The English “royal wedding” was a big yawn for many of us

I can’t help but think that the so-called “Royal Wedding” occurring in England on Friday was a last-burst of sorts for those people who prefer to think of our society as somehow white in character, and essentially tied in some way to Great Britain (even if many of those individuals aren’t the least bit English themselves).

By the time we get the next generation’s English royal wedding meant to ensure the line of succession even further, we’re going to be a nation of so many people to whom the English history has no bearing.

WE REALLY WILL be a country that will care less about what a wealthy English royal chooses to do with regards to marriage (unless, by chance, he takes a bride who turns out to be a former stripper. Tawdry taints of sex will always catch our attention).

But I can’t say that the wedding festivities and all its ritual and rigamarole caught the attention of the one-sixth of the U.S. population that is Latino. In fact, I’d say it was the ultimate “yawn.” You might as well expect us to get worked up over a cricket match.

Now I’m not saying that we’re going to suddenly shift the focus of U.S. society to other European nations. The vast majority of us Latinos would be equally bored if the Spanish royal family were to have a wedding of similar circumstance.

There are people in this country who in recent weeks have made jokes about the British wedding hype as being overdone. They usually include a line the gist of which is, “Didn’t we fight a war to be free of this?”

TRUST ME WHEN I say that the growing Latino population is more than willing to accept such thoughts. We’d be more than willing to believe that this was all a whole lot of nothin’.

In fact, a part of me is having second thoughts about writing this very commentary because I believe the 600 or so words included in this piece are 600 or so too many.

But I’m proceeding just because I feel the need to acknowledge that I deliberately ignored a story that some people want to think is some grand historic moment. Baloney!

Just for kicks, I tried typing the phrase “royal wedding Latino” into an Internet search engine. About the only relevant pieces of copy that turned up was a story published by Fox News (about an expert jeweler who makes detailed knock-offs of the ring that William gave Kate Middleton, he happens to be an immigrant from Chile) and another piece that tells us of which “Latinos” actually got invited to the wedding.

FOR WHAT IT’S worth, it amounts to Queen Sofia of Spain, along with the deputy prime minister and his wife, and the official engagement photographer – who is from Peru. Technically, none of them are Latino, a phrase that implies U.S. residency.

If it reads like I’m taking a mocking tone to all of this, you’d be correct. It’s the ultimate fluff event and we Latinos, who mostly have our ethnic origins in nations that endured their own revolutionary movements from European powers that wished to colonize us, are more than willing to treat it as such.

If anything, that sentiment probably makes us more “American” than many of the Eurocentric-types who want to think they’re the “real Americans” in this country.

So yes, Kate (or is it Princess William?) looked lovely in her wedding gown, although she looks adorable in just about anything she wears.

BUT THE CHANCE to see her live on television wasn’t worth the idea of having to wake myself up at 3 a.m. (local time) for the privilege.

I took a pass and got some sleep. And I strongly suspect I wasn’t alone in doing so.

  -30-

More talk. Where’s the action?

Last week was the time when President Barack Obama tried getting the Rev. Al Sharpton and other activists on board with his rhetoric about the need for immigration reform.

This week was the time that Obama “glitzed” up the White House by having the Latina celebrities show up so he could preach about how devoted he wishes he could be toward pushing for a desperately-needed reform of federal immigration policy.

AMONG THE LATINAS invited were Rosario Dawson, America Ferrera and Eva Longoria – to name a few. As though Eva (with her master’s degree in Latino studies) has some special knowledge that will enable our nation to fix the convoluted bureaucratic mess that is our immigration law.

I’d sooner think she has some special knowledge about professional basketball, even though her NBA husband is now an ex-, than she would about federal policy toward newcomers to this nation.

On one hand, I can understand what Obama is thinking. He’s trying to reassure certain people in prominent positions (and yes, entertainers have a certain visibility – even if it doesn’t amount to much) that he’s not unsympathetic to the concerns of the growing Latino population that sees the desires of ideologues as hostile toward our own existence in this society.

Unfortunately, however, getting Sàbado Gigante host Don Francisco to show up at the White House (he also was on the guest list for the Thursday afternoon gathering) only has so much value as a symbolic act. There comes a time when he’s going to have to take some action.

SUCH ACTION ISN’T going to involve sweet-talk to people who are friendly. It is going to involve hard political activity against the people who now are determined to fight this issue (in their minds) to the death.

LONGORIA: Our nation's immigration adviser?



That fight isn’t going to be with people such as Vanessa Hauc, the busty hostess of Al Rojo Vivo on the Telemundo television network. Although my guess is that Obama sees Hauc, Francisco (a.k.a., Mario Kreutzberger), Longoria and all the rest as a way of getting through to the hearts and minds of the people for the day when he does have to take on this political fight.

Which makes events such as Thursday’s hour-long meeting at the White House little more than propaganda stunts.

Then again, it’s not any more trivial than any time a conservative ideologue goes on a rant, thereby inspiring Rush Limbaugh or his ilk to go on a rhetorical rampage against the immigration reform we need.

IF ANYTHING, OBAMA is lining up people who will counter Limbaugh’s future rants. This is a step in the political process.

But as I wrote last week after Obama met with Sharpton and other activists (people who would have been too crude and ugly to fit in with Thursday’s meeting), there comes a time when talk must end and there must be a beginning to political activity.

We need to see and hear the actual process of trying to get something through Congress, including the hard-ball politics that will push such a needed policy past the people who are determined to kill it.

I couldn’t help but notice last week that some reports acknowledged that leading political mouthpiece Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., was NOT invited to that meeting. He wasn’t a part of this session either. I haven’t heard a thing that indicates he’s a part of any gathering at the White House in the near future.

BUT ULTIMATELY, IT is going to take talks with people like Gutierrez to get him moved into action to push for immigration reform. Obama himself can’t enact changes in immigration law.

And for those who say that Obama isn’t including Gutierrez because of the congressman’s outspoken criticism of the president, I’d say that the reason Gutierrez has been critical of Obama is because the president is engaging in nothing more than show-meetings with Hollywood’s Latina glamour girls.

  -30-

“Birthers” won’t shut up. They WANT to gripe

OBAMA: Speculation will continue

President Barack Obama goofed this week when he went ahead and gave Hawaii state officials special permission to release the so-called “long form” of his birth certificate.

Obama seems to think that by making this information public, he will be able to permanently put an end to the speculation that he really wasn’t born in the United States, and therefore technically isn’t even eligible to be president.

IT’S NOT GOING to achieve that goal. In fact, I can’t help but think that Obama has merely fed this issue even more fuel for it to burn upon.

Because the kind of people who were determined to think that Obama isn’t a “real American” aren’t going to let something as technical and detailed as a birth certificate stand in their way. It's like expecting the nativists to quit thinking that people from other countries are committing a crime just by existing in the United States. These people have to be overcome politically, not reasoned with.

For all I know, the people who were goofy enough to ignore all the evidence to the contrary are going to ignore this document. We may even start getting conspiracy theories about how Hawaii state officials are in cahoots with Obama to cover up “the truth!”

They may want to believe these documents are forged.

OR MAYBE SOME of them will now try to make the issue one of why didn’t Obama just produce such documentation three years ago back during the ’08 campaign season?

The kind of people who want to believe this issue and think it significant aren’t all that rational. Heck, they’re the kinds of people who think that real estate developer Donald Trump is presidential material.

For the record, I think Trump’s use of this issue doesn’t make him a kook as much as an opportunist. He knew it would get his rhetoric about being a presidential candidate public attention in a way that nothing else emanating from his mouth would do. Even if he doesn’t run, it helps increase his public image.

For all I know, Trump and the others will continue to keep this issue alive.

BECAUSE THIS WAS never about trying to figure out where Obama was born (in Honolulu back in 1961 – just one year after the island became an official part of the United States, rather than just a territory).

It was about trying to make Obama himself appear radically different from themselves (whom they want to believe are “the norm” of this country, even though the reality is that no one individual is “the norm,” and that is what makes our society unique).

I still recall political pundit Ann Coulter dismissing Obama by saying she wants her president “to be an American,” even before anyone had concocted this goofy theory about Obama’s birthplace.

Heck, I still remember a more-conventional broadcast-type (Cokie Roberts, to be specific) complaining that Obama made a  strategic blunder by taking a winter break in Hawaii, on account of the fact that “real people” spent a winter vacation in places like South Carolina instead of an exotic tropical island.

THAT FEELING BY people who can’t accept the mood of our society in the 21^st Century isn’t going to be changed any by producing a more-detailed document than we had previously seen before.

If anything, by releasing this new information, Obama has let himself get baited into being a part of this ridiculous argument – one  that should have withered away.

He should have learned a long time ago to laugh this one off and deal with the fact that there will always be a few kooks who will cry “Wolf!”

WINFREY: The only winner?



In fact, about the only person who will benefit from all of this will be Oprah Winfrey – who is in the home-stretch of her long-running syndicated daytime television talk show.

SHE GOT OBAMA and first lady Michelle to appear on the program – taping it this week for a segment that will air Monday.

It ensures that her program on traditional television stations (she’s shifting her attention to creating her own cable television channel) will go out with a “Bang!’

A “bang” that will be at the expense of Obama, who appears to be dignifying nonsense talk in a way it never deserved.

  -30-

Latino voter bloc on the rise, along with non-voters

It’s the drawback, I suppose, of having the overall Latino population grow so fast during the past decade.

The most recent election cycle is believed to have had 6.6 million Latinos cast ballots – more Latinos than any other election cycle.

YET, THE OVERALL amount of Latinos going up means that the number of Latinos who didn’t bother to vote also is at a record high level. Which means there is room for improvement.

Part of it is because a large amount of the Latino population (34.9 percent, to be exact) is young – too young to vote. There also is the portion that is still in the process of naturalization, which means they can’t yet vote.

Either way, it means a voter bloc that will increase significantly in recent years, even though the conservative ideologues are going to focus on the total who didn't vote and claim it as evidence of why my ethnic brethren ought to be ignored.

The Pew Hispanic Center released its own analysis of the Latino voter bloc from the 2010 election cycle, finding that the 6.6 million Latino voters is about 7 percent of the total number of people who voted last November.

HOW GOOD IS that vote for Latinos? Consider that of the 50.5 million Latinos living in this country now, about 21.3 million are eligible to vote.

To only get 6.6 million to actually show up and cast ballots isn’t that good. Yet it still is the highest figure achieved by the Latino voter bloc. Which means I can’t help but think of this as a situation that can only get better for our interests.

Because when we vote, we assert our interests. A large part of the reason that political people seem to think the Latino population can be ignored is because it doesn’t assert itself forcefully enough.

Which is why those people who talk about not voting, or withholding their votes as a protest, are missing the point. It just comes across as a temperamental hissy-fit.

I INCLUDE IN that category those political people who are going about saying that Barack Obama doesn’t have their “vote” yet for 2012. Such as Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill.

He has every right to vote, or not vote, for anyone as he sees fit. Yet to go around and talk about not voting for someone, without giving a clue who he would support, just sounds flaky.

It is the reason why Republican political people ought to be making an effort to gain the support of the growing Latino voter bloc, rather than giving in to the segment of our society that wants to piss off this growing giant at every opportunity.

The Latino “electorate” is on the rise and will gain its “clout” in future years. The gap between the number of Latinos who now bother to cast ballots and those who are eligible to cast them will close.

SO WHAT SHOULD we think of the Latino electorate? A few numbers from the Pew Hispanic Center study caught my attention.

Cuban-American individuals had the highest voter participation rate (49.3 percent) among any Latino ethnicity, while naturalized citizens who are Latino (36.6 percent) voted more than U.S.-born Latinos (29.2 percent).

Then, there is the difference between Puerto Ricans and Mexican-Americans. There isn’t much of one. Puerto Ricans had a 29.6 percent voter participation rate, while Mexican-Americans had a 28.7 percent rate.

Which is sad considering that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens by birth, which means they get that vote that other ethnic groups don’t automatically get.

  -30-

¿Melding into the societal mix?

I couldn’t help but remember a moment from a couple of years ago when I wrote about a Santa Lucia festival that occurred at a suburban Chicago church.

You have all seen the resulting photographs of some young girl (usually 13) clad in a white gown and wearing a crown made from lit candles. To fit the stereotype perfectly, the girl is blond and of some sort of Swedish ethnicity.

YET IN THIS particular instance, the girl was of a mixed ethnic profile that included Mexican ethnicity from her mother’s side of the family.

In short, the Santa Lucia queen was a Latina, albeit one who seems to take the bulk of her physical image from her father’s non-Latino side of the family. The real question of how the growing Latino population will assimilate into the mass of our society during the next few decades centers around people like this girl.

Will the non-Latino portions of their makeup become so dominant that they may not think of themselves as Latinos?

That same logic seems to be at work in a recent memorandum making its way around the Internet. The memo’s writer is a political pollster who thinks that polls of what Latinos think about various issues are skewed because we’re paying too much attention to the newly-arrived and virtually ignoring those whose families have been in this country for a few generations.

IT IS A legitimate concern, if we want to get a true picture of what the Latino population is thinking. Yet I’m not sure I believe his premise about how much and how thorough the assimilation will be.

Andre Pineda thinks the problem is that pollsters are deciding who is Latino (and who isn’t) based on Spanish-sounding surnames. Which he thinks means they’re getting the new immigrant segment of Latinos.

Which he thinks means they’re getting a more liberal perspective of the Latino society than a true rendering of the whole would give.

He thinks that intermarriage and mixing in makes Latinos more like everybody else, which he wants to believe is a conservative perspective.

I CAN’T HELP but think the opposite might be true – that the potential for a conservative Latino populace is when they are newly arrived. That might be the time when the Catholic church’s influence would be at its strongest and most likely to affect the way that a person thinks about various issues.

It might be as a person assimilates into the society as a whole and begins to see things on U.S. terms (rather than trying to relate them to life in the “old country”) that they come to their own views.

If anything, it sounds to me like this pollster is anxious to include in the Latino sampling segments of the group that aren’t so thrilled about having “Latino” elements in their overall background. Perhaps they’d say they don’t really think of themselves as “Hispanic” so much?

I’ll agree that various polling of Latinos on differing issues produces questionable results. But often more because some people don’t want to take into account the reality of the population – which really wouldn’t be considered a unified group in any other place on Earth.

WE HAVE OUR varying thoughts and beliefs on so many different things, and some people find it easier to think of things in more basic concepts.

Then again, the only completely accurate “poll” of any issue is an actual vote, rather than any kind of study that tries to predict what the vote will be.

  -30-

Like it or not, the future isn’t nativist in nature

I’m sure there are some people to whom The Tennessean newspaper out of Nashville recently was absolutely abhorrent.

The newspaper in the city that some like to think of as a country music scene covered a local conference about the state’s growing Latino population (it more than doubled during the past decade) and headlined it on its website, “TN needs more bilingual professionals.”

MORE LATINO TEACHERS are needed to handle the needs of the school systems, and universities in the area are interested in getting more Latinos (regardless of their citizenship status) to attend.

It is because of accounts like these that I personally don’t worry too much about the nativist nitwits and their hateful rhetoric. Even when they get their political lackeys to try to bend the law to accommodate their backwards beliefs, it isn’t bad so long as we have individuals who will stand up to them politically.

For so long as we have segments of our society “getting it” and realizing that policies meant to kick people out of the country and discourage others from coming here because they don’t fit some nitwit’s vision of who should be permitted to live here, it becomes just a matter of time before the nativist-types age out and wither away in numbers.

We will never be completely free of bigotry (racial, ethnic, class-oriented, or whatever). But it can be overcome.

THAT WAS THE sense I got from reading of the Tennessee Hispanic Chamber of Commerce event held last week. It’s a young population, the Latino is.

It seems that Nashville-area school districts have more than 100,000 Latino students.

What is significant about that fact is that it really isn’t unique at all. Every state in the nation has a growing Latino population that is youthful, and in many cities has become the dominant non-white population – having surpassed the African-American population in so many cities across the country.

Now the one nasty political element we face these days involves reapportionment – the process by which political boundaries are redrawn to accommodate shifts in population.

THERE ARE MANY places where the number of Latinos is so significant that it ought to be reflected by additional representation. But it won’t because there are Republican political establishments that control the process and will use the methods of redistricting to ensure that Latino political influence is held in check.

Which means it will be yet another of the last-ditch efforts we’re getting from people with ethnic hang-ups who think they can somehow keep things just the way they were. Of course, many of them will argue that they’re protecting our society from somehow becoming a “third-world” nation.

I’d argue that if we ever became the society that the nativist-element desires, that would be the day that we became a third-world country, and that it will be the influx of Latin American immigrants willing to work along with U.S.-born Latinos eager to advance who are going to keep our country from becoming a larger version of Mississippi.

Then again, I probably shouldn’t mock Mississippi. For that southern state saw its Latino population grow by 105.9 percent during the past decade – although Latinos still account for only 2.7 percent of the whole state.

WHO’S TO SAY what will happen?

Perhaps it will be the development of a Latino population that will give that southern state the jolt it needs to rise so that we stop thinking of it as being at the bottom of just about every significant category of our society.

  -30-

Is this a Latino contribution to U.S. society?

The following commentary was published here originally on April 2, 2010, although its message and tone is just as applicable this weekend. For those people who used the Chicago Tribune website on Friday to call such events “creepy,” all I’d have to say is that it somehow seems more meaningful than the Easter eggs that will be dropped from a helicopter on Sunday.

  -0-

Many devout Catholics are going to be busy Friday afternoon. They’re either going to be attending Stations of the Cross re-enactments taking place from 1-3 p.m., or they’re going to be participating in them.

Pablo Picasso's take on crucifixion.



And for a select few, they’re going to be the star of the show. Portraying the part of Jesus Christ on the cross, being executed for his “crime” of being the son of God. For all I know, some of these guys may very well really be named Jesus.

AT THE VERY least, we’re going to get re-enactments of what in reality was a gruesome act – the vicious beating, shaming and execution of a man. Not that anyone is going to die today (unless something goes horribly wrong).

But the purpose of these events, which usually are centered around Catholic parishes that have taken on strong Spanish flavors in recent years, is to give people a graphic accounting of the suffering Jesus endured – supposedly in our name to wash away our sins.

Now I know there are some people who are going to dismiss all of this as some sort of superstitious hooey. Others may try to disregard it as some sort of primitive custom that these particular ethnics will lose throughout coming years as they more fully assimilate into U.S. society.

That latter fact may very well be true. But I have to confess that a part of me admires the people who have enough dedication to go through this ritual every year. Whether they’re portraying the “Roman soldiers” who get to beat “Jesus” with whips while he shoulders his own cross or if they get the starring role of being strapped to that cross for a couple of hours (the amount of time the New Testiment tells us it took for Jesus to die), this is not an event for the faint-hearted.

EVEN IF IT is one of those parishes where they merely use rope to bind Jesus’ wrists to the cross beam (although there are some places that actually drive nails into the hands of the person portraying Jesus – leaving their palms scarred for life in a way that some take as a point of pride), this is not something I think I could ever do.

The fact is that crucifixion is a primitive method of execution that was meant to cause excruciating pain to the condemned man before he finally died of a heart attack. For the act of having one’s body hang from a cross bound only by nails in the hands or wrists causes such strain on the heart and lungs.

When combined with the fact that in a real crucifixion, the condemned person likely has been tortured or beaten and starved, it is an act of barbarism.

At least in these re-enactments, the “crosses” are usually constructed in some way that there is a platform of sorts for the “Jesus” impersonator to stand on, which significantly reduces the strain on the body.

OR ELSE WE literally would have many men sacrificing their lives Friday so that they could say they were once Jesus.

These events get taken seriously. There is no mocking them for the devout. I know in my hometown of Chicago, Cardinal Francis George usually shows up to give the re-enactment taking place in the heavily-Mexican Pilsen neighborhood a closing prayer – along with a touch of official recognition by the Catholic Church.

I know that if one ventures into an ethnic neighborhood where these events take place, the people who get to portray Jesus literally can count on a certain amount of local fame and glory in future years. Being a Jesus Impersonator on the cross for a couple of hours per year is a bigger deal than being an Elvis Impersonator.

It’s definitely less gaudy. You don’t wear a tacky jumpsuit, just a crown of thorns.

I ALSO KNOW that these re-enactments take on a bigger role in the “old country.” Because I still recall a news report from a couple of years ago out of Mexico – where police broke up a brawl at a public market that arose from two men.

Both were probably at fault in the incident that started as a fistfight between the two. But when the surrounding people in the market saw that one of the men was the local Jesus Impersonator and the other was a man who had once played the part of Judas in a theatrical production, the incident turned into a mini-riot.

The crowd ganged up on “Judas” and gave him a thorough beating, then turning him over to the police when they arrived. Ultimately, “Judas” faced criminal charges for inciting a brawl against “Jesus.”

Now perhaps something like that could only happen in Mexico (although I could picture some Southern Baptist religious folks getting captured in the spirit and engaging in something similar).

BUT THIS IS the type of emotion that is being captured by those people who will be busy showing us what they believe is the true meaning of Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

Or do you really believe that a religious holiday is about chocolate bunny rabbits whose ears get bitten off ever so quickly by people with a candy fetish?

-30-

Pure rhetorical nonsense emanates from Texas about Utah

Everybody realized that the immigration-related rhetoric from the xenophobes of our society would be ratcheted up a notch or two when the new Republican leadership of Congress took over earlier this year.

SMITH: Sue Utah!!!!!!



So no, it doesn’t shock me to learn that Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, who chairs a House Judiciary panel that oversees any possible change to immigration would border on nonsense.

ABOUT THE ONLY thing that stands out in my mind is the way in which those people are so willing to play down to the lowest common denominator and live up to our worst mental images of them.

Smith, who long has been a Texan who wants to believe that the white people came first in his home state, sent a letter this week to the Justice Department that is, as the headline states, pure rhetorical nonsense.

He’s upset that the Justice Department is not suing the state of Utah, which recently created its own state government program by which people from other countries could legally work in that state.

They would be able to do so openly. Admittedly, there’s nothing in there about making them full-fledged citizens. The implication of this program is the same as the ones proposed at the federal level – the foreign nationals come to the United States for a few years to work, then go back home.

SMITH IS TRYING to claim that it is hypocritical for the Justice Department to not penalize Utah for taking on an issue that touches on immigration when it relatively quickly filed a lawsuit against Arizona – and thus far has been successful in keeping that state’s law meant to get local cops involved in federal immigration enforcement from being enacted.

If the administration is serious about having a uniform immigration policy rather than the patchwork of state immigration laws you profess to oppose, then the administration needs to take action against the Utah law,” Smith wrote, in his letter.

The Salt Lake Tribune newspaper reported that the letter was received, and that Justice Department officials aren’t rushing to respond because provisions of the Utah law won’t take effect until 2013.

I was also pleased to learn from the newspaper that Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, himself a Republican, denounced Smith’s letter as “politics” and “a regurgitation of lines from the extreme right.”

BECAUSE THAT IS the segment of our society that is trying to pass itself off as the middle-of-the-road so it can peddle its ridiculous rhetoric onto the rest of us.

For the real problem that the conservative ideologues have with ideas such as “guest worker” programs is that they confirm the idea that these newcomers (even the ones without a valid visa) are performing valid labor that our nation can use.

In short, they’re making a contribution to our society. Which makes it all the harder to demonize them as insignificant and somehow inhuman.

So he makes a pitch for a lawsuit – one that is absurd and probably would qualify on the tort reform scale as a “frivolous” legal action, except when it fits in with their own ideological rhetoric.

GEORGE W. BUSH himself tried pushing for guest worker programs at the federal level – only to run into the opposition of people such as Smith. Let’s not forget it was around the time that Bush started getting too sympathetic on immigration issues for the ideologue taste that they turned on him and his overall approval rating plummeted to the record lows at which he finished his presidential term.

So while I’m not really sure what I think of Utah creating its own guest worker program, the one thing I do know is that I can do little but sigh in dismay at the thought of Smith living down to his reputation – rather than trying to find anything resembling a real solution to our nation’s convoluted immigration policy.

  -30-

¡Talk is cheap!

OBAMA: Time to shoot

President Barack Obama gave a whole lot of people a chance this week to express their thoughts about immigration reform, hosting an hour-long forum for people to speak out.

And as it turns out, much of the crowd was of individuals who realize that immigration “reform” consists of doing away with the bureaucratic nightmare that is our nation’s current immigration policy.

INSTEAD, WE NEED more clear-cut rules about how people can get through the process of becoming legitimate residents of this country who can live their lives out in the open. That means many of the people who already are here without a valid visa need to be accepted.

Talk of increased deportations or erecting barricades along the U.S./Mexico border miss the point.

Obama himself made a few remarks, indicating that he’s ideologically in-line with us. So we have him on our side. Right?

Who’s to say?

FOR THIS IS the kind of talk we have been hearing from Obama for years, telling us he is sympathetic with our side and the fact that we have some real mean-spirited nitwits to cope with on this issue.

Yet when it comes time to take any action, it seems that Obama is more concerned about not offending the nit-wits than he is in doing anything that would fix the mess that our nation now faces when it comes to immigration policy.

In fact, I couldn’t help but think that a Washington Post story about the White House gathering on immigration managed to bury the “lede” in the last graf.

As in the newspaper that likes to think it “owns” coverage of the federal government telling us that, “the meeting comes just before Obama heads for campaign-style stops in California and Nevada, two states with large Hispanic populations.”

HE’S GOING TO want to be able to say he took something resembling a physical act that expressed some sort of support for immigration reform – which might not be a direct concern for a majority of Latinos (who were born here) but which we support vehemently because we realize that opponents often don’t want to make a distinction about the Latino population and want to lump us in altogether.

Hence, we stick up for our ethnic brethren.

Obama has his gathering at the White House, and even let Rev. Al Sharpton into the building to say a few words.

Now I can joke that having to deal with the Reverend Al is enough of an ordeal for Obama, and we should give him a break.

YET I CAN’T help but see this as merely the source of cheap rhetoric. No action. Because there isn’t any evidence that Obama is prepared to have anything happen on the issue in Congress anytime this year.

I realize the GOP-led House of Representatives would thwart any legitimate legislation, in large part because they cater to the people who have open hostility toward immigration (they lie when they say they’re only opposed to “illegal” immigration).

But I wonder how delusional our president can be if he thinks ignoring the issue placates these individuals – many of whom are the ones who are now turning to Donald Trump because he’s willing to placate their ridiculous need to believe that Obama isn’t technically qualified to be U.S. president.

He draws their ire just by existing. If anything, I can’t help but think he ought to be using the hammer to make it clear to people just how reprehensible his opposition is on this issue.

BUT HE DOESN’T. It is because of this attitude that people such as Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., say they seriously are considering not supporting Obama’s bid for re-election.

GUTIERREZ: Nowhere else to go



Not that they’re going to go with any Republican opponent. Because even el Gallito must realize that this is a dispute between the apathetic and the enemigo. We’re not about to reward our opposition who would use any victory to smite us even further.

It would result in apathy from the Latino segment of our society, meant to match the apathy and cheap talk we get from Obama on this issue.

It also reminds me of the line spoken by actor Eli Wallach’s “Tuco” character in “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” – “If you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk.” It’s time for Obama to quit talking.

  -30-

Brewer not backing two ideologue bills doesn’t excuse her immigration actions of ‘10

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer used her sense this week in vetoing two bills designed by conservative ideologues to further advance their backward ideals into state law. Yet I’m not about to say whether she really has learned something, or has merely taken the pragmatic route.

BREWER: No immigrants, but guns and Obama okay?



Brewer, we all remember, is the governor who signed into law the hateful measure by the Arizona Legislature meant to get local police involved in federal immigration enforcement.

THAT IS THE same law that – thus far – has not received much sympathy from federal appeals courts. Who’s to say if it will ever be allowed to take effect in its entirety?

This week, Brewer used her “veto” power to kill two bills – one that would have required presidential candidates to provide a certain level of documentation to show their citizenship in this country by birth and the other to allow students at Arizona State and other public universities to carry firearms on them while on campus. Not that such sentiment is universally accepted. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (who is the ideologue's idea of a "good" immigrant) says he would sign such a bill into law if it gets through the Louisiana Legislature.

Brewer is already the “demon seed” in some quarters for her approval of the immigration measure that the Arizona Legislature persisted in approving last year.

As much as I’d like to think she vetoed those two measures because she thought they were bad policy, a part of me thinks she did it primarily because she knew she’d be piling on to her negative reputation by signing on to these two ridiculous measures.

IT MAKES ME wonder if she privately wishes she could undo her actions of last year, so as to avoid all the legal hassle and negative perception she brought on her state by approving that equally ridiculous immigration measure.

Or, maybe she really thinks she did the right thing, and her hostile feelings only exist toward newcomers to this country (and anybody that she thinks looks too much like a newcomer).

For now, I’m willing to put that aside and just be thankful that she killed off these two latest measures – although I’m sure the ideologues are now going to lead the charge later this year for a veto override. I’m willing to let those people look foolish, because I’m convinced they and their ilk are the reasons why the so-called Tea Party-type “revolution” of 2010 was a one-time aberration – and ’12 will be the year we revert back to some sense.

The citizenship bill is the one that makes Arizona look the most ridiculous because it puts the state Legislature firmly in the category of the kooks (their “king” these days is Donald Trump) who are determined to come up with conspiracy theories to justify their backward view of our society.

HOW ELSE TO explain those people who still are desperate to believe that Barack Obama wasn’t really born in Hawaii, or to concoct some other technicality that they want to believe disqualifies Obama from being able to work at the White House in any role other than a custodian.

Personally, I think last year’s action with regards to immigration put Arizona’s Legislature in the class of the loons. This merely confirms it.

And the third bill is the “cherry” on the “ice cream sundae” of ideological silliness.

My own home state of Illinois was considering a measure to allow people to carry pistols concealed on their person when they are in public, and there was debate over whether college campuses should be exempted from such a law.

THE ACADEMICS WHO run the campuses wanted the exemption, while the “gun nuts” were determined to eliminate it. As though they don’t feel safe unless they have the ability to shoot someone.

Brewer vetoed the bill that would have allowed students to carry firearms in the “public rights of way” of college campuses, because she said the bill was so badly written that it wasn’t clear what constitutes a “public right of way.”

For now, sense (sort of) prevails in Arizona. Now if we could just undo that state's immigration fiasco, …

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How black are we all?

There are those who like to point out that humanity likely originated in what is now Africa, and that in a certain sense, we all have a trace of “black” in us.

That is particularly true for the growing Latino population, even though there are those of us who don’t like to have to admit that fact.

FOR THE FACT is that what we now think of as Latino (or Hispanic, if you have a preference for the federal bureaucratic-speak) is really so much of a mixture of those Spaniards coming to colonize the Americas and conquer the indigenous peoples, and bringing their African laborers (a.k.a., slaves) with them to do the actual work of building a colony.

Unlike other European powers that like to pretend they were somehow keeping the “bloodlines” straight and pure, there was no such pretense in Spanish colonies. There was plenty of intermingling.

Of course, even among the Spaniards, there was the intermingling of past centuries with Arabs. This is an overly-simplistic explanation.

But the point being that the reason it becomes so complicated to drop Latinos into a single racial category is that we really aren’t any one race. Go back far enough into one’s family tree, and you can probably find a person of any racial type.

THAT IS WHY I’m going to find interesting the public reaction to the PBS documentary series that’s going to start airing Tuesday, and will run for the next month. “Black in Latin America” is meant to show just how much of an African influence there is in places like the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Brazil.

All one has to do is look honestly at those places to see the truth of such a statement. That becomes relevant when people from these nations then immigrate to the United States.

It is why it is technically honest to say Latino/Hispanic/Chicano/whatever is not a race, in and of itself.

But I could see where Harvard “scholar” Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is going to stir up resentment among Latinos (and maybe other people) by bringing up this very point.

BECAUSE THE DEGREE to which Latinos are willing to concede this racial point varies from open acceptance to hostility expressed in tones that one might expect from the most vile of bigots.

When the Census Bureau counted the population of the nation in 2000, almost half of Latinos identified themselves racially as “white,” with almost as many saying they were “other” – which meant they wanted to be thought of as a separate distinguishable race.

Very few were willing to admit to being of African origins.

For every 24 Latinos who claimed to be white, there was 1 who would admit to being black (and another 21 who said they were “other”). From what I have heard, the most recent Census Bureau count last year shows much fewer people claiming to be “other,” with many seeming to choose “white” instead.

NOW I’LL BE the first to admit there are Latinos who are very fair-skinned to the point where some people in our society might have trouble believing they could really be Latino (we’re all supposed to be some sort of not-quite-American Indian, but some sort of foreign Indian in their minds).

But just looking around me at other Latinos, there’s no way that so many of us are “white” compared to black.

Of course, this is one of those issues that is a generational thing – almost like issues related to gay-rights, where countless polls show that younger people are much more accepting than the older generation.

Older Latinos tend to be more concerned about this. I can recall one of my grandfathers being particularly obsessed with this issue; once hearing him say that darker-skinned Latinos weren’t really Latino but were just passing themselves off as us.

YES, HE USED much cruder language, including several racially-insensitive epithets that I’d rather not reiterate. Then again, my grandfather has been gone from this life for a third of a century, and I have encountered many Latinos much younger than myself who routinely send me e-mail messages and other responses telling me how overly-obsessed some people are with race and ethnicity.

I wish I could watch the program Tuesday (although paying work will keep me away from a television set at night), but will have to find a moment when it re-airs on my local PBS affiliate. It could wind up giving us all a jolt of reality.

Unless, that is, if my particular affiliate chooses to interrupt the programming with their pledge drives and requests for my money (of which I don’t  have any right now on account of the fact that I just made my payments to the IRS).

But that is a rant for some other date.

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