Latinos like others on Libya ambivalence

It seems that Latinos (or at least the activist groups that like to think they speak for us) aren’t all that enthused about getting involved in any kind of military conflict concerning Libya and its leader, Moammar Gadhafi.

Not that such an attitude about the “military action” (not a “war,” according to President Barack Obama’s spokesman) ought to be surprising. Because it merely means we share the same apathy that the bulk of society seems to have.

THE GALLUP ORGANIZATION came out with a new poll saying only 10 percent of the populace thinks the United States should have a “leading” role in military activity in Libya, while a solid majority (nearly 60 percent) think we should have either a minor role, or should withdraw outright.

So nobody should think it outrageous that the National Latino Congreso met recently in Austin, Texas, and included among its activity approval of a resolution that calls for the U.S. military to get out of anything involved with Libya.

“Member organizations of the Congreso are especially sensitive to issues of regime change and U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of developing nations because of the tragic and outrageous history of such interventions and military and covert operations in Latin American countries,” their resolution reads.

“Such a policy of intervention and armed assault by the U.S. government is therefore harmful to the relationship with the countries of Latin America, as witnessed by the refusal of many Latin American countries to endorse the current military intervention,” it reads.

HENCE, THE CONGRESO – which includes such groups as the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Mexican-American Political Association and the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement; to name a few – is taking the stance that the United States should pull any support for Libya-related military actions, and also should not spent any federal funds to help others with such acts.

“This administration does not have a mandate from the American people to engage in regime change in any nation in the world,” the Congreso resolution reads.

Which would certainly be true, if the Gallup Organization’s poll has any legitimacy. Their poll has 44 percent of the public approving of Obama’s handling of the situation, another 44 percent disapproving – and the other 12 percent not knowing what to think of the issue.

Even among those people who want U.S. involvement with Libya, there is no consensus. Forty-five percent want our military to stick with merely enforcing the no-fly zone over Libya that supposedly will inhibit the ability of Gadhafi’s military to repel the rebels.

WHILE ANOTHER 44 percent want the U.S. to focus on eliminating Gadhafi himself.

But there are those people among the populace, at-large, who would be willing to agree with the Congreso, which in its resolution said, “there is clearly hypocrisy and a double standard in relation to the situation in Libya and other oil rich regimes such as Bahrain, where there are in fact dictatorships under challenge by popular opposition, but where the dictatorships are allies of the United States.”

Anyone who thinks that line is bunk ought to keep in mind that Saddam Hussein of Iraq was once considered a worthwhile U.S. ally, before finally becoming too much of an embarrassment for us to support any longer.

So by no means should anyone think that Latinos are all that sympathetic to the regime of Gadhafi. It’s just that we realize the legitimacy of the Congreso’s resolution statement that, “it is clear from the history of the United States and the European nations that whenever there was even the hint of an armed insurrection, that they themselves have responded with overwhelming and deadly force.”

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Latinos, Jewish people not some undivided chasm, unless we let it be

It was an odd juxtaposition of stories I encountered on the Internet Tuesday afternoon – one about a poll saying that half of Latinos think the United States is too supportive of Israel, and another about an effort in Texas to bring Latinos and Jewish people together.



Are they on to something in L.A.?

For it seems that people reacting to the poll by the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding said this is a sign that Jewish people should be concerned about the growing Latino population – and need to figure ways to reach out to us so we can find our common ground.

IT SEEMS THAT some of us are already reaching out. And it really isn’t that hard to find common ground – many of the nativist nitwits who look for any excuse they can find to berate Latinos probably got their practice throughout the years claiming that Jewish people weren’t American enough, in their minds, to deserve to live in this country.

Now I suppose I come from a different perspective on this particular issue, since I gained a Jewish step-mother when my father remarried. In fact, after them being together for 27 years, my father finally converted to Judaism just over a month ago.

Personally, I sat through the service where he was officially welcomed as a new Jew and heard him talk of his “loss of faith” with the Catholic Church years ago (while also talking about how, as a small boy spending summers with relatives in Mexico, he contemplated becoming a priest), and wondered why he hadn’t made this jump in faith years ago.

Just because my father is now Jewish, I can’t say it has impacted our relationship in any way. It hasn’t created some cultural gap that we can’t bridge.

IN FACT, DEALING with my step-mother’s family throughout the years, I’d have to say they have been people who were more than willing to be open to the idea of aspects of life coming from a culture not rooted solely within los Estados Unidos.

About the closest I can come to a moment when I felt “out of the loop” is one that is more humorous than anything else – my young niece last year jokingly uninvited me from Hanukkah celebrations because I wasn’t Jewish.

My point in all of this is that I have been around enough Jewish people to find it’s not a very mysterious group. In fact, about the only people who find it something strange are the people who have deliberately isolated themselves.

Which is what I think the foundation found when they conducted their poll. Among its findings?

FIFTY-EIGHT PERCENT OF Jewish people surveyed think Latinos have prejudices that are anti-Jewish. Guess what, 46 percent of Latinos surveyed agreed. It may well be they interviewed too many people who just came out of Mass that day.

Then again, there are signs that the prejudice can be found all the way around. The poll found that 54 percent of Jewish people were supportive of the overbearing moves by Arizona state government to get local law enforcement involved in federal enforcement of immigration laws.

But it seems that 46 percent of Latinos surveyed are inclined to agree with the nativists who think the United States government is too supportive of Israel, with many Latinos saying they “don’t know” whether we should support Israelis or Palestinians.

Which makes me think that by being split apart, the only people who gain are the nativist element who would just as soon be rid of both of us. It seems many of us on all sides could use an education process.

WHICH IS WHY I was pleased to read the accounts from the San Antonio Express-News newspaper about a recent meeting of the minds, which former Mayor and federal Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros said could turn into a national coalition with some influence, if handled right.

Cisneros said it would be a coalition of “common experiences” and “common interests” bringing the two groups together.

Which is the step in the right direction. For if we start getting all the individual groups working together, eventually the nativists will get to be isolated all by themselves.

Isolated into irrelevance, while our society advances beyond them.

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Will organ donation rise as Latinos further assimilate?

Mi madre

Perhaps it is because my brother, Christopher, and I (at third-generation) are further along the path to assimilation. But there wasn’t any hesitation when our mother died last autumn that we would permit her organs to be donated for possible transplant.

In large part, it was because she herself insisted we act in such a manner. It was one of the things she made clear to us in her final years of life, and she also had signed all the proper paperwork to indicate that this was her wish.

TO ME, IF I had thrown up some sort of fit and claimed my mother’s body was somehow being violated by the concept of organ donation, I could envision someday ascending to an after-life – only to have my mother waiting to lecture me about why I didn’t follow her wishes.

So it is from that perspective that I read a recent study, and various reports about it, that indicate the Latino population is less likely to permit organs to be donated that any other ethnic or racial group in our society.

The Texas Organ Sharing Alliance said that only 31 percent of all people they followed who donated organs during 2010 were Latino (compared to the 42 percent of all Texans who are Tejano).

The Reuters wire service did a particularly nice piece of reporting about this issue, finding many Latinos who saw this as a religious issue – as though losing a body part would make one incomplete in the “afterlife.”

THE WIRE SERVICE even found one Latina who got cut off by the bulk of her family after she gave approval for her daughter’s heart and liver to be donated after she died in an automobile accident.

I’ll admit that I have encountered people who have felt this way – who claimed that organ donation was somehow sinful. Of course, those individuals were of Polish ethnic descent – albeit, still Catholic.

Which makes me think this is an issue that will change with time, perhaps as the Catholic Church has less of an impact upon the daily routines of the lives of many Latinos. In short, as Latinos continue their path to assimilation.

What amazes me is that the Catholic church has taken official stances indicating that organ donation doesn’t do anything to deny one the chance at an afterlife outside of Hell. Unless we also want to believe that the souls of war casualties that get mutilated also are condemned to purgatory?

YET STILL, FOR some it just doesn’t register. As though they don’t realize the body will eventually rot away. Organ donation can give someone a chance at improved life.

A part of me feels like if any body part of my mother was able to benefit someone else, then a part of her lives on for awhile longer Now I don’t know what happened with her body, as she was ill for the last decade of her life. I don’t know if her organs were worth much (she herself was waiting for a kidney transplant, one that never came to be), although my brother and I were told that her corneas were likely of use to scientists doing medical research.

So if there are some Latino individuals out there who think my brother and I somehow did the wrong thing with our mother, I’ll have to tell them to stuff it. (Actually, I have a few choice Spanish obscenities for them, but decorum prevents me from repeating them here).

My mother lives on in the memories of my brother and I, regardless of what was done with her body parts. Hopefully, the day will come when my ethnic brethren will come to the same realization.

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With Latinos in sight everywhere, they’re confused about how to perceive us

It seems that nobody is quite sure what to make of the growing Latino population these days.

Is there truth here?

The Chicago Tribune published a report this weekend claiming a scandal in that sheriff’s police in suburban McHenry County, Ill., were identifying Latinos caught in traffic stops as “white” when it came to compiling statistics meant to find if racial profiling was a problem.

IT SEEMED LIKE a cover-up to some, who think the police are harassing Latinos, then trying to doctor statistics to show they are not. To me, it just seems like a holdover from the past when what we now call Latinos were classified racially as “white,” albeit not quite as white as certain other individuals.

Then again, the Census Bureau population count for 2000 showed that 48 percent of Latinos identified themselves racially as white. Some studies of the partial results we have seen thus far for the 2010 population count shows that many Latinos are calling themselves “white.”

Heck, I once had a Census Bureau enumerator doing a canvass on my block classify me as “white” after taking one look at me. So it’s not the most outrageous claim I have ever heard for Latinos to be perceived as such (although those of us who are honest will admit there likely is a racial mix in our family trees).

If anything, it is just evidence that we haven’t quite figured out what to think of the growing Latino population in this country – perhaps because it doesn’t fit into the “black/white” convenient AND simplistic categories in use in the past.

THOSE WANTING TO know more about this situation ought to check out this site’s sister weblog, the Chicago Argus, for more detail.

For those looking for more reading material to start off the week, this commentary is worth reading, because it applies in so many ways to so many places far beyond Stockton, Calif.

There also is a glimpse from what the nativist types want to think of as the “old country” about the fact that more than 50 million people living in this country identify as “Latino.” And some people just couldn’t wait until Thursday to celebrate their memories of the life of United Farm Workers founder Cesar Chavez.

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Nothing’s going to happen on 12/21/12

Now I’m convinced that our planet, as we know it, is NOT going to come to an end on Dec. 21, 2012.

Mexico tourism officials are trying to use the modern interpretations of the Mayas’ calendars that supposedly come to an end on that date some 21 months from now to justify having people plan trips to Mexico for December of next year.

AFTER ALL, IF Planet Earth is going to come to an end, why not be in the place where the Mayans were when they made their writings that modern scholars have interpreted in such a way.

And if it turns out to be a bunch of bunk and Dec. 22 turns out to be just another day, you’d be able to enjoy the beauty of Mexico. Stick around a few days more, and you can celebrate a Mexican Christmas (even though the traditional posada is usually done around Dec. 12).

Which makes me think that Dec. 12, 2012 is destined to become as overblown and, ultimately, uneventful as was Jan. 1, 2000.

Remember when so many people were convinced the world was going to end on that date because computer technology was too stupid to comprehend the coming of a new millennium?

IN THE END, the computers didn’t care. They just kept chugging away. That is what I expect to happen next December.

While I would get a kick out of seeing the Mexican economy get a jolt from all those international tourists gullible enough to plan December vacation trips, it just seems that so many people are building themselves up for a massive emotional let-down.

And what happens if some people decide to buy a one-way ticket to Mexico, figuring the world will end and money spent on a return trip home would be wasted?

They’re going to find themselves stuck in Mexico City, or whichever Mexican city they chose to spend our society’s “final days” of existence. Which means the Mexican economy could make a financial double-killing.

GET THE PEOPLE as they stay in Mexico for as much as they can spend, then bleed them dry as they pay whatever they have left when they want to go back home.

And be sure to sell them all kinds of tacky t-shirts and other “Mayan End of the World” merchandise.

Come Christmas Eve of 2012, all of that junk will be up for sale on eBay, with people desperate to find anyone to buy it off of them at a quarter a pop.

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Those who see nothing but nightmare are determined to be miserable

This East Los Angeles-based mural is becoming more and more a literal truth.

How large is the Latino population of this nation?

I couldn’t help but notice the fact that the percentage increase during the past decade is NOT a record, even though the Census Bureau counts indicate that the Latino population went from 35.3 million on April 1, 2000 to 50.5 million on April 1, 2010.

THAT IS FIFTEEN million more individuals whose ethnic origins lie in Latin American nations (Dare I say that makes them, and us who were already here, the “real” Americans?). That’s a lot of people.

There are individual states that want to believe they’re isolated from this reality that can’t dream of having that many people (and the influence that is gained from having significant populations).

Yet because there already were a significant number of Latinos in the United States a decade ago, the percentage that 15.2 million more people comprises isn’t a record.

The 2000 to 2010 Latino increase was 43 percent – less than the 58 percent growth experienced from 1990 to 2000.

I’M SURE THE nativist element of our society will try to twist this fact into a negative. A 58 percent growth one decade falls to 43 percent the next decade. The Latino “growth” is slowing.

That’s one way to look at it. If you want to fantasize about such thoughts, I suppose you also spend your time dreaming of the Detroit Lions playing someday in the Super Bowl.

But I can’t help but think of the fact that this growth trend is expected to continue through about 2050, when Latinos are expected to be about one-third of the nation’s population (officially, we’re now 16.3 percent). The percentages of the growth will decline because the overall number will become so large that it can’t help but shrink.

That would mean about 100 million Latinos – or twice as many as we have currently. That is, unless we get significant numbers of Latinos who intermarry with Anglos to the degree that they start thinking of themselves more as the latter than Latino.

THEN AGAIN, I expect the real xenophobes would consider that an even bigger doomsday scenario than a growing, but separate, class of Latinos.

In terms of electoral politics, I can’t help but get my giggles from the states that had the largest percentage growths of Latinos during the past decade. We’re talking about Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, both North and South Carolina and Tennessee.

They’re all places where the Republican Party is counting on being the dominant force for years to come. Yet they all have seen at least 100 percent increases in their Latino populations.

The Southern Strategy of old that got Richard M. Nixon elected president in 1968 and has been the base of the GOP ever since is going to have to undergo a serious revision – lest the new arrivals deem the local politicos irrelevant in future election cycles.

FOR AT 17.1 million Latinos under 18, that is a lot of young people who are going to grow up into mature adults who are going to take this country in a direction relevant to their existence – not the warped vision that the nativist element may propose.

So while I live in one of the nine states that have significant Latino communities (and have had them for decades), all it really means is that the rest of the country is starting to come along and enjoy the same perks and benefits of a significant Latino population.

As for those of you who are determined to screech and scream about this, all I can say is “grow up.” You remind me of my 8-year-old niece throwing a tantrum when she wants something all to herself and can’t have it.

Pretty soon, the bulk of our society is going to realize that the best way to deal with your rants is to ignore them outright.

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What is appropriate way for people to respond?

The Chicago Tribune seems to have triggered something when they reported earlier this week about an activist group that is trying to get its members to post comments in response to the negative nitwits who like to post negative, if not outright hostile, comments on the Internet to stories about immigration, or anything involving non-white ethnicity.

That story is getting picked up. Even Fox News has felt the need to do a version of the piece for their own web site.

I’M NOT SURE if they’re trying to create the perception that the positive comments about immigration are somehow phony. But it does seem to have people ticked off.

One person literally responded to this story by calling such comments, “tan Klan-MALDEF propaganda,” which is almost a cute rhyme.

For the record, the Tribune reported about the Latino Policy Forum, which is creating what it calls a “Comment Corps.” About 3,000 people who would be willing to post responses to negative stories, or to try to rebut anyone who posts negative comments to serious reporting about ethnicity issues.

Personally, I thought the idea was kind of weak, and not just because it feeds into the conspiracy theories of the conservative ideologues.

I’D RATHER SEE these people putting their effort on the Internet to creating a website (or websites) that do the actual reporting or commenting. That attitude is what caused me some three years ago to create this weblog – in hopes that at least a few of the pieces of commentary that get published here will actually help explain to the masses what is running through the minds of this country’s growing Latino population.

A serious piece of writing contributes more than someone writing a sentence saying that someone else is being stupid when they make such ridiculous comments as one that got posted on this very site recently – one who said that he felt sorry for the hogs when I wrote a commentary about the Kansas state legislator who joked about shooting immigrants the way that state controls its excess hog population.

Not that I’m telling them not to post comments. They have the right to use their time as they see fit, and I have the right to think their effort is miniscule in terms of its overall significance.

As far as what I think of all those negative comments that get posted on all kinds of websites, I think they usually show the lack of intelligence of the people making such postings.

IT IS THE reason why I have allowed some fairly outrageous trash talk in the comments section of this weblog. Those nonsense-talk posts usually wind up confirming the legitimacy of whatever stance I have taken on a particular issue.

Then again, many of the people who respond to me seem to prefer sending me e-mails directly, meaning only I get to enjoy the sheer stupidity that some people take way too much pride in.

And yes. I will admit to being curious to see what kind of trash talk someone comes up with in response to this piece of commentary.

Someone will take offense to a commentary about comments and feel the need to comment in such a negative fashion. Some people just have nothing better to do with themselves than to rant in response to what others write – rather than try to lead with their thoughts.

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Obama proper in making Latin American visit

OBAMA: He'll be back soon

There are those people who have been denouncing the fact that President Barack Obama has been visiting Latin American nations the past few days – implying that he’s wasting his time at a time when there is the massive relief effort in Japan and the military movement in Libya, along with all the other crises occurring around the nation and the world.

I even stumbled across some people who tried to trash Obama by saying he is worthy of the same criticism that then-President George W. Bush got on Sept. 11, 2001, when he was notified of the incidents at the Pentagon and World Trade Center while reading to schoolchildren and appeared to have no reaction.

IN OBAMA’S CASE, there are video clips and still photographs of the president playing soccer with children in Brazil – at the exact moment that attacks were taking place in support of rebels who would like to depose Moammar Ghadafi as their leader/dictator/tyrant.

Of course, if those photographs and video clips didn’t exist, these people would have found some other reason to complain. These ideologues just want to complain – and this combines two of their leading “issues” that cause them to rant.

We’re talking about Obama and Latin America. Either one of those factors would have justified a rant, in their minds. Having both creates a crisis. If only we could somehow work gay people into the mix, they would have had the "trifecta" that would have amounted to an outright disaster for which they’d engage in the rant to end all rants.

I have written other pieces of commentary talking about the significance of a U.S. president trying to build up relations with Latin American nations, and also showing that he understands that “Latin America” extends beyond Mexico (or, if he’s from New York, Puerto Rico).

SO THE FACT that Obama has been in El Salvador, Brazil and Chile (he should be back in the United States by Wednesday) trying to bolster this nation (along with his own perception) is a plus.

I honestly don’t get those people who try to compare him to Bush. For one thing, it comes across like they’re now conceding that all the criticism of their ideological ally was justified – that Bush did appear to be clueless and slow on the draw in reacting to the actions of extremists who try to use Islam as a cover for their violent behavior.

Personally, I agree that filmmaker Michael Moore’s depiction of Bush at that moment in his film “Fahrenheit 9/11” was a cheap-shot – an exaggeration of his behavior. If he had jumped up and started barking out orders, I’d be wondering if he had forgotten his medication. It would have come across as an over-reaction.

But more importantly, I don’t see the Obama moment as being comparable. Because the attacks were taking place. Which means Obama must have given whatever military orders were appropriate for the situation.

IF YOU COULD show that military personnel were waiting to hear from the president to learn if they had a “go” order, then maybe it would be the same. It wasn’t.

Or could it be that we just have some crackpots who were upset that a U.S. president would kick around a soccer ball without thinking it was some sort of alien object? Like those nitwits who every four years insist in ranting about the fact that the World Cup tourney gets more and more attention in this country.

Besides, I would think that having Obama in some sort of soccer-related moment while in Brazil (the nation whose national team is a world-wide dominant power in the sport) is a natural. It would have been a missed opportunity if he hadn’t done something.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Former CNN newsperson Rick Sanchez wrote an interesting commentary about how both conservative and liberal partisans are missing the point of having Barack Obama visit Latin American nations. It is good to see him keeping busy despite his dismissal from the cable news station last year.

Latino products alter marketing to make more money

I’m curious to see how badly butchered the pronunciation of Tecate becomes in coming months.

Are we going to see more girls like these in coming months?



We’re going to find out because the Mexican brand of beer (made originally in the border region city of Tecate) plans to expand its marketing efforts to include English-language commercials.

THE BEER BRAND has been distributed in the United States for years. But what little advertising has been done for it has focused on Spanish-language media outlets, and has tended to portray a product to be consumed by Mexican immigrants who want a taste of the home country.

But it seems the marketers are realizing that many Latinos are also capable of speaking English. And also that there could be a demand for the beer brand among non-Latinos – particularly those who realize that Corona brand beer has too foul (in my opinion) a flavor to be consumed seriously.

So yes, we’re going to get the sight of blonde women bouncing about on the beach (most likely in the red and black colors of Tecate), while consuming a beer. Perhaps they’ll even figure out the trick of using a lime slice and some salt to bolster a Tecate beer’s flavor – without making a complete mess of oneself.

Reports in the advertising press talk of the tagline, “Let’s celebrate character. Con caracter.”

THAT LITTLE BIT of bilingual taste to an English ad.

The advertising press points out the most significant reason for trying to market this product to more people. Despite what the nativists want to believe about Mexicans somehow overrunning the United States, the number of immigrant men from Mexico in this country comprises less than 10 percent of the number of Latinos.

So trying to be a taste of the “old country” is just too limited a market for the product to remain viable.

If anything, the fact that Tecate sees a chance to become a larger-scale product is what provides the evidence that Latinos are growing into a more significant part of this society.

EVEN OUR PRODUCTS are going to have the chance to become more mainstream.

Although I’d argue that Cerveza Tecate is far from the most ethnic experience one can have. The same company that distributes Heineken beer in the United States is the same one that handles Tecate, along with other Mexican brands such as Bohemia, Carta Blanca and Dos Equis.

All of which are easily available in the liquor department of your supermarket (once you get past the big Budweiser displays and search for something with a little bit better flavor than a Miller Lite).

So will people learn to pronounce the beer name properly (Te-CAH-teh)? Or are we going to get so many variations of gibberish that it will be laughable?

OF COURSE, IF the marketers truly had any sense of trying to appeal to the U.S. market and make their product seem a little less “foreign,” they’d probably try to come up with a baseball tie. Not like it isn’t possible.

For the city of Tecate does have a professional baseball club – albeit one in the Liga Norte del Mexico that serves as a “minor” league to the Mexican League.

Mexico's answer to the Milwaukee Brewers baseball club?



Their teams, in honor of the local product manufactured in the city, are known as Los Cerveceros. The beer-makers, or brewers.

Just like the ballclub out of Milwaukee.

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Elections like these will happen everywhere

The Napa Valley Register newspaper used the muscle of its editorial page to try to persuade its readership that a city of 38 percent Latino population without any Latinos on the City Council is somehow wrong.

“Our government doesn’t reflect the makeup of our community,” the newspaper said, adding, “Napa’s City Council has never included a council person of Latino descent. It’s scarcely even seen a Latino candidate run for one of its seats.”

THE NEWSPAPER THEN goes on to name a few possible people in their local business community of Latin American ethnic origins who might consider running for office.

Now I personally have no interest in Napa, Calif., municipal elections. I have never been to that city, and may well never visit there at any point during my lifetime.

But what caught my attention about this editorial was not so much that certain people learned Sunday they would have the newspaper’s support if they chose to run for elective office, but that such an editorial stance could be taken by any newsgathering organization anywhere in this country.

The Census Bureau findings for the 2010 population count are coming out state-by-state, and showing significant Latino population increases everywhere. No place is exempt from this trend.

WHICH MEANS THERE are a lot of political establishments that are going to have to stop thinking of Latino elected officials as some sort of absurd concept that only happens elsewhere.

That isn’t going to be an easy concept for some people. I couldn’t help but notice one person responded to the newspaper’s editorial by calling it a “disgusting article.”

Of course, I’d argue it is that person who has the problem that must be overcome, and it is time that we quit giving those people who want to keep the political status quo so much (if any) credibility.

Because this isn’t just a Napa thing.

THIS EDITORIAL IS capable of being written in any community. Remove the population figures, ethnic percentages and the names of the local officials, and the sentiment is the same.

As that particular newspaper put it, “Look around … and you can’t help but notice the impact of the Latino community. In our arts, in our business community, in our schools, the Hispanic influence is everywhere …”

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Stating the incredibly obvious

Will this symbol become irrelevant in Latino politics?

It’s nice to see that somebody within the ranks of the Republican Party gets the fact that the growing Latino population is not a problem to be overcome, but a voter base that must be appealed to.

What is questionable is how many of the people who currently count themselves among the GOP ranks will want to listen to the message.

THERE IS A new poll of Latino voters in California, trying to determine how those of us with ethnic ties to Latin America perceive the Republican Party. The bottom-line results are discouraging for that political party.

Only 26 percent of Latinos questioned think favorably about the GOP, while 47 percent think unfavorably about it. By comparison, 62 percent of Latinos think favorably about the Democratic Party, with only 22 percent unfavorable.

The poll also found that GOP rhetoric defending conservative ideology as “sticking to core values” and nominating “true conservatives” is a turn-off to Latinos. Only 22 percent think those things are something we could support.

It seems that “core values” plays among Latinos the way the phrase “state’s rights” plays among a certain generation of African-American voters – nothing more than political code for using government to uphold one’s irrational hang-ups about people who aren’t exactly like themselves.

YET THERE IS the positive part for the GOP, if they’re willing to listen to it. One-third of Latinos said they were wedded to the Democratic Party; they’re not shifting. Yet another third say they would consider Republican candidates for political office if they were “less conservative.”

We, the growing Latino population of the United States of America, truly are Democrats by Default. The party often shows apathy toward our concerns, yet that becomes preferable to the hostility showed in recent years by the GOP – which has become a political party for people who are having trouble accepting the reality of the United States population as it exists in the 21^st Century.

State after state is showing significant increases in Latinos, with those increases often being the only reason states/cities/counties didn’t lose people in their official population count.

But as the Republican-leaning political consultant who commissioned this particular poll pointed out the positive aspect – 73 percent of Latinos are willing to accept rhetoric about immigration that excludes more people from coming to the United States, PROVIDED that the GOP candidate also says that part of the solution involves acknowledging the status of people who already are in this country.

IN SHORT, THE people who seriously expect the Republican Party to be their political mechanism for electing people who will push for more deportations are the ones who are killing the GOP.

It also means that the future of the Republican Party is to accept a policy that merely reflects reality. Screaming “amnesty” as though it is a dirty word merely makes one look quite foolish – if not hateful.

So will this study make any impact upon the people to whom it is aimed? I can’t say, because my own observations indicate to me that many of the Republican members would consider this kind of attitude outright heresy.

I’m curious to see how many people react to this poll (if not this specific commentary) by claiming it to be unbelievable, ridiculous, if not outright un-American, in attitude to not demonize the growing Latino population.

I’M SURE SOME will even claim that last year’s election cycle is the evidence of how faulty this logic is.

Of course, a realistic look at what happened last year showed that the candidates who made the most blatant appeals to nativist thought didn’t win, even in a “big” GOP year. Also, some of the most interesting gains for the Republican Party last year was in states where they had Latino candidates running – which is, in itself, an appeal the GOP should be making.

But they aren’t, and many GOP partisans are determined not to, at all costs. Stubborn minds among their ranks is what ultimately will reduce the one-time Party of Lincoln to irrelevance except in the most isolated of communities in this country.

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Obama heading for not-as-approving South American territory

President Barack Obama leaves the country Friday for his five-day sojourn to a trio of South American nations, hoping his presence can help make some sense of a U.S. foreign policy toward Latin American nations that all too often is more apathetic than anything else.

The international backing that Obama draws for the United States remains in this hemisphere – despite what seems like the best attempts by our officials to blow away such support.

I COULDN’T HELP but notice the Gallup Organization’s latest poll – one that studied Obama’s approval rating in the various nations of Latin America.

He is well-liked in all three countries he plans to visit. In Chile (67 percent approval), El Salvador (61 percent) and Brazil (55 percent), he won’t be running into overwhelming opposition – unless he manages to do something stupid while there this weekend and into next.

In fact, that seems to be the attitude toward Obama in all the nations that comprise the Americas.

About the only nation that has a significant negative perception of Obama is Venezuela, where 34 percent disapprove and only 37 percent approve of his performance.

THEN AGAIN, WHEN one has an outspoken demagogue of a leader such as Hugo Chavez, it might be expected that the people would be influenced by his pompous rhetoric.

Which might also be seen as evidence that Obama is doing something correct, if Chavez doesn’t fully trust him.

Rattling through the Gallup list of Latin American nations and their support levels for Obama, I couldn’t help but notice Mexico – the nation that most often dominates our society’s public perception of Latin America as a whole.

Even with the demonization that comes from too many officials in this country, Mexicans who were surveyed have a 50 percent approval rating for Obama, compared to 32 percent who disapprove and 19 percent who “don’t know” what to think of the U.S. president – who has met five times with their nation’s leader during his two years in office.

YET ONE YEAR ago, Mexicans gave Obama a 62 percent approval rating. Which means the rhetoric we hear too much of these days is having its negative impact. It makes Obama look weak that he can’t stand up to the people who engage in such trash talk.

That is not as bad as Obama’s drop in El Salvador, where he once had an 84 percent approval rating. This is the kind of attitude he is going to have to overcome on his South American trip.

That is what makes this particular trip so important, despite the attitudes of some people who would prefer to think that an Obama trip to any other part of the world would be more significant than the one he’s taking now.

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This is where the nativist rhetoric has taken us

I will give Kansas state Rep. Virgil Peck, R-Tyro, one bit of credit – he didn’t hem and haw and take a day and forever before issuing what purports to be an apology for his ignorant rhetoric during debate in a Kansas House committee.



PECK: He apologizes



His one-line statement (“My statements were regrettable. Please accept my apology”) came Tuesday, one day after the legislator from a rural town of 219 people (only one of whom admits to being “Hispanic”) managed to put his foot in his mouth on a national scale.

MONDAY IS WHEN he suggested that the solution to the problem of wild hogs roaming about be applied to the immigration policy and the numbers of people living here without a valid visa.

That solution involves game control officials shooting the hogs to keep their numbers under control; which sounds more like something you’d see in a grotesque video game than in real life.

I’m going to give Peck the benefit of the doubt and believe what he says when he claims it was meant as a joke – a tacky one, albeit – and that he never meant to advocate the shooting of people as a serious public policy initiative.

The very idea of immigration officials flying around in helicopters with high-powered rifles, acting as snipers and picking people off because someone believes they don’t look like they should belong in this country is just too ridiculous to take seriously.

THE PROBLEM WITH this type of rhetoric is that there are unbalanced types in our society who usually are the very ones who want to believe that all their problems in life are someone else’s fault – most likely someone who doesn’t deserve to be here in the first place.

So could I have seen someone take Peck too literally? Of course. There are some people who like to send me anonymous messages who I could easily envision taking Peck’s talk seriously; and who are probably seriously upset now that he issued an apology.

This is the ugly mood that our society has sunk to in the past couple of years, and the mood to which some politicians are more than willing to pander with their political rhetoric when it comes to the upcoming election cycle.

In short, the problem isn’t that Peck made a tacky joke (I make grotesque comments all the time myself, sometimes even in my copy published by this weblog). It’s that some people are more than eager to accept such humor with a straight-face.

WHICH IS WHY I was pleased to see among the people jumping all over Peck for his comments none other than Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, who said that while he is sympathetic to the view of people who want fewer foreigners in this country, he called Peck’s rhetoric, “completely inappropriate.”

Brownback is harder for the nativists to denounce or ignore than the statements that came from the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus or the National Council of La Raza, which are equally valid but feed into the nativist viewpoint that it is their close-minded view that is somehow being picked upon and that THEY are the true victims.

So when I look back upon this whole affair, I see something to be pleased with. A politician said something stupid (which is nothing new, it will happen again), and an outspoken majority criticized him for such nitwit comments.

Peck probably will be more careful in the future when he speaks. That is, if anyone will seriously care what the legislator from a southeast Kansas rural town (located near the communities of Havana and Peru, ironically enough) thinks about anything else in the future.

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