Hispanic Fanatic

I once took a freelance gig editing a book about conspiracy theories. It was an encyclopedia of crazy shit like Mkultra and the Bavarian Illuminati and Area 51.

The book was a highly entertaining read, but it didn’t exactly keep me up at night. I just don’t believe humans are competent enough to pull off fake moon landings and shadow governments and the like. So I’m not prone to yelling, “Conspiracy!” and attributing sinister motives to shadowy figures.

But it’s not a conspiracy to say that Hispanics and African Americans have long been played off one another. And the reason for this is clear: It maintains the status quo.

After all, if America’s two largest ethnic minorities are busy fighting each other, they have little energy to combat the power structures that hinder their mutual growth.

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Recently, I wrote about the low-level celebrity who confused me with the valet at a parking ramp.

While out having drinks, I retold the story to a couple of friends who, inexplicably, had not read it on the blog (yet they all claimed that they read my posts religiously… hmmm). In any case, we talked about whether the celebrity’s mistake rose to the level of racial profiling.

We never came to a definitive conclusion, because the topic soon drifted into a more concrete example of judging someone by the color of his skin. I’m talking about the TSA’s habit of stopping people like me for multiple wandings and the occasional frisking at airports. I’ve written before about this, but my friends all had theories on why the TSA is convinced that I’m the next Mohamed Atta.

“It’s because you look like somebody,” Friend One said. “There must be a guy on the terror watch list who looks exactly like you. It’s just bad luck.”

“No,” Friend Two said. “It’s because you look like everybody. You’re like the standard angry traveler with a bad attitude. They want to make an example out of you for going through the line with a scowl.”

“You’re both wrong,” Friend Three said. “It’s because you look like nobody. You’re still an exotic mix compared with most people who fly. So TSA thinks you could be a Muslim extremist, or a MS-13 gang member, or a yakuza for all they know. You could be something bad because nobody else in line resembles you.”

I thanked them for their insights. I finally had an answer on why I have to allow an extra fifteen minutes for airport security whenever I fly.

It’s because I look like somebody… or I look like everybody…  or I look like nobody.

So there you have it. That certainly clears things up.

But just as I achieved this level of enlightenment, Friend Four spoke up.

“It’s because you look brown,” she said. “That’s it.”

Damn, I had never even considered that.

By now, you’ve heard all about the Kansas legislator who said it was a fine idea to hire gunmen to fly around in helicopters and shoot undocumented immigrants. Republican Virgil Peck made what he calls a “joke” during a public hearing on how to control the feral-pig population (like you, I was unaware that this was a huge problem in Kansas).

In any case, Peck has apologized for comparing immigrants to hogs, and while he was at it, for advocating that the state just start executing people it doesn’t like.

Of course, Peck’s comments are not in the smallest way indicative of the GOP’s hatred for Hispanics. As conservatives are quick to point out, that is all a liberal-media myth, and the Republican Party truly loves Hispanics. After all, you only joke about slaughtering people like vermin if you really respect them.

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I never get tired of writing about Hispanic culture. But I have to admit that certain related topics have started to wear on me. Check that — one subject has pummeled me into stunned disbelief and ulcer-causing frustration.

Yes, once again, I have to grit my teeth and pound the word “Arizona” into the keyboard. It wasn’t enough that the state passed SB 1070, the most overtly Latino-hostile piece of legislation in modern history. Nor was Arizona satisfied when it banned ethnic studies in high schools, under the guise that kids who learned about Cesar Chavez would get riled up and burn down Tucson.

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When I was a college student, I worked at the student newspaper. I was a longhaired, hard-drinking journalist — a Woodward and/or Bernstein in training — who would someday expose wrongdoers and bring down corrupt powerbrokers.

Well, at least that’s how I saw myself back then. It didn’t quite work out that way. And it’s not just because my chosen field, print journalism, soon became as relevant as the telegraph.

In truth, I got soured on the crusading-reporter thing pretty quickly. One of my first interview subjects was an intense man who proudly called himself a black separatist. He gave lectures around the country that outlined how African Americans needed to reject integration and establish their own nation.

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In 1989, Charles Stuart murdered his pregnant wife. To cover up his crime, he told police that a black man had done it. The cops, and pretty much everybody else, believed him.

Then the lie unraveled, and Stuart killed himself by jumping off a bridge.

Stuart is perhaps the most infamous example of someone who commits a crime or indulges in bad behavior, and then pins the blame on a black man. In fact, there is a history of people who have embraced this very effective ploy.

However, the gambit seems to be played out. In 2010, making up some story that an African American jumped you is so cliché. Contemporary Americans have paid attention to the political zeitgeist, and thus informed, decided that the most logical scapegoat is a Latino male.

For example, Heidi Jones, a weather anchor for ABC’s New York City affiliate and an occasional forecaster on Good Morning America, has recently been suspended from her job and has been arrested for lying to the police.

Jones claimed that a man tried to rape her while she was jogging in Central Park a couple of months ago. After investigating her claims, however, “investigators found inconsistencies in her story and could find no witnesses or suspects” and eventually got Jones to admit that she had “spun the tale as a ‘plea for sympathy’ because of trouble in her personal life.”

Jones has been charged with two counts of filing a false police report, and she faces a year in jail or a thousand-dollar fine.

One’s first reaction to this is disgust. Jones’ actions are incredibly harmful to real rape victims, many of whom often face hostile accusations of making the whole thing up. Here we have a public figure who has fabricated a sexual assault, providing ammunition to misogynists everywhere.

Pity is also a common reaction. How messed up must this woman’s existence be to create such a grotesque tale “in a plea for sympathy to counter some unknown setback that she was experiencing in her personal life”?

Once we get past those responses, however, we see the modern twist on the Stuart trope. Jones knew that to have any credibility, her fictional rapist had to be Hispanic.

Saying the guy was black seems suspicious, because that’s what Stuart and other liars claimed. However, a white perpetrator strains credibility, because… well… you know.

So Hispanic it is. After all, we make handy targets in political ads, and we have been blamed for everything from skyrocketing crime rates to the housing collapse. As such, creating a Latino thug who jumps women in the dark is a logical choice for the imaginary crime victim.

Lisa Navarrete, a spokeswoman for La Raza, commented on Jones’ hoax. Navarrete said it “reflects the mindset of many more people who think that if you want to make up a story and you want people to believe it, you should blame an African American man or a Latino.”

Navarrete is mostly correct. However, she’s clearly stuck in the past when she claims African Americans are as likely to be the object of a false claim. I mean, it’s not 1989 anymore.

Remember on Seinfeld, when one of the characters (usually Elaine) would get all freaked out over some minor slight? Much of that show’s comedy flowed from conniptions over mild social transgressions, such as neglecting to send a thank-you card or issuing improper credit for the big salad or speaking too close to one’s face.

Well, you’ll be delighted to know that such petty behaviors have their own sociological term, but only if they are directed at ethnic minorities.

In such cases, they are called acts of racial microaggression, and they are “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color.”

Microaggression is what occurs when security guards follow black people around stores, or an Asian American is told he speaks English well, or a Latino is mistaken for a day laborer. It’s the little things, subtle behaviors that a person may not even notice — unless they are directed at you.

In its nuances, microaggression is different from some racist nut screaming epithets and yelling at us to get out of the country (I believe that would be considered bugfuck macroaggression, technically speaking).

There are also microinsults and microinvalidation, and the truly alarming concept of microassault. I assume that last one involves bigots with tiny fists.

Just about any ethic minority can give examples of microaggression from his or her own life. These are moments when we are told (not overtly, of course) that we don’t belong.

The existence of this concept is undeniable. But does that mean racial microaggression has any real power? In other words, is this a real problem, the infamous death by a thousand cuts, or is it just fancied-up whining?

An argument can be made that, yes, a person repeatedly subjected to innuendo and between-the-lines insults will soon believe that he or she is inferior. But one could also say that such jabs are too weak, even when accumulated, to do any lasting damage.

I would be interested to know if anyone has done any research on the real-world effects of this phenomenon. I would also like to know if people who indulge in racial microaggression are accidental racists.

In any case, the punishment for such behavior could not be clearer, nor more severe.

That’s right: No soup for you.

It’s good karma to thank one’s internet friends, so let me give a quick shout out to Pete and Raul for their recent comments on my posts.

Speaking of amigos, a friend and I met up for dinner recently. For some reason, we started talking about shitty jobs that we’ve had in the past. Between us, we’ve had some pretty horrific gigs, but one of hers in particular caught my attention.

My friend used to be a personal assistant for a minor celebrity here in Los Angeles. One of her duties was to take the celebrity’s mother out to lunch. Yes, Hollywood types really do pay people to perform such tasks (I’m glad I could confirm your justifiably low opinion of them).

In any case, my friend was doing her job, listening to the celebrity’s elderly mother drone on over lunch, when the old lady stopped talking. My friend looked up, concerned that her client’s mom had just suffered a stroke on her watch.

But the celebrity’s mom was staring. My friend noticed the unmistakable flitting of anger cross the lady’s face.

“Look at them,” the celebrity’s mom hissed.

My friend turned around to see what the offense was. As you can imagine, the object of scorn was a Latino family.

The celebrity’s mom launched into a diatribe about how Hispanics were taking over and how they were “stealing my benefits.”

The exact nature of these benefits was not made clear. In fact, my friend briefly considered telling the old lady that any privileges she had accrued were because of her majority status in the culture — that and the fact that her daughter had once starred in a hit TV show. It wasn’t because the old lady had actually worked hard for anything.

Nor did my friend learn how a normal-looking family out for a meal was really a front for stealing the old woman’s “benefits,” whatever those were. In fact, as my friend explained, “I’m not even sure everybody in the family was Hispanic. A couple of them looked Middle Eastern.”

In any case, my friend endured the diatribe about “sneaky Mexicans” and escorted the old lady out of the restaurant. The benefit-stealing family of possible Hispanics remained oblivious.

My friend quit the job soon after this incident. Cut off from the entourage, she never heard from the celebrity again. It’s just as well, because her old boss is now an ex-celebrity who hasn’t worked in years. In all likelihood, she doesn’t even have a personal assistant anymore.

Who knows, maybe the celebrity has to suffer the indignity of taking her own damn mom out for lunch.

Let me say a quick thanks to Antonio, Robin, and my old friend the Bitca for their recent comments.

Next, let me introduce the subject of today’s post: sex.

Yes… sex… sex… sex.

Sorry, I was just trying to drive up the site’s traffic.

However, the topic is relevant, in light of a recent study that looked at everybody’s favorite pastime (i.e., getting’ it on) and filtered it through a racial prism.

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It’s dangerous, not to mention intellectually dishonest, to insist that any racial or ethnic group has specific likes or dislikes. After all, in today’s multiracial society, it’s often debatable who is or isn’t a member of a certain group. And let’s not forget that such assertions, even well-meaning ones, open up the door to stereotyping.

But like most dangerous and/or offensive things, it’s also a lot of fun to do.

Recently, the good people at OK Trends did a little analysis on people who joined a dating website. The researchers looked at over a half-million individuals and divided them into groups by their self-stated race or ethnicity. The authors then “isolated the words and phrases that made each racial group’s essays statistically distinct” and posted the results.

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