Posted on 12/17/2006 2:11:34 PM PST by WatchingInAmazement
Michael Richard's frenzied meltdown onstage at the Laugh Factory.
Black firefighter Tennie Pierce's charges of endemic racism in the Los Angeles Fire Department.
NYPD unloading 50 rounds into three unarmed black men.
Ten black teens and preteens on trial for hate crimes in Long Beach, Calif., after a savage attack on three white women.
We might just be closing in on Christmas, but I'd say: Get ready for a long, hot 2007 if the current climate prevails.
Race relations in America have taken center stage, and once again the fault lines have been highlighted as a predominantly black-and-white affair.
That old paradigm might provide a comfortably familiar dynamic for activists, elected officials and the media to play off, but it conceals the new reality -- and the danger -- of the deepening racial polarization on America's streets.
And some of the most stridently racial rhetoric these days is not being heard from blacks or whites but rather from Latinos.
From street activists to students to professionals, Latinos are stoking ethnic anger as they pander to crowds with blatant stereotypes and use racially charged language to motivate their supporters -- and they are doing so with virtual impunity.
At an October protest in Escondido, Calif., organizer Fernando Suarez de Solar of a group called Aztec Warriors for Peace whipped a crowd of illegal immigrants into a frenzy outside City Hall after the council passed an ordinance that requires landlords to verify the legal residency of their tenants.
"Do not allow yourselves to be intimidated by any blue-eyed 'whitey' that comes to your house and asks you for 'papers,'" de Solar shouted in Spanish. Moments later, when he was giving me an English translation of what he had just told the crowd, he forgot to include the reference to "blue-eyed whitey," perhaps in deference to my green eyes.
Two teenage girls standing in the crowd casually dismissed Anglos as little more than a race of lazy bigots who have stolen everything they have acquired.
"Like, white people shouldn't be trying to do that, like trying to take all of the Mexicans [away]. That's why they have everything," said 16-year-old Norma Sanchez.
Her friend Jeanette Rivera, 17, quickly interjected "Without us, [whites] are nothing."
The uncomfortable truth of just how many immigrant and native Latinos perceive Anglo-Americans through a hard prism of negative racial and cultural stereotypes has not been explored much in the media, though it is brazenly on display at rallies that draw swarms of television, radio and print reporters.
It is clear that many Latino activists feel the coast is clear and experience little trepidation about making outrageous and divisive claims calculated to further racially polarize their base of supporters for pure political gain.
In September, activist Emma Lozano stood on a stage in Los Angeles at a rally marking the convening of the National Latino Congress and proclaimed that the aging population -- Anglos -- is able to survive only as a result of the exploitation of illegal immigrant labor.
"It is because of the undocumented that the [white] people who are retiring today are able to retire. Because of the work, the sweat, the exploitation of the undocumented worker," Lozano shouted at the crowd. "They are getting their hearing aids, their crutches and their pacemakers because of our work."
Like the two teens in Escondido, Lozano merely gave a louder voice to the view now pervasive among Latinos: Anglo-Americans do not enjoy the fruits that spring from a heritage of their parents' hard labor, a legacy of toil and sweat that stretches from John Steinbeck's fields in California's Central Valley to the coal mines of West Virginia. Rather, they are the sole inheritors of pillaged loot, beneficiaries of historical crimes against Latinos.
Analogies to slavery are tossed freely about by immigrant activists, with "white privilege" now the new code phrase for white plantation owner.
"What is happening now in America is the dehumanization and modern slavery of all the immigrants," Jorge Luis Macias told students at Mount San Antonio College in Walnut, Calif., in September. Macias is an assignment editor at the Spanish-language newspaper La Opinion.
At the same forum, Angelica Salas from the Coalition of Immigrant Rights Los Angeles told students that illegal immigrants were akin to runaway slaves. "So at present we do have an immigration law that many immigrants have to violate when they come to this country," Salas said. "Slavery was a law."
And those comments pale next to the anti-Anglo venom easily found in but a few keystrokes on the Web, percolating forth from a wellspring of Latino and Mexican nationalist movements that depict Anglos as more akin to the Dutch Afrikaners of South Africa's apartheid regime than Americans.
As the media convulse with the very real stresses and strains between blacks and whites in America, a virulent strain of Latino ethnocentrism is growing in the vacuum. Unless it is confronted honestly, it will set the stage for even greater racial upheaval.
Anglo-Americans -- and particularly the working middle class -- are feeling more denigrated and under siege than perhaps at any time in recent history. And it is the strident debate about illegal immigration that is fueling this sense of isolation.
Pundits might chastise Anglos for their defensiveness and mockingly dismiss their angst about what is clearly a double standard in the public use of race-based appeals, but they will ignore this simmering anger at their peril.
What happens when Kramer's name is Juan? Right now, nothing much at all.
If that doesn't change soon, we'll all be in for a very long, hot 2007 indeed.
I too am watching in amazement, and disgust.
Regards.
Like, learn how to speak, like, normal English, Norma.
Gosh, when did we acquire the hyphen?
Maybe they should teach us a lesson and leave and then watch us just wither away without them (sarc). Sure, we might have to mow our own lawns and make our own beds, but we'll live.
"...we'll all be in for a very long, hot 2007 indeed..."
....no, we're all going to be in for race war.....wars of secession and partition are a global reality....why would anyone think they won't come here too?.....see Thomas Chittum's book "Civil War II"
There are new billboards here in town advertising a local radio show where the two hosts are shown in a flying saucer, with the phrase Latino Invasion. It is offensive to have to see this type of rhetoric essentially mocking the legal system , such as the legal term illegal alien (as opposed to resident alien) and associating our laws with race, such as the poster intendeds.
Although the poster described is tasteless and offensive, its free speech and their right to make racists fools of them selfs by associating the Latin heritage with illegal law breaking with no regards to the seriousness of the problem of illegal immigration.
However, consider if a competing radio show pictured two cowboys, describing a European invasion, can anyone imagine the outcry there would be?
If we are so bad on immigrants, why do they come here? IF they don't like it they can always go home.
Gosh, when did we acquire the hyphen?
======
When it was discovered there was/is money to be made from it.
Why? B/c nobody likes teacher's pet.
I'd rather be called whitey.
There's one big difference w/ slavery: The illegals can simply not work and go home.
You can't steal something from a society that has nothing of value to steal.
"Anglo-Americans"
??? Where is Anglo?
ImpreMedia, LLC
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We already hear dead-serious talk about how do we help the majority minority communities around us.
de Solar's kid was one of the first soldiers killed in Iraq. The city of Escondido spent a small fortune providing the logistics for a formal funeral procession. They also permitted him to put a plaque in honor of his son in a local park. He thanked us by demanding that the American flag be removed from his sons coffin.
Actually, it's del Solar.
Here's a nice shot of him singing the Mexican national anthem at his son's funeral.
http://www.fallenheroesmemorial.com/oif/profiles/solarjesusasuarezdel.html
Next door to J-Lo?
Beats me. Of course, once upon a time there was a place called Angle-land....it sorta got cleaned up a bit, pronounced a bit differently...
Oddly, most of the people from that place looked similar and even acted mostly similar.
Not exactly diverse. But, it worked out for about 1000 years or so.
Then they got the Labour Party, and things went downhill ever since.
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