Barack Obama and Latinos: ¿Sí se puede?
Listening to the news and the so-called pundits lately is sad, amusing, and pathetic. For the longest time they've been talking about Barack Obama's race. Is he "black" enough? Can he attract white voters? And after the recent spat with the Clinton camp - where, IMHO, I believe it was incredibly stupid on both sides to get tangled on the race issue so carelessly - now everyone is talking about how Obama's reaction will play with white voters.
Since newspapers abhor a vacuum, now the issue du jour is whether Latinos will vote for Obama.
Atahualpa Yupanqui wrote a beautiful milonga entitled Los Hermanos or "The Brothers." Although it may be deemed a protest song or a song about the common Argentinian, the lyrics are universal and apply to the situation at hand here.
Emphasis added. And therein lies the main issue: Latinos have a history of racial discrimination and prejudice dating hundreds of years. Both against Latinos of African descent and against indigenous communities in Central and South America. That, compounded with a near universal denial of racism in Latin America, or denial of it as being a problem, and it is not surprising that as we carry nuestros muertos, their attitudes shine through.
The interesting and ironic thing is that, compared with Latin America, the U.S. has been extremely progressive in how it deals with racial discrimination. For example, when they conducted the census in Puerto Rico, well over 75% of the people identified themselves in terms of color as "white." We're not talking Argentina here, which is recognized as the most European of the Latin American nations. We're talking about Puerto Rico, home of salsa music and reggaetón.
And, why do people call themselves "white" when most Puertoricans are mulatto? Because nobody wants to be black. But because there are so many people of color - either black or brown - Puertoricans came up with two interesting conventions: first was "el que no tiene dinga, tiene mandinga" or "he who does not have dinga (ancestors from the African dinga tribe), has mandigo (ancestors from the African mandigo tribe)." Or, "everybody's black." The second one was that if you have a single blood relative who was white - no matter how far removed - then you're white. Those two conventions managed to remove race from the everyday debate in P.R.
What it hasn't removed is the fact that most of the statewide elected officers are white. Puerto Rico has never had a dark-skinned governor. Or resident commissioner. And one of our all-time greatest musical export, Menudo, was always an all-white boy band.
And P.R. is hardly alone on this. In the Dominican Republic, it was the political "kiss of death" for a Presidential candidate when rumors surfaced stating that he was either born in Haiti or he was of Hatian parents.
And so it goes in Latin America. I can't think of a single country that is "free from sin" so to speak.
When it comes to race, we need to drop our dead ones and leave them behind.
Since newspapers abhor a vacuum, now the issue du jour is whether Latinos will vote for Obama.
“Many Latinos are not ready for a person of color,” Natasha Carrillo, 20, of East Los Angeles, said. “I don’t think many Latinos will vote for Obama. There’s always been tension in the black and Latino communities. There’s still that strong ethnic division. I helped organize citizenship drives, and those who I’ve talked to support Clinton.”And it's not just mainstream media.
I recently had a discussion with a good friend who heads a prominent Latino social service agency in Los Angeles about the White House prospects of Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama. He lowered his voice and shamefacedly said that many Latinos that he talked with scoffed or sneered at the idea of voting for Obama.Emphasis added. There are many possible reasons why Latinos may feel "apprehensive" about voting for an African-American candidate. However, lets focus on the one reason nobody is discussing in either article.
When I asked why, his answer was blunt. They just can’t see themselves voting for a black guy. The disdain, or less charitably bigotry, that he said many Latinos express toward Obama is anecdotal and can hardly be taken as the sentiment of most Latinos. But that some expressed that sentiment is not surprising.
Atahualpa Yupanqui wrote a beautiful milonga entitled Los Hermanos or "The Brothers." Although it may be deemed a protest song or a song about the common Argentinian, the lyrics are universal and apply to the situation at hand here.
Which translates, roughly, to "And so we keep on walking/tanned in solitude/and in us our dead ones/so nobody's left behind."Y así seguimos andando
curtidos de soledad;
y en nosotros nuestros muertos
pa' que nadie quede atrás
Emphasis added. And therein lies the main issue: Latinos have a history of racial discrimination and prejudice dating hundreds of years. Both against Latinos of African descent and against indigenous communities in Central and South America. That, compounded with a near universal denial of racism in Latin America, or denial of it as being a problem, and it is not surprising that as we carry nuestros muertos, their attitudes shine through.
The interesting and ironic thing is that, compared with Latin America, the U.S. has been extremely progressive in how it deals with racial discrimination. For example, when they conducted the census in Puerto Rico, well over 75% of the people identified themselves in terms of color as "white." We're not talking Argentina here, which is recognized as the most European of the Latin American nations. We're talking about Puerto Rico, home of salsa music and reggaetón.
And, why do people call themselves "white" when most Puertoricans are mulatto? Because nobody wants to be black. But because there are so many people of color - either black or brown - Puertoricans came up with two interesting conventions: first was "el que no tiene dinga, tiene mandinga" or "he who does not have dinga (ancestors from the African dinga tribe), has mandigo (ancestors from the African mandigo tribe)." Or, "everybody's black." The second one was that if you have a single blood relative who was white - no matter how far removed - then you're white. Those two conventions managed to remove race from the everyday debate in P.R.
What it hasn't removed is the fact that most of the statewide elected officers are white. Puerto Rico has never had a dark-skinned governor. Or resident commissioner. And one of our all-time greatest musical export, Menudo, was always an all-white boy band.
And P.R. is hardly alone on this. In the Dominican Republic, it was the political "kiss of death" for a Presidential candidate when rumors surfaced stating that he was either born in Haiti or he was of Hatian parents.
And so it goes in Latin America. I can't think of a single country that is "free from sin" so to speak.
When it comes to race, we need to drop our dead ones and leave them behind.
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I agree with you. And don't you think that electing a black progressive president also increases the chances for a Latino - or Native American, Asian or any other non-caucasian person - to get elected in a hopefully not so distant future?
Fjhab,
Electing a black president - progressive or not - increases the chances that everyone will evaluate candidates for the content of their character. Actually, it would probably be better if the Republicans are the ones who nominate and help elect a black president.
Both of you are dead-on right in your comments.
Dicen la verdad que hay que escuchar el país.
I'm Chicano and used to support Hillary Clinton's campaign, but there's no way I'll ever vote for her now (even if she's nominated) due to her campaign's actions. Some of the accusations leveled at the Clintons are overdone, but some of them are entirely fair-- the Clinton campaign making insinuations about Obama as someone "who could be mistaken for a drug dealer" or a "Muslim Manchurian candidate"? (Code words for "ooh, scary colored guy, watch out white voters".)
The thing is, Obama rose above all this mierda and he just stayed cool. Él no gritó acusaciones, he just kept going with his campaign-- and yet, the Hillary campaign and some idiots in the media still accused him of playing the race card. WTF???
IOW, the message from this is that white politicians like Hillary can launch racist bulls**t at Black candidates and then, even when the Black candidates keep their cool and don't wade it into that crap, they still get slapped with the "race card" label. All this while Hillary is desperately and futilely trying to suppress voters in Nevada with that idiot lawsuit to remove polling places.
There's no way I'm ever voting for Hillary now. Ever. I don't care if she's nominated. If the Clintons pull this crap and Blacks and Latinos were still to vote for Hillary, then the message we'd be sending is, yeah, it's OK to go and race-bait minority candidates, then falsely accuse them of playing the race card (even they don't remotely do that), and yeah, no problem.
No way. If they're using the "drug-dealer" and "scary dark-skinned Manchurian candidate" insinuations against a Black candidate here, it's only a matter of time before they try using it against Brown candidates as well. And if the Clintons were to get our votes anyway, from Blacks and Latinos, we'd just be sending the message that it's OK for white candidates like Hillary to race-bait like that-- and open up the floodgates against other Black and Brown candidates in the future.
I'll therefore be supporting Obama, but if the Dems nominate Hillary, I stay home in November, or I write in some name in the President field like Al Gore, and then just vote for Democrats for Congress, governor and state legislature. There has to be a stern punishment for these tactics or we hit our own people.
And if John McCain gets elected President instead of Hillary, that's fine with me. Of all the Republicans, it's basically McCain and Huckabee who are the only Republicans who haven't given into the immigrant-hating crap from the party, especially McCain who even gave strong support to the various bills providing guest worker status and other assistance for our people. I have no trouble seeing McCain in office and besides, Democrats will still have Congress, and be poised pretty well to retake the Presidency in 2012.
Raquel,
A couple of clarifications: I don't think it was the Clinton campaign who came up with the "Muslim Manchurian candidate" thing. I actually came across it in some conservative blogs.
[T]he Hillary campaign and some idiots in the media still accused him of playing the race card.
That also needs some further clarification. The whole issue about the race card came out as a result of an exchage regarding Hillary's statement that Obama needed to "get real" and not promise things he could not deliver. Obama countered by saying, essentially, that not having ambitious aspirations is wrong and he went on to note JFK and the space program and MLK and the struggle for civil rights.
Hillary countered by stating that it took Lyndon Johnson, a savvy president, to get the Civil Rights Act passed. Which was a pretty clumsy way of trying to make the point that you don't need "big dreams" you need to know what it takes to make them happen.
Many African-Americans, Obama included, felt that Hillary was minimizing or discounting the importance of the civil rights movement that MLK was leading at that time.
And so, they were off.
I don't think Hillary was trying to use race as a wedge - I don't think any Democrat is trying to do that - because African-Americans and Latinos are key voting blocks in this election. But in the U.S., race is so sensitive and it so permeates so much of our lives that saying something stupid is sometimes taken as saying something racist.
Well, hell by that logic Mitt Romney is the Mormon/Muslim Manchurian candidate. I hope Obama wins the primaries and the nomination: with the Black vote going 95%+ for him, that puts us Latinos higher up on the swing vote food chain.
Whatever we do, we shouldnt appear to heavily back one candidate in the respective primaries. Let the ass-kissing begin!!! Of the R's I only fear Fred Thompson as a president.
Urban, I don't favor block voting, neither now nor at pretty much any other time. African-Americans complain that the Democrats take them for granted but that's because they have a history of either voting Democrat or not voting at all, which makes them far less appealing to Republicans.
I don't see Latinos doing too much block voting anyhow because we're not a homogeneous group. Issues play differently with different Latino groups. For example, I don't see Cubans switching their traditional support for Republicans any time soon. Nor do I see a large "Mexicans for Tancredo" block out there.