Commentary & Cuentos

Thoughts on Race, Politics, and Pop Culture

Was the Sleeping Giant Slayed in 2016?

Mariachi musicians sing and play as they go from house to house to encourage people to come to vote on election day at the Sun Valley's Latino district, Los Angeles County, on November 6, 2012 in California.AFP PHOTO /JOE KLAMAR (Photo credit should read JOE KLAMAR/AFP/Getty Images)

When the primary season began, there were signs that the 2016 election was going to be different from others in the past. This would be the most diverse electorate in United States history, and Latinos were set to play a central role on a national stage. Latinos had played an important part of the Barack Obama coalition and their electoral size only continued to grow. After suffering two presidential defeats, the Republican National Committee, headed by Reince Priebus, issued a report that rethought the GOP’s strategy. The RNC had come to the conclusion that the Republican Party needed new voters. It needed Latinos, but Latinos’ support for Republican candidates had been steadily decreasing since George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign. The RNC thought a change in policy and rhetoric could fix this in 2016.

As 2016 approached, it seemed both parties were doubling down on diversity.

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Our Democracy After the Election

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My mother cried on election night.  In her years here, she has witnessed every American election since 1972.  Never once did she cry.  That should say something about this election.

She visited the weekend before the election to see her grandchildren and after they went to bed she asked me gravely, “mijo, do you really think he can win?”

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The History of Donald Trump’s Definite Article

Donald Trump’s minority outreach has failed miserably.  Perhaps, the most visible, or audible, sign of dissonance in Trump’s message is his constant use of the definite article “the” before the communities he’s speaking about—as in “the Blacks” “ the African-Americans,”  “the Latinos, the Hispanics.”  It is grating and alienating.  What is so off-putting about one of the most common words used daily?

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Definite articles are used with adjectives to refer to a whole group of people, but they are also used to identify a particular person, object, or item.  Trump is using them correctly when he says “the Latinos,” and “the African-Americans,” but using “the” ascribes singular dimensions and monolithic proportions to diverse communities.  It homogenizes people and obscures their diverse concerns and needs.

In this, Trump doesn’t need a grammar lesson, although a thesaurus wouldn’t hurt.  His use of the definite article is not a syntactical flaw.  His idiosyncratic word choice is ideologically revealing, a peak into the grammar—or the systematic or structural design—of his ideas.  His reliance on the definite article hints at a dated understanding of identities and politics that is locked in the mid-20th century.

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The Vice-Presidential Debate Showed the Limitations of Kaine’s Latino Outreach

It was only a few months ago, when the news cycle was abuzz with rumors of a possible Latino vice-presidential pick.  Xavier Becerra, Julian Castro, Tom Perez, all were floated as possible names on Hillary Clinton’s short list.  Becerra, the most senior ranking Latino Democrat in the house, was a qualified choice.  Castro, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the rising-star of the Democratic Party brought with him youth, good looks, and the right political pedigree (by way of Stanford and Harvard).  Perez, Secretary of Labor, brought with him political gravitas and liberal credibility, given his background in labor and civil rights issues.

All were strong choices and Latino advocacy groups were excited about the possibility for new political and social visibility.  In an election which ultimately saw a candidate who ran on an anti-Mexican platform, a Latino could have significant potential to disrupt the entire Trumpian narrative.

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Instead, Clinton picked Tim Kaine.  It was supposed to be okay because Kaine would successfully reenergize the Latino vote.  A sprinkling of Spanish, a mention of his time in Costa Rica, a few words on his Catholicism, and Latinos would just eat him up with their cucharras.  Kaine was supposed recharge Clinton’s Latino outreach.

Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate, showed Kaine’s failure to live up to that initial promise.

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The White Working-Class wasn’t Tricked into Racism by Trump, They’ve Chosen it, Historically

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Weeks ago, Hillary Clinton took flak for her passing statement that half of Trump voters were a group that she would characterize as a “basket of deplorables.”  Clinton was criticized by many for her statement by both left and right.  She ended up apologizing for the percentage (which she claimed was “half”), but not for the statement itself.

The criticism she drew from well-intentioned liberal strategists and journalists, builds upon a theme that has grown during this election cycle.  2016 is the year of economic anxiety.  During the primary season, two populist dark horses rose to prominence—Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.  Their messages of economic populism struck a deep chord and brought new voters out in droves.  Trump, as he likes to mention, received more votes than any other candidate in a Republican presidential primary.  Similarly, Sanders energized the millennial vote, a young population that is growing in its electoral importance.   The rise of these unexpected candidates was explained through their economic messages.  In Sanders, young students and workers were tired of a system that burdened them with school debt and made them pay for three decades of tax cuts for the Baby-Boomer generation.  In Trump, white workers saw a figure that put America first and promised to “Make America Great Again.”

While Trump declared his run for the White House on an explicitly racist note, it was not until much later—when he issued a call for a banning of all Muslim immigrants and called Judge Curiel a Mexican who was biased and unfit for the bench—that the press started to call Trump a racist.  But it was always Trump who was the racist, intentionally leading his supporters astray.  The white working-class was not at fault for their racism.  They were economically anxious, afraid because they had lost their place in society.  They were misapplying their anxieties to communities they had no contact with and couldn’t be blamed for resenting the first Black president, for wanting to deport 11 million Mexican migrants, for wanting to ban Muslims.  They were sad they were making less money and losing their cultural hegemony in their nation.  Trump, the snake-oil salesman, the crooked used-car salesman, was selling them the empty promise of racism and the poor white working-class was using its last bit of money to buy his magical solutions—a wall so tall that they would be protected and they wouldn’t even have to pay for it.

The notion that the white working-class was somehow tricked into racism or lacked the understanding of global economic change is deeply flawed and it is historically inaccurate.  The white working-class was not tricked.  They have used racism to combat their economic decline and to assert their social worth at multiple points in U.S. history.  White supremacy and their connection to it helped transform them into meaningful contributors to the nation.

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The Politics of American History

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History is a frustrating thing.  Most have learned that history is a certainty, a fact, a singular, straightforward, correct answer.  Our confidence in its authoritative certainty was forged in history lessons from kindergarten through high school.  Multiple-choice and true-or-false questions have honed a belief in its singular truth. The Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. George Washington was the first president.  Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941.  A+.

History is not a hard science.  It is not just an accumulation of facts.  History is deeply rooted in the humanities, more closely connected with literature than math or science.  History is not physics—for every human action there is not an equal and opposite reaction.  There is no formula that predetermines or explains the cause and effect of past and present.  Historians craft the cause and explain the effect.  While dates, times, bills, and people are facts, they have no larger meaning without the analytical work that people must do.  History is how we make meaning.  History is how we explain the past and make sense of the present.  History is not infallible; it is interpretive.  Yet, history has been used in the exercise of politics as a form of concrete evidence.  Politicians and influential leaders have wielded history in their bidding to influence the American electorate.

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Day 1 and 2 of the Republican National Convention

Day 1: Make America Safe Again

Monday July 18, 2016 was the first day of the Republican National Convention.  Following the presumptive candidate’s restorationist theme of “Make America Great Again,” the theme for the day was the multitude of threats that the nation faced and how to correct them.  After hours, of speeches it became clear what the most significant threat to the nation was for Trump and his supporters: people of color.  American decline was not caused by neoliberal policies, outsourcing, massive tax cuts, deregulation, and a disbelief in government.  Instead, the speakers screamed, it was Muslims, Mexicans, and Black lives that threatened America.

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¡Nunca Trump!: Latino Republicans and the Battle for the GOP

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For Latino Republicans, their presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump, places them in a difficult position. Liberal and Leftist Latinos since the 1960s have asserted that Republican politicians and policies are racist. The Latino Left has argued, persuasively in many cases, that where some Republican policies are not intently racist, their outcomes usually are. Latino Republicans, on the other hand, have countered those arguments. They have continued to maintain that conservatism is not racist at all. They believe that their policies have the emancipatory potential to provide Latinos socioeconomic mobility and success without government dependency. They have maintained that their policies do not create structural racism, but instead create a level playing field where individuals may compete to achieve individual successes. Republicanism for them does not build exclusionary structures, but breaks down burdensome regulatory frameworks. Ultimately, lowering the cost of entry into the market, lowering the cost of taxes, lowering the cost of goods will help working-class Latino families. Rarely do Latino Republican operatives and consultants mention the historical political strategy of playing upon racial anxiety and antagonism. They try to minimize it by saying it’s an outlier or the product of working-class disaffection. But Trump not only disrupts this narrative, his explicit racism destroys it. His campaign sets back nearly four decades of Republican outreach to the Latino community. While the Never Trump forces have dwindled, Latino Republicans continue the battle. Their words and actions are more telling of the future of the Republican Party. And for the most part, their message is clear: ¡Nunca Trump!

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Latinos and the Liberal Establishment: A Short History

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In Berkeley, CA in 1964, Free Speech Movement leader Mario Savio decried the old institutions of social change had been compromised.  Unions, universities, the government, all had been bureaucratized, which meant in the langue of their time, sterilized, scrubbed clean, and removed of their humanity.  Liberalism had failed them; in the quest for systematic reform the engine of social changed and stalled and become a monstrous machine instead.

The time for radical change, possibly revolution, had come.  It was time to destroy, to sacrifice all in an effort to make the uncaring machinations end.  Savio passionately urged his fellow students:

There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, make you so sick at heart that you can’t take part! Put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon the apparatus—and you’ve got to make it stop!  And you’ve got ot indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it—that unless you’re free the machine will be prevented from working at all!

It was not just the white college students who voiced a general frustration with American society and politics.  Young Chicanas, Chicanos, Native-Americans, and African-Americans all voiced their anger over government failure to address the problems that affected them.  In the decades since the Great Depression, Americans had turned to the government as the main institution to provide them protection from a wildly fluctuating economic system that they were almost all universally dependent upon but had no control over individually.  The state, through mindfully managed macroeconomic planning and social programs, would provide regular workers and citizens a certain level of security.  But as the decades wore on, it seemed that the promises of liberalism and the proposed economic solutions were not reaching minority communities.

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The Rise and Fall of Marco Rubio: How Republicans Failed to Woo Latinos

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On March 15, 2016 after a devastating primary loss in his home state of Florida, Marco Rubio suspended his campaign.  He won only one county, Miami-Dade.  He was utterly bested by Donald Trump.  His loss could very well mark the end of his career.  He will lose his seat in the senate and the Florida primary revealed his limited electability at the state level.  His defeat and subsequent retreat doesn’t mean he should be forgotten.  Rubio, more than any other figure in the Republican Party, explains how the GOP understands the Latino community.  Rubio was not a happenstance shooting-star, the wish of a wayward party come to life.  His rise was certainly meteoric but this meant that he was destined for a crash-course and an eventual burn-out.  His rise was always connected to his fall.  Rubio’s place in the Republican Party was predicated on the fundamental misunderstandings of the Latino community by the party itself.

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