Monthly Archives: June 2012

The Unintended Paradox of Arizona

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Nothing defines an individual more than a different identity being thrust upon him or her. It is more important than just one moment, and it in the long run might be pivotal for the country.  It might convert a leaderless community into one of action — for America’s good.. 

The massive attention given to the Supreme Court decision on Arizona represents only a part of our passage into the new time we are privileged to witness, although many of us will have to adjust our vision to it, as if entering a room suddenly lit.  The intense speculation over the HispanicLatino vote in the presidential race is but another component of the point of no return.  Things HispanicLatino have become and will forever be, with growing strength, a part of the national consciousness.  The Dream Act.  The penetration of the HispanicLatino image into mainstream advertising.  The changing demography.  Unending elections and perennial electoral calculations.  All are real departure points rooted in change but now intensified by the necessity of HispanicLatinos to prove their citizenship by showing their papers until the last remaining part of Arizona is declared unconstitutional. 

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Court on Arizona: Maintains and raises race as central theme of nation’s future

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The essence of the American experience throughout its history has been race.  From the country’s very beginning when the founders sidestepped slavery, through the Civil War and through the civil rights movement, racial identity – and the meaning of Americanhood – has been a focal point in the events of our time.  The Supreme Court’s affirmative decision on Arizona’s anti-HispanicLatino law maintains – and in fact raises – race as a central theme of the nation’s destiny.  Not only can any HispanicLatino be stopped by local enforcement officials but also blacks, Asian Americans and any dark-skinned person thought to be from anywhere else.  In that sense, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer was correct in claiming that the “heart” of her state’s racist law that permits racial profiling was confirmed. 

But Brewer also said that local enforcement authorities will be held “accountable” if they engage in racial profiling.  From my days covering police departments as a reporter years ago and then later when I worked as a speechwriter for the commissioner of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service, I know the power and discretion that local officers have.  And some, no doubt, will go overboard.  And therein Brewer has no idea how accountable local governments will be held, for the moment that any citizen or any other person in the country legally has his or her rights violated by overzealous officers, they must sue the local governments that officer represents. 

Only a cascade of lawsuits that will hurt local governments financially can push back the wave of discrimination that will soon be visited upon unsuspecting HispanicLatinos and other individuals of color.  County and city and school districts that engage in any kind of discrimination must be taken into account – immediately.  HispanicLatino attorneys must be the first line of attack on the Court’s tragic decision.  In the smaller towns and cities and marginal localities in which HispanicLatinos are at the most risk, properly timed lawsuits against these local governments can bankrupt many of them. The Court left open the possibility that the most odious part of the decision could be challenged almost immediately.  Let those legal assaults begin in earnest on all fronts.  HispanicLatino attorneys literally must invade local courthouses with lawsuits.  Local and state governments should pause before moving forward on ill-fated, ill-advised efforts that will prove counterproductive in the end.

A pivotal implication of the Court’s decision, then, is the slow movement of history pushing HispanicLatinos to the lead of the civil rights struggles of the future through the legal system.  The Court put in high relief the lead role that HispanicLatinos – the principal force changing the country’s demographics – are going to play in its future.

In more ways than most people can appreciate, this is a pivotal moment in the nation’s history.  The Court did nothing to advance the notion that the nation one day will get over the question of the color of one’s skin.  And in deciding infamously on Bush v. Gore, women’s wages, campaign finance reform and, probably, health care and, certainly, on Arizona, the Court is on the wrong side of history.  HispanicLatinos can advance their history-altering responsibilities by making sure that the Court – its decisions and its composition – become an election-year issue.

If HispanicLatinos in fact are destined to change the country, let them start by remaking the Court by helping re-elect a President who might yet have the opportunity to appoint another justice or two.

Marco Rubio: Laugh or Cry?

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I am one of those HispanicLatinos who wants to like Marco Rubio.  Anyone who knows and understands how fast HispanicLatinos need to rise within high leadership circles to affect the challenges the country faces should cut a wide swath around individuals like Rubio, especially those gifted with the kind of presence, charm and personality that some people equate to that possessed by John F. Kennedy.  In today’s media-driven world, Rubio possesses all the traits that lead to success.

Except that Rubio is so wrong on so many fronts.

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Romney Lets Golden Moment Pass

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I do not know what President Obama is going to say today in Orlando at the annual convention of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials.  I did hear Mitt Romney yesterday and to say that it fell short of what he needed to do is an understatement.  By my timing, Romney spoke for 16 minutes.  In the 20 or so GOP debates during the presidential primary campaign, I estimate that Romney spent at least five minutes, on average, bashing immigrants and, by extension, HispanicLatinos who, while not making immigration their number one priority, do not cotton to that kind of language.  Romney’s antagonistic language in the last few months amounted to perhaps as many as 100 televised minutes – not to mention the endless repetition of his remarks as sounds bites across every medium in the country.  It isn’t as if HispanicLatinos do not know where Romney stands on things HispanicLatino.  And so 16 minutes hardly would suffice. 

But Romney amazed me:  The national Spanish-language networks, both television and radio, waited for him with genuine interest.  Univision and Telemundo were there, but also were the mainstream media, from which most HispanicLatinos get their news.  CNN and MSNBC carried the address live.  This was not a “gotcha” moment.  He had control of the entire environment.  It was a golden moment for Romney but, like the alleged vetting of Marco Rubio for vice president, Romney flubbed his opportunity.  Perhaps he expects Jeb Bush or Rubio to do what he could not do for himself.  Yet it does not work that way. Folks do not vote for surrogates. He could have achieved 100 percent coverage of the HispanicLatino community to make up for 100 minutes of discord.

If the Romney campaign hoped for some phrase, some language, some image, some narrative to register and make it across the many media gathered there that could begin to turn around the presidential race, the speech it prepared for its candidate was wholly and surprisingly absent of anything substantive.  Who gets this kind of tee-up and whiffs it? 

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Off Comes the Shine on Marco Rubio

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Reports earlier yesterday that Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was not being vetted as a serious vice presidential running mate by the Mitt Romney campaign – contradicted later by the candidate himself – imparts valuable political data.  Perhaps a goldmine. 

The first nugget suggests ongoing debate within the campaign about the strategy for the general election itself.  Thus the hash that became the latest Rubio boomlet was no boomlet at all.  More probably it was a botched attempt to influence internal campaign thinking.

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The Dreamers: Tomorrow’s Leaders – the Force the HispanicLatino Community Has Always Needed

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The next few days or fortnight will redeem Charles Dickens’ it was the worst of times, it was the best of times for the HispanicLatino community.  In a clear signal that it understands the political and fundamental role that HispanicLatinos play in developing the future of the country, the Obama Administration set the stage for the incorporation of 800,000 mostly HispanicLatino young men and women into the flow of American life.  For them, it is the best of times, at least in the short run.  They can think about how to proceed with their lives for the next two years and perhaps longer if they make the most of the time they have been allotted.

But depending on what and when the Supreme Court rules on Arizona’s anti-HispanicLatino law, the rest of the community could well be facing the beginning of the worst of times, starting now, if the Court announces its decision today or perhaps next week.  The Court almost certainly will rule in favor of a law that targets HispanicLatinos specifically so that they any individual who appears to be HispanicLatino can be harassed at the whim of any local official.  Indeed, almost any positive ruling by the Court will encourage local officials, including law enforcement and public school officials, to embark on dangerous self-enforcement missions that in some cases will provoke violence. 

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The Fundamental Choice Mexicans Face

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The Mexican presidential debate last night might have changed the course of the election, scheduled for July 1.  But probably not as much as a student-led revolt against the return of the PRI – the party that dominated the country for more than five decades under governments that were feeble excuses for democracy.  The polls supposed that the Partido Revolucionario Institucional would return to power but now show that perhaps the election was called too early.  Students took to the streets and the internet and seem to have reminded their fellow Mexicans of the PRI’s history.  The students shouting in the streets certainly reminded me of the day in 1990 that Luis Donaldo Colossio two years before he was assassinated looked at me across the conference table in our newspaper editorial board room, a quizzical expression on his face.

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Gail Does Texas

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So Gail Collins sorta ruined my weekend.  The columnist for The New York Times could not have known that I had not planned to pick up another book this week, especially with the EuroCup competition starting today.  Still recovering from Robert Caro’s latest forest-killer on Lyndon Johnson, I thought I had made enough time for a story about the history of the Mossad.  Reading about LBJ and about how Israel ruthlessly wages universal war against its enemies is not easy.  It is going to take me longer to read 200 pages of Collins’ As Texas Goes... as 1,000 pages of Caro.  Laughing consumes more time than you think.  It has been years since I went from beef and bourbon to cotton candy, and you know how long that takes to eat.

There no doubt will be more to say on Collins’ book (on page 32 so far) but I saw her hawking it on MSNBC on Wednesday.  In the ensuing discussion with Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, none of them could put a finger on why Texans feels their state is so special.  They like most people could not get beyond the surprise that, for good and bad, Texans care a lot about their state – a state that seems to have inordinate influence over the nation’s life, as Collins believes.

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Wisconsin last night compounded the value of the HispanicLatino vote for November

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The election results in Wisconsin last night raise more than an eyebrow.  They carry real implications.  The one consequence not being discussed in the post-election analyses on the television sets is the ever-ballooning importance of the HispanicLatino vote.  Take the electoral votes of Wisconsin and perhaps other near-by states out of the equation for November, and it makes Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Florida all the more critical.  As each day passes, the HispanicLatino vote gains greater political currency, and the resources dedicated to it should increase accordingly.  States that are deemed safe today might not be tomorrow, and so whatever additional insurance can be purchased by the campaigns, its cost should not daunt campaign strategists.

The facility with which Gov. Scott Walker swept aside the attempt to recall him also gives rise to the need to review the infrastructure that President Obama’s campaign is building to win in November.  However important labor unions, they can provide only one component of the votes Democrats need.

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