Hispanic Fanatic

Because I so often write about the dark side of human nature, I thought I’d pass along some good news in America’s fight against racism. It seems that at the University of Alabama, “multiple African American women have accepted bids to join traditionally white sororities. The move ends the last bastion of segregation at the tradition-bound southern university.”

Now, I’ve never understood why anybody would want to be a sorority girl or a frat boy, but that’s not the point. Surely, we can be happy that another pillar of institutionalized racism has been toppled. And I presume that Latina girls are now eligible to wear Greek-lettered sweatshirts in Alabama.

Well, I should have stopped reading the news article there, because in the internet comments section of the story (always a disturbing barometer of what Americans are really thinking), I did not encounter the cheers and upbeat replies that I expected to see.

Instead, I saw a lot of apologists for bigotry. There were the people who said it wasn’t a racial issue, and that the sororities just have high standards, such as the woman who wrote, “I’m as lily-white as they come and had the same chance of getting into a UofA sorority as a black girl.” Well, actually, she had a much better chance, as evidenced by the fact that, according to the article, current “members of the traditionally white sororities said they were pressured by alumnae to keep black women from joining.” Well, if that is not overt discrimination, I don’t know what is.

But many people (and not just that lily-white girl) must have skipped over that line, because I also learned from readers’ comments that the University of Alabama Greek system was not prejudiced. Rather, it was just “the media and everybody else wanting to play the race card,” and those pesky minorities themselves, who keep “cramming [diversity] down our throats [and] keep the pot boiling and that is raging all over the country now.”

There were also the readers who insisted that letting blacks into a formally all-white sorority was a “politically correct situation,” and that minorities should “stop acting like the world owes it to you to be fair.”

And then there were the philosophical bigots, such as the gentleman who insisted that “if we want to reserve the right to not serve or admit a black person, or anyone else for that matter, we should be allowed that freedom.”

But my favorite was the straightforward racist, such as the guy who cracked that the white girls had better “keep an eye on their valuables!”

And at least one commentator saw grim overtones in the concept of black sorority girls, labeling the news as “more White genocide, cheered on by the mainstream media.”

Yes, this was the reaction that this unequivocally positive news story generated. I feel much better about America right now.

Don’t you?

In this great melting pot we call America, people of every race commingle and socialize routinely. Why, you can’t walk down the street without elbowing groups of hotties representing both genders and every ethnicity, all hanging out and being so very cosmopolitan and twenty-first century.

Wait, that’s not real life. That’s a Gap ad.

In actuality, a recent study has found that about “40 percent of whites and 25 percent of non-whites do not have any close friends of other races.”

This means that large segments of American society still view other races as an exotic other. Specifically, the survey found that older, white, conservative women were the least likely to hang with someone who didn’t resemble them, while “younger Americans were more likely to say they have friends — or romances — outside their own racial group.” Also people on the West Coast “had the most diverse relationships while people in the South had the least.”

Yes, even in this mythical post-racial environment, a lot of us prefer to kick back with our own kind, if you get my racially coded drift.

But wait, the poll also found that “Hispanics were the most likely to have a diverse friendship network.” So once again, it’s Latinos who are on the cutting edge of culture.

Apparently, we will drink with anybody.

Blame it on the amygdala.

This region of the brain, which plays a central role in processing fear and aggression, may be the source of one of the most insidious concepts to bedevil humankind: racism.

A recent study revealed that people’s amygdalas react differently when they see individuals who do not share their race. Furthermore, the “same circuits in the brain that allow us to see which ethnic group a person belongs to overlap with others that drive emotional decisions.”

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Decades after James Brown first exhorted his brethren to say it loud (“I’m black and I’m proud), another group of oppressed Americans — gay people — adopted the idea and found resounding success in proclaiming their pride.

But African Americans, gays, and (presumably) gay African Americans are not the only people who are proud of their culture.

Latinos are well-known for bursting with pride for their heritage. However, while such expressions of ethnic boosterism are practically required on Puerto Rican Day, or during Hispanic Heritage Month, or — Lord help us — Cinco de Mayo, such statements often come across as just empty phrases.

After all, do we have good reason to be proud?

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I admit that I’m not much of a basketball aficionado. I saw Michael Jordan play once, and that’s pretty much my sole anecdote about the NBA.

However, I paid attention when a young boy named Sebastien de la Cruz sang the National Anthem before an NBA final game recently. Apparently, “he was pretty awesome.”

But of course, this is America, and somebody’s gotta be offended about something. So plenty of Twitter feeds exploded with outrage that a “Mexican django” (whatever that is) who was “probably illegal” was belting out the Star-Spangled Banner. And those were some of the nicer, less racist comments.

As we all know, the National Anthem only counts as a patriotic song if a white person sings it. Otherwise, it’s political correctness run rampant, or a sign of moral decline, or just plain icky.

Well, Sebastien de la Cruz found out about the controversy he provoked, but he refrained from slamming his attackers (all of whom are faceless cowards who think its edgy to gang up on a young boy via social media). In any case, the Spurs have apparently asked him to return for an encore.

The kid showed a lot of class, and since he has declared himself a Spurs fan, I’ve decided that I’m rooting for them too.

It’s not like I know who else is playing, anyway.

Apparently, if you’re Hispanic and live in Pennsylvania, a job is yours for the asking.

I say this because the Republican governor of that state, Tom Corbett, recently that he couldn’t find a single Latino to work for him.

He even implored his constituents that “If you can find us one, please let me know.” He then got, well, a little defensive about his lack of ethnic outreach, snapping, “Do any of you [Hispanics] want to come to Harrisburg? See?”

Now there are about 800,000 Latinos in Pennsylvania, which is just under seven percent of the state’s population. Surely, there must be a few who could handle working with a cranky Republican.

Sure enough, after Corbett looked a little harder, he finally “remembered the one Latino in his administration.”

Well, that’s a relief. At least Hispanics aren’t totally shut out in one of our largest states. After all, there’s one Latina helping to run the place.

Still, if affirmative action were all that, one would think people of a brownish hue could just march right up to governor and say, “Here I am. Put me on the state payroll.”

I have my doubts about that. But who knows, maybe you should give it a shot. Talk about an easy interview.

Every time I write about the GOP’s image problem with Latino voters, some conservative sends me an angry missive insisting that it’s all the liberal media spreading lies. I discover that not only does the Republican Party respect Hispanics, but it has their best interests at heart. The missive usually ends by telling me that Republicans are actually the most open-minded and tolerant of Americans.

And then approximately fourteen minutes later, a GOP leader will say something like this:

“My father had a ranch. We used to have fifty to sixty wetbacks to pick tomatoes.

That’s Alaska Representative Don Young, a Republican, who recently said this during a radio interview. Honestly, I don’t know what point he was trying to make, because I can’t get past the casual use of the term “wetback.”

Of course, Young’s fellow Republicans were quick to distance themselves from his offhanded bigotry, while stressing, “Hey, hey, we’re crazy about Latinos.” But this was not some risqué joke or harmless gaffe. This was an elected official resorting to slurs when referring to the fastest-growing ethnicity in America.

Now, I’m not saying that the Democratic Party is immune to racism, but honestly, when was the last time you heard of a Democrat saying something so prima facie bigoted? Yes, I know all about Biden’s “back in chains” comment — something that is not even in the same universe as far as offensive language.

So I have to wonder why wildly derogatory and/or lunatic statements seem to spring solely from the mouths of Republicans.

Sure, such comments are not as egregious as the GOP tendency — even eagerness — to excuse rape. As such, perhaps misogyny is still the Republicans’ number-one issue. But you would think a political movement that, by its own admission, has an image problem with ethnic minorities would take just the smallest care not to fling around racial epithets like its 1950.

So let’s go ahead and accept the congressman’s apology that “there was no malice in my heart or intent to offend,” while dismissing his slur as a simple “poor choice of words.”

But just this once, will you conservatives spare me the corrective email insisting that I have it all wrong? Can you just drop the denial about the white-hot strain of racism in your party that you have allowed to fester and grow? Instead, spend that energy by actually trying to drag your GOP brethren into the twenty-first century.

Or just keep doing what you’re doing. Then sit back and wait from that big group hug from Latinos, because deep down we know that you really, really love us.

Many Americans insist that prejudice is extinct in our post-racial society, where we have a black president and everything. Of course, the officially sanctioned use of racism (ala Jim Crow laws) is a distant relic of the past, and no governmental or academic institution still exhibits racist behavior.

Nope.

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I’ve toyed with the idea of instituting a Wordless Wednesday feature on this site. But of course, I update on the weekends (more or less), and I usually can’t shut up once I get writing, so just slapping a picture online isn’t going to happen.

But as an experiment, I’m going to sidestep my loquacious tendencies and simply post a photograph with minimal text.

Here we have a young Hispanic boy whose parents are taking him to a school board meeting in Arizona. This is how he was greeted at the door.

Draw your own conclusions.

Wow, I almost let MLK Day pass without directing you to an article I recently wrote for Being Latino about the great man himself.

It’s more or less about… well, you can see for yourself by clicking here.

In the meantime, take this newest of federal holidays off. And practice peace, love, and compassion toward your fellow human beings.

Yeah, that all sounds pretty good. Should be easy to do.