Culture "war" is not about "culture" but white racial identity

The media styled the recent Virginia governor’s race as a “culture war,” insofar as how Donald Trump defines it, and naturally plays the race card to the hilt. The morning of the election, he tweeted “EdWGillespie will totally turn around the high crime and poor economic performance of VA. MS-13 and crime will be gone.” And then “Ralph Northam will allow crime to be rampant in Virginia. He’s weak on crime, weak on our GREAT VETS. Anti-Second Amendment and has been horrible n Virginia economy.” A Gillespie campaign ad again made an effort to tie Northam with the MS-13 gang and “sanctuary cities” for “violent” Hispanic “criminals.” 

All this racist nonsense from the master of “fake news” was to stoke the fear of whites by defining Hispanic “culture” as one of criminality and violence (recall during the campaign that he only suggested that “some” immigrants from Mexico were not violent rapists). Yet even the MS-13 gang stereotyping suffers from the usual fallacies; violent, yes, but they are small in number compared to “homegrown” gangs, and like all such affiliations their victims tend not to be white people at all, but members of other gangs; most white people are still victimized by members of their own race—they just act “indignant” if they are the victim of someone other than another white person. It was also pointed out that there are no “sanctuary cities” in Virginia; furthermore, unlike Trump and his alleged “bone spur,” Northam did his duty and served in the military. 

Meanwhile, a Latino political group paid for their own television spot, featuring a Confederate-flag waving Gillespie supporter trying to run down a group of immigrant children, no doubt a reminder of what had happened in Charlottesville. It is hard to say exactly what impact this had on the vote itself, but it does appear that the white “America First” crowd was “upset” that anyone should so harshly judge their motivations; one should note that it seems “acceptable” to apply all manner of ugly racist stereotypes onto Hispanics without being called out on it; I recall an incident at a work location that a white person was telling “jokes” about “Mexicans” in front of a group white and black co-workers; I alone spoke out about the racism of his “jokes,” and his response was that “nobody else thinks that they are  racist.” I retorted that I thought they were racist, after which fear that I might speak to a supervisor shut him up. It is interesting to note that Hispanics (in the media or even on the street) apparently have no right to respond with a narrative that is not merely told about them—one that includes the Thornton shooting, that despite all the evidence no one wants to admit that it was hate crime targeting Hispanics.  

Instead of facing the dark place within themselves, those more tuned into Trump could be expected to respond to his white “America First” message (undermined recently by his lapdog antics with China and Putin during his Asian trip), and many of them had the audacity to be “insulted” by the accusation of overt racial hostility in the Latino ad. Still, many voters were apparently equally disgusted with the racism that Trump and then Gillespie injected into the campaign; one voter who decided on Northam bemusingly professed not to “realize” that Northam was a member of the MS-13 gang, and exit polls suggested that many college-educated suburbanites were off-put by Trump’s attempt to put them on his sewer-level. 

After Northam’s victory, Trump proclaimed that it was due to the fact that Gillespie had not “fully” embraced his race-baiting tactics, which again was not true; the reality was that Trump’s “intervention” turned-off more voters than it “turn-on.” Still, it was a close call, and one can find examples in everyday life how close it can be; the other day I encountered an office-type white female walking in the opposite direction and who “smiled” at me in that self-conscious way, yet in almost the same instant her hand gravitated to her handbag to check if it was “still there.” Which action was her more “genuine” response? We only need to observe Trump’s ever changing responses to the Charlottesville incident to know the answer to that.

You’d be amazed by how much “interest” my presence in the building excites—and it’s not necessarily from security and the building management. They usually spring into “action” after getting a call from some bigoted employee offended by the sight of me, who is certain I don’t “belong” there. I always wear what could be termed “office casual” attire; I have been told that if I wore clothing more suitable to a lowly position, there would be less confusion and hostility about my “place,” just to "confirm" their own in their conceit. Is this a racist construct? Only those wallowing in their own mendacity can doubt it.
 

While the election may be over the “culture war” continues, although behind the scenes not exactly in the way that bigots and nativists like Trump, Ann Coulter and Pat Buchanan who believe that Hispanics are out to “destroy America” think. Most Hispanics are not “white” in the Anglo sense of the word, but have varying degrees of indigenous people ancestry—which ironically makes them more “American” than either whites or blacks in this part of world. Nevertheless those who tend to believe so do so for another ironic reason—that they feel more culturally attuned to white America, which is a fair assumption to make since Spanish culture is  European in origin just as the “Anglo” culture is, just with a different “flavor.” Apparently not pleasing to certain people; I observed that the "taco day" that an insurance company in the building I work in was not exactly the "cultural exchange" and effort to show racial harmony it purported to be; everyone was eager to bring a piece of the puzzle, but hardly anyone was willing to "partake." It appeared to me that about 90 percent of the food was thrown out; even the people who brought it were unwilling to take it home with them and be forced to eat it themselves. What hypocrisy.

Thus the so-called “culture war” seems dependent more on white racial identity rather than actual cultural assimilation. I recall that when I was attending a college located in a former Confederate state, I was listening to favorite hit songs from the 70s collected on a cassette tape, and a blonde-haired student sneered “That isn’t your music.” He meant, of course, that “my people” didn’t create this music, whoever “my people” were. Of course you could say the same thing about people who are not black who “enjoy” rap and hip-hop music—especially since most white kids typically do not derive from the “culture” from which such music is spawned. The reality is that culture is not the “property” of any particular group of people, but to the individual who lives by it.

One other curious item in regard to “cultural racism” is how it is on display in “subtle” ways by women of color. I recall encountering during my itinerant temp days a black female who tried to “doll” up her looks as Caucasian as possible, pick out a summer job white kid who looked like he was from a “nice” family and college material, and cling to him like a wet rag; it made me sick to see that. I could tell the target was uncomfortable with it (I suspected he probably had a blonde Barbie Doll girlfriend already). That attempt apparently failed, because the next time I saw her at another job site she was attempting even more desperately to seduce another young white male of “good” stock. 

Many “Americanized” Hispanic women are much the same, hoping to achieve bought social status (I wonder what they have to “sell”); in the 2006 film Ask the Dust based on the John Fante novel, the would-be Italian-American novelist is told by a Mexican woman with whom he has a turbulent relationship with that she would prefer to marry the Anglo man whose surname is ironically “White,” rather than someone whose name (Bandini) is barely “better” than her own; her one goal in life was to “improve” her social status by marrying “white.” All of this is a racist “statement” because it implies an acceptance of racist stereotypes, especially that held against their men; one might recall Lorena Bobbitt, a Hispanic woman from Ecuador who married her “dream” white man. Some of us remember the media circus surrounding how that ended.