NewsTaco

By Dr. Henry Flores, NewsTaco

Normally, I don’t like to get involved in throwing chingasos with other people let alone other pundits over something, someone else said.  Pero Ruben Navarrette has just gone too far.  He upset an “old lion” of Chicano Studies, Dr. Rudy Acuña when Ruben recently wrote against the Dream Act.  I was going to let that one go but then I reread another column he wrote toward the end of last year and I just had to say something.

I was introduced to Ruben’s thinking in his memoir of his time at Harvard.  It must have been very traumatic for this young man given his humble background to arrive at one of the cathedrals of American education and tried to fit in.  Maybe he tried to join some fraternity and was required to face his identity.  I guess the emotional pounding Ruben received was enough to cause him to change from being a Chicano to a multi-cultural Latino.  I guess it could happen to anyone but it also must have affected his perception.

Over the years it seems that Ruben has tried to play the role of the even-handed journalist but as an opinion maker it makes him appear more of an apologist than anything else.

For instance, in the column I am referring to he accused the Democratic Party of being dismissive of African Americans and Hispanics.  He stated that Hispanic and Black activists cared little for the interests of their communities and only for those of the Democratic Party.  Rightfully, never accuse me of not ever agreeing with Ruben, he points out that both party’s take Blacks and Hispanics for granted.

What I found outrageous was his insinuation that African Americans and Latinos do not want to recognize the appointment of Tim Scott as the junior senator from South Carolina or the elections of Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz as indicators of the achievement of “political prominence” by minorities in the South.  Ruben claims that minority politicians will not be recognized by minority activists unless they are Democrats.  Activists are not against Scott, Rubio and Cruz because they are Republican.  African American and Latino activists are against these three because they support anti-minority legislation.

Por favor Ruben, you should have looked at the voting records and public statements of these three United States senators before making your claims.  All three have been anti-immigrant, anti-health care, anti-education, in short, anti-every policy important to the African American and Latino communities.  Scott, Rubio and Cruz are not held up as examples of minority achievement because they stand for anti-minority policies.

I agree with Adolph Reed, Jr., a much respected and admired political scientist, when he stated that Scott was a “token” put up by the Republican Party to veil the racism that underlies the party’s public policy agenda and provide psychological mollification for those casting votes who don’t wish to be thought of as racists.

One interesting thing that Ruben pointed out was that 93% of African Americans supported President Obama in the last election.  What he failed to point out was that more than 70%, some estimates go as high as 75%, of Latinos voted for the president.  Black voters moved to the Democratic Party, they originally were strong Republican voters, as a result of the support the party gave to the Civil Rights Acts in the 1960s.  Latinos have supported Democratic presidential candidates at approximately the 65%+ range since we started polling them in 1980.  As a matter of fact, the anti-immigrant rhetoric spewed by Republican Party activists and politicians and those organizations supporting politicians like Scott, Rubio and Cruz, have moved Latino voters closer to the Democratic Party.

Ruben, not only are all three of these senators Tea Party sweethearts they appear to be aiding and abetting the party’s attempt at alienating all minority voters.  Technically, these three might not be considered “tokens” but co-conspirators in the effort at driving minority voters away from the Republican Party.  Still, if these three senators were representative of their communities they would not be supporting anti-immigrant and other anti-minority policies; rather they would be actively speaking out against the Tea Party.

[Photo by  Gage Skidmore]

By Jesse Treviño, HispanicLatino

It is almost impossible to understand Ruben Navarrette.  On the heels of trying to take down Olympic hero Leo Manzano a couple months ago, Navarrette in a column published by CNN on its website is trying, in effect, to keep HispanicLatinos from voting for President Obama.  It is no longer important to understand what makes Navarrette tick, though his point is well taken:  HispanicLatinos are not yet respected fully by the political system.  But his answer to the problem is particularly atrocious.  Navarrette wants HispanicLatinos to vote for neither Mitt Romney nor Obama – a half no-vote for each.

Navarrette when he votes today thereby would deny a full vote to Obama, the one of the two candidates more likely to nominate a member of the Supreme Court likely to defend the constitutional rights that HispanicLatinos need to…become respected fully by the political system.

What makes Navarrette’s perspective galling is that the election is so tight and potentially decisive.  I am not familiar enough with Navarrette to know if he has ever worked in government.  So he must not understand how a Republican-controlled White House would work every day to appoint federal judges – for life – who at every level of the judicial system would downgrade consistently over time the civil rights of HispanicLatinos and other minorities.  This very day, public officials across the country are busy conspiring to marginalize and damage HispanicLatinos when they try to exercise their God-given right to vote – in part because the highest court sanctions these travesties. 

In other words, after so much struggle not that much has changed in some places.  Many individuals are still fighting for their rights – for respect.  It is insufferable for Navarrette to disrespect the individuals who this week have been intimidated from going to the polls, and he insults the ones who were denied the right to vote outright or were put into some sort of electoral limbo through a provisional ballot.  As for the rest of us, we should find Navarrette’s solipsistic argument offensive.  He ill-uses our past and abuses our future.  At this point, Navarrette and the unholy alliance of civil rights violators with whom he is in league either intentionally or not are a menace.

Navarrette’s statements are hard to reconcile with reality.  In his last excursion, he skewered Manzano’s First Amendment right — and the right of all Ameicans — to free speech when the Olympian draped a combined Mexican and American flag over his shoulders during his jaunt around the stadium in London this summer to celebrate a hard-won silver medal.  Coming from a journalist protected by the same constitutional privilege, that was rich enough.  But now Navarrette denigrates the Fifteenth Amendment that guarantees a free and fair vote to every member of the community that he purports to know and of which he for some reason chooses to remain a part.  He leaves in his wake confusion and distrust and insecurity — the bane of too many HispanicLatinos.

It might be too late for Navarrette, but if he feels he and his fellow HispanicLatinos are disrespected, he might want to consider where respect begins.  One does not engender respect from others until one engenders respect for — and from — his or her own self.  One does not attain respect unless each of us moves to attain power, and no one gains strength by unilaterally disarming.  It is hard not to feel naked and powerless if you take off your clothes in public.

Were HispanicLatinos equal members in all aspects of society, then the kind of preposterous protest that Navarrette espouses might in some, other less important day be considered – at best – whimsical.  But, dude, we are nowhere near any day like that, and until we get there you cannot expect anyone to take you seriously.

If newspapers tomorrow banner-headlined the news that the 70 percent of us who voted for Obama had made the difference for his re-election it would mater naught if his second term were a disaster or that no HispanicLatino was invited to step past the portico of the White House for the next four years.

What would matter is that we – a population on a long journey into the future – would have made the difference and knew it.  And that is how respect starts and from where power grows: With complete self-awareness that leads to self-respect, the building block of a better life.  We should feel sorry that anyone – including Navarrette – might not get to be a part of it.

Still, his vote is inestimably valuable even if he is the last to recognize its – and his own – full worth.

Jesse Treviño is the former editorial page editor of The Austin American-Statesman.

[Photo by DonkeyHotey]