Hispanic Fanatic

First off, let me thank Festina, Kerstein, and Robin for their comments.

Second, let me backtrack a little by retelling the story of Cousin #6. As you may recall, he came to America when he was a toddler. When he turned eighteen and joined the Army, he assumed his application for citizenship would be fast-tracked. However, even after filling out all the paperwork and following every rule, years later he found himself on the phone talking to an INS official who insisted that he come to the office for an interview.

“But I’m on active duty,” my cousin said. “In Bagdad.”

“That’s not an excuse,” the INS official said.

Yes, Cousin #6 had entered the immigration maze.

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One of my favorite words is “internecine.” Of course, I don’t admire the concept (i.e., hostility or conflict within a group). I just like the sound of its syllables clanging together.

In any case, “internecine” describes the situation whenever ethnic minorities beat up on each other. It’s most famous application is “black-on-black violence.”

I have yet to hear about brown-on-brown violence, but perhaps it is only a matter of time. For example, a few months ago in Staten Island, a Mexican immigrant became one of the borough’s recent victims of a hate crime.

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The Dream Act may not be dead. But it is most certainly on hold, and no one is sure for how long.

The U.S. Senate did not directly kill the bill. Rather, Senate Republicans filibustered the defense authorization bill. The reason was that the Dream Act, as well as the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal, were amendments to the legislation. These two bits of conservative wolfbane were too much for Republicans to stomach. So they voted, en masse and without exception, to deny the bill’s passage.

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Recently, I wrote about the concept of self-loathing among immigrants. My thesis was that some immigrants want so badly to be considered “American” that they will join in on hatred aimed at newcomers.

As we know, all immigrants are not Hispanic, nor are all Hispanics immigrants. However, it’s safe to say that immigration and Latino culture are closely linked. Therefore, you will be delighted to know that self-hatred can transcend citizenship status and careen right into questions of ethnicity and race.

For example, a few weeks ago, the GOP candidate for governor in Nevada, Brian Sandoval, endeared himself to his fellow Latinos during an interview with Univision.

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In a recent post, I asked if assimilation was truly a positive goal, or if it is often used as a justification to push around new immigrant groups. I think the answer is that it’s a bit of both.

Still, let’s dwell on the positive aspects of this tricky, amorphous concept. Rates of assimilation are down among today’s immigrants, which has caused no shortage of alarm among many Americans.

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Just to be clear, nobody should yell “Nazi” at people unless there are, you know, actual Nazis present.

I make this clarification not just because it’s the truth, but because so many people have had their sensibilities offended during the arduous debate over immigration.

Judging from reader comments to several of my posts, it is not illegal immigrants and their supporters who have been slandered. No, this coalition of liberals and minimum-wage workers — outnumbered by at least two to one in many opinion polls — are the aggressors.

Yes, the “Nazi” label has apparently been tossed at people who support laws such as SB 1070. Now, even if you’re in a privileged position of economic power and numerical supremacy, and the person yelling it is near society’s bottom rung, that’s got to sting (although it would be nice to acknowledge that dynamic).

For the sake of argument, let’s call it even, and forget about all the racial slurs and threatening vitriol aimed at illegal immigrants. We’ll also let it go that much of people’s defensiveness (“I am not a fascist!”) is just the attempt to counter-attack uncomfortable accusations of racism.

It’s impossible to measure how many individuals on each side are acting like lunatics and to what degree. So let’s just call it unsightly all around.

However, I would ask that if you send me hyperbolic emails detailing crazed behavior by illegal immigrants, as one person did, that you at least keep it timely.

You see, I recently received a forward about the Montebello flag-raising incident. If you don’t recall, some Latino teenagers in California got out of hand during a demonstration. They raised the Mexican flag, and hung the American flag beneath it, upside-down.

It’s certainly a striking image. Perhaps that’s why it’s still flying around the internet as proof of a Latino insurrection, despite the fact that it happened in 2006.

Now, it would seem to me that if nothing more egregious than raising a flag has happened in the last four years, then the Hispanic overthrow of our government is not quite the threat the right wing is presenting.

At the risk of becoming defensive myself, I’d like to bring up an image from a demonstration that resonated with me. Granted, the protest was about healthcare, not immigration, but it at least occurred within the last year or so.

You may have seen this gentleman, and others like him. They believed it was a good idea to carry assault rifles to venues where President Obama was speaking.

The response from conservatives was praise and the usual pontificating about Second Amendment rights.

So if we’re keeping track: A bunch of unruly teenagers come up with a tacky way to protest, and it becomes a horrifying sign of revolution. However, grown men show up with firearms in a clear attempt to terrify their political foes, and it is a sign of patriotism.

The kids were disciplined for their idiotic prank. The guys with guns, however, went about their lives just fine, with the biggest burden probably the hassle of digging through the fan mail they received.

I could also point out that many of those teens have been told, sometimes overtly, that they are subhumans who have no rights. This is contrast to the adults with guns, who tend to be at the top of the American pecking order. They should also be – and let me phrase this delicately – old enough to know better.

So by all means, if the emotional response of teenagers is more of a threat to you than the aggressive tactics of adults, make your case. The odds are, however, that you will lose that competition.

When I was a kid, my mom volunteered to get the ERA passed. She was disappointed (actually, quite pissed) when the Equal Rights Amendment ran out of gas near the finish line.

The ERA was fairly popular, but it couldn’t get past the high hurdle that proposed Constitutional amendments face: Two-thirds of both chambers of Congress must pass it, and then three-fourths of the states have to approve it. There’s an alternative method of approving amendments that involves a Constitutional convention, but that route is less common.

In recent months, we’ve heard that another change to the Constitution is imminent. Yes, conservatives have their hearts set on revoking Amendment 14. This pesky amendment, among other things, establishes that people born in the United States are full citizens.

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Baseball season is winding down, and my hometown team continues to flounder (no, I don’t want to talk about it, thank you).

But one bright spot in this dismal year is the perpetually colorful Ozzie Guillen. The manager of the Chicago White Sox often makes comments that range from bizarre to offensive, and one never knows if he’s going to let loose with a maniacal observation, incoherent insight, or slanderous attack. Not many people can go from egotistical rant to self-loathing diatribe in the same interview, but Guillen manages it.

Recently, Guillen made news by claiming that Major League Baseball treats Asian players better than it does Latin American players. He pointed out that, among other things, Asian players are assigned translators, while Latin American players are left to fend for themselves.

Guillen added that “We bring a Japanese player and they are very good and they bring all these privileges to them. We bring a Dominican kid … go to the minor leagues, good luck.”

OK, his syntax is garbled (it’s part of his charm). But Guillen’s point — that Latin American players are treated as less important and more disposable — is a valid one.

One could argue that it’s simple economics. MLB probably assumes that the many players from the Dominican Republic and Cuba and so on will look out for each other. Maybe they feel that they have to coddle a kid from Taiwan. I don’t know.

But I appreciate that Guillen, in his own undeniably idiosyncratic way, has once again gotten people to think about an issue bigger than baseball.

The other outrageous comment that caught my attention recently came from an unlikely source.

Yes, Rupert Murdoch, Mr. Fox News himself, recently called for immigration reform that would create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented residents. This is the infamous “amnesty” provision.

Murdoch said that we’re missing a chance for reform because we’re bashing illegal immigrants too much. He added that Americans need to deal with the fact that more residents are speaking Spanish, saying that such changes have “been going on in this country for hundreds of years. You’ve got to adjust.”

Coming from a guy who signs Bill O’Reilly’s paychecks, his comments are clearly more shocking than anything Ozzie Guillen could say.

“If you really want racism to disappear, don’t mention it!”

Comment on CNN message board

I recently read an article on a mainstream news site that addressed the messy racial overtones of a certain political situation. I expected the reader comments to be a maelstrom of partisan rhetoric and crazed theories. They did not disappoint.

However, one reader took a different approach. The commentator railed against the site for running the article in the first place. The comment was, more or less, “Stop playing the race card. All it does is divide us.”

I couldn’t help but think of a recent comment I received on one of my posts. I had written about some recent shenanigans aimed at Latinos. A reader didn’t dispute my analysis of the event. Instead, he or she stated that I was beating a dead horse and that looking at racial issues was “getting old.”

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When President Lyndon Johnson signed civil rights legislation in the 1960s, he famously remarked that Democrats had lost the South for a generation. Of course, he was an optimist. It’s two generations, and counting, since white Southerners have become synonymous with the Republican Party.

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