Super Duper Surg(e)imiento: How Obama Is Cutting Into Clinton’s Latino Advantage

After hearing about Ted Kennedy’s endorsement of Barack Obama, my father, Ramon, says it made him think twice about his support for Hillary Clinton. “That (endorsement) matters” he said as he watched Spanish language Obama ads squeezed in between Univision news reports of the Kennedy endorsement, “They (the Kennedy’s) have a lot of history with us”.

That Ramon, who was defensive the last time I asked him about who he’d vote for, is now rethinking his previous support for Clinton previews what may be a big Super Duper Tuesday surprise: Obama cutting into Clinton’s lead among the more than 10 million Latinos eligible to vote this week.

National polls like the recent USA Today poll show Obama either drastically or completely reducing Clinton’s lead across the country. But other developments indicate that what pundits and media outlets have been calling Clinton’s Latino “firewall” may also be falling. A case in point is Arizona, where Obama actually leads Clinton among Latinos by 53-37 percent, according to a recent poll conducted by McClatchy newspapers.

Conventional wisdom tells us that history, political patronage and the much-coveted endorsements from members of most the Latino politirati are driving Latinos voters like Ramon towards Clinton. But Arizona tells us that history may still be in the making-and remaking. While the Kennedy endorsements do bring a new glow to the hallowed velvet pictures of JFK adorning homes and apartments of many older Latinos, Obama’s Arizona advantage can hardly be explained solely in terms of the spirits of our Latino political past.

Obama is also speaking to the present and to the future. Whether or not Obama can cut Clinton’s Latino advantage by Tuesday, his gains in Arizona provide valuable object lessons with regard to Latino politics, object lessons that take us far beyond the now ridiculous ideas about Latinos’ racist refusal to vote for a black person. Principal among the lessons of Arizona is the strategic priority placed on new Latino voters.

“It’s not rocket science” says Cuauhtémoc “Temo” Figueroa, the former union organizer who is the Obama campaign’s National Field Director. “We can’t win without new voters. We need young people, immigrants and other voters traditionally left out of the elections” said Figueroa from the very loud Obama campaign office in Fresno, California adding “New voters were key to victory in Iowa and new voters are key to winning the Latino vote.”

Central to dropping Clinton’s advantage are Obama’s appeals to the more than 2 million immigrants and first and second generation Latinos added to the rolls of eligible voters since 2004. In Arizona, unions like the SEIU and nonprofits like the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project have undertaken massive voter registration campaigns. Such intense focus on new Latino voters comes atop political soil prepared by what huge majorities of these Latinos consider the fertilizer of anti-immigrant politics.

Obama’s efforts in Arizona and across the Latino U.S. are yielding fruit in no small part because he, more than Hillary Clinton, has intensified his organizing around and his stands on immigration, the definitive issue of Latino politics. Though many polls show the economy, education the Iraq war are the top issues for Latino and other voters this election year, massive marches, polls and common sense tell us that immigration is shaping the political consciousness of an entire generation of new voters. Clinton, who has both avoided or flip-flopped around the issue, is counting on history, name recognition and the endorsements she received from the majority of old-line Latino political leaders like Raul Yzaguirre, the former head of the National Council of La Raza or United Farmworkers leader, Dolores Huerta.

To counterbalance pull of the Latino political past, Obama has started more aggressively deploying a browner, more pro-immigrant variant of the future-oriented message that fueled his victories in the largely black and white states of Iowa and South Carolina. Obama’s unswerving support for driver’s licenses for the undocumented and his commitment to deal with immigration reform early in his tenure are being noticed in Latino voter’s homes as well as in editorial offices of newspapers like of the Los Angeles-based La Opinion, which recently endorsed him. Editors at the country’s largest Spanish language newspaper said they were “disappointed with her (Clinton’s) calculated opposition to driver’s licenses for the undocumented, which contrasts markedly from the forceful argument in support made by Obama.”

Endorsements from Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano and Congressman Raul Grijalva have, no doubt, helped the Illinois senator as well. But Obama’s lead in Latino Arizona, one of the centers of anti-immigrant movement in the United States, comes in no small part because his message is accompanied by more serious organizing and investments in the Latino electorate. At the same time, a more nuanced understanding of the Latino electorate as a segmented electorate makes targeted messaging more effective, especially in the younger and newly naturalized segments of the electorate. Many of these voters either don’t know or could care less that my friends Dolores Huerta and former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros are backing Hillary Clinton.

Beyond the simplistic storyline of Latino unwillingness to support a black candidate, explanations of Obama’s recent Latino surge must include the former failures of the black and white leaders of the Obama campaign. Sources close to the Obama camp tell me that the campaign has started shortening a Latino learning curve made steeper by, for example, an operation in which key Obama staffers charged with securing the Latino vote did not, until recently, have direct access to campaign leaders like David Axelrod.

Whether or not the Obama campaign is successful in dropping the Clinton tally among Latinos like my father, Ramon, Super Duper Tuesday will provide more than a few of the object lessons that political strategists and pundits will study long after the general election in November.

Beyond the Mama’s Chi-chi Theory: Latino Vote Lust Previews Growing National Sophistication

It’s both scary and exciting to watch the media and political frenzy building around the Latino vote next Super Duper Tuesday and beyond. Scary because never have so many known so little about so large a population as Latinos. Yet, this hasn’t hastened the exponential growth of the cottage porn industry of Latino vote expertise being displayed in all its perverse glory this election year. It’s also exciting to watch the new Latino watchers because we as a society will only benefit from the growth in genuine information and knowledge mixed in with the dross of many news reports and campaign statements.

My favorite from among the numerous and stunningly simplistic explanations for why, for example, Latino voters appear to be heavily inclined towards Border Wall supporter and driver’s license flip-flopper, Hillary Clinton, actually comes from an elected official - a Latino elected official no less.

As the world watched and waited to see how Latinos would vote in Nevada last week, widely-quoted Nevada Assemblyman Ruben Kihuen used the global spotlight to unveil for the first time his Mama’s Chi-chi Theory of Latino Political Participation, and he did so in no less a venue than the New York Times, the nation’s newspaper of record:

“The Hispanic community is very family oriented, and we respect our mothers,” said Ruben Kihuen, an influential Democratic assemblyman from Las Vegas who supported Mrs. Clinton. “A lot of middle-aged women see her as a mother, a head of the household, and they can identify with this. Especially when they see her daughter, Chelsea, with her.”

Though not as pernicious as the now thoroughly discredited “anti-black-Latinos-are-the- rearguard-of-white-racism” theory of the Clinton vote, Kihuen’s Chi-chi theory does reflect the unprecedented -and often prurient- interest in Latino politics.

Despite being left out of the mainstream discussion of the Latino vote, many, more thoughtful Latinos in the blogosphere, alternative and other media and in the body politic generally have seized the political moment to offer insights that anticipate the eventual demise of the Mama’s Chi-chi Theory and other, less-absurd media constructs.

And the collective and relatively new interest of news organizations, pollsters, bloggers, politicos and other interested parties from across the political and geographic spectrum also previews the future sophistication about things Latino. Over the past several months, I have, for example, spoken with and become aware of numerous national and international (and not just Latin American) media outlets planning or actually doing more in-depth reporting on the U.S. Latino vote.

For all its frustrating simplicity, the coverage of and interest in the Latino electorate may well be remembered as one of the most important new developments of this year in media and politics.

We will, for the time being, have to suffer the flatulence and bad taste of the burrito logic informing Kihuen’s Chi-chi Theory. Still, some of the current attention and reporting found in some Spanish language and English language media and other outlets does give one cause for optimism about the new national conversation around Latino and U.S. politics.

Radio Nation Interview: “Black-Latino Tensions” in the Electorate

check out this interview I did with Laura Flanders on Radio Nation. It goes 20,000 leagues deeper than the silliness that current passes for race reporting in the U.S. Guest Amy Alexander and I take a more serious look at this part of the most racialized election in recent memory. Hope you like it:

Everyone’s an Expert on the Latino Vote, Except Latinos

Everyone’s an Expert on the Latino Vote, Except Latinos

New America Media, Commentary, Roberto Lovato, Posted: Jan 22, 2008

Editor’s Note: The newly minted experts on the Latino vote are using the old paradigms to explain the Nevada vote results says NAM writer Roberto Lovato.

NEW YORK – The most interesting development out of this weekend’s Nevada caucus votes had little to do with Hillary Clinton winning a large percentage of the Latino vote – that was predictable. More fascinating was the sudden and exponential surge in the number of experts in Latino politics.

It was tragicomic to watch non-Spanish speaking pundits explain the ‘reality’ of the Nevada vote while standing in the artificial light of the casinos during one of the first caucus meetings held entirely in Spanish. Reporters had to wait for translators to tell them what campaign workers were saying before they could report it to us. Understanding the electoral needs of casino, hotel, restaurant and other workers who labor in a new economy – and require new hours for voting – proved very difficult for many in the media to understand.

It was no less difficult having to watch the white, and some African American, political commentators on MSNBC, CNN and other networks tell us that the Latino vote for Clinton reflected “Black-Latino tensions.” The New York Times newspaper had earlier echoed these observations in a story that caused frustration in the Latino blogosphere. In a recent issue of The New Yorker, a publication that has no Latino editorial staff and publishes very few stories a year about the country’s 46 million Latinos, the magazine showed off its newfound expertise in a story which detailed how Latinos are Clinton’s electoral “firewall,” thanks to the “lingering tensions between the Hispanic and black communities.” It’s hard to know how they know this when only one serious polling organization in the country conducts polls in a language other than English.

Yet everybody, it seems, has something to say about Latino politics. Everybody that is, except Latinos.

The awkwardness and simplicity seen and heard in the coverage of the Latino electorate illustrates how ill-equipped the news organizations, the political parties and the society as a whole are to understand and deal with the historic political shift previewed in Nevada: the death of the black-white electorate. Simplistic talk about the Latino vote provides another example of how we live when the ‘experts’ and their organizations are increasingly out of touch with the dynamism and complexity of the electorate and the general populace.

As a result, the growth of the very diverse Latino electorate will likely force the revelation of more inconvenient truths. Principle among them is the media’s conclusion that anti-black racism among Latinos explains why they voted Clinton and not Obama in Nevada. Story after story tries to fit the Latino vote into the procrustean bed of old-school, black v. white politics.

Typical of these conclusions are statements by the liberal New Republic’s John Judis. He explained Latino support for Clinton this way: “Latino immigrants hold negative stereotypical views of blacks and feel that they have more in common with whites than with blacks.” Judis backed his claims with a modicum of academic seriousness as he quoted “experts” like Duke University political scientist Paula D. McClain. McClain told me in an interview that she neither speaks Spanish nor watches the primary source of Latino news and political information, saying: “I don’t watch Univision.” Quoting her makes little practical sense.

It only makes sense when we consider how ever-expanding Latino power in Nevada and across the country is pushing up against people’s fraying sense of nationhood and citizenship. Latino citizens and voters, not undocumented immigrants, are the targets of many liberals. These liberals long for the simpler days of a black-white electorate, a less-globalized country. Like Clinton, Obama and all Republican candidates, they support the political and racial equivalents of the anti-immigrant, anti-Latino border wall.

So instead of considering that Latinos reflect the new complexities of our political age, we should, experts tell us, simply swallow the black-white political logic of the previous era, like the half-moon cookies our grandmothers made. Ignore whatever you think of the Clintons - they have more than 15 years of relationships, name-recognition and history in the Latino electorate. Outside of Chicago, Obama has less than two years. Never mind that Latinos may still be wondering about why Obama did not, until recently, secure the support of most black voters. Never mind about the political amnesia about how the country’s last black candidate of national stature – Jesse Jackson- defied the prevailing racial logic during the Presidential primaries of 1988, when his Rainbow Coalition secured almost 50 percent of the Latino vote in Latino-heavy New Mexico counties like Santa Fe and San Miguel and 36 percent of the Latino vote in the largest Latino state in the country: California.

The Latino experience of the right-of-center Clintons and the left-of-center Jackson, who the Illinois senator did not ask to campaign for him, raises questions about Mr. Obama’s political operation and his political agenda. Time will tell us what was behind the Latino support for Clinton in Nevada. And who knows, maybe the experts telling us about Obama, Clinton and other candidates’ fortunes in upcoming primaries will do so without the black and white lens that has proven obsolete in the face of a new country.

Presidential Candidates Take the ‘Social’ Out of ‘Change’

Presidential Candidates Take the ‘Social’ Out of ‘Change’

New America Media, Commentary, Roberto Lovato, Posted: Jan 16, 2008

Editor’s Note: Presidential candidates now clamor for change, and many invoke Martin Luther King, Jr. for their own political benefit, but lost in the debate is the social movement of change, notes NAM contributing editor Roberto Lovato.

The spirit of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. still seems to stir serious controversy among politicians. But, as we’re witnessing with the latest racial politics pushing the primary process, the King icon is also being used to build the fortunes and legacies of these politicians, especially those who would be president.

Despite a racial controversy involving a newsletter bearing Ron Paul’s name that called King a “world-class adulterer” and “pro-communist philanderer,” the Republican candidate plans to launch a new and likely record-breaking multimillion dollar “super Tuesday” fundraising campaign on Jan. 21, Martin Luther King, Jr., day; Mitt Romney mentioned seeing King only to later “clarify” that he never actually saw him; Rudy Giuliani regularly makes references to King in speeches, books and security consulting engagements that earned the former New York mayor the millions of dollars that were, until recently, paying for his campaign. And Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are in the midst of a fierce battle over the MLK legacy to see who deserves to win the black vote.

Lost in the bickering over and celebrations of King as an individual is any notion of the social movement that defined King and an entire generation. Similarly, the mind-numbing mantra of “change” mouthed ad infinitum by all of today’s presidential candidates would have us believe that they, not we, are the arbiters of change. The King anniversary appears to provide candidates an opportunity to remind us that they have a monopoly on “change.”

The most recent electoral banter around King takes place within the collective amnesia about his views, especially his later views focusing on issues dogging us to this day: racism and poverty, prisoners and war. To the detriment of our political process, we forget that King’s views came about at least in part as a response to a black political milieu defined not just by white racism, but by the wealth of spirited action and the intellectual perspective provided by millions of people, thousands of organizations and other, less-requited political stars – Angela Davis, the Black Panthers and their combination of service and calls to militancy; Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam and their own brand of self-determination; Stokely Carmichael and the more militant students of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. These and many others influenced and pressured King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the 1960s.

As the harried run toward this year’s King celebrations and the South Carolina primary continues, the practically propagandistic repetitions and variations of words and phrases like “change,” “hope,” “content of character”, “I have a dream” and other King-isms are coded and distributed for mass consumption like Coca-Cola. Coke is, in fact, the main corporate sponsor of a gigantic new civil rights museum located just a shout from Ebenezer Baptist Church and King’s birthplace in Atlanta.

Nowhere is this denial of the “social” in “change” better exemplified than in statements made by Hillary Clinton, who said last week, “Dr King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done.” Few among the pundits noted how Clinton’s framing of the issue deleted the social component of change. Instead, the media, pundits and even community leaders are engaged in a heated discussion about what the candidates believe: whether it was King, the individual, or Johnson, the individual, who “realized” the dream.

This climate has benefited Barack Obama, who speaks more skillfully than any other candidate to a still mostly white electorate that is largely unwilling to deal collectively with issues of race and racism beyond the platitudes one hears during official celebrations of King. Obama’s King-like cadences and charisma give us that semi-religious feeling that goes with being part of a social change movement -only without a social change movement.

In critical ways, the lack of the “social” in our discussions of “change” allows us to gloss over crucial differences between Obama the candidate and King, the leader of the Poor People’s Campaign. When asked how he would like to be remembered after his death, King said, “I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison.”

Like his competitors, Obama spends most of his time making speeches packed with calls for tax cuts and other proposals targeting the crumbling bastion of individualism: the “middle class.” He spends little to no time at rallies dealing with those most devastated by the lack of change: working class people, especially young people like those fueling the Jena Six movement. As he and the other candidates vie to be the inheritors of the King legacy, those who would be King say not a word about forcing “change” in a prison industry that predicts the value of its stock based on the future school performance of black and Latino third graders.

As we decide, during these times of continued crisis, on whom to vote for and what to do beyond the ballot box once they get elected, we might do well to recall the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., social change agent: “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering,
and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”

Not one dedicated individual, but many.

Touted As “First” Focused on Latinos and Race, Nevada Dem Debate Delivers Nada

Tonight’s Democratic debate on MSNBC was sold by organizers as the “first” debate focused on Latinos and issues of race (actually, it was the Univision debate that did so). Though we heard many a promise to end the war, strengthen the “middle class” and so on, by the end of the 2 hours it was clear that Clinton, Obama and Edwards have little more than the waste at Yucca Mountain to offer voters out West

Debate questions and responses centered on the economy and the war - both top issues for Latinos - the substance was, as expected lacking, severely so.

Most despicable to me were responses to Tim Russert’s question about the Solomon Amendment, a Federal statute requiring univiersities to provide military recruiters access to detailed personal information - telephone, address, grades, etc- of students. Universities not implementing this politically parasitic law get their federal funds cut. ALL 3 candidates said they’d “vigorously enforce” a law many of us have seen keep poor, unknowing students and their families vulnerable to the biggest predators on earth-the Pentagon.Brian Williams did his part to slant the debate towards non-Latino interests by asking why English “should not” be adopted as the official U.S. language. Russert then quoted an uinformed, stupid and article in the New Yorker, which repeated unproven statements that Latinos would be unwilling to support a black candidate. To his credit, Obama dispelled it by talking about his huge support among Latinos in Illinois, a seriously Latino state.

And nuclear bomb-maker General Electric’s MSNBC network denied succeeded in denying serious and fiery anti-war candidate Dennis Kucinich.

A BIG BRONX CHEER AND BOOOOOO TO MSNBC FOR FAILING LATINOS AND ALL OF US.

Obama, Clinton “Step Back” From Race Flap - But Still Silent Abour Racism

Today’s AP tells us that Dem candidates Clinton and Obama have decided to “step back” from the race bickering around the legacy of Dr. Mr. Luther King. According to the AP, “Democratic presidential rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama stepped back from a controversy over race Monday night, agreeing that a prolonged clash over civil rights could harm their party’s overall drive to win the White House.”

Now, we all know that this has a lot to do with the much-anticipated South Carolina primary. Touted as the “first black primary”, the voting in Southern Carolilna, a state with a significant African American electorate, will, indeed be determinate in the horse race we call elections. An, so, both camps have played the race card in their own way, Clinton through her husband, who called the Obama campaign a “fairy tale” and Obama through surrogates nailing Clinton.

Lost in the haze of such offensively simplistic approaches to race by the media and pols is the racism rising in the south and across the country; You know, the kind we find exhibited in things like the “noose” and Imus incidents as well as in the more disguised racism of the immigration debate.

The issues and candidates have been thoroughly vetted and racialized. Talk of them “stepping back” rings pretty hollow at this point. Candidates should be foregrounding and yelling at the top of their voices about the racial crisis ravaging the country, but they don’t. Instead, they use race in its more coded, but equally noxious forms found for, example, in the vote or support for the Border Wall of Shame on the part of all the leading Democratic and Republican candidates.

Mark my words: there’ll be no “stepping back” from electoral racism, the political gift that keeps on giving.

More on this real soon.

WBAI Interview About Obama and “Progressivism”

This just in from New York’s own WBAI. Check out this interview on Wakeup Call. Host Mario Murillo queries historian Gerald Horne, political scientist Valeria Sinclair-Chapman and yours truly about how “progressives” should deal with Barack Obama. Together, I think we brought a broader context to discussion about Obama, “change” and “hope”; We talked about such things as the historical context for Obamania, gender and Obama/Clinton and the geopolitical and economic context for the rise of populist, liberal pols like Obama, Clinton and Edwards.

Hope you like it!

Iowa Race Results: Obama, Huckabee and the “Colorblind” Electorate

 

Iowa Results: Race Invisibility or Invisible Race?

New America Media, Commentary, Roberto Lovato, Posted: Jan 04, 2008

Editor’s Note: The victory of Barack Obama in the Democratic caucus in one of the country’s whitest states has been hailed by pundits as a sign that the country is moving beyond the old rhetoric around race. But race might just be becoming invisible, now identified by symbols such as “illegal immigrant,” the cornerstone of the campaign of Iowa’s other winner, Republican Mike Huckabee, writes NAM contributor Roberto Lovato.

As news broke of Barack Obama’s victory in Iowa, one of the country’s whitest states, political pundits of all stripes quickly told us that we were witnessing a historic shift: the end of race and racism as campaign issues. Even CNN’s dour conservative political analyst Bill Bennett waxed multiculti as he proclaimed that Obama “taught” African Americans that race wasn’t an issue they needed in order to succeed in politics. Though enthusiastic about the Obama victory, Bennett’s more jocular colleague Jack Cafferty was not quite ready to intone a full-throated Kumbaya. But he did declare that the Illinois
senator’s win “gives him currency in a state where the color of his skin may be an issue.”

NBC’s Tom Brokaw credited the Mike Huckabee victory in the Republican caucus to “his defense against illegal immigration,” an issue not viewed in racial terms by white voters. On all parts of the political and media spectrum, pundits and politicos are interpreting the Iowa results to mean that we inhabit a color-blind electoral system.

While watching a black man win the vote of an overwhelmingly white electorate is especially welcome in such racially-charged times as ours, and while the victory of a poor (at least in terms of electoral cash) populist preacher over the preferred Republican candidates of corporate America is refreshing, we are hardly entering the age of race invisibility in politics.

Instead, Iowa points us towards the age of invisible race politics.

To his credit, Barack Obama has carefully cultivated an image as a “change” candidate who takes the higher ground, one that talks about race – but not racism. Iowa confirms that, in doing so, he can make even the whitest electorate feel like it’s voting to overcome the catastrophic legacy of racial discrimination, like the Oprah viewer that gives himself or herself a racial pat on the back for really, truly liking her show.

“[Obama] is being consumed as the embodiment of color blindness,” political theorist Angela Davis told the Nation magazine recently, adding that “it’s the notion that we have moved beyond racism by not taking race into account. That’s what makes him conceivable as a presidential candidate. He’s become the model of diversity in this period…a model of diversity as the difference that makes no difference. The change that brings no change.”

It was interesting to watch Obama deliver the most memorable and moving caucus victory speech in memory, one that included King-like intonations and references to the activists who “marched through Selma and Montgomery for freedom’s cause” in the 1960s. Such inspired, impassioned pleas follow a campaign trail-tested rhetoric in which racism such as that surrounding the Jena Six case remains a largely unspoken part of Obama’s speeches and policy platforms. He appears to be more comfortable getting choked up when speaking about the fight against the racist past than he does during those few times he talks about the racist present.

On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee also did his part to promote invisible race politics. The GOP underdog did so in no small part thanks to the issue of immigration, a very racial electoral wedge that many voters believe has nothing to do with race.

By focusing on “illegals,” “illegal aliens” and other racial codes, Huckabee and other Republican candidates get to ride the juggernaut of anti-immigrant, anti-Latino sentiment gripping the country - without appearing racist. Pundits have even taken to calling the immigration issue the “New Willie Horton,” in reference to how, during the 1988 presidential race, a political advertisement deployed by George H.W. Bush against Democratic rival Michael Dukakis featured a black man convicted of murder who raped a woman after being furloughed. Many African Americans and others deemed the Horton ads a thinly veiled appeal to anti-black sentiment in the electorate.

Latino leaders and editorials in Spanish-language newspapers have denounced Huckabee for openly touting the endorsement of Jim Gilchrist, one of the co-founders of the anti-immigrant Minutemen, an organization denounced as a racist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and others. In an election that will witness the largest Latino voter participation in history, how well the veil of legality hides the racial aspects embedded in the immigration issue may determine the fate of Republican candidates like Huckabee.

Regardless of the outcome of this year’s election, the success of Barack Obama and the immigration politics of Mike Huckabee signal clearly that we are well on our way to a new era in race and politics. Obama’s story and his echoes of King make us feel good about ourselves and God knows this country desperately needs that. The question we need to ask is: “Are we willing to push him to talk seriously about those echoes of the racial past in the present that he so skillfully avoids?” And as far as Republicans like Huckabee, we have to ask, “How long are we willing to accept their unskillful use of the racist appeals inherent in their rants about immigrants and immigration issues?” Failure to ask these and other questions will leave us vulnerable to the silent poison of invisible race politics.

Poll: Most Latinos Hurt by Anti-Immigrant Climate

This report by the Pew Hispanic Center found that most Latinos say they are being hurt in some form by the anti-immigrant climate gripping the United States. According to the poll released this week,

“Just over half of all Hispanic adults in the U.S. worry that they, a family member or a close friend could be deported”

The study also found that the overwhelming majority of us reject the raids. The report states that,

Three quarters (75%) disapprove of workplace raids; some 79% prefer that local police not take an active role in identifying illegal immigrants; and some 55% disapprove of states checking for immigration status before issuing driver’s licenses.

Such uniformity around the immigration moves us beyond the simplistic logic of the mainstream media that tells us that Republicans will lose ground among Latinos in the next year’s election. It take us into deeper territory: the birth of a more oppositional Latino culture shaped, in part, by what the white majority and some (not all) African Americans believe is right.

As with the freedom struggles of African Americans, Latino claims to rights and liberties will have to persuade people and directly challenge the racist beliefs coded and cloaked by the thinning veneer of “legal” versus “illegal” as can be seen in this quote from the report,

By contrast, non-Hispanics are much more supportive of all these policies, with a slight majority favoring workplace raids and a heavy majority favoring driver’s license checks.

So, simply changing the party in power will not suffice. Such patterns are now firmly rooted in the deeper realm of the very spirit and letter of what it means to be “American”. That’s why we must teach this country to put the accent in the phrase “the United States Of América”.

NPR Interview: Blacks, Latinos and What Divides and Unites Us

If I do say so myself, I sound rancid, tired in this interview with Maria Hinojosa on NPR’s Latino USA. Thankfully, my New America Media colleague, Earl Ofari Hutchison, doesn’t. Still,there’s something there, especially in areas Earl & I agree on like the need to bust out of the box of “black-Latino tensions” that defines much reporting around the issues. Hope you like it despite tu servidor’s putrid performance.