No, Senator, Life Isn’t Fair

[Crossposted from Booman Tribune, where I’m guest-posting this week]

Pobre John McCain. With Sarah Palin back in the headlines, he’s getting all nostalgic about what might have been. Rather than blame his failed warmongering ideology and erratic behavior for the drudging he received on Election Day, though, he’s whining about brown folk being mean to him!

RAMOS: Are Republicans concerned about upsetting their base if they vote to legalize undocumented immigrants?

MCCAIN: I don’t know…uh…I can’t speak for all Republicans…I know I was out there twice — on the floor of the Senate with Senator Kennedy — trying to pass comprehensive immigration with a path to legalization on it and I was attacked during the campaign for being anti-immigrant. Life isn’t fair.

RAMOS: Talking specifically about that — the last time we spoke was during the campaign. And you know and I know that you only got 31% of the Hispanic vote. Are you disappointed? What went wrong?

MCCAIN: Obviously I’m very disappointed. Millions of dollars of attack ads on your network and across the country in Spanish-language stations attacked me for being anti-immigrant, anti-Hispanic, and anti-immigration reform. They succeeded.

Think Progress

Republicans don’t want to talk about why their party is becoming whiter and more male dominated. To them, the onus remains on those people to cross the bridge to them, paying no attention to land mines put in the path. This strategery is already failing and will continue to do so if the numbers continue to reflect a more diverse voting population:

According to census data, 66 percent of whites voted in November, down 1 percentage point from 2004. Blacks increased their turnout by 5 points to 65 percent. Hispanics improved turnout by 3 points, and Asians by 3.5 points, each reaching a turnout of nearly 50 percent. In all, minorities made up nearly 1 in 4 voters in 2008, the most diverse electorate ever.

Philly Enquirer

Democrats shouldn’t rest easy, however, because a mistake both party establishments make is assuming that communities of color can be pandered to by talk with no walk, or treated like unthinking masses altogether.

The latter is the fatal mistake made by the GOP. They assume that if 95% of black voters and 67% of latino voters pulled the lever for Obama, then it must be because we were showing solidarity for another darkie by default! John McCain blames spanish attack ads for losing the latino vote, which proves (again) that he is out of touch with us:

U.S. online Hispanics are heavier Internet users than the general market. In May 2009 (according to comScore Media Metrix), 68% of U.S, online Hispanics could be found online on the average day, compared to 62% of the general market. Online Hispanics consumed 8% more Page Views, 10% more minutes, and made 18% more visits online than their general market counterparts.

Online Hispanics are younger. One driver of the heaviness of Hispanic Internet usage in the U.S. is the relative age of the population. The median age of the U.S. online Hispanic population was 29.6 in May, compared with 34 for the general market. This is not surprising given the younger skew of the Hispanic population in general; according to census data, fully 61% of Hispanics are under the age of 35, compared to 45% of the non-Hispanic population. Online Hispanics are slightly younger than Hispanics overall, and significantly younger than online users overall. But notably for advertisers, they are younger than the Hispanic audiences generally delivered by offline media.

MediaPost.com

This post is not really about John McCain, is it? It’s about a political establishment that is consumed by maintaining a thick level of insulation from voters’ needs. The look of shock on their faces when they see that minorities share many of the same concerns as the wider population is amusing to watch unfold; and you could knock them over with a slight breeze if you told them that they could reach latinos using English-language media.

With a Census looming next year, and data that will undoubtedly show more representation of Latinos, African Americans, and Asians as part of the larger population, life will continue to be unfair to any elected official who supports policies that affect our communities detrimentally; or treat us as uppity when we demand an equal voice at the table.

Just ask Tom Tancredo

 

Ads in Spanish Target GOP Racism Against Sotomayor

When Sonia Sotomayor was nominated by President Obama to replace Justice Souter on the Supreme Court back in May, I wrote the following:

…as we’ll see in the coming days, she is an “intellectual lightweight” despite having a long and stellar career on the bench. She will be attacked as a person of color who has the audacity to uphold affirmative action laws not because they’re the law, but because she’s looking out for her people. The media’s whiteness will show in all its unholy glory.

An example of this mindset can be found during today’s broadcast on NPR’s Morning Edition. Ed Whalen, President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, wasted no time on getting that talking point out into the mix right at the onset. There will be no holds barred with this nomination process.

The conservative movement’s success at derailing Sotomayor’s placement on the Supreme Court is hinged on causing white backlash against her identity and making her out to be a token latina/affirmative action candidate instead of the qualified, capable judge that she has proven to be over the years.

As a blunt blogger friend of mine likes to say, “Bet on it.”

What I should’ve wrote was, “the GOP’s whiteness will show in all its unholy glory”. Witness their party leader, Rush Limbaugh, during today’s broadcast as the Sotomayor hearing commenced on the Hill:

LIMBAUGH: That is one of the most, oh, tear-jerking, let’s play the Stradivarius and get the tears going for poor Sonia Sotomayor; she was denied access to the classics. My guess is she’d have found racism in all the classics. She’d have found bigotry in all the classics. If she read the classics, she’d wonder why the hell are these classic. This is Western civilization, white-dominated culture — the hell with this.

Media Matters

It’s almost comical that the GOP decided that the best way to attack an accomplished Latina judge was to claim she’s racist. Projection, much?

Rush Limbaugh is not an elected official, but he is a go-to venue for conservatives to preach to their base, and Senator Sessions, who is leading the Republican questioning of Judge Sotomayor during the hearings clearly has his Limbaugh-approved talking points:

Jeff Sessions began his statement by saying he hoped the confirmation hearings would be “the best we’ve ever had,” before launching into a laundry list of terms being used by conservative activists to discredit Sonia Sotomayor: “bias,” “prejudice,” racial quotas. Sessions touched on every right-wing bugaboo from the court, from the influence of foreign law and the court “created a right for terrorists captured on a foreign battlefield to sue the United States in our own country” to property rights. Sessions fretted that the court would be “corrupted” by Obama‘s view that “the depth and breath of one’s empathy” is an important quality for a judge.

via Tapped

In response to the idiotic blatherings of the GOP and their defacto leader, Rush Limbaugh, Presente.org and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee have launched the following spanish-language ad to build political opposition to the Right’s irresponsibility.

Sample Script:
In Spanish:

“Sonia Sotomayor is set to be the first Latina, and the first Puerto Rican, to serve on the US Supreme Court. It is a proud moment for our community. Yet Republican leaders insist on attacking her:”

In English:

“She doesn’t have any intellectual depth. She’s got a — she’s an angry woman, she’s a bigot. She’s a racist.”

In Spanish:

That’s Republican leader Rush Limbaugh calling Judge Sotomayor a racist and a bigot.

It’s insulting to all Latinos and Americans.

We asked Republican Congressman Adam Putnam if he would denounce Limbaugh’s words. He refused to reply. Let’s put a stop to the hate. Call Congressman Putnam today at 863-534-353 and tell him to condemn this language.

This ad was paid for by Presente Action

I’m pleased to endorse this ad campaign and hope that the GOP understands that they do lasting harm to not only communities of color by fanning racial divisions, but also their political future.

Operating Gringo sounds like an appropriate name for it.

 

A Look at Migrant Detention Under President Obama

Crossposted from The Sanctuary

The American Prospect lays out some numbers that show how little has changed with respect to migrant detention under the leadership of a new President, specifically through the usage of the Secure Communities initiative.

Secure Communities relies on police in jails like the one where Martinez was processed to enter fingerprints into a joint Department of Homeland Security and FBI database monitored by ICE. Federal officials then decide whether to take “appropriate action” and issue a detainer on an immigrant before he or she is released. The program began in Texas in late 2008, is now in place in 48 counties in seven states, and is set to reach full implementation nationwide by 2012. It receives a 30 percent funding boost in Obama’s proposed 2010 budget and has support from key Democrats such as Rep. David Price of North Carolina, who chairs the Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security and pushed for much of the new funding. “One thing liberals and conservatives and everyone in between can agree on is that truly dangerous people should be at the top of the list for deportation,” Price says.

The American Prospect

Programs like this sound good on paper, but those of us who happen to be brown know that we are in for unequal application of these types of laws. The country needs to stop pretending that immigration enforcement is about whether or not a person has their papers. People of color will always be targeted unfairly and beyond that, this is a central part of a long effort to eradicate migrant cultures.

Obama’s budget also maintains funding for the 287(g) program, though at a decreased level. Civil-rights advocates note the bulk of counties that signed up to participate in the program are in Southern states with rapidly growing Latino populations. “The program gets mediated by a history of racism and nativist hostility,” says Deborah Weissman, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who co-authored a study on the politics of local immigration enforcement. The study recounts how Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson told the Raleigh News & Observer that he applied to participate in the 287(g) program because Mexican “values are a lot different — their morals — than what we have here.” He linked the county’s growing Latino population with a rise in crime rates. Never mind that Latinos make up 10 percent of the population in Alamance County and account for about 12 percent of its criminal cases. About 70 percent of immigrants detained in Alamance County through 287(g) were guilty only of traffic offenses. (emphasis mine)

I would argue, of course, that “Mexican values” are indigenous to the United States, but when you’re dealing with a law enforcement officer who comes right out and states boldly that they are targeting people for being Other, why bother? The bigotry shines more strongly than the glean off the gold badge on his uniform.

With incarceration rates for Latinos and African Americans off the charts, media and political forked tongues that reinforce a false message that we are more criminally prone, and the gravy train of funding to the privatized prison industry continuing unabated, President Obama’s promise of change has yet to arrive with respect to migrant detention and deportations.

The abuses will continue unless we force D.C. to act. This week there is a huge gathering of immigration organizations in the nation’s capitol, will this diseased part of the immigration system go unchallenged?

Let’s hope not.

 

What to Expect from Sotomayor’s Nomination Process

President Obama has announced his nomination of Sonia Sotomayor as the candidate to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court that will open after the retirement of Justice David Souter. Sotomayor, a self-described “”Newyorkrican”, grew up in the Bronx and worked her ass off to get to Yale Law School where she graduated summa cum laude and served as editor of the Yale Law Review.

I could go into how excited I am to see a Latina be considered for the SCOTUS, the first in this country’s history and only the third woman (because I am beaming), but the buzz-kill has been rather abrupt from the seeing this accomplished and competent judge attacked for those very things that I consider a source of pride.

It should be a source of pride to everyone.

Conservatives like to talk about bootstraps and how important it is to refrain from whining about ones situation. Well…Sonia Sotomayor couldn’t be a finer example of putting the nose to the grindstone despite all the societial odds stacked against you and making it.

But as we’ll see in the coming days, she is an “intellectual lightweight” despite having a long and stellar career on the bench. She will be attacked as a person of color who has the audacity to uphold affirmative action laws not because they’re the law, but because she’s looking out for her people. The media’s whiteness will show in all its unholy glory.

An example of this mindset can be found during today’s broadcast on NPR’s Morning Edition. Ed Whalen, President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, wasted no time on getting that talking point out into the mix right at the onset. There will be no holds barred with this nomination process.

The conservative movement’s success at derailing Sotomayor’s placement on the Supreme Court is hinged on causing white backlash against her identity and making her out to be a token latina/affirmative action candidate instead of the qualified, capable judge that she has proven to be over the years.

As a blunt blogger friend of mine likes to say, “Bet on it.”

 

It’s Not Easy Being Green

er…Brown.

I’ve been blogging since January 1999. I was starting my second semester as a freshman in college and picked up a part-time job to help pay for life expenses. Between class, work, and the general pangs of Growing Up™, the writing became an important outlet so my head wouldn’t explode.

A curious thing occurred, though, when I began to explore and assert my inner-Xicano – Una Identidad Sin Fronteras. Like scales falling from my eyes, I realized how much centrifugal force was applied by assimilation to eradicate any instance of dissonance with Normal (read: white).

From language to learning styles to the way words are spoken to the clothes that are worn to interpersonal relationships both familial and professional, the subtle baseline note that came through like a tuning fork that my ear was finally trained to detect was: “You’re doing it wrong”

It is something that all people of color experience at some point in their lives. If they haven’t yet, they will.

Like any mezcla of humanity, there’s the eternal push-and-pull of influence. Por ejemplo, I guarantee that for every Republican that supports full rights for gays and lesbians, there is a close friend, sibling, or someone that’s positively affected their life who identify as homosexual. Empathy.

It’s a step forward, but the situation is not the same on either side of the flag that’s tied in the middle of the tug-of-war rope. The historically dominant side seeks to eradicate the perceived weak by two methods: denouncement and/or disappearing.

Perceived because the weakness is like a mirage in the Sonoran desert.

Over the past few years, my experience of being a citizen of the United States with Mexican ancestry has been enlightening, to say the least. Anti-migrant hysteria from conservatives and nativists who’ve declared war on my cultura and identity alongside demands for mass deportations and family destruction have been a source of radicalization that’s ignited the habanero in my bloodstream.

The haters have a smart strategy, though.

By making immigration a “Latino issue”, they’ve succeeded for years in ghettoizing (denouncement) and marginalizing (disappearing) voices like mine and others who can actually speak to how failed immigration policies affect those whom are targeted by enforcement-only campaigns. Institutional and often outright racism has guaranteed that the vast majority of faces of those raided at their work sites or homes, detained and deported, are brown, even though the U.S. has undocumented workers from every part of the world with varying degrees of melanin.

The irony is that pointing this out somehow makes me the racist. Still don’t know how that all works out, but I digress…

The Lou Dobbs and Pat “Operation Wetback” Buchanans of the world thrive because of their ability to hold back coalitions. They represent a power structure that would crumble into dust and drift away like expelled flatulence if enough human beings chose to “Build Bridges and Break Down Walls” as our tag line states at The Sanctuary instead of destroy.

Which brings me to the point of this series – Luis Ramirez.

to be continued…

 

The Perks of Being Brown in 2008

Since it’s all the rage, I’ll do an Atriotic post by saying…

Deep Thought: Lou Dobbs would call me a racist for pointing out these statistics.

The annual reports show that black drivers were pulled over more disproportionately in 2007 than in 2006, but they were less likely to be searched or arrested this past year. Hispanic motorists were more likely to be searched and arrested in 2007, but in 2006 they were pulled over with greater frequency than would be expected based on their share of the population. Data for whites remained largely unchanged between the two years.

Hispanic drivers in 2007 were searched more often than anyone else, nearly 15 percent of the times they were pulled over. That compares with 12 percent of stopped black motorists and 7 percent of white drivers.

Even though searched the least, white drivers were the most likely to be found with contraband in their vehicles — almost one time for every four vehicle searches.

Minority motorists also were far more likely to be arrested. About 11 percent of Hispanic drivers pulled over were arrested — compared with 9 percent for blacks and 5 percent for whites.

Kansas City Star

And these:

Compared with white women, black women had lower odds of receiving definitive therapy (82.1 percent for blacks versus 86.1 percent for whites). Hispanic women also had a lower rate, 83.2 percent, while the rate among Asian women, 89.4 percent, was higher than it was for white women.

“The difference between blacks and whites may seem small percentage wise — 4 percent — but if 200,000 women are diagnosed with early breast cancer every year, 4 percent amounts to 8,000 women who are not receive definitive primary therapy,” said Freedman.

Science Daily

 

Tom Horne Targets TUSD Minority Studies

Back in June, I responded to the Goldwater Institute’s recommendations to the Republican Party on how they should cater to latin@ voters. Towards the end, I mentioned comments by Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne as an example of the far-right nativist contigent that currently holds power in the GOP.

These are not the voices of moderation. These are not voices who are even making an attempt to understand where the Latino community is coming from on the various issues of the day. It is a group who has chosen to define us in the most negative way possible. Take the Superintendent for Public Instruction, for example, in a Letter to the Editor to the AZRepublic in February:

In a column dated Jan. 29, 2007 “Let’s ditch ’50s mentality,” Republic editorial writer Linda Valdez criticizes me for one of my lawyer’s arguments in the Flores case.

This argument was that Tucson Unified should not be heard claiming that their English-language program suffers from lack of state funds. In fact, they waste huge amounts of the money they do receive on programs like “ethnic studies,” including “Raza” studies. (“La Raza” means “the race.”)

linkage

Well, in what is probably Example #85204 of Why. Elections. Matter. Tom Horne has decided that he is going to do everything he can to dismantle programs that are succeeding at graduating minority students and showing them that they can go to college if they summon the will.

TUSD’s ethnic studies program has come under the lens of Arizona’s education czar.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne has asked the Tucson Unified School District to provide information on funding for its ethnic studies programs.

The request also calls for all training materials used in Mexican-American and African-American studies, syllabuses, videos, films, teachers’ guides, reading materials, audio recordings and other instructional materials.

Horne said his inquiry is not based on a question of academics or education, but “values.”

linkage

Those values – those of Tom Horne and by the growing nativist, WHITE contingency – are made clear by the horse’s ass mouth.

Horne was elected in 2002 on a platform that included an anti-bilingual-education stance.

“I have a long history of opposing ethnic studies and gender studies,” he said, explaining that he halted a proposed women’s studies program in a Paradise Valley high school.

Paging Leonard Clark! Do you think we can add another name to that recall petition?

 

Discovering The New World

Columbus Day is not a holiday that I celebrate nor commemorate. It is one of those phenomenons in U.S. society that is so ingrained that to even question its validity is nearly traitorous. But, sorry, can’t fight back my instincts – the very concept of celebrating a figure like Columbus is offensive.

When the ships arrived at the shores of this chunk of land, nothing was discovered. Well, at least from the perspective of the native peoples who had already called it home and cultivated its lifeforce in such a balance that the give and take of the natural cycle was allowed to do its thing.

Lately, I can’t help but feel a little bit like a village man who suddenly realizes that over the horizon a new creature is trotting in this general direction. They certainly look humanlike, but there’s something different.

Did you know that the Spanish Conquistadors scared the bejeebers out of native peoples whenever they initially rode up on horses? You see, there were no creatures like that around here for at least 10,000 years, so to new eyes, it looked like a centaurish animal.

We all know that the illusion was immediately shattered like a mirror when the riders dismounted. The newcomers were, indeed, humans only still different. Different ways of communicating, different sets of values, everything different. Which brings me to the point of this post.

Lots of conversation is raging about the blog world and its diversity. Specifically, the lack of it. And here is where I would like to share some thoughts that are wafting around like clouds of smoke out of a pipe. I will let Jenifer Fernandez Ancona begin, by quoting the ending of her excellent commentary over at Open Left.

One of the key ways to build bridges is for people to get to know each other better, and to find where there is common ground across issues. A sense of community is built through ideological ties, but also personal ties. This is also why more diverse voices at the planning table of Netroots Nation is important, and why deliberately bringing together bloggers and Internet activists from all kinds of different backgrounds could be a central goal of the gathering.

But that kind of multi-racial coalition can only work if everyone — especially those with the biggest platforms who are considered leaders — is truly on board.

Now, if you go read the comments, you’ll see some defensive blow back by one the more prominent bloggers in the Progressive Blogosphere™. It’s not surprising since there’s been quite a bit of it displayed in all its glory this week. On the other side of the indignation coming from the most heavily-trafficked blogs are the beginnings of entreaties and conversation.

Only we’re already starting to see that we don’t speak the same language – even if we hold a lot of the same political values. So, how to move forward?

Well, speaking as a Latino and for me as a person, I agree with Jenifer that the first step is to have the blogs who have been coronated by the status quo as the official spokespeople to realize that there is a problem. The other piece that should be occurring simultaneously is a commitment to listening to what has always been going on outside of the Kos/MyDD/FireDogLake/Atrios/Digby realm of existence.

There are blogs out here that specifically write for audiences using our voices as people of color. As I wrote over the summer, however, none of us can (nor will) claim to be speaking for everyone within our demographic. But we are out here doing our thing. We might not have the street cred to warrant an invitation to debate on Meet the Press or anything, and maybe the question we should all ask, is why?

If you find that question absurd coming from a random Latino blogger who averages around 100 hits a day, then you are still part of the problem.

But what have you (the plural you) got to show for your blogging efforts?

The conversation is already at a stopping point here.

A method of measurement is being asked for that does not speak the same dialect as me. Where the questioner is seeking some type of validation, I read arrogance. Pointing that out is not always the easiest thing to do, but it is necessary. Sorry. But since you, dear Hypothetical Human asked, I would like to point out an example of what I’m talking about when I mention shutting our mouths and clicking on sites that are outside of our norm.

Remember the Immigration Marches from 2006? I recall the shock that it sent over at DailyKos and other sites – lots of “how could we have missed knowing about this?” “did you see those numbers, how did they get so many?” etc etc. Well, that’s because you weren’t listening.

So, here we are today – 13 de Agosto 2007.

Conversations are beginning to bud now, those who have managed to “Crash the Gates” are scrambling to point out every non-white/non-male blogger that they’ve ever known in order to refute assertions that they lack diversity, and still I sit – wondering if we’ll ever be able to figure out how to talk with one another without me being expected to assimilate to the Empire’s way of existence.

to be continued…