Back when Barack Obama announced
his “executive order” to extend a policy that allowed the children of undocumented
immigrants to remain in the country “temporarily” to adults who had not
committed crimes (and “come out of the shadows”), I derided the order as a
publicity stunt to convince the gullible to expose themselves to immediate deportation by registering
themselves right into ICE data banks, to be used when the executive order was
ultimately challenged in court. I observed that Republican complaints were just
the usual red meat of hate to throw at their constituents, and the House of
Representatives is just playing to the base by inserting language rescinding
the executive order into the Homeland Security funding bill.
As predicted, the so-called
“executive order” is on hold in court. I say “so-called,” because essentially
that is all it was. Obama never actually signed the executive order; in fact,
when he announced the order and gravely signed two sheets of paper in front of
the cameras, what we were not told was that what he was signing had nothing to
do with immigration. Why did Obama refuse to put his name to his supposed
“order”? No doubt to add the “plausible deniability” he would need when the
heat became too hot for him.
So Obama lied to the Hispanic
community, and exposed millions of otherwise hardworking, law-abiding people to
detriment by his false assurances. Unfortunately, this mendacity goes far
beyond the political, and into the media. There is no denying the fact that the
media—particularly during the height of
the anti-immigrant hysteria during the Bush administration—provided images of
these people as little more than nameless, faceless, sometimes diseased and
certainly “criminal” semi-human vermin (CNN was particularly notorious for
this). No one ever asked these people about their life experiences or their
hopes for themselves or their children. All they were here to do, in the words
of far-right bigot Patrick Buchanan, was to “destroy America.”
The Seattle Times, as I noted in example after example over the years,
contributed to this culture of hate; one or two “neutral on the facts” stories
does not change that. Believe me, my observation upon perusing reader comments
on the Times website accompanying
these stories prove that while perhaps in the generality most people don’t
“dwell” on their feelings about other groups, in individuals the hate is both
pervasive and repellant, and causes one to wonder what actually lies behind the
façade of every stranger’s face you encounter.
Even for the so-called “liberals”
this is true. There are of course those whose opinions are based on sound
reasoning and are willing to listen to alternative input and reevaluate their
position if someone who exists outside their own experience questions a
particular “fact”; this would be particularly true from discussions from people
of differing backgrounds and races. On the other hand, there are the phony
“liberals” who just like to hear themselves talk; they want you to “love” them
just because they are “speaking for you.” But when you point out certain
discrepancies in their positions, they cannot accept any questioning of their
patronage without taking personal offense and launching into illogical personal
attacks. How dare you question them when they are deigning to be your “friend”?
After the Pasco shooting—in which
it turns out that 17 shots were fired by police in killing a Mexican farm
worker for allegedly throwing rocks at trucks—national news outlets treated the
story as another Ferguson-type incident. However, the Seattle Times certainly didn’t treat it as such. Every day I walk
past the newsstand and peruse what the Times considers the “top” story above
the front page cutline; if the Pasco story was there, I would have taken an
immediate interest in it. That never happened. I passed on a message to the Times concerning my feelings about this
along the lines of my previous post. I also contacted “liberal” columnist Danny
Westneat, to whom I imparted the following audacious views:
Sometimes I wish the Seattle Times would just die, at least on
newsstands where we have to be exposed to its version of what is “important”
for people to know. I always thought the P-I was truer to principle, but
unfortunately too many people had this impression that just because a newspaper
called itself the “Times,” it somehow had more “legitimacy.” I suppose there are still a few people left
willing to fork over a whole dollar for a newspaper that is maybe a dozen
broadsheets total in its weekly edition, which of course leaves out quite a bit
of legitimate news the Times doesn’t think is worthwhile to know.
One of those stories apparently is the police shooting in Pasco, which
some outside the state have called the Washington version of Ferguson, but has
been treated as relatively inconsequential by the Times. Why is this? Because
the victim was Hispanic, and the Times—if it doesn’t exactly have a culture of
prejudice against Hispanics and their concerns, despite the fact they are
technically the country’s largest minority group—it certainly doesn’t go out of
its way to dissect the reasons for that impression. Don’t tell me I’m “wrong,” because as Big Daddy
would say, you would be guilty of mendacity. Most of the stories that the Times
actually publishes in regard to the Hispanic community has the effect of
“confirming” the various negative stereotypes people have, and of course the
Times isn’t alone in the media (or by politicians) to create an atmosphere of
hate among those looking for self-justification.
The Times implicitly “justifies” prejudice against Hispanics generally
by allowing the public not to make a distinction between the minority of
undocumented immigrants and even native-born citizens of Hispanic “ethnicity.”
Furthermore, the media and black activists tend to demote prejudice against
Hispanics to an inferior grade by giving it the “ethnicity” label, when in fact
the prejudice is almost solely directed at short, dark-skinned people who are
fully or mixed indigenous race; after all, isn’t Obama considered “black”
despite having a white mother? Are not Native Americans (of the same
“indigenous” category of those south of the border) a separate race? So why
don’t we call things by their real names?
The Times may possibly employ one or two people with “Spanish” names,
but they clearly have no impact on the reporting of Hispanic concerns. You only
have to be racist against one group to be a racist; you only have to
discriminate against one group to be guilty of discrimination, no matter how
hard you try to “justify” it.
Westneat actually responded (how
could he not), merely asserting that the Times
had supposedly run stories for two days on the Pasco shooting. I responded that
I never saw anything on the front page of the Times (maybe they put it on the “front page” of the local section,
or the website) concerning the incident, and that the rest of my claims still
stood. He responded by stating I was still wrong, and that furthermore, the Times did employ a “Hispanic,” Erik
Lacitis, a name the last time made any impact on me was when he essentially
defended the belief that Kennewick Man might be “Caucasian.” From his
photographs available on the Internet, Lacitis himself appears very much
“Caucasian.” In fact, for an alleged “Hispanic,” I found it curious that
besides the fact that “Lacitis” is a name most commonly found in the Baltic
state of Latvia (bordering Russia), but in America, his first name is typically
spelled with a “c” rather than a “k” which is typically northern European.
Anyways, I responded to Mr.
Westneat’s claim by saying that “Whatever you want to say. Erik Lacitis is
Hispanic? In what universe? I've seen his picture, and he looks "Caucasian"
to me, and he is no doubt he is one of those ‘I'm not one of them’ types. I'm
talking about the atmosphere of bigotry being fostered against what George Bush
patronizingly called his ‘little brown ones.’ Your newspaper still cultivates
bigotry and stereotypes against the stereotypical ‘Mexican.’ No mendacity
coming out of your or anyone else' mouth can change that.”
Mr. Westneat again responded, merely
by lamely observing that Hispanics can be “white,” which only angered me
further.
Why are you continuing to ignore what I am saying? My whole point is that people are not
"prejudiced" against a clearly Caucasian "Hispanic." I'm
sure if anyone encountered him on the street, no one would mistake him for
"Hispanic," someone who draws up the red flags of their prejudices
and stereotypes. This is the whole crux of this "ethnicity" hypocrisy
(why don’t we say that blacks and Asians are an “ethnicity” of American?). Have you ever watched Univision? If you
did, you would see on its TV shows and soaps that everyone is really
"white"--no dark or "ethnic" faces in sight; these are what
I call the "Euro-elites." That's the world Erik Lacitis lives in.
Racism is just as pervasive in the society those people live in as does in this
country. Eric is no "threat" to the Times order; a Hispanic who is
actually politically and socially aware would be in a culture where being
between white and black mendacity is a hard place indeed.
I remember in college, a
professor—clearly “Caucasian”—was asked about his Spanish “sounding” name. I
could tell he was annoyed by the question. He gave me a disgusted sideways
glance at me before stating that he was “Portuguese.” I knew from this that he
was making a “point” of saying that he wasn’t “one of them,” meaning me, since
despite my non-Spanish named people “assumed” I was “Mexican” because of my “ethnic” appearance—which, of
course, the professor found an unappealing comparison. I also recall a fellow
student taking exception to my preference for pop music of the Sixties and
Seventies; it wasn’t “my” music. I observe Latinas attempting to gain false
“status” by becoming a white man’s strumpet. Recently, I overheard a “mestizo”
with visions of grandeur announce that he was “white.” An Anglo who heard this
snorted with incredulity, while I just laughed. I was asked what I thought was
so amusing; I said “You, calling yourself ‘white’.”
It is obvious why this conundrum
is something that “liberals” like Westneat seek to avoid answering, because
that would expose the “kink” in their “liberalism.” That’s why I don’t trust
them.
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