BroadSnark

The situation in Mexico keeps degrading.  Predictably, increased police and military are being used against more than just drug cartels.  I mean they are so handy at getting rid of unions.  Also, they don’t actually have to worry about trials or anything, they can just shoot people and then kick back with a cold one.

Wiretap says that Latinos are Underrepresented in Nonprofits.  I can testify to that, having worked in Cali nonprofits for six years.  They say there is some better news when it comes to board representation, but I’m fairly sure those figures are misleading.  In Central California, the same handful of Latinos were on many, many boards.  In other words, they are counting the same few Latinos over and over.

Yvette brings up a good point about why women who are anti-porn don’t have equally scathing critiques about working at McDonalds.  Those women probably don’t buy porn, but they do buy cheap food from poor women (as I’ve written about before).

Janelle wrote a great article about sharing on Trust is the Only Currency.  It’s amazing how many ways there are to shift our lives in a more cooperative direction.

And, finally, this article over at the New York Review of Books talks about nonviolent revolutions since 1989.  It’s long, but there is a lot to debate about in the piece (especially for the revolutionarily inclined).

My boyfriend received a forwarded email from his mother some time ago. The title of the email was “In Just One Year” and it arrived with the comment “So, I thought this was interesting…” The email paints immigrants as criminals and parasites (responses to those accusations can be found in my previous post). Both of her sons were livid when they received it. I can’t imagine that she would have sent the email to her sons had she realized how angry they would be. So what is the disconnect here?

A Short History of Immigration Policy in the United States

Americans have a short historical memory, especially when it comes to immigration policy. We haven’t always had laws against immigration, although I’m sure many Native Americans wish they had thought of it. In fact, the first immigration law wasn’t passed until 1882. Until then, anyone who wanted to immigrate could do so. (I should note that the naturalization laws of 1790 and 1795 restricted citizenship to white people.)

The late 1800s were tumultuous. There was a long depression from 1873 through 1896 and several outright panics. In California, the gold rush was long over and the merchants and railroad barons who had benefited the most were sitting on huge fortunes. The major national railroads were completed and the laborers who had built the railroads (and often died doing it) were no longer needed. Many of those laborers were Chinese.

A worker movement was developing in the face of the tough economic times and the movement took a decidedly ugly, racist turn. (Click here to see a poster from that period telling workers that they should boycott all Chinese businesses or businesses who hired Chinese labor and here for a cartoon demonstrating anti-Chinese sentiment.) Eventually, after much pressure from Californians and considerable violence against Chinese people, the nation passed its very first immigration law. It is known as the Chinese Exclusion Act and it was intended to do just that, exclude people based on their national origin.

As the years went on, further court cases and immigration laws reflected the racism accepted in the United States at the time. Until 1965, when the Johnson administration revamped our immigration laws, they were based on trying to keep the nation as white (ie. Western European) as possible.

The Anti-Immigration Movement is Still Racist

While the target of the anti-immigration movement is now more Mexican than Chinese, the underlying racism remains. If you want proof of the racism in today’s anti-immigration movement, just look at the email that kicked off this reply. One of the sources used by the author was the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). FAIR is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

FAIR was founded by John Tanton, a man who has said that the fight against immigration is a fight to keep white control. Tanton also founded The Center for Immigration Studies, another source used by the author. See this enlightening (and disturbing) article about the connections between white supremacists and anti-immigration groups for more information.

Tom Tancredo is another source from the emails. Tancredo was called an “idiot” by the (conservative) National Review and voted one of the 10 worst congressmen by the (not so conservative) Rolling Stone. Although the grandson of Italian immigrants, he wants to stop even legal immigration. He also took a bit of heat for accusing the Catholic Pope of trying to increase membership in the Catholic church by encouraging immigration and for referring to Miami as a “third world country.”

And while it takes all of five minutes to discover that the above sources are (at minimum) linked to some very nasty hate groups, the mainstream news regularly calls on them to comment. They never ask on air about their qualifications, sources, or methodology. They never explain to the audience who they are or what their philosophy is. So if some people believe these statistics to be true and remain blissfully unaware of the reaction they might get when spreading them, it is somewhat understandable.

But while many non-Latinos may believe the “experts” provided by the media, Latinos personal experiences with racism in this country leave them skeptical of even the more mild arguments for changing our immigration policies. This is not just a matter of hurt feelings. According to 2007 FBI statistics, hate crimes against Latinos rose 35% between 2003 and 2007. Not all of the victims survive, including 25 year old Luis Ramirez who was beaten to death by several teenagers.

Beginning a Conversation About Immigration

After a bit of research, I was able to find the original post of the article “In Just One Year.” It was written by an ultra-conservative woman named Carolyn Hileman and published on the American Conservative Daily. Google Carolyn Hileman and one of the links you will find is a site called “Mexicans Go Home.”

I hate to add to the click rate on that trash site, but it’s one of the most disgusting examples of the hateful, anti-Mexican core of the anti-immigration movement. I felt like I had to expose it. In one post, the site has a Mexican flag where the eagle and serpent have been replaced by a pile of shit. Across the flag it says “Mexico, Land of Shit and Druglords”

We need to be able to speak about immigration, but we won’t be able to do it until the hateful fringe elements stop being treated like legitimate sources for non-biased information. People have to stop spreading information without first identifying who it came from (or at least identifying that it may not be true) and we can’t allow our media to do it either.

It seems like pundits do almost nothing but slice and dice the electorate into what they wish were neatly organized and predictable groups – white voters, black voters, old voters, young voters, men, women, extra terrestrials…

I didn’t think I could be more disgusted with the whole process until Richard Wolffe showed up on MSNBC talking about how Obama needed to court the Latino vote in Florida. Wolffe suggested that Obama was going to have to go down to Florida “speak their language” and “eat tacos.” Eat tacos!!! Argh!!! His statement is ignorant and offensive on so many levels I hardly know where to begin.

Not all “Latinos” eat tacos. I challenge Mr. Wolffe to head over to the Cuban restaurant Puerto Sagua on Miami beach and try to find a taco on the menu.

Not all people from Latin America speak Spanish. There are hundreds of indigenous languages still spoken and some immigrants from Latin America have never spoken Spanish. That doesn’t even begin to look at Portuguese, French and various creoles. Even Latinos in the U.S. whose families speak Spanish often don’t speak Spanish themselves.

In fact, growing up in South Florida, the majority of my friends barely spoke enough Spanish to converse with their abuelas. As media executives Jeff Valdez and Jose Cancela explain in an interview with Hispanic Magazine, the vast majority of Latinos speak English and only about a quarter are considered “Spanish dominant” – and that’s coming from the people trying to sell Spanish language ad space.

The idea of Latinos or Hispanics as a group is a creation of statisticians and advertising executives. If you don’t believe me, check out Arlene Dávila’s book Latinos Inc. In short, advertising executives convinced advertisers that there was this huge group of “Latinos” out there who all shared the same characteristics and could be advertised to as a group, on Spanish language television of course.

The truth is that a wealthy, white, educated, fervently anti-communist, Cuban revolution-era exile in Miami doesn’t have the same political interests as a migrant laborer from Mexico picking strawberries in Watsonville, California.

A Spanish, African, and Taino descended Puerto Rican musician who splits her time between New York and the island does not have the same political interests as a Californio politician whose Spanish descended ancestors have been living on the same land since the 1700s.

“Latinos” covers every conceivable background, history, economic status, and educational level. Trying to figure out how Latinos are going to vote based on the fact that they come from some place in the non-anglo dominated Americas is absurd.

A Cuban friend of mine once told me that she was a Republican because John F. Kennedy screwed up the Bay of Pigs and Cubans have never forgotten that betrayal. Some Mexican Catholics, on the other hand, are known for having pictures of JFK prominently displayed in their homes right next to Jesus and the pope. Are you trying to tell me they are going to vote the same?