Hispanic Fanatic

By now you’ve heard GOP Rep. Steve King (a longtime friend of the Hispanic community) insist that “among young undocumented immigrants in the United States, ‘for everyone who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who’” are essentially drug mules.

King, “an Iowa conservative who has come under fire for comments about immigrants before,” has stood by his remarks, insisting that he has “seen it with my eyes and watched the data and video that support what I say.”

I think we would all like to see the video that shows 100 Latino drug mules ganging up on one Hispanic valedictorian. That would indeed be persuasive to the immigration debate.

But all these references to mules have me thinking about another anti-immigration zealot who was obsessed with animals. I’m taking about Cordelia Scaife May, an heiress who, “before her death in 2005, devoted much of her wealth to … curbing immigration, both legal and illegal.”

Scaife May “never knew poverty,” unlike so many of the immigrants she despised. Ultimately, she became a crazy recluse and alcoholic. She also was obsessed with birds.

Her millions continue to fund right-wing anti-immigrant groups to this day. So here we have a rich person who never worked a day in her life. She was a virulent xenophobe and racist who held her fellow humans in contempt simply because they were born in another country. But she had a soft spot for the little birdies.

And who can argue with those priorities?

Basically, some conservatives don’t think of Hispanics as animals. They think of Hispanics as less than animals.

Here’s a cheery statistic that you may have missed: The wealthiest 1 percent now control 39 percent of the world’s wealth, and their share is likely to grow in the coming years.

What this means is that while you were digging out from the Great Recession — or are still digging out — multimillionaires coasted through just fine. And the gap between the uber-wealthy and the rest of us is the widest it has been in about a half century.

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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.

Well, I was going to post something insightful about the Heritage Foundation’s claims that Latinos are genetically destined to be low-IQ drains on society. But I’m just too dim to find fault with what is clearly rigorous, scientifically validated research free of any racial animus. Nope, can’t be done.

In fact, I won’t even point out this study, which implies that both conservatives and racists (and there may be some overlap) tend to have lower IQs themselves. I’m just not bright enough to quote that research.

So instead I’m going to give a shout out to someone I have dismissed regularly, Mr. George Lopez. He pointed out that the GOP obsession with portraying Latinos as threats to America is “fucking crazy.”

It may not be articulate, but it is accurate.

My cousin (Cousin #6)  is one of the more than 83,000 immigrants who have become citizens since the September 11 attacks by embracing “a wartime edict to entice immigrants to join the military in exchange for rapid naturalization.”

The program has its critics. Some claim allowing non-citizens to enlist in the military “injects the armed forces with an increased security risk” and is “just like the Roman Empire, not to get too melodramatic about it.”

Yes, the last thing we want in any discussion about immigration is melodrama. After all, the debate has been nothing but calm, logical, and respectful to this point.

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As we all know, the quickest way to convince people to do something is to tell them they are forbidden from doing it. Currently, legislators in everybody’s favorite state — Arizona — are learning this most basic principle of reverse psychology.

You see, in 2010, Arizona lawmakers passed a law to dismantle ethnic studies in that state. The official reason was that such programs promoted “the overthrow of the U.S. government” and created resentment toward white people.

Now, the ban must have been successful, because the U.S. government is still intact. And there have been no reports of rampaging crowds of young Latinos terrorizing the white people of Tucson, which no doubt would have happened if they attended a single ethnic studies class.

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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?

Yes, there’s been a bit of a gap since I updated the site, but as you can guess from the tenor and tone of the last few posts, there is an obvious reason why I haven’t gotten to the computer for a couple of weeks now.

That’s right. I became a father recently, and the past few days have been a pleasant and perplexing miasma of joy, exhaustion, and adrenalized activity.

Soon, I will get back to writing regularly. But until then, almost all of my attention will be focused on a certain young Latino who spends most of his time wailing nonstop.

And I’m pretty damned thrilled about that.