however, that Ruben Navarrette has just written about the contradictions inherent in any discussion about illegal immigration. His points will have to suffice until I can devote the attention that the subject deserves. So stay tuned, because I’ll post a reply this week (and I’ll later post about my damn car… really, it’s kind of a funny story and it all relates).