Some of us are whatever you want us to be, whether we like it or not

 

I’ve told this story before, but I’ll recap it again because it is similar to a story that appeared in the Seattle Times the other day. When I was working at the airport I would take a bus to Renton after work to visit the now deceased Fry’s Electronics store. The bus didn’t pass the store, so I had to walk a couple miles the rest of the way from the Renton station.  On one of these trips I observed a police car weaving in and out of parking lots behind me, getting closer and closer; it seemed rather odd to me, but nothing more. I noticed that the driver was a white female.

I kept on walking down the sidewalk when suddenly I was surrounded by three Renton police cars, one to the front, side and back. A half-dozen cops were jumped out to make sure I didn’t escape. What was this about? I innocently (no, make that indignantly) inquired. A bank, I was told, had just been robbed. Hey, don’t look at me, I said, I just got off the bus from my airport job. Well, I was told, I matched the description of the robber. What are you talking about, I said, all I have is this little bag with a couple of knick-knacks in it. I was told to empty the bag, which I did. See? No money and no gun.

I suspected the officer in “charge” was getting a little nervous that I might file a harassment report, and he got on his phone and asked someone for a “description” of the robber so I could hear it for myself: white male, 5 foot-10, gray hair and beard, dark clothes. “See! See!” proclaimed the cop breathlessly, “You are wearing dark clothes!” Oh sure, I’m wearing my airport uniform with the company logo prominently displayed, and that wasn’t mentioned?  What about the rest of the description? I don’t fit any of those. So while the real robber is getting away, you are harassing an innocent person merely because he looks like one of those “Mexicans?” Yeah, that’s right—the white Mexican, black Mexican, Asian Mexican—they are all “Mexican" if need be.

To prove that they were serious about this, another police car showed up with the witness in the back seat; they must really have thought she was blind or stupid to describe someone who looked nothing like me, and she just needed her memory “refreshed.” I saw her shake her head. “I said a 5-10 white man with a beard, not a scrawny little Mexican.” I blinked and everyone was gone—no apology, not confessions that the only reason I was a “suspect” was because “Mexicans” are all criminals.

It took me awhile to find out what was really wrong with me in other people's eyes, and it took an Army drill sergeant to open my eyes to reality:

Is that the way you fold your socks, you Mexican?

I'm not a Mexican.

You--Cuban?

I'm not Cuban.

You--Puerto Rican?

I'm not Puerto Rican.

You--whatever you are.

Which leads me to the story in the Times by David Gutman. In the sleepy town of Moses Lake in Grant County, which voted heavily for Trump in the past two elections (52 percent are non-Hispanic white, but half the large Hispanic population working in the agriculture business are foreign-born and not eligible to vote), so we can imagine that there is some level of hostility and prejudice against certain groups from certain people. I found this story about an organization that was distributing this leaflet in town reminding white people of their God-given rights to be “themselves”…

 

… promoting the Aryan Freedom Network...

 

 

...and directing those who find the flyer to its white supremacy website. The ADL and SPLC identifies the group as a “Christian Identity” one-off; according to one site, a neo-Nazi convention had been held in which smaller groups wanted to come under the "leadership" of the AFN, but many of their members were put-off by the "religious" aspects of the AFN's "code of conduct." I mean, you should be able to beat on or kill subhumans without having to worry about what God thinks about it, although that doesn't seem to worry members of the AFN anymore than Islamic suicide bombers who think their actions will send them to "paradise."

The AFN reportedly has "issues" principally against Jews, blacks and LGBTQ. But if that is the case, then why would these leaflets be passed around a place like Moses Lake, which out of a population of 25,000 is one-percent black and probably has even fewer Jews and LGBTQ who openly admit it? Apparently the ADL and SPLC missed this “mission statement” on the neo-Nazi group’s website:

To end non-White immigration to Europe, North America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

Well, it is interesting that this group would include countries in which whites were the uninvited “immigrants” invading the lands of non-white native peoples. But the point here is that Moses Lake and Grant County are places whose economy is largely agricultural, and thus you would see a lot of farm workers who happen to be Hispanic migrants. 30 percent of the town and the county are “Hispanic” according to the 2020 census, with 52 percent “non-Hispanic white.” So the principle “enemy” of the white race intended by the leaflets are clearly the area’s Hispanic population.

The story in question in the Times reveals that there may be a “constituency” that is open to the group’s “message”—and that apparently included the police department, prosecutors and people who sit on juries. Gutman writes

In 2017, Moses Lake police, responding to a report of a possible vehicle prowler outside the house, confronted Zamora, leading to an altercation in Moses Lake police nearly beat Joseph Zamora to death. Then he was charged with and convicted of assaulting an officer. He served a full prison term. Then Grant County prosecutors asked for the case to be dismissed. Then the state Supreme Court threw out Zamora’s convictions, because the prosecutor used racial bias during the trial.

If Zamora was black, the police officers involved would probably have been fired and subject to civil lawsuit. Instead, after Zamora asked that the Grant County prosecutor, Kevin McCrae, file charges against the officers, McCrae instead decided to recharge Zamora because he “hadn’t learned his lesson,” didn’t take “responsibility” for his actions, and was “lucky he wasn’t shot dead.” Such talk convinced five local attorneys to represent Zamora in the case pro-bono.

The Times noted that

Zamora’s confrontation with then-Moses Lake police Officer Kevin Hake happened in 2017. Hake stopped Zamora, who was walking to his niece’s home, after a neighbor called about a suspected car prowler. (It was later determined there was no car prowler.)

He tried to walk away, but Hake blocked him. A struggle ensued. Hake pulled his gun and placed it against Zamora’s ear and temple, and in his mouth.

A few more officers arrived to finish the job, and “the beating left Zamora in a medically induced coma in the ICU for a month,” as can be proven in the image below from the Times:

 

And yet Zamora was the one charged with “assault.” For me, the real problem is why this was deemed necessary to begin with. We never found out who was the person who made the police call in the first place. Why did he or she think he was a car prowler? Because he was Hispanic, and when this person, like so many others, sees a “Mexican” a million red flags go up? Zamora told the officer that he was visiting his niece, but of course some people are “guilty” until “proven” innocent, and in the mind’s of some "innocence" is just an inconvenient distraction—you deserve to be beat on for being there:

At trial, then-Grant County Prosecutor Garth Dano asked potential jurors their opinions on a border wall, on illegal border crossings and on crime committed by immigrants.

Despite the fact that Zamora was a U.S. citizen, and that he was beaten nearly to death by the officers, he was the one charged with “assault.” he was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison based on a false accusation by a bigoted, paranoid individual.

I suppose some people around cops feel that if they have “right” on their side, they have nothing to fear. My many interactions with local law enforcement tells me that being “right” doesn’t mean a thing. You just have to wait it out and give the cops time to figure out how to extricate themselves from looking like racially-profiling fools, especially if the person they are detaining sounds like someone who could file an erudite complaint. You don't want them to "invent" a crime.

Still, some innocent people allow their indignation upon being falsely accused to get the better of them; but I have more sympathy for people like Zamora than those who actually just committed crimes, those whose refusal to be lawfully detained ends in death, and then comes the self-righteous, hypocritical protests. Unfortunately, innocence and guilt are just two sides of the same coin for police—it’s a “heads I win, tails you lose” proposition. Of course it depends on the local socio-political environment you live in, and if people are weaned on negative stereotypes on certain groups (Hispanics) and taught that being “suspicious” of another group is “racist” (against blacks), or have a strong LGBTQ community,  then you know those who have a “need” to scapegoat or openly express their bigotry have that one group left to beat on because that lacks a voice in society.

Meanwhile, Ron DeSantis finally admitted that he was behind the political stunt flights sending Venezuelan asylum seekers from Texas to Sacramento with false promises of jobs; you know he can’t be doing this without the connivance of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Last month John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight episode…

 

 

…concerned Joe Biden’s continuing Trump’s failed immigration policies, in fact making it worse. Of course that is not the “message” Biden was sending to Hispanic voters:

Asylum seekers may understandably have been encouraged by Biden's rhetoric on the campaign trail which was notably different than his opponent. “Look I can't only imagine what it's like to see someone in your family deported that's right I can only imagine what that's like and  to me it's all about family beginning middle and end it's about family. That's not going to happen in my administration the idea you can't even seek asylum on American soil.”

But it seems that Biden was easily cowed by the racist rhetoric from the right, instead advising migrants not to come at all, and practicing double standards—even for people escaping from U.S.-labeled “oppressive” regimes like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba—on asylum grants, which only makes people less likely to see any “advantage” in allowing the “process” to guide their actions. Why put their trust in the "law" when either they are lied to…

This Honduran migrant talked about getting all the way to America with his family on the presumption he'd be able to apply for asylum only to be taken into custody and woken up one day with an unpleasant surprise. One of us asked where are you taking us. Is it true we're being deported?  They said no we're not deporting you we're taking you to a shelter and you can keep going from there, and that was a lie they tricked us when we got off the bus we saw the sign that said Tijuana Baja California.

…or favoritism is showed to other groups:

The administration has been criticized for a lack of clarity and consistency in who is eligible and in general some have argued that there's been a pretty glaring discrepancy in who the country has and hasn't decided to allow in. At a migrant shelter in Tijuana Mexico, claims of a double standard and special treatment for Ukrainians fleeing the war and being admitted to the U.S.. I love that the government is helping them because they've gone through a really hard situation but that's not what happens for people here for exactly the same reason. All should be treated the same way. “How do you guys account for the difference in the treatment between them and you?” “Racism.”

I always laugh when I hear people say “You need to do this the ‘legal’ way like my ancestors did.” That is so full of shit; until the 1924 immigration law, European immigrants literally had to just get off the boat to be “legal.” They might have to “register,” but even if they were “sick” they were just quarantined for a short while until they got better. Even after the immigration law, so many Europeans were entering the country illegally that in 1929 an amnesty law was passed that remained in effect for 20 years—and by that time immigration from Europe had been reduced to a relative trickle.

Hispanics have always been convenient scapegoats for the country’s ills, while at the same time some people are cognizant of the fact that their labor is “useful.” DeSantis signed a new political campaign law which fines employers $10,000 per undocumented worker they hire; now you see Hispanic laborers leaving the state. 

You have right-wingnuts who claim this will “help” legal residents because farmers will be forced to pay higher wages, although it is admitted that whatever that may be, it will be wiped out by higher food prices. But the other "problem" is that we've seen this before: when the bracero program was ended in the 1960s, U.S. citizens were expected to flock to all these new job openings on the farms; that never happened, and farmers again became dependent on migrant labor, legal or not.

Some Florida Republican politicians like State Rep. Rick Roth are “asking” migrants not to leave, that the anti-immigrant law doesn’t have any real “teeth,” and they don’t have to “fear” being deported. Well, that won’t stop DeSantis from sending out his thugs to conduct raids on farms as political stunts, and in fact in this instance some Republicans are wondering if they have given DeSantis too much rope this time. Yet even Roth seems to be talking out of both sides when he said the law “does give more police state powers going forward to deal with immigration, but still this is mainly a political bill.”

That is America today. It didn’t used to be that way, even in the 1980s when Reagan was courting the Hispanic vote. But now if you are Hispanic—or “look” Hispanic—you can pretty much count on, at least in  the generality, of being whatever people want you to be, since on one hand the  “diversity” of the Hispanic community prevents any coalescing of a single train of socio-political thought into a political movement that will confront prejudice and stereotyping, and on the other Hispanics have no voice in the mainstream media to counter what most consumers of news are fed on a daily basis.

My personal observation is that if you are Hispanic, you don’t even have the right to speak for yourself; if you point out to some people that their attitude leaves something to be desired, they just tell you to leave and don’t come back if you don't like it—which of course underlines the fact that they just don’t like your “face.”