Posted on 08/30/2003 2:51:19 AM PDT by tallhappy
Fair and Unbalanced Racism - 08/29/03
By
Rodolfo F. Acuna
Fox News and the O'Reilly factor have touched off a tempest in the
proverbial teapot by denouncing California Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante for
not renouncing his affiliation with a Chicano student organization of
which he was a member in the 1970s. These so-called journalists equate
MECHA with the Klu Klux Klan and violence, which at a time of general
hysteria over terrorism is irresponsible.
Moreover, the accusations happen to be unfounded and lack any probative
value; one would expect more of professional journalists who are
supposedly dedicated to search for the truth using an object
methodology. Indeed, the instances that Fox News and its gaggle of talk
show hosts cite where not MECHA events but events sponsored by other
organizations. The one event that Fox News cites as violent was a July 4
demonstration in 1996 where they said Mechistas attacked black and white
Americans protesting illegal immigration. The truth is that many
groups were present at this demonstration, and it was racist nativist
groups that attacked them.
Moreover, they accuse MEChA of association with anti-Semitic groups like
Nation of Aztlan. Here again Fox News is guilty of distorting the facts
and guilty of sloppy reporting. There no such group as the Nation of
Aztlan and most MECHAS have severed ties with any group with sexist,
anti-Semitic or homophobic agendas.
Fox News and OReilly also mistakenly say that MEChA's motto is "for the
race, everything. For those outside the race, nothing." Again, they have
gotten wrong; actually the motto of MECHA is La union hace la fuerza
(Unity creates power). Further the gaggle charges that MECHA has 300
chapters in universities across the U.S. making the false assumption
that they have a national organization with a national office. MECHA is
a student organization with no formal central body, it has no national
office, it has no budget, and it has no constitution.
Each MECHA chapter has a set of bylaws that the student affairs office
must approve. These bylaws state that the organization is open to all
students no matter their race, sexual orientation, gender or religion.
These alleged journalist also charge that the organization is dedicated
to the creation of the Nation of Aztlan; this is a ridiculous charge.
Most MECHAs are dedicated to creating a space on the university campuses.
The organization is anything but anti-Semitism and antiblack; some of
its members are black and others are Jews. At California State
University Northridge MECHA has formed coalitions with various groups.
Despite the facts, the racist nativists are calling on Bustamante to
renounce his membership in MEChA, an organization that he belonged to
more than 30 years ago. They say that his membership in MECHA is
certainly more relevant than Arnold Schwarzenegger's father being a
Nazi. I really find this to be offensive. First because it trivializes
an ideology that murdered six million people, and second because no one
in the Latino community is stooping to this sort of demagoguery.
In my youth, I naively believed that the only hope for democracy was
higher education and the so-called Fifth Estate. In part I became a
historian because of this naivety. Through the years, I had tremendous
respect for journalist such as Edward R. Murrow.
This respect has dwindled as journalist today have abandoned objectivity
and the search for the truth, instead searching for ratings by playing
on the fears of Americans. I would hope that other journalist would show
more professionalism and base their reports on fact. The truth be told,
if I were to grade the Fox coverage it would be a fail. In the first
three paragraphs it makes five errors of fact. So much for fair and
balanced coverage; so much for professionalism.
What is amazing is that, despite Acuna's protestations against anti-semitism or association with such groups, his writings appear at the worst of them, the Voz de Aztlan (Voice of Aztlan), for example The Miami Myth Machine and Popi
More telling, the cal State San Marcos Mecha site links to this overtly anti-semitic Voz de Aztlan site. See their link page.
See this page here, from the very anti-semtic KKK-like Voz de Aztlan site. The page is titled "Nation of Aztlan".
Who also has numerous articles at this same Voz de Aztlan (aztlan.net) site? None other than Professor Acuna who says there is no Nation of Aztlan and there are no ties to anti-semitic groups.
Here are five articles by this Acuna fellow at the aztlan.net KKK web site.
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: How Else Can We Teach Them a Lesson?
Murder in Arizona . . . Its Only the Third World
Then by what authority does this guy speak? If what he says is true, we shouldn't be listening to him at all.
MECHA may be just a student organization, but there is a driving force behind all this (as your researched links so point out). Ever since the cold war, people who have sought to "conquer" the United States have understood that it cannot be taken by military force, but that it can be taken by infiltration from within. The communist/socialists are eating away at our nation from within and now we also seem to have Muslim-radicals and Chicano radicals doing the same thing.
I don't think that it is necessarily a "bad" thing to have a large voting block of people who want to bring about change. We would have to look at what kind of change they want and their motives to know whether we are in danger from them. The Muslim-radicals seek to convert the U.S. to Islam and force us all under it's religion. The Chicanos, up until recently have been seen as a group just seeking the American Dream.... but perhaps it's time that we take a closer look at real motives. Just exactly what kind of changes to they invision taking place if and when they become a powerful enough voting block? Will they want exclusionary rights (as in this is OUR state, Gringo's get out), will they want to vote themselves re-distribution of the wealth and reparations, will they begin insisting that "under God" can only mean being Catholic?
Bill O'Rielly has indeed "touched off a tempest". But perhaps its time that we opened our eyes and see what this tempest is all about before it's too late!
I grew up in West Texas, just below the caprock. There were no mexicans, except those who came in to pick cotton each fall. Now, many businesses are owned by hispanics - legal immigrants. There is a Catholic church, now, not just Baptist and Methodist. Their numbers increase. Some do not want to join Mexico, some do.
It never was. It's a radical secessionist anti-American group --- always was and is. The first time I learned the nature of these Chicano groups was from a hispanic guy who grew up in New Mexico --he grew up in a poor but patriotic American family which didn't consider themselves "Mexicans" because they descended from Indians who'd been in the SW USA long before Mexico existed and from Spaniards from Spain. He said when he started college his father told him he had better stay far away from any brown-power groups and that if he didn't, he would show up and drag him out of college and make him work. A lot of people of US hispanic descent despise the Chicano activists because they know what they're about.
This is what it's all about --- they want to accuse every white of being a racist or a Nazi even though they themselves are extreme racists "La Raza" everything for the Race, nothing for outside the Race --- but they don't want anyone to realize that. Bustamante uses the "n" word --- but we're supposed to forget about that, and with a little digging there are probably far worse anti-white words that are part of his vocabulary.
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