If Republicans continue to struggle to appeal to Latino voters, Spanish-language ads may not stave off a change that experts like Bositis see coming in the not too distant future, when states such as Georgia go purple and eventually blue.Georgia? Vote Democrat? Phhhht. Georgia voting in a Democrat in a statewide election for a senator or governor is as unlikely as them sending the guy to the White House.
George W. Bush and the "Red State/Blue State" nonsense so obsesses the progressive mind that they talk like November of 2000 was the dawn of political history in this country. Hey, Mr. Bositis, did you know Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings?
19 comments:
"...did you know Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings?"
Owwww. I heard that very phrase shouted across a record store while I was waiting to turn in one of those newfangled VHS rental tapes.
Depression set in when Number Two Son asked "Who's Paul McCartney?"
Tell him "some geezer that's almost as rich as that old fart Bono." :D
Which color was North Carolina last time? Or Virginia? Or Indiana? I forget.
Shootin' Buddy
I do so love reading about the latino vote like it's a homogenous block of same-thinking look-alike people.
The cubanos around here are not looking for the same thing from their elected officials that mexicans are looking for in Los Angeles.
Tailoring your message for the latino vote consists of what, exactly?
Angus McThag said "Tailoring your message for the latino vote consists of what, exactly?"
According to my handy copy of the Leftinumericon (3rd Edition) in the "Political Witcheries" chapter -under the subsection entitled "Arcane Binding Magics and Encantations"- it means promising them a redistribution quota of "All manner of free thinges whot other souls hath earned of the sweat of the brow".
@RL - That works pretty good with a lot of Anglos, too. Living in Maryland, as I do, gives proof of that almost daily.
Of course it works.
The Leftinumericon is an equal opportunity Grimoire which only advocates using discrimination spells expediently in "any matter known to increase the aggregate worldly powers of the highest practitioners of The Arcane Order of the Hammer and Sickle".
Hell Georgia voted Dhimmicrat for decades - who didja think wrote all those Jim Crow laws?
Coming from a racially and politically mixed family that speaks as much Spanish as English, may I point out that 50% of all Spanish surnamed Americans put their race down as White, and their family's country of origin as Spain, even if said family spent the last four centuries in Mexico or Chile.
There is nobody on earth as ferociously chauvanist as a South American white, and I have heard pale skinned men from Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Peru all use the same term for "knocking up" an Indian, Black, or mixed race woman. It translates as "improving the breed".
I've also spent a lot of time with Cubans, and have met few who vote Democrat. Cuban owned Miami is a tough town to live in without money, but it's a lot tougher if you aren't lilly white.
A friend of the family is Carribean Spanish, with a minute touch of the tar brush. He got all kinds of grief from his prospective Mother-In-Law because of that little touch, and she lectured her daughter about her responsibility to "La Raza", which means mestizos in Mexico, but whites in the Carribean.
A close relative who is happily married to a mixed race lady of all three major ancestries found in the Caribbean area mentioned a NatGeo special he saw on Cuba, with all the ladies spending hours combing their babies hair straight and dusting in talcum powder to make them appear more Caucasian before the mandatory government race classification exam.
It permeates every part of Hispanic culture, from the envious Mestizo and Mulatto to the bitter Black and brooding Indian, on to the smug, contemptuous Huero talking down to the monkeys.
People meet and spend the first few moments of their conversation surrepticiously looking at complexion and bone structure for the slightest hint of something non-European. If they find it, or think they do, the conversation takes a definate shift in direction.
I was sitting in a really wonderful Peruvian restaurant a few months ago, having a good beer and watching Venezualan TV news. Every single person on that broadcast could easily have passed for German with the sound off.
For reference, the Peruvians are much less racially uptight than anybody else in Latin America, and have to be about the classiest and most fun people on the planet.
In Peru, it's still much better to be white than red, but they manage to get along suprisingly well, and I think most Peruvian whites I've met think of themselves as Peruvians rather than Spaniards living in Peru, something you don't find anywhere else down there.
Lest we begin to think of the Peruvians as something more than human however, both White and Indian Peruvians absolutely despise Blacks and Mulattoes, and would smoke them all if given the chance.
So if anybody thinks Hispanics are a monolithic block, they're toking something better than I am.
Last I heard, the split was about 70-30 in favor of the Democrats, but that is a product of people on welfare or having government jobs vs. people running there own businesses. It ain't the language, it's the urban social system most of them inhabit.
Also, though I'm in favor of controlled borders and a bounty on any illegal, I should point out that legitimate Mexican-Americans are the only "minority" group that pulls it's own weight in terms of military service.
Ethnic makeup of actual combat units in the U.S. military is 90% white, 9% Hispanic, and 1% everything else. The overwhelming majority of Hispanics in the military are of Mexican decent, and they soldier superbly. They have serious balls, and a sense of loyalty and personal honor that can only be admired. Seriously solid dudes.
Ed:
That's massively informative. Thankee.
Spot on Ed. I still remember the time, thirty years ago, when I heard a very pale skinned upper-class Mexican in Chiapas expound on the difference between the "Gente de Razon" and the "Animales".
What Ed and JD said. I don't have the breadth of experience that they do, and I can't generalize, but a couple of times I've heard upper-class Mexicans say things casually that sounded more like something from a David Duke. A drunk David Duke.
There was a band called Wings? ;)
Ed Foster.
I've heard often enough about paler skinned Puerto Ricans and the whole "negras" is not really a proud term of endearment celebrated in song thing, but in my 40 some odd years living 90 miles away from Puerto Rico (PR) -with a few of them living and working in various parts of PR- on an island where nearly a third of the population is of PR/Spanish Virgin Island descent, in a business where most of our employees celebrate Christmas 'til Three King's Day, I've not heard but one crotchety old-monied-elitist-has-been dreaming Spanish aristocrat great grandparent dreams out loud (in private) type person make airs about being inherently superior to darker-skinned folk...Unless that other someone happened to be an illegal, low class Santo Domingan prostitute, thief, or layabout. Granted, I don't have an ocean front condo on Ashford Avenue or even know whereabouts the Paso Fino equestrian set might hang out, nor have I spent any meaningful time in La Perla with the bottom 1%. But still.
In my experience I find the oft-repeated claim of rampant Puerto Rican (as in PR Puerto Rican) racism to be somewhat akin to claims that white-skinned Americans don't like browner-skinned Americans because John Kerry and the right reverend Al Sharpton talk smack about white Southern rednecks clinging to their country music, moonshine, NASCAR, and hog hunting, while lamenting that those obvious racists aren't voting for democrats with quite as much vigor as the used to.
RL, I mostly agree with you on the situation in and around San Juan, but I'm talking about family members from the cordillera centrale around Ai Bonito who were basically run out of town because their Spanish-Italian-pinch of Amerindian mother married a mostly black man from the Afro-Spanish area in the southwest, below Mayaguez and west of Ponce.
Conversely, I worked with a blond, freckled, blue eyed and button nosed engineer that I first thought was eastern European.
Turned out that he was born and raised on Culebra, and was descended from a Conquistador family that took it's pay in land, and never brought in any slaves. Still straight northern Spanish.
His wife and kids are just as blond, but Dave is very liberal on the subject of race. When he finished highschool he went to San Juan, and got a job caddying out at the Dorado.
He didn't get a single tip all summer, because the players didn't want to see one of their own in a subservient job. All the money went to the 'stizos.
But basically, my experience is here in New England and New York, with emigre, mostly lower "caste" and mixed race (same thing really) Puerto Ricans and other Caribbean Spanish speakers, and I would be the first to admit they don't refect an accurate picture of the 75% white Puerto Rico they left.
I also have experienced the bitter hatred of Cuban whites for Blacks, who formed the majority of the security details Fidel used to savage the Cuban middleclass.
The Cuban Communists used the racial hatred of the Blacks and Mulattoes to control the basically all white middle and upper classes.
Sadly, the Cuban troops sent to fight in Angola were almost all Black, and the great majority came back with AIDS, which didn't add much to the less than cordial relationship between the races there.
As for Dominicans, after 24 years of murder, rape, and madness at the hands of the Haitian army, the treatment of Haitians in the Dominican Republic is regarded as payback, and nobody there feels the slightest twinge of guilt at the near million half starved Haitian "guestworkers" doing all the bull work.
It's not the overt attitude of the whites, at least publically. It's the serious inferiority complex and acceptance of the old pecking order that I see among so many, hell, virtually all the Hispanics I know. Everybody wants a chance to "lighten the line" and gain more status.
I was riding through Hartford's Park Street barrio years ago with two Cuban friends, as they explained how things worked. I thought it was a bit over the top and they were putting me on, so they put on a demonstration for me.
We were passing two mixed race Puerto Rican teenaged girls pushing their baby carriages up the street. Raul and Manny got out of the car, went over and chatted up the two ladies, and went upstairs with them for a half hour quicky.
Manny is straight Spanish, Raul is half Spanish, and like many Habaneros, the rest is mostly English. The lower you go on the genetic pecking order, the more important race becomes to them. A light skinned baby is a real bragger.
Practicing my basic Spanish one day, I "accidentally" used the word Mulatto instead of Mestizo in a conversation with two Peruvian friends, just to see how similar or different their attitudes were to the Caribbeans and Mexicans I knew.
They accepted that it was an honest mistake, but told me that if it happened again we wouldn't be friends any more.
The whole thing is pretty complicated, and from my point of view pretty sad, but it's a factor that has to be considered when dealing with folks from down that way.
"The whole thing is pretty complicated, and from my point of view pretty sad, but it's a factor that has to be considered when dealing with folks from down that way."
Yeah everything is complicated pretty much everywhere. I've heard of the same sort of "don't you dare bring shame upon the family by marrying so-and-so shade of WTF" throughout various parts of the US. But growing up in the Caribbean I have seen more overt racism from black people toward the differing shades between "he so black he blue", to "yellow (lighter-skinned) black" and "he too 'tink he white" than from whites. Not to mention the fact that many local community mis-leaders invoke, fetishize and reenact Fireburn* in public schools and respectable swathes of local popular culture regularly. Then there is the class of political operatives influenced by purveyors of imported African-American race politics who pretty much advocate resentment if not outright hate for white folk.Full stop.Period.
It's really a special sort of shame but racial classification seems to be the order of the day and has only increased in emotional intensity with the adoption of official US political standards and practices wherein the old slavery scabs supersede and replace nearly healed upper-lower (really respectable family vs. un-respectable family regardless of wealth or color) class division scabs which are picked at to distraction and actively exploited to roll back any rapportment that was achieved since Emancipation...All in the name of tolerance and "repairing relations" (AKA Reparations) in service of political power. Heck "they" (all democrats of course) have run a functional monopoly at every level of government for 40+ years now and get far more 'free' Federal money yearly than the Cubans got from the USSR at the height of the Cold War, yet every problem from potholes that would make 1970 NYC blush, to crap power generation and healthcare (both government-owned monopolies) is still the fault of 'Continentals' and 'business' (local political code for white folk). God forbid they vote for a not democrat or the anyone but republicans Independent Citizens Movement (ICM) party.
Soooo...Anyway, how long ago was that running out of town thing? Much of the Cordillera Central is beautiful (like a shorter Switzerland and deeper green Ireland collided in the tropics and set the thermostat to 70) and hearing of that sort of thing really surprises the hell out of me. I'm thinking maybe it's an old school generation thing. Though admittedly I haven't been to the Aibonito/Cayey area - BTW if memory serves, wasn't the Cayey area a Macheteros stronghold?
My non-surfing jaunts through PR have been west of there along the coast and in the Cordillera, and south of Cayey along the south-east coast...Haven't been to Ponce beyond passing through since I was a kid. As for the southern west coast (Boqueron?); There be Flying Saucers Y Martianos.
;^)
*(Fireburn was a labor revolt wherein mobs of freed slaves burned out as many white and mixed households and sugar plantations as they could to gain the right to switch employment from the Danish government.)
Bravo on the whole response, you're right on the button. The Ai Bonito thing was about 20 years ago, and if we ever get to sit down over a beer I'll tell you the other 95%. This is family, so it's not for public consumption.
And have I ever heard the "Uppity High Yellah" vs. the "Maroon Monkey" thing around here.
Most of the aerospace/firearms jobshops here in the Connecticut river valley are staffed by eastern Europeans, with a smattering of French Canadians and the odd Italian or two. For some reason most of the programmers are Irish. Go figure.
I've worked or source inspected in most of them, and had the dubious distinction of running QC in about the only one of them with a reasonable number of blacks.
We had a full scale race war running between the lighter skinned Jamaicans and the American Blacks, with really ugly fistfights starting every time the Jamaican leadman opened a commentary on the stupidity and laziness of, as he so delicately put it, "You Niggas".
My lead inspector was an absolutely wonderful Jamaican lady in her early 60's, very devout, with the kind of work ethic so typical of the J's who came here in the 1960's. She was very light, and mostly Irish by blood.
For reference, the English shipped 300,000 female Irish slaves to Jamaica in the 1600's, to breed them with African men. They didn't stop until the 1680's, when it adversely effected the profits of the slave traders. Most light skinned house slaves in the American south came from such unions.
I would listen to her family stories for hours, and marvel at how much of the maternal culture remained in the rural Jamaican middleclass. She sounded like my Irish immigrant grandmother.
Yet now, her family of successful farmers and lumbermill operators are being taxed almost out of business and live in fear of their lives in a society run by what poor Rose calls the "Tire Burners".
Three and a half centuries of misery and desperation, with nothing but honesty, hard work, and family to sustain them. They walk across their land and every rock has a name, a story, part of their lives wrapped up in it. They love the place.
And if they could find a buyer, they would all grab the money and run like hell for the states. But there aren't any takers. Nobody is foolish enough to pay good money for what will be condemned and taken by some Maroon politician within a few years, or even months.
Sweet, classy people, way over on the wrong side of the cultural curve.
LoL! Would that be a Caribbean Beer Summit?
So...Red Stripe, Banks, Wadadli, or Carib? Surely not Medalla.
;^)
The Caribbean part of my family is more recently from the Wadadli side of the Caribbean with older Carib beer roots, but I can relate to the whole old dignity thing so prevalent in the Islands and can listen to family stories forever...And boy is that the truth about "Mami run 'tings". For having no official power or official respect, old-school Caribbean women were generally not to be crossed...But many men nevertheless had/have their outside 'tings regardless. Respectful disrespect begetting dignity. Strange dynamic.
My big fat family controversy is between the half who claim Carib [cannibal] roots and the other who've sought to temper the old stories -of kicking ass and taking names into near extinction- by claiming a more acceptably warlike Taino/Arawak heritage. I'm inclined to be in the "My ancestors used to eat your ancestors and marry their womenfolk and adopt their kids" camp. The stories are cooler. (P.s. French Europeans were supposed to be the tenderest)
;^)
Anyway, many people -even here in the Americanized roots conscious Virgin Islands- have no clue that Irish slaves (*gasp*...White slaves...Absurd!) and indenturedd servants played such a large part in the development of the various Caribbean societies...I guess it doesn't fit "The Narrative".
Traces of Irie-land even cut through the harsher Danish-accented 'Crucian' English where I'm at, but you can really hear a wee touch of the brogue in Bajan (Barbados).
Good stuff Mr. Foster. It'd be cool to hear more.
RL, if you're ever in the New England area, we have to down the odd case or so of Carib Lager if it's a hot day, of my cooler nights favorite, Blackbeard Ale.
Wadadli, like in the Rasta looking band back in the 70's? Dood, if you know them, you're almost as old as me. Do they still do the Sunday band thing up at the old fort over English Harbor? The barbecue in that place is about as good as I've had anywhere, and I have many a mellow and lascivious memory of Pigeaon Point.
Post a Comment