The Other Lesson of the Pedro Gonzalez Expose

The internet is atwitter reading a lengthy expose in Breitbart (of all places) detailing the long history of antisemitic and racist comments from major Ron DeSantis booster Pedro Gonzalez. The source is a bit funny -- the impetus very clearly is some internal Trump-on-DeSantis violence (Breitbart is decidedly in the former camp). 

The stuff is very blatant (when snips about the "Rothschild physiognomy" are the public comments, you know it's bad). Of course, none of it has stopped Gonzalez from being embraced by the usual suspects on the Jewish far-right, like Josh Hammer, who defended Gonzalez on the striking grounds that, well, he's really racist to a lot of people so the antisemitism doesn't stand out (Gonzalez has been a regular contributor at Newsweek under the dominion of Hammer and Batya Ungar-Sargon).

All of this is the usual combination of amusing and terrifying that typifies every story about right-wing infighting over increasingly brazen bigotry. But there is one other element I want to flag here that likely will be missed by most: the soaring levels of antisemitism one finds amongst minority and especially Latino conservatives, specifically. Gonzalez is an avatar of that trend, one that has been underappreciated in broader discourse. Once again, antisemitism is a huge growth opportunity for the GOP in minority communities -- not because most minorities are antisemitic, but because the subset of minorities most likely to be flipped by GOP appeals, specifically, is disproportionately antisemitic.

Why Is Democratic Support Amongst Latinos Crumbling?

Republican Mayra Flores won a special election for a heavily Latino Texas House seat on Tuesday, turning a historically blue seat red for the first time in over a century. While redistricting means that the seat will likely elect a Democrat in the fall, Flores' victory is the apex of a trend where Democratic performance has crumbled in the historically-blue Rio Grande Valley.

What is causing this trend? I'll dispense with one no doubt popular hot take -- the whole "Latinx" thing. No, it's not popular amongst the broader Latino community. But also, no, it's almost certainly not driving a major vote shift given how few Latino Americans have even heard of the term.

That said, something is clearly in the air. It seems evident that many Democrats just assumed that Trumpist rabble-rousing about immigration would permanently turn off the Latino community and send them (further) into the arms of the Democratic Party. That maybe led to some coasting, which is now coming back to bite Team Blue. But that still doesn't offer a positive explanation about what issue areas are driving the Latino vote today -- especially when it seems that the Republican Party's political extremism, and ties to White nationalism, is growing more pronounced.

Of course, one can fairly observe that "the Latino vote" is an amalgamation of several different political collectives who hardly share identical interests or perspectives. Mexican-Americans in the Rio Grande Valley have many differences from Puerto Rican voters in New York or Cuban-Americans in Miami. But even if we cast a more focused lens, concentrating on places like the Rio Grande Valley, I think the puzzle remains (and I'd also ask whether there is, right now, a substantial subsector of the Latino population which is currently moving in a more Democratic direction? If not, then it seems there is a problem here that is occurring across cohorts).

Likewise, it has long been known that many Latino Americans are socially more conservative than the median American Democrat. But that's always been true, raising a "why now" question. Is this a backlash against (perceived or real) excesses amongst progressives in socially liberal policy? I know everyone likes to blame "the Squad" for everything, and I think that's a temptation to be resisted, but at least it's a hypothesis that needs to be explored. Nonetheless, I doubt that's the only valid explanation on offer, and I'm interested in hearing others.

Antisemitism is a GOP Growth Opportunity in Minority Communities

When Marjorie Taylor Greene found herself approvingly quoting Nation of Islam conspiracy theories and noting the "common ground" between the GOP and the NoI, many laughed. Others pointed out that the synergy should not surprise: there really is a lot of common ground between the two. Conspiratorial antisemites should flock together. It is hardly a surprise that Louis Farrakhan has had his share of praise for Donald Trump; nor should it shock that one of Trump's most prominent Black advisors, Omarosa Manigault, tried to do outreach connected the Trump administration to Farrakhan. When one looks at the younger generation of "Blexit" style Black conservative leaders who are exciting the contemporary Republican Party, antisemitism is often part and parcel of their appeal. Omarosa was one example. Candace Owens -- she of the infamous apologia for Hitler -- is another. Mark Robinson, the new Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina and a rising star in the state GOP, has the Jewish community in a near-panic after a bevy of antisemitic (and otherwise bigoted remarks) which he has not retracted -- the most blatant being the claim that the movie Black Panther was the project of an "agnostic Jew" whose sole agenda was "to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets." Similar trends have been observed among Latinos in Miami -- a crucial "battleground" community whose unexpectedly shift back to the right in 2016 and 2020 has kept that state in the Republican column.

An underappreciated reality is this: antisemitism is one of the most obvious avenues for the GOP to make inroads in communities of color. To be sure, this is all relative -- we're talking about how to move from 10% of the Black vote to 15% of the vote; the vast majority of Black Americans are not antisemitic and are not going to be swayed over to the GOP side of the ledger by antisemitic appeals. Still, the Hirsh/Royden paper measuring antisemitic attitudes in the American population specifically found a massive spike among young conservatives, and specifically young conservatives of color (Latinos and African-American). I've joked that this finding has "something for everyone" partaking in the debates over where antisemitism is most threatening (the left is happy it can blame the right, and the right is happy it can blame Black people). But their finding really does have significant implications for where the "low hanging fruit" is for Republicans trying to bolster their vote share in minority communities, and it is very likely the GOP will start explicitly chasing that vote sooner rather than later.  

The obvious truth about someone like Louis Farrakhan is that he is a conservative figure and his ideology is far more harmonious with the right than the left. The same is true for others in the Black community who share Farrakhan's broader outlook. This obvious truth has been obscured, partially by the idiosyncratic reasons that Farrakhan and his NoI have connections to some on the progressive left, partially because the brand of conservatism he represents (deep mistrust of public institutions, xenophobic fear of contamination by "outsiders", conspiratorial ravings about the true powers governing society), when racialized through a Black perspective, often present White people and America as the "institutions" or "outsiders" or "powers" that are indicted. But on the latter, particularly, as the GOP has gotten increasingly comfortable with overt and often violent anti-government rhetoric, there are more and more opportunities for overlap here. Railing against "the CIA" or "the FBI" or "the banks" or the "globalists" -- those words will sound very similar coming out of either camp, and will likewise resonate similarly no matter who is speaking them. Marjorie Taylor Greene is doing nothing more than recognizing what was already before her eyes. And to the extent that attacks on "Whites" seems to be an insurmountable hurdle, well, redirecting those attacks onto the Jews is a prime opportunity for "compromise" that can satisfy both parties (Eric Ward's seminal "skin in the game" article expressly identified this in exploring how he, as a Black man, could enter far-right spaces -- the presumed common ground and foundation for alliance that could unify Black Americans and the far-right was explicitly that of antisemitism).

Again, Farrakhan is not representative here -- this post is not about how the GOP will win majorities of the Black community. I'm just saying that, however large this sector is in the Black community, it is a sector that is ripe for  As the GOP gets more explicitly captured by folks like Marjorie Taylor Green, these commonalities are going to become more apparent and become more tempting to leverage. And anyone who thinks that genuine concern or fair-feeling for Jews is going to stop Republican strategists from pushing that button is out to lunch. It is, simply put, too tempting a target. The overlap is already present, the votes are there to be had, and the Republican Party has no scruples to speak of when it comes to converting hateful rabble-rousing into electoral success.

Suit Up Roundup

The latest wedding prep item to be checked off the list is my wedding suit. I like it. It's snazzy. Still have to pick it up post-alterations, though.

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Anil Kalhan explains what was evident to anyone paying attention: John Roberts didn't "overturn" Korematsu in Trump v. Hawaii -- he renamed it.

What do you call a Jewish Indian fusion food truck? Nu Deli. I love this more than I can express (semi-related: I picked up The Last Jews of Karala: The 2,000-Year History of India's Forgotten Jewish Community at a bookstore the other day. So far, so good.).

Right now, we're seeing growing recognition of the full diversity of the Jewish community. That's good. But it also means reckoning seriously with the fact that the Jewish community has not always been welcoming of our full diversity. Hey Alma hosted a roundtable discussion with six Jews of Color that's definitely worth a read. Sandra Lawson and Donna Cephas write of racism they've experienced within the Jewish community. And the Baltimore Jewish Times just ran a profile on Mendel Davis, son of an African-American Chabad Rabbi.

Nobody expects the National Review to defend the Spanish Inquisition!

An interesting blast from the past: the Jewish Current reprints an exchange between Rabbi Joachim Prinz and an antisemitic Christian pastor who heard him speak at an army base in Abilene, Texas. It is striking reading, precisely because the pastor's arguments come couched in language we'd recognize today: he condemns Nazism, acknowledges the existence of some good Jews, speaks in unfailingly polite terms -- but nonetheless makes sweeping generalizations against the faith as a whole to justify his bigotry. It's well worth reading not because of how alien it is, but because of how little the language of "civil" bigotry has changed over the past seventy years.

JTA profiles Alma Hernandez, a 25-year old Mexican-American Jewish women running for a seat in the Arizona House of Representatives. (She's also being targeted by David Duke, which is possibly the least surprising thing imaginable).

Term Limited Roundup

My last class meeting is on Wednesday. After that (and grading finals), I'm free of teaching obligations for the next two (two!) years. All I have to do in that time is write a dissertation. Should be easy-peasy!

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I've been meaning to share this outstanding essay by C. Thi Nguyen on "echo chambers", and how we discount information from "the other side", for some time now. It's really, really good.

Several Labour MPs, including Luciana Berger, give heart-wrenching descriptions of the antisemitism they continue to face in British society. J.K. Rowling comes in with an assist (though the article doesn't link to her best moment).

Great conversation in Slate by several Black writers about being Black in White spaces in America. Starbucks, Waffle Houses, golf courses .....

J Street is the future of Democratic Party pro-Israel work. How do I know? Because on the one hand, Ben Cardin was welcome there, despite being a high-profile opponent of the Iran Deal and a backer of the Israel Anti-Boycott Act. And on the other hand, Ben Cardin's message at J Street was basically in line with the broader progressive Zionist camp. Those who want to keep excluding J Street from the pro-Israel camp do so at their own peril.

The L.A. Times has an interesting piece on Latinos joining the Border Patrol (note: Border Patrol and ICE are distinct agencies). The Border Patrol either is now or soon will be majority Latino in personnel.

You know you're spending too much time following American antisemitism when a new story breaks about an antisemitic professor at Knox College and you're like "I bet I know who!" (my guess was "the guy who said that Michael Twitty wants 'to be everything but [his] African sel[f]' because Twitty is a Black Jew". I guessed right).

Sarah Jones interviews Michael Kimmel on deradicalization and reintegration of former White Supremacists. Also apropos: San Francisco anti-racism trainings that are for White Men only. Good example of "owning your shit" and not demanding that POCs serve as educators, or bad example of White Fragility and refusal to tolerate discomfort? You decide.

Are the Koch-brothers (the famous right-libertarian billionaires pumping money into academia and think tanks) spearheading a new insertion of paleo-con anti-Israel ideology back into the political right?

Two interesting pieces on Mizrahi Jews and the ongoing failure to fully grapple with their differentiated history vis-a-vis European/Ashkenazi Jews. The first centers on the documentary series "The Ancestral Sin", regarding how Mizrahi Jews were systematically marginalized by bigoted (largely secular) bureaucrats in Israel's early days. The second is a call for Mizrahi Jews to be given an equal seat at the table in Jewish conversations today.

Boxing's Not Dying, You're Just "Colorblind"

I, of course, am watching the big fight tonight -- Miguel Cotto vs. Yoshihiro Kamegai. Why, what are you watching?

In all seriousness, I do think Mayweather/McGregor is a sideshow. That didn't stop me from putting money on Mayweather (half on Mayweather to win straight, and half on Mayweather plus the "over" on rounds), but as a boxing match it's only competitive if Mayweather has gotten old since his last fight. And that's not that interesting to me. While Cotto/Kamegai isn't exactly a toss-up fight, it should be exciting and at least it's a match-up of boxers. Plus it won't cost me $100.

But since we have another moment where boxing is in the public eye, I wanted to flag this article in the Washington Post about the future of the sport. For a long time, the conventional wisdom has been that boxing is "dying", now restricted to an older fan base who are not interesting as advertising demographics. The real energy, the line goes, is behind MMA. And certainly, the latter sport has seen explosive growth over the past decade. But the WaPo article reveals that the CW about boxing has been largely misconceived. 18-29 year olds are the most likely to call themselves boxing fans (39%), and at similar rates to MMA (37%). Overall, boxing and MMA have roughly the same proportion of fans (25% for Americans call themselves MMA fans, 28% boxing fans).

So what's driving the narrative on boxing? While the article doesn't harp on this, the big difference is along the dimension of race. Non-whites are far more likely to consider themselves boxing fans than are whites. While just 17% of white people identify as boxing fans, for blacks that jumps to 52% and for Latinos its 61%. Amongst women, just 8% of white women are boxing fans, compared to 40% of nonwhite women (a significantly higher rate than the 25% of white men who characterize themselves as boxing fans).

To be sure, boxing was in some ways shooting itself in the foot by keeping so many of its big fights on premium cable networks or PPV, where younger fans often didn't have access to them. That consideration was a major factor in Top Rank's just-announced four year deal with ESPN, part of a larger shift in recent years of boxing over to basic cable and even network television.

But it's hard not to think that a large part of why people thought "boxing is dead" was because white people were less invested in the sport. Amongst black and Latino communities, boxing is still incredibly popular; it was just that their interest didn't "count" in assessing the vitality of the sport.

Re-Recognizing Racism: The Case of Tucson's Mexican-American Studies Litigation

A federal court invalidated an attempt by the state of Arizona to shut down a Mexican-American Studies curriculum in Tucson high schools, concluding that it was motivated by racial animus. The opinion is here, and it is just brutal on the primary architects of the law and its enforcement: Tom Horne and John Huppenthal.

What's striking about this opinion is that it doesn't flinch from the ascription of a racist motive. The program in question improved educational outcomes and was favorably reviewed in an audit ordered by the very officials whose avowed agenda was to destroy the department. Reviewing statements and practices by the major players behind the bill, the court's opinion concludes in no uncertain terms that the reason this law was passed and applied against Tucson's Mexican-American Studies program was because of bias against Mexican-Americans.

I strongly suspect that the willingness to make that determination is impacted by our current political climate. For all the whining that conservatives have engaged in about always being called a racist every which way, for the most part when it comes to official organs of government that had pretty much fallen off the table. There was an unspoken agreement that the "racism" charge was just too, well, mean to form the basis of high-level normative discourse.

And so, even a few years ago, for a federal judge to accuse a high-ranking state official of being motivated by racism would have been virtually unthinkable.  Courts dealing with racial discrimination suits would bend over backwards to couch their judgments in ways that would not be read as simply concluding that the defendants were being bigoted. Unfair, maybe; inconsistent, perhaps; unlawful, occasionally -- but not the dreaded "r" word. It wasn't seen as plausible that someone of prominence and prestige could be so crass as to be racist.

What's different now? One change is that conservatives on the Supreme Court have diced up our constitutional protections against racial discrimination such that only conscious, intentional discrimination qualifies. So judges who made have in past years relied on face-saving alternative rationales for invalidating discriminatory policies now have no choice but to say, flat-out, "this was done because of racial bias."

But I also think there's a greater psychological willingness to draw the inference of discrimination. The rise of Donald Trump demonstrated that explicit racial animus remained a live force in American politics, one that had a significant presence even amongst "elite" and "respectable" figures. Moreover, while in past years we might have worried about the backlash of flatly declaring a significant political figure racist -- how rude! -- now the calculus has changed. For it turned out that wearing kid-gloves around the racism issue in no way dissipated White racial resentment -- no matter how delicately one tip-toes around the issue, certain White people are just aching to thunder "are you calling ME a RACIST?". And so there's really not a lot of reason to beat around the bush anymore.

Pre-Examinations Roundup

My Intro to American Politics students have their final exam tomorrow. They grow up so fast! Also, if you're thinking "what an interesting time to teach American Politics!" -- you're right.

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Great piece by MaNishtana on the reaction to Trump's election from Latino Jews.

Honestly, this profile on the ADL in Trump's America is pretty dreadful. Seeking reactions on the ADL's stern stance on Steve Bannon, it talks to the whole spectrum of the Jewish community, ranging from those who think the ADL is making an honest mistake to those who think it's making a regular mistake. Missing are those who think it can stand to show even sterner stuff in standing up to the resurgent right. Also: "Greenblatt’s outspokenness put him in something of an awkward position in a community where, after all, almost a third of Jews who voted cast a ballot for Trump." If by "almost a third" you mean "less than a quarter", then sure. And somehow, nobody thinks it's "awkward" when Wyoming's representatives actually profess the views held by most Wyoming denizens.

The headline is overwrought, but the fact that anyone thought it was a good idea to feature neo-Nazis in a Cadillac ad is worrisome.

A BDS backer ran for President of the UK's Union of Jewish Students. He got annihilated (article doesn't give the full vote breakdown, but he came in third with less than 10% of the vote). BDS isn't popular amongst millennial Jews either.

Sigal Samuel has a great contribution -- from a Mizrahi perspective -- on the great "are Jews White in Trump's America" debate.

Also on the Mizrahi beat, great to see Loolwa Khazzoom's name back in print.

I actually think there are a lot of good insights from Abe Foxman about where the American Jewish community is headed over the next few years. One thing I absolutely agree with is that -- fairly or not -- the greatest risk of rupture between the American Jewish community and Israel is if Israel keeps on showing contempt towards non-Orthodox Jewish streams.

Updates on the Ryerson University walkout to block a Holocaust Memorial resolution: Here is a Jewish student who attended the meeting, and here is a news story on some administrative reactions to the events.

Post-Election Roundup: The Bad Place or the Darkest Timeline?

Jill says we're in the darkest timeline. I say we're in The Bad Place. Either way, it ain't good, and my browser is clogging up.

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If there's an award for Most Craven Jewish Organization of 2016, the Republican Jewish Coalition has to be the frontrunner.

Everyone's talking about how coastal elites are in a bubble. But many rural Americans -- who've scarcely met a Muslim or a Jew, or an African-American or an Asian -- are in a huge bubble of their own. And nobody seems all that concerned with urging them to break out, or to take seriously the views of other people unlike them.

Latino Trump voters explain their votes.

A meditation by Joan C. Williams (UC-Hastings Law) on what drives "White working class" (which actually generally means middle class) voters. Basically, they feel like their is a dignity-deficit in their lives, and they hate the professional/managerial (not the rich) class. An interesting read, though I have some reservations.

The anti-Semitization of racism. That's my term, but Phoebe Maltz Bovy explains how racism is beginning to resemble anti-Semitism in that it targets achievement by racial minorities and snarls about their supposed excess of power and influence.

And finally, a truly excellent letter from Missouri U.S. Senate candidate Jason Kander, a Democrat who only narrowly lost his deep red state in a big GOP year. Well worth reading if you need a jolt.

Trumping the Undercard

I got to say, this is pretty neat:

Boxing promoter Bob Arum plans to make a statement against Donald Trump with an all-Hispanic undercard on his next big pay-per-view show. 

Arum said Tuesday that he'll feature all Hispanic fighters on the undercard of Manny Pacquiao's third meeting with Timothy Bradley on April 9 in Las Vegas. Arum called it "the Donald Trump undercard." 

Arum is no fan of the Republican presidential contender's calls for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and the deportation of an estimated 11 million people living in the country illegally. 

"I want them to know there are a lot of people that have their back and are not going to allow them to be deported," Arum said. "And if Trump got elected, I would be in the streets with them protesting."

At one level, it's not too surprising that a boxing promoter would take this stance, given the importance of the Latino community as the main base of boxing fandom in the United States. But still, it's a bold step and one that, as a boxing fan, I'm proud to see.

This article also informed me that before his boxing promotion career Arum, now 84 years old, was an attorney with the Department of Justice in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. He's also a graduate of Harvard Law -- a distinction he shares with fellow boxing promoter Lou DiBella. Famed boxing adviser Al Haymon is also a Harvard alum. Turns out that there are a lot of really smart cookies in the boxing business!

A Sanctified Institution

Immigrant to America? Want citizenship? Forget things like the pesky DREAM Act! Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) has a better recommendation: just marry an American! After all, if marriage is kind of like buying a cow (which I'm given to understand that it is), why not buy American?

In reality, Jezebel pretty much says what I want to say:

if Kyl actually encouraging marriages for citizenship someone should let him know that's a Federal felony. So much for the sanctity of marriage, hypocrites. And even if marriage is a good option for someone, it isn't a totally safe bet, anyway — there are plenty of couples where one of the partners is found guilty of something like an expired visa and are given penalties that range from years to a lifetime. There are just so many issues here, and I have a feeling I'm not even scratching the surface.

I would add that -- criminal liability aside -- there is something rather bloodless about telling someone they should marry, not for love, not because of true connection, but in order to access a legislative privilege. If this is the GOP's big plan to win back Latinos, well, best of luck.

A Waste of Democracy

Alejandrina Cabrera, s city council candidate in heavily-Spanish-speaking San Luis, Arizona has been removed from the ballot after a judge ruled her English ability wasn't good enough to qualify. This was in accordance with Arizona's state law establishing English as the official language.

I have to think that, particularly as applied to this case, the law has to be unconstitutional. The hook would be the Equal Protection Clause (though it is times like this when my hostility to Luther v. Borden shines brightest), but in general it is fundamentally undemocratic for the state to impose substantive barriers to keep certain types of candidates off the ballot. The whole principle of a democracy is that the people get to decide what sort of person represents them, and if the people want to elect someone whose primary language is Spanish but whose English fluency is (in the candidate's own words), about a 5 out of 10, that's their prerogative.

When you compare that to the view of the City Attorney, who said that the decision was correct because a vote for Cabrera "would have been wasted, because [voters]c could have voted for someone better prepared to be an elected official," and the fundamentally authoritarian nature of the law becomes clear. The state is preventing a candidate from running for office because -- regardless of what the voters might think -- the state thinks that other people would be a better elected official. This is, more or less, how Iran conducts its "democracy", and it remains a sham even when it makes its way to one of the fifty states.

Now, to be sure, some set of neutrally-applied procedural hurdles -- such as attaining a set number of signatures, may be okay. But notably, such laws only effect persons who by virtue of their failure have already demonstrated themselves unlikely to obtain substantial, much less majority, support. Here, by contrast, the target of the law seems to be someone who could plausibly be elected -- and the insistence on trying to force Cabrera off the ballot seems to imply that she poses a real threat to her political opponents in San Luis. Well, that's democracy -- sometimes the voters vote for someone other than you. The solution is to be more appealing to the electorate, not rig the system so your opponents can't get on the ballot.

(And we won't even get into the nauseating nature of the comments on CNN's piece. I have to remind myself that internet commenters are not a representative cross-sample of America lest I despair of this whole national project altogether).

Vicente Fox News

I think Mitt Romney has to be the odds-on favorite to win the GOP nomination. And when he does, this ad will guarantee that he'll be throttled amongst Latino voters.

Under the Bus!

Mistermix calls his mother a liar. But the point of the post -- that Hispanics are rapidly developing a grudge against the Republican Party that may endure for generations -- is potentially solid. And a GOP that can't appeal to Hispanic voters is a GOP whose electoral future is bleak indeed.

Next to the White House

Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), is not a fan of the proposed Latino-American museum on the Mall:

“I don’t want a situation,” said Representative Jim Moran, a Democrat from Virginia, “where whites go to the original museum, African-Americans go to the African-American museum, Indians go to the Indian museum, Hispanics go to the Latino American museum. That’s not America.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates rejoins: "Much more preferable is a world where we all just go to the white museum."

I should add that I'm not entirely sure why Rep. Moran thinks only Hispanics would or should go to the Latino American museum. I'm interested in other cultures! I like learning about people whose backgrounds differ from my own! Learning about Latino history would probably be really enriching. Maybe Rep. Moran is only interested in learning about white "original" history, but many of us sweep wider in our reach.

"Round Two" Roundup

That will be the last time I refer to the round of 64 as "round two". Stupid play-in games. And stupid Marquette for blowing my bracket halfway to St. Louis. (Also, with respect to the Hoyas: "Actual Jesuits could play better than Georgetown is right now.").

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Grant Hill's response to being thought of as an "Uncle Tom". Ta-Nehisi Coates has characteristically insightful comments.

Minnesota Republicans propose criminalizing possession of money by the poor. No, seriously.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) was for Romneycare before he decided it was a "colossal mistake".

Color me unconvinced, but Ed Kilgore thinks Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) could make a serious play in the Iowa caucuses. If it happens, it won't be because she's less "flawed" than Palin (I'm unconvinced that she's actually more media savvy), but because Republican crazification can never be underestimated.

GreaT post at Post-Bourgie on how being a Black kid growing up on the rough side of Philly turned the writer into a feminist.

Latinos in California are fleeing the GOP in droves. Can the rest of the West be far behind?

Keep the IRS Out of My [Girlfriend's] Uterus!

The GOP's Ambassador

When he isn't advising folks to quit speaking the language of living in the "ghetto" (he says -- I'm not kidding -- he meant the Jewish ghetto, so presumably, his objection is to Hebrew), Newt Gingrich likes to think of himself as a "go-between" for the GOP and minority communities. No, I don't get where he got that idea either.

And now, Gingrich has started talking about what the GOP needs to do to build upon their 2010 victories in 2012. In order to rack up a suitable governing majority to begin 2013:

Republicans need to spend at least 30 percent of their time campaigning to black, Hispanic and other minority communities ....

Interesting! And what should they say in those meetings?

....and emphasize lowering taxes instead of social programs such as welfare.

Great plan, Newt! Finger on the pulse.

Via Chait.

Getting Chippy

I was going to post on this yesterday, before the Giffords shooting became the key story.

Claiming it promotes racial hostility and "ethnic solidarity", the Attorney General of Arizona has ordered Tucson Unified School District's Mexican-American studies program shut down. Similar Arizona programs targeted at the life and history of Asian-Americans, African-Americans, and Native Americans were unaffected. The program is open to students of all backgrounds, although most of the students partaking are Latino. The Arizona AG, Tom Horne, has a history of tension with the Latino population in general and this program in particular -- students enrolled responded to a speech by one of Mr. Horne's aides designed to argue that Republicans were not anti-Latino by turning their backs and raising their fists in the air. And of course, this decision comes at a time when tensions between the White and Latino population of Arizona are at their peak. It's almost impossible to view the decision to outlaw this program as simply another salvo in the ongoing battle between White and Latino Arizonans as to whether the latter are truly equal members of the state.

Richard Jeffrey Newman has a good post on the topic at Alas, a Blog, and I wanted to riff a bit on a point I made in the comments over there.

There's a lot of talk regarding these sorts of programs that they play towards a politics of victimology, that they encourage these kids to see themselves solely as the beaten down, crushed, hopeless objects of White racism. As an alternative, the proposal is that we teach American history as the story of a bad past, albeit with some Whites who "got it", and then a progressive shift towards more and more White people "getting it" until today, when racial problems are mostly a thing of the past.

What is strange, though, is that this latter program seems to me to be sending a considerably stronger message of passivity towards Latino students. Teaching the history as the story of White people progressively "getting it" doesn't provide any agency to the Black or Latino or Native American communities. It reinforces their status as objects, passive recipients of the abuse and later grace of the White majority, and it doesn't provide any narrative elements by which they can build themselves up, as opposed to waiting for White justice to strike again. If anything, it is a far more "victimizing" narrative than the ethnic solidarity alternative, which tends to be very si, se puede (or, as the Black nationalists put it, “do it for self, brother”).

That's why these programs are typically associated with higher achievement levels, not lower ones (and that seems to be the case in Tuscon, where the students enrolled outperform those who are not). Sure, these programs say "you've gotten fucked over, hard". But any remotely historical program will teach that, and moreover, these kids are living their lives, so they’re going to know that anyway. But instead of saying "but then the White folks saw the light and it all got better, and if you're good boys and girls they'll do right by you too" — a very passive, objectifying, stultifying way of looking at it — it says "but our people fought back, and won our rights, and earned our spot, and if they can do it, you can do it too, no matter what obstacles you face." It's the educational equivalent of a halftime pep talk. "White people are racist, ergo, you're doomed" is a bad message. "There is racism out there, and it's still a big problem -- but look at all the people who fought it, and beat it, and made the world better for themselves and everyone around them," is a salutary, inspirational message.

The other sentiment floating around here is that these programs turn the enrolled students into radicals of some sort or another. This does seem to rest uneasily with the claim that it enforces Latino passivity -- radicals aren't exactly known for sitting on their hands -- but put that aside. As I noted a few years ago in a similar case, a young student being a radical for awhile isn't exactly the worst outcome in the world. Many of our great intellectuals (liberal and conservative) spent time as youthful radicals. I was far more radical when I was in high school than I am now, and I think I turned out alright.

We can say that maybe turning your back on a public official and raising a fist isn't the most mature act in the world, but guess what -- teenagers aren't really known for their maturity. Certainly, this manner of acting out -- seeking to make a political statement, however misguided or inappropriately expressed -- is a far cry better than many of the other ways 17-year-olds can act immature. I'll trade a little juvenile political theater for higher graduation rates any day of the week.

Finally, lest we forget, we live in capitalist, competition-driven system. There's not only no harm in teaching kids to come out of school with a burning desire to fight for what they want, it's the whole point. If you're coming from a place where you don't have a lot of advantages and don't have a lot of social capital backing you up, it's probably a good thing to come out of school and into the real world with a bit of a chip on your shoulder -- a belief that you've got something to prove and a determination that you're capable of doing it. That, again, is something salutary. It shouldn't be discouraged.

Basic Instincts

For much of his career, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was one of the foremost champions of immigration reform. Then a few things happened. He lost the 2008 election to Barack Obama -- an event which unquestionably left him spectacularly bitter. He also faced a right-wing primary challenger in 2010 that left him racing to deny he ever was a maverick.

And so when the DREAM Act came to the floor, McCain voted nay. Grant Woods, an old friend of McCain and his first chief of staff, explains why:

Woods said "it hurts" McCain to vote against legislation like the Dream Act after years of working on reform but said the senator felt betrayed when Latinos overwhelmingly supported Obama in 2008. "When you carry that fight at great sacrifice year after year and then you are abandoned during the biggest fight of your life, it has to have some sort of effect on you," he said.

So basically, much like everything else McCain has done over the past two years, his DREAM Act vote was a fit of pique to wound those who kept him out of the Oval Office. Of course, it's no mystery why Latinos broke hard for Democrats in 2008, and it seems like their instincts that Senator McCain was naught but a fair-weather friend were spot on. "Country first", indeed.

The DREAM Collapses

I had expected the DREAM act to fail. The GOP is in the grip of a hysterical anti-immigration fervor, such that even children -- children who often had no choice in coming here, children who often know no other country, children who are working hard and want to go to college, or defend our freedoms in combat -- these children, to the GOP, are enemies. The concept of "terror babies" is one that could only occur in a diseased political climate.

And in terms of raw political calculation, the GOP is exceptionally worried that these new American citizens will be Democrats. Latinos already are leaning mildly Democratic, and while that's a lean that's growing more severe each year due to the aforementioned GOP anti-Latino hysteria, the fact remains that for many GOP strategists, creating new paths to citizenship means creating new Democratic voters. So, concerns of justice notwithstanding, the DREAM act was likely to fail for the same reason DC remains disenfranchised.

But I was wrong. I was wrong to lay the blame entirely on Republicans.

The cloture vote failed, 55-41. Five more votes, and it would have passed. And wouldn't you know it, but five Democrats voted against cloture. They are Senators Max Baucus (MT), Jon Tester (MT), Kay Hagan (NC), Ben Nelson (NE) and Mark Pryor (AR). Senator Pryor is, in fact, a graduate of my high school -- a fact which now thoroughly embarrasses me. Three Republicans -- Richard Lugar (IN), Lisa Murkowski (AK), and Robert Bennett (UT) -- broke with their party, along with both Senate independents, giving us our final tally.

I assumed the DREAM act would collapse because I assumed Republicans would not let it pass. And let's be clear -- the vast majority of the Senate GOP voted against the bill. We should harbor no illusions: they are primarily at fault here. And it's worth noting that the DREAM supporters did their job -- they got the support of a majority of Americans, a majority of House members, a majority of Senators, and the President. It is a sign of our dysfunctional times that this wasn't sufficient.

But the point isn't about laying blame down. I had been fatalistic about the DREAM act because I assumed it was a sure-fire victim of GOP obstruction -- something that would fail even if the Democrats managed to keep a united front. But it wasn't. They needed Democratic help. And they got it. Five Democrats, whose presence in my party shames me.

Part of me wants to close with some tripe about how we're the real victims here -- about how America is hurt when we turn away smart, motivated kids who have worked hard to get into college, or have sworn the deepest oath imaginable to our nation by agreeing to serve in uniform. And we are hurt by our short-sightedness, no doubt. But the real victims remain the immigrants themselves -- shut out of the only country they known by a political class that is willing to turn children into monsters.