What Lindsey Graham and the GOP think they know about Latinos

By Victor Landa, NewsTaco

Lindsey Graham, of all people, knows what I need. In fact, he may know what I need better than I know myself.

That’s what he told a group of GOP faithful this past weekend in Florida. “President Obama has been a lousy president for people of color,” he said. Who knew?

I could tell you what I think, being a person of color and all, but in this case it doesn’t matter, because the good Senator from South Carolina has already pronounced on my behalf to a group of people who are all too eager to let him speak for me. In fact, he’s so sure he knows I need that he’s sketched a plan to get people of color like me to sympathize, and eventually vote for, the good ol’ GOP. The trick, he says, is in the churches.

This is what he told the conservative crowd: “Here’s my way forward: there are churches full of people in the Hispanic and African-American community who believe just like you do. Anybody here pro-life? Who’s the most pro-life demographic in all of America? Hispanics.”

There you have it, appeal to social conservatism, Latinos are in the mix there somewhere – faith-based Latinos, specifically, are sitting in churches, waiting to be enlightened.

If I didn’t know any better I’d think Mr. Graham was being a little paternalistic, condescending even. If I knew my own needs I’d know that I wouldn’t want to vote for a person or political party that claims to know what I want without asking. But that would be out of character, being a person of color and all.

It wouldn’t matter that as a Latino I understand that my particular cultural group, by and large, makes a healthy distinction between what we do in church and what we do in the voting booth.

It wouldn’t matter that when Latinos listen to politicians they don’t hear what the politicians think they’re saying. For instance, non-Latino politicos think Latinos care about immigration a lot because we identify with the issue and because we know immigrants in our primary family and social circles. Part of that is true, but what we really hear isn’t so much about immigration as it is about attitude. When people talk about immigration they’re talking about how they fell about Latinos in general, and we know that, we can decode it.

We also know that when politicians think they can corral Latinos in church, they’re thinking we’re like they are.  I’ve walked out of church twice – once when the priest told the congregation that they shouldn’t vote for President Obama and again when another priest used his homily to go on a tear against the Supreme Court. I didn’t leave in mid-mass because I disagreed with the politics, I left because I don’t go to church to be told how to think politically. Neither did the Latino couple I talked to outside the church who left as I did, saddened at the politicizing of the sacred mass.

Lindsey Graham said what many conservative politicians have been saying for a long time. Remember “Latinos are Republicans, they just don’t know it?” That was Ronald Reagan’s thing, and Graham is saying the same thing, he’s saying what many on the GOP camp still think. I can see why.

Here’s the plain truth, as I see it – being a person of color: they sincerely don’t see us as their equal. So it’s OK to talk down to us, speak on our behalf, to tell us what we think and what we don’t know. It’s a safe thing to do because when Latinos don’t vote for them as they expect, it’ll be our fault, not theirs, because we didn’t know any better.

By the way, the liberals don’t get off easily on this one they’re just as clueless on some counts. But that’s fodder for another day.