Hispanic Fanatic

So there I was, blasting away at the bull’s-eye with a .22 rifle. When I was done, I handed the gun back to its owner and wondered if I should feel exhilarated or manly or something. But I just felt indifferent.

I was fourteen, and that’s the only time I’ve ever fired a gun. In the decades since, I’ve had no desire to repeat the experience.

I don’t own a gun, a fact that aligns with a larger statistic. We Latinos are the ethnic group least likely to own a firearm. Just 18 percent of us are packing heat. In contrast, more than one-third of white people (and a sky-high 61 percent of Southern white men) are armed.

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I’ve written before about the fact that people who own guns are more likely to use them on themselves or a loved one than for self-defense.

And I’ve also written before about the tendency of Americans to make up imaginary assailants to cover up their real crimes. Invariably, the fictitious thug is black or Hispanic.

Well, these disparate elements combined this week in Texas, when “police in San Antonio say a group of friends panicked after one of them accidentally shot another in the back, and tried to pin the whole thing on a Hispanic male who never existed.”

Apparently, a 19-year-old kid, who had no problem getting a handgun (this is America, after all), was “handling the weapon in a reckless manner when it suddenly went off.” One of the ace marksman’s friends was hit, and although nobody died, they had to come up with a story when they hit the emergency room.

Naturally, they said a Latino tried to carjack them. The cops, to their credit, didn’t buy it, and the teen hotshot has been arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and evading arrest.

So what have we learned from this fiasco? Well, for starters, it shows that many Americans still believe nothing is more plausible than a Latino or black man popping up out of nowhere to rob and shoot you. But it also shows that this particular racist trope is pretty much played out.

So as service to you readers who trying to cover up your own botched shootings and/or self-inflicted stupidity, let me offer some advice.

You’re going to have to get creative when you talk to the cops. That means no more “a big scary Latino guy did it!”

To fool the cops, you need to describe your imaginary assailant as such:

“He was half Chinese, half Finnish, with some black Irish on his mother’s side and a smattering of Chilean blood. He was left-handed with a limp, and he had a dueling scar in the shape of a mermaid across his chin. He carried the discrete sadness of enduring multiple heartbreaks, combined with the air of a former military man. His lower-class status belied his bourgouis ambitions, and his racial and ethnic makeup are the perfect encapsulation of America’s changing demographics.”

Then add, “Oh yeah. And he had a gun. Yup.”

Let’s see how that one works.

As threatened, new fatherhood has sapped my time and energy to the point that I am barely able to rant and rave effectively. I have no doubt that this will change as my son gains maturity and I gain perspective, but for now my updates will be succinct (which is a nice way of saying that they’ll be really short).

First, as I’m sure you know, President Obama is at long last finished with attempting to compromise with conservatives who would gladly push him into a wood chipper if they could get away with it. The president is moving forward on immigration reform, joined by a few Republicans who insist that they never ever referred to a pathway to citizenship as “amnesty.” Of course, we could have had all this progress years ago, but as I’ve written before, some people always need to scream and fight and threaten to overthrow the government before we just go ahead and adopt the progressive idea. I have no idea why this is the route to reform, but it just is.

Second, I noticed that my infant son is part of yet another growing trend. Apparently, the state he was born in (California) now has more Latinos than white people for the first time since statehood. This was a surprise to some.

This news came out just about the time my son was born. Is it coincidence, or was he the tipping point?

What do you think?

One of my fondest memories of childhood is attending Christmas Midnight Mass at my family’s Catholic Church. My cousins and I would bask in the glittering pageantry, well aware that as soon as we got home, all the presents beneath the tree would be vanquished under our attacking hands.

I’m about to become a father. Naturally, I should look forward to taking my own son to Midnight Mass.

Well, I’m not. Because he will not be raised Catholic. In fact, he will not be raised with any religion at all.

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Recently, I wrote that I am about to become a father. And when I say, “about to,” I mean it. The baby is due in a few days, and he can arrive literally any minute — maybe even before I finish typing this sentence… what was that?

Oh, sorry, I thought I heard my wife going into labor. Never mind. Carry on.

But you may have noticed that I used the pronoun “he” to refer to the baby. Previously, I said the baby was a girl. Well, my wife and I received the ultimate changeup when the doctors announced that they had read the original ultrasound wrong.

That’s right. They got the wrong gender. So we’re having a boy now.

The doctors must have had a good laugh about that one.

We’re happy either way, although it definitely rocked our world to have the genders switch like that.

Regardless of his XY makeup, our baby will, as I’ve written before, be part of the fast-growing multiethnic generation.

Interestingly, his arrival comes at a time when birthrates in America are declining, especially among Latinas and immigrants. Apparently, Hispanics are learning that the Pope is not the ultimate authority on what they do with their bodies, and that they can use birth control just like everybody else.

This is great news, of course, and it can only help Hispanics improve their economic standing and educational levels.

Now, I would like to analyze this issue further, but you see, I’m too jittery to spend more than seven minutes on any one task, because the baby… wait, what? Sorry, another false alarm.

Check back with me in a few days.

As we all know, President Obama won reelection only because he promised Hispanics unspecified “gifts,” and we responded by casting more than 70% of our votes for him.

Yet I have not received even a thank-you note. Hmm…

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As everybody knows by now, uber-nerd Nate Silver called the presidential election weeks ago.  Lots of progressives, like me, watched the returns with a certain sense of calm, well aware that Obama was going to win.

But for some Republicans, it wasn’t just a disappointing loss. It was also a stomach-churning shocker. Many conservatives are so self-deluded that they believe reality and facts and hard data are secondary to their own hopes and opinions.

For them, Romney’s loss created more than just standard depression. It unleashed an overwrought wailing that, to the rest of us, resembled high comedy.

Honestly, how could they be surprised? For months, people like me have been saying that Latino voters would punish the Republican Party, and that this could be the difference in the swing states.

Indeed, Obama won a startling 71 percent of the Hispanic vote.

Still, some conservatives, even the Latino ones, were predicting a Romney landslide. After the fact, however, even Hispanic members of the GOP had to admit that “Latinos were disillusioned with President Obama, but they were terrified of Mitt Romney.”

Now that the accuracy of that quote has been verified, some of the most xenophobic elements of the conservative movement are saying, “Gee, maybe we should rethink our hatred of immigrants.”

And all it took was getting their asses kicked.

Of course, delusion is still a powerful force within the Republican Party. Many higher-ups in the GOP still insist that Latinos only voted for the president because we’re going to get free stuff.

Well, if that’s their explanation for Romney’s loss, and their plan for the future, I look forward to reading history books about the Republican Party. They will be there, in the section that talks about the Bull Moose Party and the Whigs. And they will be just as relevant.

As we careen, cartwheel, and plummet into the finale of this interminable election season, one refrain we hear many times is that Republicans and Democrats are one and the same.

Indeed, there is ample evidence that both parties are indebted to big business and the status quo. And as Latinos know, Obama’s original immigration policies weren’t much of an improvement over Bush’s approach.

Still, there are differences between the two men running for president— besides the fact that one is a communist Kenyan and the other is a money-grubbing fascist (hey, that’s what the internet told me).

For those who have inexplicably not paid attention, Obama is pro-choice, while Romney is pro-life. Obama is against the death penalty, while Romney is fine with it. The president has come out in support of gay marriage, while Romney believes marriage is a straights-only deal. And Obama doesn’t share Romney’s opinion that the US government is inherently inept, corrupt, and/or evil.

I have to admit, those seem to be fairly large differences to me.

Even progressive icon Daniel Ellsberg, no fan of Obama, thinks the president is substantially different from Romney.

So who are the people yelling that Obama and Romney are clones? I mean, besides Lupe Fiasco?

Well, there are true believers who think a leftist or libertarian chief exec is a possibility (it’s not). Then there are self-proclaimed radicals who dismiss the entire American system as corrupt or bourgeois or just plain icky. And finally, there are voters who simply say, “It don’t matter none.” 

But of course it does matter. And for Latino voters, it’s crucial.

Hispanics are the least likely ethnic group to have health insurance, a situation that the infamous Obamacare may alleviate.

On immigration, Obama has endorsed the Dream Act (belatedly, of course), while Romney is still trying to explain how self-deportation would work.

And when it comes to economic policy, Romney’s tax cuts would benefit the upper classes, which are not exactly awash in Latinos. Keep in mind that according to some experts, Romney “cannot deliver all the tax cuts he promised to the wealthy without raising taxes on the middle class.” One can presume that Hispanics will not be among the direct beneficiaries of his tax plan.

However, perhaps some Latinos still believe that it doesn’t matter who wins. Well, think back to those distant days of 2000, when Bush was elected. At the time, many Americans voted for Nader because Gore and Bush were apparently too similar. Therefore, we have to assume that under President Gore, the September 11 attacks, the Great Recession, and FEMA’s horrific response to Hurricane Katrina would have all occurred. Those are rather huge assumptions, to say the least.

But the Iraq War, an obsession unique to neo-cons, certainly would not have happened. So for the families of 4,500 dead US soldiers, there was at least one fundamental, very real difference between the candidates.

By the way, approximately 500 of those soldiers were Latino.

My wife is pregnant.

Yes, it’s pretty great news.

Our daughter is due in January. We’ve never been parents, so by next summer, I’ll be one of those annoying first-time fathers who believes the most important thing in the world is his baby’s capacity for drool. Just wait, I’ll be blogging about it day and night. This may cut into the readership of the 19.3 million mommy bloggers out there, so I apologize in advance for usurping their authority.

But with all the hectic preparation for the child’s arrival, and careful time set aside for crippling self-doubt and solipsistic panic attacks, I’ve barely had time to ponder the political ramifications of this kid. That has to change.

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We all know the grim statistics. Hispanics are less likely to graduate high school than other ethnic groups, and Latinas, in particular, still have higher rates of teen pregnancy and fewer college degrees than other young girls do.

So what can be done about this appalling situation? Well, perhaps something as simple as giving Hispanic girls a camera is a start.

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