OPINION: Lackluster media coverage of Susana Martinez RNC speech, exposes uncomfortable realities

Dr. Stephen Nuno, fellow Loyola Cub, on NBC Latino speaks about the "uncomfortable contradictions" seen at the GOP Convention!

Dr. Stephen Nuno's BLOG (CLICK HERE)

Opinion: Lackluster media coverage of Susana Martinez RNC speech, exposes uncomfortable realities

Filed under: Latinos |

All of a sudden every Republican is an immigrant or descendant of immigrants. Paul Ryan has been invoking his Irish roots on the stump. Susana Martinez, that girl from a border town, spoke with the hometown nostalgia that is common in political discussions.

Yet sometimes this can create some uncomfortable contradictions — like Mitt Romney’s appeal to his Mexican roots.

But if you are looking for a good sign, as a Republican, that the party is succeeding in changing the image of the party, one clue can be how the media portrays it.

For instance, Condoleeza Rice was given full exposure by the media. Maybe because she is pretty. Maybe because she has a great story. Maybe because she is an authority figure.

But maybe also because she is a shining contradiction. A black lady, giving her Republican sermon to the white masses. It’s a beautiful dichotomy with great imagery and the fact that few blacks will vote for Romney only adds to the rich irony.

But if the media likes these contradictions, why didn’t Governor Susana Martinez get the type ofexposure from the media that Rice did? Is it because prominent Republicans, like Donald Trump, are good with “the blacks”. but not the Hispanics?

Maybe her story isn’t as compelling. Maybe, as a governor of a small state, she won’t resonate with a larger audience.

But maybe it’s because a Latina Republican isn’t such a contradiction in terms. Maybe the concept has life, and it is embodied by Martinez, that the GOP will recruit a Latina if they are willing to buy into the GOP vision of America.

For a group, like Hispanics, who have more flexibility in their identity, this is a possibility. A Marco Rubio has options. Ted Cruz, can stand in a room of tea partiers and not be a contradiction that lays bare the sociopathic issues of some of its Party’s members. This isn’t necessarily bad news for Latinos, but it’s certainly bad news for Democrats.

Martinez doesn’t evoke the same sense of triumphalism on the part of the Democrats because the GOP has been more successful at promoting Latinos up the ladder, and these ambassadors can be used to gain more Latino voters. But its potential is also its greatest threat. Its commonness, makes her boring. And if you are in California, or a Democrat in general, you don’t want to start encouraging the idea that this can happen.

My latest post on NBC Latino.

There are two types of people who won’t like this story, Democrats and GOP racists.

When some moron throws peanuts at a black CNN worker, that’s a story. Chanting“USA, USA!” while a Puerto Rican lady is trying to speak. That’s a story. A Latina Republican giving a stump speech. Apparently, that’s not a story. The other stories reaffirm the ugliness of the GOP, while Martinez’ story is inconsistent with it. Is this to say that the ugliness is not real? Of course not. But can it change. You bet.

If you are trying to look for a sign from the heavens, that perhaps some day the Republicans will put away the daggers and welcome more Latinos into the party, perhaps this is a clue not of its current reality, but maybe of its very real potential.

Local City Corruption....lack of voter engagement!

LA Times: "The Rise and Fall of Mr. Cudahy." (CLICK HERE)

Today's Los Angeles Times, yet had another article of local city corruption in the city of Cudahy, in the southeast Los Angeles County. The twist to this story is that it could have been a great "rags to riches" story and even a great "American Up-From-Your-Bootstraps" kind of story. Sadly enough...neither will be told.

In the center of the corruption scandal, is George Perez, otherwise know as "GP" to those who know him in the region. He started working as a janitor in 1986 for the City of Cudahy and worked his way up to become the City's city manager, with no formal education or training, but plenty of ambition. GP was the powerbroker of the City of Cudahy...he basically decided who was on or off the city council and controlled all business coming in and out.

Last year George Perez abruptly resigned from his position as city manager. Now the FBI is alleging him as the centerpiece of a large corruption scandal, which includes bribery and drug use.

This is a perfect example of  power corrupting, and the obvious vacuum of local civic engagement. When one person wields this much power and control for so long, one has to wonder where are the people of Cudahy, local law enforcement, local businesses, surrounding municipalities, etc.. in all this "wild, wild, west" fiasco? This is why we as Americans must understand that everything begins in our own homes and backyards....we have the right and responsibility, under the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, to engage and VOTE!

How To "Self - Deport"..Jan Brewer Style!

VIRAL PARODY VIDEO TAKES AIM AT GOP ADOPTION OF "SELF-DEPORTATION"

With Republicans adding self-deportation to the party's platform at the Republican National Convention, a 'Funny or Die' video featuring George Lopez and "Jan Brewer" takes aim at what self-deportation might actually look like.

 

How to "Self - Deport"...by Governor Jan Brewer (CLICK HERE) 

 

Mitt Romney Lags In Latino Support, Despite Campaign Efforts

Dear Mitt Romney Presidential Campaign Strategist:

Please re-read this article and should you have any questions regarding Latino strategy for your Presidential Campaign, feel free to contact "Jimmy's Politico" for some assistance in this matter.

Yours truly,

Jaime Rojas Jr

CLICK HERE for Huffington Post article:


The Mitt Romney campaign wants to earn the support of 38 percent of Latino voters in November. That may be difficult, especially given consistently bad polling numbers, including a NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo report out Wednesday that found only 28 percent of Latino voters support the presumptive Republican nominee.
Jose Fuentes, a co-chairman of Romney's Hispanic leadership team, told the Hill the campaign's target number is 38 percent, roughly consistent with 2008 nominee Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) results with Latinos. That could be a harder target for Romney, though, given his views on immigration and other issues. While McCain was a supporter of immigration reform -- a position he backed away from, but didn't drop, during the election -- Romney opposes paths to citizenship and the Dream Act, which a strong majority of Latinos support.
Thirty-eight percent is pretty far away. Nearly every poll puts Romney far behind President Barack Obama among Latino voters, 63 percent of whom support the president, according to the poll released Wednesday. That gap hasn't closed since Romney selected Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as his running mate.
The NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo poll found that 28 percent of Latino voters say they are less likely to vote for Romney because of Ryan, compared with 15 percent who say the choice makes them more inclined to support him. And Ryan's views are unpopular with Latino voters, 44 percent of whom say he is "out of step," according to the poll.
The one potential trouble spot for Obama, according to the poll, is in voter enthusiasm. Consistent with other polls, the report found enthusiasm for his candidacy had decreased significantly since 2008, when a high number of Latinos helped vote Obama into office. Now, only 61 percent of Latino voters are enthusiastic about his candidacy, the organizations found.
The poll doesn't dig into immigration, but Republicans could be hurting themselves there after a Tuesday decision to toughen the party platform's stance on the issue. The platform committee approved edits proposed by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the man behind Arizona immigration law S.B. 1070, abolishing sanctuary cities and in-state tuition for undocumented young people, as well as mandating E-Verify employment verification. Given Latino voters' opposition to state immigration laws, such changes could damage the Romney campaign's effort to net 38 percent of the vote.
The NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo poll is based on phone calls from Aug. 16 to Aug. 20 with 300 Latino voters.

Opinion: Toure flap and GOP's language to delegitimize minorities

Here is another great piece by my good friend and fellow Loyola Cub, Dr. Stephen Nuno:

CLICK HERE for Dr. Stephen Nuno's Blog post!

My latest post on NBC Latino, also posted on The Grio.

Was Touré correct to say that, by trying to access racial stereotypes about the “angry black man,” Mitt Romney was engaging in the niggerization of President Obama? In a word: yes.

However, Touré’s violation in such a charged accusation was not that he was being candid and accurate, but that he identified the wrong culprit. The GOP has for years massaged the superior notions of whites, largely in the context of advancing the notion of inferior qualities of blacks and lately signaling the “otherness” of Latinos.

But this has a long tradition in America, undergirded by institutions which have propped up this racial order. From a legal system that gave us separate but equal, and which began with a Constitution that declared blacks as three-fifths of a human, to the social reality which gave us the era of Jim Crow, the inferiority of blacks is a normality of American thinking. That’s just a fact.

Now, when measuring the validity of Touré’s charge, and the counter argument that Joe Biden’s comment to a crowd of black folks that Romney/Ryan was trying to put them back in chainswas equally racist, one must first keep in mind this normalcy of black inferiority in America.

Does Biden’s comment sustain this normalcy? No. It was lazy, crude, and patronizing, but it wasn’t racist. Now consider Romney’s campaign, and its focus on welfare and “taking back America.” Consider the white audiences. Consider the obsession with President Obama’s citizenship by the Tea Party. Consider the constant use of President Obama’s middle name by his detractors, Barack Hussein Obama, they say. Consider the push by the GOP to drug test welfare recipients despite there being no evidence that welfare recipients use drugs at greater rates than non-welfare recipients.

The only campaign which operates under the normalcy of black inferiority is the GOP campaign. When Rick Santorum spoke to a crowd of white folks in Iowa and told them that he doesn’t want to make black folks’ lives better by giving them someone else’s money, he was appealing to that normalcy. In Romney’s terms, Rick Santorum was making a cultural connection with his audience.

The normalcy of whiteness is a constant problem for blacks, of course, but it is also one that is complicated by the growing Latino population. While there is a long record of discrimination toward Hispanics in America, Latinos could also appeal for inclusion into white society with varied success.

Legally, Hispanics are white, so other methods of exclusion became necessary. But Latinos used their legal status as whites to tear down the mechanisms of separation. For instance,Westminster v. Mendez was a desegregation case in California that sued the city of Westminster to allow Hispanic children to attend the “white schools.” This case predated Brown v. Board of Education by almost ten years.

Despite the legal victories, our socialization to accept the normalcy of whiteness is being constantly reaffirmed by framing ethnic minorities as “others.” In the case of Latinos, this socialization is often supported by the use of terms that dehumanize them. The use of the term “anchor baby” is quite literally a dehumanizing term. The almost universal acceptance by the GOP of use of the term “illegal immigrant” is another mechanism of delegitimizing Latinos.

Quite similar to our immigration laws, Congress signed the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, compelling law enforcement to arrest and detain anyone suspected of being a runaway slave. This law served to put any black person under an aura of suspicion, and it was constantly used against free blacks to detain them under suspicion of violating the law of being present in public when they had no legal right to be. Since black folks had no social standing, the inconvenience this presented to free blacks was not a concern, since without the status and privilege of whiteness, they had no claims to civility.

The immigration debate does much the same thing to Latinos in the US. When Jan Brewer issued her executive order reaffirming that undocumented immigrants had no right to access any state resources, she was reminding Latinos of their second-class status in the State of Arizona. Latinos are all under suspicion. And that’s the way the GOP likes it.

It’s the normalcy of whiteness that Touré should have criticized. It’s hard to say how intentional the GOP consultants are being in making these appeals and whether Romney is consciously participating in these cultural appeals. For now, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, its difficult to be conscious of the air we breathe.

Is Brewer Blocking The Dream For Young Immigrants?

The program that relaxes deportation for some young undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, is only in its second day, but  Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer wasted no time signing an executive order blocking those young people from getting state IDs and other benefits under the new federal plan. NBC Latino’s Sandra Lilley and Prof. Stephen Nuno discuss.

CLICK HERE for MSNBC video story!

Who Is REALLY Running Los Angeles?

 LA TImes Article: CLICK HERE

The LA Times staff writer, Jon Healey, wrote a piece this past Monday regarding the issue of Walmart in Chinatown. I believe Jon really broke down the REAL issues facing the people of Los Angeles and Chinatown versus the mixed and sometimes erroneous statements that have been made on the project.

Los Angeles City Council is considering a proposal that would put a hold on all new future chain-store development of Chinatown. As Jon Healey writes, “…a move that specifically would halt the planned construction of a Wal-Mart grocery store in the neighborhood.” Wal-Mart applied for the LA City required permits to build a grocery store in a pre-existing location, that has been sitting vacant for more than 15 years. Empty…no much needed sales tax revenue for the City of Los Angeles and even more important jobs for those residents of Los Angeles, who need them most.

What the proposed action is really telling future developers and businesses wanting to come to Los Angeles is this…EVEN IF YOU PLAY BY THE RULES…YOU ARE NOT WELCOME! This is a political platform to pick and chose who comes and stays in Los Angeles, instead of just letting the already established rules and regulations dictate that effort.

The real issue behind the outcry of this battle is organized labors’ political agenda, not the Chinatown community’s agenda, who support Wal-Mart. So it uses its major “political muscle” to move mountains and instead of creating good paying jobs…it’s actually creating controlled chaos for the benefit of a few elected officials and labor leadership. Trust me….if the people of Chinatown do not want this store in their neighborhood, they will not shop there and Wal-Mart will close shop.  So this is ALL about union dues, and not about good paying jobs.

As business advocates, let’s continue to support the laws and regulations already established by the City of Los Angeles’ Planning Department and stop wasting valuable Angelino tax dollars on political drama. I put this on the table to organized labor….why have you not brought in a “unionized” market to this exact location in the past 15 years?