MotherJones Blog: "Mexican Americans...take Spanish...in Summer School...And Get B's"...: Or are we Buying Into The Hype?

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"Mexican Americans...take Spanish...in Summer School...And Get B's"...: Or are we Buying Into The Hype?

It's a long way to the Dem's August convention in Denver, but it's hard to see how Clinton can save herself from herself and her husband now. Her MLK vs LBJ Freudian slip was her last chance to stop the Billary race-baiting train and...she chose not to. Pissing on the South Carolina vote and the annoying little Negroes who dared to vote against her sealed her fate, it seems. Or it should have. We'll see. But, in any event, Obama is far from home free. Now that he's all but won the battle against old school white supremacy he can move on to new school black-Latino hostility. Are Latinos the new whites, the people who refuse to vote for blacks? The pundits are torn. From the SF Gate:

Sen. Barack Obama easily won the African American vote in South Carolina, but to woo California Latinos, where he is running 3-to-1 behind rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, he is taking a giant risk: spotlighting his support for the red-hot issue of granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.

It's a huge issue for Latinos, who want them. It's also a huge issue for the general electorate, which most vehemently does not. Obama's stand could come back to haunt him not only in a general election, but with other voters in California, where driver's licenses for illegal immigrants helped undo former Gov. Gray Davis.

Clinton stumbled into that minefield in a debate last fall and quickly backed off. First she suggested a New York proposal for driver's licenses for illegal immigrants might be reasonable. Then she denied endorsing the idea, and later came out against them.

Asked directly about the issue now, her California campaign spokesman said Clinton "believes the solution is to pass comprehensive immigration reform."

"Barack Obama has not backed down" on driver's licenses for undocumented people, said Federico Peña, a former Clinton administration Cabinet member and Denver mayor now supporting Obama. "I think when the Latino community hears Barack's position on such an important and controversial issue, they'll understand that his heart and his intellect is with Latino community."

But what of blacks' hearts and intellects? Not only must Obama woo Latinos he must do so without alienating blacks who, as a group, have little interest in Latino preferences. When, it must be said, they're not actively hostile to them as with immigration and job competition.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is not optimistic about Obama's ability to appeal to Latinos though he will desperately need to. He notes:

Since [black Mayor Tom Bradley's lack of appeal to LA's Latino voters] then the political polarization between Latino voters and black candidates has been a virtual trademark in every other race where a black candidate has squared off against a white or Latino candidate. In 1993, Rudolph Giuliani, a tough law and order, conservative Republican running in heavily Democratic New York city against liberal African-American Democrat David Dinkins got nearly forty percent of the Latino vote. Nearly a decade later, Lee Brown, the former New York City police commissioner, got less than 30 percent of the Latino vote in his run-off race against Orlando Sanchez for Houston mayor. The even more popular, veteran former Congressman Ron Dellums received barely thirty percent of the Latino vote in his race for mayor in Oakland against a Latino challenger in 2005.

My friend Gregory Rodriguez though is trying to flip the script on the notion that Hispanics won't vote for blacks and makes me reconsider my unexamined ideas about their anti-black feelings. He writes in Time:

I imagine he said it as if he were confessing a deep, dark secret. And, of course (wink, wink), he had no idea his little confession would make the rounds. But when Sergio Bendixen, Hillary Clinton's pollster and resident Latino expert, told the New Yorker after her win in New Hampshire that "the Hispanic voter--and I want to say this very carefully--has not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates," he started a firestorm of innuendo that has begun to shape how the media are covering the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in the heavily Hispanic Western states.

After the Jan. 19 Nevada caucuses, in which Latino voters supported Senator Clinton by a ratio of nearly 3 to 1, some journalists literally borrowed Bendixen's analysis word for word before going on to speculate about Barack Obama's political fortunes in such delegate-rich states as California and Texas. Ignoring the possibility that Nevada's Latino voters actually preferred Clinton or, at the very least, had fond memories of her husband's presidency, more than a few pundits jumped on the idea that Latino voters simply didn't like the fact that her opponent was African American.

The only problem with this new conventional wisdom is that it's wrong. "It's one of those unqualified stereotypes about Latinos that people embrace even though there's not a bit of data to support it," says political scientist Fernando Guerra of Loyola Marymount University, an expert on Latino voting patterns. "Here in Los Angeles, all three black members of Congress represent heavily Latino districts and couldn't survive without significant Latino support."

Whatever the truth, we can know for a fact that a new storm front is forming now as Obama continues trying to be all race transcendant. God help him as he tries to reconcile all the intra-black rivenings (e.g. rap v Cosby, black social conservatism v. civil unions and abortion), whilst simultaneously trying to make blacks and browns learn to coexist.

The real mystery is why he even wants this job.

Comments

"they're not actively hostile to them as with immigration and job competition." Debby, get into the hood. We are under pressure from the Mexicans in L.A.(and the CA prisons, ever hear of the "Mexican Mafia"?), they are taking our neighborhoods, our jobs, and our businesses(legal and otherwise), not to mention the drive bys and the banging. We are fleeing our neighborhoods like the people did in Bosnia. This is ethnic cleansing. The Mexican Mafia has a policy of genocide against us.

Posted by: Tyrone on 01/29/08 at 5:42 AM Respond

This quote describes the whole thing best:
“When you are washing dishes and waiting tables and are working these kinds of jobs, you don’t pick up Newsweek and find out the phenomenon about Barack Obama,” said Gutierrez, who says Latinos don’t know Obama.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0108/8076.html

Posted by: e on 01/29/08 at 5:56 AM Respond

I'm hispanic and I'm very liberal in all things but won't tolerate someone who doesn't plan on getting tough on illegal immigrants and their employers. I don't think candidates need to worry too much about the latino vote because they really don't vote. They'll bitch and moan, but they won't vote. I've been part of many voter registration drives and many latinos wear their non-voting apathy like a badge of honor. Change that and then the candidates can start worrying about the latino vote.

Posted by: Ned Allen on 01/29/08 at 6:11 AM Respond

LOS ANGELES -- Sen. Hillary Clinton is relying on the big Latino vote as her firewall to prevent her losing the Feb. 5 primary in California, the most important of 22 states contested on the Democratic side on Mega Tuesday. But that reliance, both pro-Clinton and anti-Clinton Democrats say, is fraught with peril for the Democratic Party coalition because it threatens to alienate its essential African American component.

Clinton's double-digit lead in California polls over Sen. Barack Obama is misleading. Subtract a Latino voting bloc whose dependability to show up on Election Day always has been shaky, and Clinton is no better than even here, with Obama gaining. To encourage this firewall, the Clinton campaign may be drifting into encouragement of Hispanic vs. black racial conflict by condoning Latino hostility toward the first African American with a chance to become president.

The implications transcend California. The pugnacious campaign strategy of Bill and Hillary Clinton in forcefully identifying Obama as the black candidate spreads concern that they could be putting at risk continued massive, unconditional support for Democrats by African Americans. The long-range situation is so disturbing that some Clinton supporters talk about an outcome they rejected not long ago: a Clinton-Obama ticket.

Posted by: Ms. Jackson on 01/29/08 at 6:13 AM Respond

To my Latino Voters: We are cousins. We share the same grandparents from Africa. Some Africans were enslaved and sent to North American and some were sent to the islands and South American. We are Family and let us not forget this! Just like they tried to separate us in the South Carolina Primary: it is not going to work. This divide and conquer will not prevail. Let Barack Obama bring us all together for unity in the United States.

Posted by: Marlene on 01/29/08 at 6:18 AM Respond

Insensitivity was reflected in a recent issue of the New Yorker, when Clinton's veteran Latino political operative Sergio Bendixen was quoted as saying, "The Hispanic voter -- and I want to say this very carefully -- has not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates."

That brief quote from an obscure politician has generated shock and awe in Democratic circles. It comes close to validating the concern that the Clinton campaign is not only relying on a brown firewall built on an anti-black base but is reinforcing it. A prominent Democrat who has not picked a candidate this year told me, "In any campaign I have been involved in, Bendixen would have been gone."

But not in Clinton's campaign. At the Jan. 15 debate, before the Nevada caucuses, where the Latino vote was important, NBC's Tim Russert read the Bendixen quote and asked Clinton, "Does that represent the view of your campaign?" Her response was chilling: "No, he was making a historical statement."

Posted by: Mr. Jackson on 01/29/08 at 6:19 AM Respond

Latinos should wake up in theWest and see the reality wafting their way.
We have a man that talks a good game but has nothing t back it up and yet the media is touting him as the next JFK?
Wake up people!!! You are smarter than this. Ms. Clinton and her husband have making your way easier for a decade. Get out and support her.

Posted by: Southern on 01/29/08 at 8:01 AM Respond

What does the title of this post mean? There's nothing in the text about it.

Posted by: Rasputin on 01/29/08 at 10:40 AM Respond

Rasputin, it comes from a Cheech and Chong song, "Mexican Americans," which you can watch here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2K-_2AHYh0

However, they got it wrong, it's night school, not summer school. They like education so much they work and go to night school.

Posted by: Eric on 01/29/08 at 12:41 PM Respond

Marlene,
Everyone's grandparents are from Africa. Perhaps more relevant, Obama has received support from Ted Kennedy.

Tyrone,
Wow, that's terrible, I wonder if there might be some reason Latinos would feel that they would have the right to live in a place called Los Angeles. Such Anglo name, right? Total mystery.

Well, keep up the Bosnia rhetoric. Now that a war with Iran looks less likely thanks to the NIE, maybe NATO will terror bomb Los Angeles to stop the evil Mexican Invaders! If Obama stuck with that, he'd win white and black support! Of course, it was Clinton who bombed Belgrade, with Hillary's support. Oh well.

Posted by: Eric on 01/29/08 at 1:07 PM Respond

Eric, you talk like a Cracker. What's matter with you boy.

Posted by: Tyrone on 01/29/08 at 1:59 PM Respond

Latinos are not monolithic. Some are conservative, some liberal, others independent. Maybe Teddy will influence a few; most, however, will vote their conscience. Caroline will influence no one.
Moreover, some of the racist comments made are without merit. Illegal latinos, those from Mexico, Central America, and South America, are for the most part descendants of the first inhabitants of this continent. They look like their ancestors; white people look European, which is where the majority came from. Aqui se van a quedar, con o sin permiso. Reality.

Posted by: gloria on 01/29/08 at 3:07 PM Respond

Tyrone, you are pretty funny. What else you got?

Posted by: AG on 01/29/08 at 3:49 PM Respond

Well Blacks and Mexicans may have had alot of fighting going on but both should remember something. Whites took this whole land from Mexicans and enslaved Blacks. Sure at worst we've killed each other but there has never been such an all out war like there was with whites. To Mexicans (hispanics) just remember all the white racism that went on last year. That hurts us more than the small fights in the cities. And Hillary won't support any real measures to help us. Vote Obama!

Posted by: Ivan on 01/29/08 at 5:39 PM Respond

Ivan, don't trivialize the situation in Los Angeles. You people are killing my people. You owe us an apology. With a Russian name, you are no Mexican, but that is okay, you can apologize for them anyway.

Posted by: Tyrone on 01/29/08 at 5:50 PM Respond

Tyrone that is the problem you think everyone owes you something.

Posted by: Real on 01/30/08 at 4:13 PM Respond

When you compete for housing, jobs, schools, etc, you're going to have problems. Latinos move in, The Brothers move out. Now the Bros know how white folks felt 25 years ago. 25 years from now, Asian Indians will move in and the Spanish will flee to the dream. And Ivan sounds like some white kid who never rode a bus.

Posted by: Twotimer on 01/31/08 at 8:35 AM Respond