Defining candidates beyond their ethnicity

*This piece makes very interesting points. The writer, Joe Mathews, an editor at Zócalo Public Square, says that reducing political candidates to their ethnicity, and talking about their ethnicity as the most important factor in an election (he uses Antonio Villaraigosa as an example) is a disservice to the candidate’s ethnic community and to the electorate as a whole.  When a candidate’s accomplishments are minimized in favor of an ethnic label (i.e. the Latino candidate) it perpetuates the assumption that Anglos define the mainstream. Keep in mind, the piece was written by an Anglo. I think a Latino writer would have a slightly different take. Yes, Anglos still define the mainstream and highlighting ethnicity reduces an election to an ethnic horse race; it assumes that ethnic communities have different priorities than the mainstream. But the reverse is also a reduction. Not taking a candidate’s ethnicity into account whitewashes the politics of a very diverse electorate. So, some good points here, taken with a grain or two of sal. VL

By Joe Mathews, Zócalo Public Square

It shouldn’t matter much to Californians whether Antonio Villaraigosa gets to be a U.S. senator or governor someday. But it should matter whether Antonio Villaraigosa gets to be Antonio Villaraigosa.

Villaraigosa didn’t get that opportunity over the past six weeks, as he pondered, and ultimately decided against, a campaign for the U.S. Senate. Instead, in the media coverage and public discussion of the political drama, he was portrayed as one thing above all: the Latino candidate.

Villaraigosa’s supporters expressed hopes that he would be a historic Latino candidate. Opponents pointedly said that Latinos don’t vote at high rates, as they urged him to skip the race and support Attorney General Kamala Harris. And then critics of those opponents claimed that pushing the Latino candidate out of the race was an insult to Latinos.

In the face of this relentless ethnic reductionism, the best response may be: Ay Ay Ay Ay. If one of this era’s most complicated, accomplished and frustrating Californians can be defined so narrowly, then what hope do the other 38 million of us have to be considered as full and complex humans, products not only of our heritage but also of our deeds and dreams?

Click HERE to read the full story.

[Photo by Antonio R. Villaraigosa/Flickr]

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