Well, we can see that despite what Fox News’ far-right hacks
are saying, immigrant advocates received yet another setback in the new
“bi-partisan” funding bill; while Democratic women (unsuccessfully) held-up the bill fighting
for an “update” of the Violence Against Women Act to include more attacks
on the due process rights of the accused, and of course does not address
domestic violence perpetrated by women (thus perpetuating a vicious cycle in
which nothing is solved), protections for DACA and TPS recipients were once again kicked into the
ditch. Not only that, but Democrats caved on limiting the number of cots
available for ICE Stormtroopers to conduct arbitrary roundups of people without
“proper” papers, regardless if they are guilty of being nothing more than being
hardworking people. Perhaps even worse, the bill doesn’t stop Trump from stealing
disaster relief funds from California or Puerto Rico to use for his “wall”—now that
it is becoming apparent Trump will be the perpetrator of a humanitarian crisis by declaring his “national emergency,” which only
exists in his and his racist supporters’ minds. In response, Nancy Pelosi stated only that she "may" file a legal challenge to it.
As I pointed out in my last post, the hypocrisy about cross-border
migration runs deep in this country, but it is useful to point out that Hispanics
haven’t done much to push back because of a false sense of “identity.” Back in
1992 there was an article in the journal Social
Science Research that reported on the hypocrisy of Mexican society to
properly address racism in Mexico by basically dividing the country into recognized members of indigenous tribes and “everyone else”—a construct of denial
that ill-prepares immigrants for the reality of racial identity in the U.S. Not
that Mexican immigrants shouldn’t be able to figure this out for themselves; you
can see in Spanish language films and television programming that people
clearly “Caucasian” predominate, with those more “ethnic” portrayed in the
usual “ethnic” roles—this despite the fact that even in Mexico “pure-bred”
whites are a tiny minority, but one that clearly has a “plantation” mentality
about the way society is built.
While most Mexicans are “trained” to view themselves simply
as “mestizo” in order to avoid facing the truth of racial divisions based on
the level of non-white “blood” as judged by appearance, in the U.S. they face
the harsh reality of a racial “dichotomy” in Anglo-American society, in which you are either “white” or the “other.” Calls by many whites (most
recently by former NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw) for Hispanics to “assimilate” more
is not just hypocritical on its face (the vast majority of Hispanics desire
“assimilation”), but in denial of the level of racism and social exclusion that
Hispanics of “non-pure” whiteness face in this country. When I was in college I recall an incident when I was listening to a cassette tape I made of some of my favorite songs of the 60s and 70s that I grew-up listening to; a white student sneered "That isn't 'your' music."
According to recent research by Biomedical Central, DNA studies of
Mexicans/Mexican-Americans reveal that ”85 to 90%
of mtDNA lineages are of Native
American origin,” which the researchers found a “surprisingly” high and
unexpected level of indigenous “blood.” Of course, this likely is partly due to
the “dominance” of “dark” genes (after all, Barack Obama is considered “black”
despite having a white mother), the preference of most immigrant
males (whether from Spain or subsequently by their offspring) to “mate” with
Native American females (quite the opposite from Anglo immigrants, who looked
upon with horror “mating” with “subhuman” and “barbaric” peoples), as well as the reality that "Euro-elites" in Mexico are happy enough to stay where they control the social and economic power. But on the other hand, Hispanics in general who are judged as
“non-white” because of their level of indigenous blood should actually celebrate their indigenous heritage and
“weaponize” it as an educational tool for whites (and blacks) ignorant about
historical truths, rather than run away from it. Their anscestors were, after all, here long before they were. Not only was nearly one-third
of current U.S. territory once part of Mexico (hence conspiracy theories about
a “Reconquista”), but indigenous tribes have representatives on both sides of a
border that was an artificial creation by the European invaders to begin with.
Yet many if not most U.S. residents of Mexican origin
continue to believe in the myth that they are “white” and that by just
saying so it makes in so in the eyes of Anglo-America. The irony is that
despite the far-right hysteria that “Mexicans” are out to destroy “Anglo
culture,” the great majority believe that because they see themselves as at
least culturally “white,” that makes them so, and not the “threat” they are
made out to be by the Buchanans and Coulters of the world. But the harsh reality is
that because they are viewed through the prism of being either “white” or the “other” in this country, it just doesn’t matter what they believe they are. You either
have the ill-informed commentary of “liberals” like Brokaw, or the willful,
racist ignorance of people in MAGA hats following lockstep behind their Fuhrer
in the White House.
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