The genius of McCain and the Republicans with Hispanics

In 2000, I was quite concerned that the Republicans began to pander to the “Hispanic” voters. First of all, it bothers me to no end (being the descendants of historically oppressed peoples) that we now treat Hispanics – even those directly from Portugal or Spain as an oppressed minority group needing preferential treatment.

Besides almost conquering the New World, along with much of Africa and Asia – how could anyone consider these groups as oppressed.

So, America has created a new “oppressed” group. Of course, many of those people will vote for Democrats because democrats have been the primary party responsible for preferential treatment. Even though there may be some negatives associated with preferential treatment, most people would take it if they got the chance. So, they want preferential treatment for their children as well.

Some people (perhaps a strong minority) of Republicans are against preferential treatment policies. 

When our policies benefit non-American citizens who are rich – and whose whole family has had money for generations – because they are the right race we have a real problem.

“Hispanics”, at best, will vote maybe 30% for Republicans. They will continue to vote for money (govt contracts) and school (scholarship).

America cannot address its racial problem because entire foundation is premised upon lies (all non-whites need to benefit, no whites can).

America now for many years has had “racial” policies that are just plain wrong. However, our society is so disturbed that any challenge to these policies will be either attributed to "racism" or ignored.

Few have really challenged our racial favoritism for groups that have no history of being victims in America. 

People from Spain and Portugal obtain qualifications for many minority contracting programs. What history do they have of being oppressed as a group? None whatsoever. They were oppressors by any definition (killing Indians, taking black slaves from Africa). Do Estonians have such a history? How about the Swiss? How about Slovakians?

Also, people from high castes (as well as any caste) from India (who have a long history of oppressing “lower caste” peoples) once again get preferential treatment. What about Irish people – did they not suffer a long history of oppression – both in America and in Ireland?

These programs broadly benefit many groups who never were as a group “oppressed” at the costly expense in engaging in an ugly form of historical revisionism.

At the same time, a member of a group with a long history of being discriminated against (most significantly black Americans who are descendants of slaves) are treated the same as groups that suffered no oppression and actually enslaved black slaves (like Portuguese). It apparently makes no difference that Portugal also had an apartheid system in its African colonies in the 1970s. Apparently that was OK but the policy we had in the South up until the 1960s was not (?).

On that note, should a black African be treated the same as a black descendant of slaves?

I do support assisting one group (and one group alone) with government policy – blacks in America who are the descendants of slaves. I do not support exactly the same programs that we have because they do not really get to the route of what ails much of poor black society (everyone will benefit if ghettos change).

Recently a (very liberal) colleague of mine suggested that my observation that Obama was an “elitist” was some sort of code for being prejudiced that people use as a “racist” excuse not to vote for him. This observation makes no sense and in and of itself is an example of stark prejudices that many people have.

First, I should mention that this colleague is very educated – so I would not excuse his belief as coming from simple ignorance. His view is more of a nuanced form of bigotry.

First, of all – would a “racist” use that same excuse to denounce a prejudice against other serious previous black Presidential candidates such as Jesse Jackson, Doug Wilder or Carol Mosely-Braun? Would such a criticism really make any sense in the context of those politicians?

Of course, interestingly one could make that same criticism (being an elitist) against someone very different like Alan Keyes.

You see, unlike what my colleague apparently thinks, not all blacks are alike. In fact, the 5 different black political leaders who I have so far referenced are not really that much like each other.

When you throw into the mix other national politicians like Colin Powell and Condi Rice you see that those 7 people are really not much like each other either.

When you throw in for good measure Clarence Thomas and Thurgood Marshall, you can see that you have many different kinds of black American politicians – just like there are all sorts of different “white” politicians.

On a very simple “spectrum” level, those 9 people would probably rate something like:

Left                                                 Moderate                                      Right

Jackson, Obama,                     Powell, Wilder                       Keyes, Thomas, Rice

Mosely-Braun, Marshall

Yet, it is clear that “elitists” can be found in a variety of places (like Obama on the left and Keyes and Rice on the right).

You see, as my colleague misses (and misses very badly) – no group can be considered as “all the same.” 

While it may be true that some racists might be saying that Obama is an elitist (I kind of doubt that is what the first criticism of most “racists” might have) – does that make it somehow untrue?

Obama, in his own words, does not “get” much of middle America. This fact is probably at least in part related to two things (1) lack of exposure to middle American culture and (2) his education.

Obama lived in Hawaii, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Boston – and attended elite (especially Harvard law school) institutions. Having a limited exposure to certain groups coupled with the common (non-secret) disdain that many people in those areas have for certain “groups” might be likely to fuel a disdain for another group is a common occurrence.

Anyway, more importantly, Obama’s “bitter” comments and lack of understanding of why people might value guns or church proves the point. Obama thinks that way – he says so.

Apparently Al Campanis and Dusty Baker also had incorrect general ideas about groups of people.

Rather than using the “guilt” and “shame” (coupled with political correctness) I like to suggest a more stick to try to convince people to not have “group” ideas about generally unimportant physical characteristics (like race or ethnicity).

Even when people use generally more true assumptions it can get people in trouble. For example, while as a general point it might be true that most 20 year olds could fight better than most 60 year olds such a point would be wrong a very significant (probably more than 25%) amount of the time.

For a combination of reasons, such as history, ignorance, political correctness and leftwing ideology America is beset with almost insurmountable problems associated with racial attitudes. A combination of two factors more than others serve as the root of this problem – (1) America’s history of Jim Crow laws and (2) America’s decision to have large scale immigration of previously rare (if not non-existent) ethnic, racial and religious groups.

In order to remedy America’s past historical poor treatment of black Americans (and black Americans most certainly) – identity politics and political correctness became a substitute for historical fact and fairness. A code word for this nonsense is “diversity.”

First, no racial or ethnic group was treated as poorly as blacks were in America. Though American Indians suffered in this country, they never were mistreated like blacks were. For example, American Indians could become a Vice President in the 1920s (Charles Curtis) become major league baseball players in the 1910s (Jim Thorpe) serve along side whites in combat (Ira Hayes). Will Rogers, perhaps the most beloved American in the 1920-30s was perhaps as much as ½ American Indian. Put it bluntly, it was seen as “cool” to be part American Indian. Indeed, some American Indians held black slaves.

From the very beginning, intermarriage between whites and American Indians was tolerated if not encouraged (see Pocahontas’ example). Thomas Jefferson promoted this idea as well.

Why did society treat American Indians better than blacks? There are a host of potential reasons (perhaps stemming from the slavery situation, or perhaps stemming from the simple concept that American Indians “look more” like a white person than a black person). Whatever the root, that is where we found ourselves between 1880 and 1960. 

Slavery itself was not necessarily unique. The first forms of slavery existing in America were not as harsh – and whites were subject to the same slave conditions as blacks. For whatever reasons, slavery evolved in America the way it did and after slavery Jim Crow laws sought to completely treat blacks differently than whites.

During slavery, and in places like Louisiana there was a “mulatto” concept and a Creole concept where mixed race peoples obtained more rights than full “black” persons. Especially in Louisiana an upper level Creole culture developed. Effectively, this was totally over with a case called Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896.

Not only did that case affirm a principle called separate but equal – but it affirmed the treatment of someone 1/8 black and 7/8 white as a “black person.” Homer Plessy – like Peter Ustonov was not visibly black – he announced that he was on the rail car to serve as a good test case to possibly overturn segregation rules relating rail cars.

Without a full recitation of all the laws and court decisions of the 1960s and 1970s, America in essence decided it had to make up for the past by helping out all minorities. While there may have been isolated examples of poor treatment of the few members of racial groups like Chinese or Pakistani peoples – in fact the record was really mixed. The famous Siamese twins (Chang and Eng Bunker) were legally allowed to marry and have children with two white women during the late 19^th century in North Carolina – not something any black person could have done.

Furthermore, we had television shows where “Hispanics” married non-hispanics (I love Lucy).

Strangely, in the past 40 years America changed a linguistic group into a racial group – today we have something called an “Hispanic Race” – and of course there is no such thing any more than there is such a thing as an American Race.

I will recite some of the most inane (and factually false) politically correct racial attitudes that dominate nearly all college campuses, the media and both political parties.

1.) The “white race” (all “white people”). White peoples are very diverse – and had very different histories both in the U.S. and in their respective native countries. Many of the “countries” where “whites” live even have diverse groups within the country itself. A small country like Switzerland has Germans, Italians and French peoples. A larger country like Finland has Fins, Sami (laps) and Swedes as native peoples – all very different peoples. However, “whites” even get more diverse when comparing a Scot to a Greek or a Spaniard to a Russian, an Albanian to a Norwegian etc, etc, etc.

Many of these ethic groups had few if any members of those groups in America prior to the Civil War or during the time where “separate but equal” was established. Members of many of these groups faced open discrimination in the U.S. and often fled their homeland under worse circumstances than slavery (Jews from Germany, Armenians from Turkey, Irish from Ireland). 

2.) The Hispanic Race. Those who speak Spanish can be of any sort of racial or ethnic background – like Alberto Fujioro, Alfredo Stroessner, Sammy Sosa, Bernardo O’Higgins, Fernando Valenzuela, Dickie Thon, Alex Rodriguez – these people are ethically and racially very different. Just like Daniel Inoue, Herbert Hoover, Hank Aaron, Joseph Kennedy, Ira Hayes, Mike Schmidt and Roy Campinella are also different.

Spanish peoples were very, very powerful. They dominated the American Indians (and still do today) and enslaved millions of black Africans. That is also true of the Portuguese peoples – the particular prime example is Brazil.

Calling Spanish or Portugese and Oppressed group is like calling similar groups like the English and French oppressed. These countries were the most dominant empires 200 to 300 years ago – and the world wide spread of those language shows that point.

However, it is a little more nuanced – so many Mexicans peoples who reside in America are either fully or partially American Indian. Many Dominicans who reside in America are fully or partially black African.

So, certainly many “Hispanics” can claim a history of being oppressed just as an English speaking American Indian in Arizona can make such a claim as well as an English speaking Jamaican of black African Ancestry.

However jumping to the conclusion that “English Speakers” have a history of being oppressed makes no historical sense – nor does calling “Hispanics” a historically oppressed “minority.”

3) Asian Americans. Asia is a huge continent – the largest one. It has numerous racial and ethnic groups including groups that people would call “white” and groups that might be mistaken as “black Africans.” 

Within many Asian countries it is common that oppressed minority groups (racial, cultural and/or religious) exist.

America has managed to create a whole new race out of an actually very diverse group of people.

4) East Asians – this is what I think most people who use the term “Asian American” seem to mean. That is, they apparently are substituting the old term of “oriental” with Asian. God knows why “oriental” is somehow offensive.

However, even peoples of East Asia are very diverse – Koreans often are Christians but those from Indonesia are usually not. China itself has many cultural groups.

Anyway, aside from a handful of Chinese and Japanese – few peoples from other cultures like Vietnam lived in the U.S. before the 1960s.

5) Indians – Again, the Indian subcontinent is very diverse. Some groups are historically oppressors, others are not. Some groups have light skin, others do not. Some groups have different facial features from each other, speak different languages, etc.

6) African Americans – 7 syllables – “black” has one. Furthermore, many people who are black have never set foot in America – thus they are not African American.

Sub-Saharan Africans can be described as a race like Europeans could be described as a race. Though many cultural, religious and ethic groups exist in those regions – common physical traits do exist. 

Black Americans who are descendants of slaves in this country virtually all came from West Africa (with a small number from what is now the South East Africa in the Tanzania region). People from Nigeria do not have the same culture as Ethiopians – nor do they look much like Ethiopians.

While one could suppose that an Ethiopian who found himself in the deep South in the 1920s would have had a hard time – the same could be said of any a person who “looks Jewish” who found himself in Germany in 1943. Should that kind of speculative treatment form the basis of public policy?

America is currently very sick in its treatment of racial groups and its attitudes.

For example, any person who is “not white” can obtain preferential treatment in public contracting (all contracts with federal monies). All “non whites” are preferred in government hiring and large corporate hirings in order to satisfy government oversight for equal opportunity and affirmative action (low numbers could mean big trouble – so the pressure is to keep the minority number as high as possible). So irrespective of actual history – you could be the son of a Nigerian Prince or the son of a Colombian Spaniard whose family had slaves and took 1,000,000 acres from native Indian Tribes -- because of membership in a racial or cultural group you get preferential treatment.

In education, it is a bit different – many Asian groups (West, Central and East Asians all) have a tendency to do well in school and on standardized tests. So, it is felt that they are over-represented at many of the elite schools – so it is harder to obtain admission with such a background (still, such a person can get preference in contracting and hiring).

Two major current public examples show the flawed American view. 

First, Tiger Woods. If anything, it would be most accurate to claim he is East Asian given his mother being 75% Thai (50) and Chinese (25) and his father being 25% East Asian (Chinese). In total, he is of a very diverse background 50% East Asian, 25% Black American 12.5% American Indian 12.5% European white.

Woods has always made it a point to correct people for calling him simply “black.” Certainly, under the one drop rule he is – but that should not be a rule. Indeed, it treats “back blood” as something like a “tainted” trait.

A reverse situation is that of Barack Obama. Unlike Woods, who is openly proud of all of his heritage – Obama gravitates to the majority ignorant feelings of Americans. That is, simply while Woods has black American ancestry – Obama does not. He has Kenyan ancestry – a culture different than the West African peoples who were enslaved. However, even more importantly, he has no connection to generations who lived in America and were forced to go to different school, unable to vote, or not able to eat in restaurants.

While an ignorant white bigot of today (who has no power unlike bigots from 50 years ago) can “not like” Obama because of his “look” white bigots have no power in college admissions, large companies or government. Indeed, the reverse is true – irrespective of one’s attitude a school, business or government must advance blacks in order to avoid EEOC potential sanctions. Also, perhaps more obviously, the open attitudes of whites in power in the South in 1960 are no longer popular – just like the German’s attitude towards Jews were not longer popular in 1960. It does not mean that prejudice and racism does not exist – but if it is not backed up with anything – and actually if openly harbored can easily destroy a career of an otherwise successful person in business or academia – then what importance can it have? Indeed, some other statistics show that a racial conspiracy does not exist. For example, whites rarely commit violence against blacks – black college educated women earn more than white college educated women.

Nevertheless, I would like to see the historically poor black areas improve. I believe the government should try to do something – teach people in ghettos the early value of work and responsibility. Giving a middle class black kid a scholarship instead of a poor white kid one does not solve this problem – and it diminishes any success of the black person.

Am I aware of petty racism against blacks? Yes, I am. Some of it has to deal with the crime problem in the community. Other attitudes might be more similar to old attitudes against Polish (allegedly dumb) or Irish (allegedly drunks).

It is also true that groups of non-blacks can sometimes say ugly things about blacks when they are not around (that includes when other non-whites are there). Yet, for the most part, bigotry makes a white person more enemies than friends in my experience.

Those of us who are 40 and under certainly have a different experience.

According to this same philosophy, all of us “whites” (irrespective of actual background and ethnicity) have been exploiting “people of color” (another anti-white racial term) since the beginning of time. Of course, in reality there is no historical basis for this very general view of history.

Of course, “diversity” on a college campus means that nobody (particularly a white male) can question radical feminism and historical revisionism that leaves out key facts of history.

Nobody ever should have to prove that they are not a bigot. At this point in my life, I suppose I am willing to be called a bigot. If bigotry means that you speak about historical truths and believe in equal treatment for equal conduct – then I certainly am a bigot. It saddens me that this Orwellian definition of bigotry dominates (1) mainstream media (2) college campuses (3) the Democratic party (4) about half of the Republican party.

McCain is not able or willing to stand up to politically correct bigots. If he were, the Obama church thing would be a point he would bring up. How is it that Don Imus says a stupid comment about a basketball team and is fired – but I guy can attend a crazy bigoted church and defend the bigoted minister and it makes very little difference.

Oh yeah, Michael Richards overreacts in a club – destroyed. Manager Dusty Baker says that whites cannot play good baseball in the heat – and nothing happens.

The Duke Professors – can say anything they want about innocent students and how white men commit acts of violence against black women (of course, this is a total statistical lie) – and guess what – nothing happens.

Growing up, I did see first hand that blacks could be mistreated. A few times when I was the only white kid around black kids adults would say rude things to my friends (not the kind of things that white kids would typically hear). Nevertheless, being 39 years old – I never lived through an America that had separate accommodations or schools. Ever since I can remember Martin Luther King’s birthday was a holiday (dating from the mid-70s in the state I grew up). That was before King would have even been 50 years old.

Public Service announcements on television and teachers were very anti-racism in the 1970s.  My parents had no bigoted feelings whatsoever (I suppose if they had, they would have prevented my friendships with certain kids growing up).

Anyway, a theme of many of my blogs is that I am tired of being “blamed” for the condition of blacks or any other "minority" in America. Neither I nor my family has any connection aside from an argument that we helped contribute to the freedom of blacks.