It must be difficult for Jorge Ramos. The hate and fear Donald Trump gins up every day against Hispanic/Latinos forces the anchor of the Univisión evening news program to confront the madness non-stop. Days might go by when the average Dreamer or undocumented worker does not have to confront the racist travesties Trump has unleashed. But Ramos must.
The news business can marinate its practitioners in melancholy, and it can affect one’s health, especially when the issue is far greater than just hate. It is scapegoating, and it will last long after Trump leaves office, which is why Ramos has to be at his professionally decorous best always. For his Sunday morning talk show last week, Al Punto, Ramos invited two pro-Trump Hispanic/Latino supporters to discuss Trump. Ramos was cool and unflappable but his blood pressure surely must have soared as the two Trumpers skirted questions about Trump’s evident racist core.
It costs not being fake news, especially when a journalist is in the presence of individuals who are complicit in damage that will linger for years – as are other Hispanic/Latinos who justify their Republican leanings on lofty concepts like free markets, self-reliance and morality but do not look at the collateral damage wrought by a man who in another era would have donned the white robes of animosity.
I stopped writing on this blog because I wanted to refrain from contributing to the furies of the times. But watching Ramos on Sunday I pondered if I could try to explain how some Hispanic/Latinos can support Trump’s demonstrably dehumanizing rhetoric and policies. I have lived and worked in – not just visited – the top four states of the Union in which more than 60 percent of the Hispanic/Latinos live. I have worked in journalism and polling public opinion. I have lived along the U.S.-Mexico border observing both travail and treasure. Perhaps, then, my perspective might have some merit.
A recent Fox News poll pegged Trump’s Hispanic/Latino support at 21 percent nationally. A couple of days later a poll commissioned by The New York Times had him at 31 percent. These surveys are of registered voters – adults with personal and political histories and interests. These polls do not include the mass number of Hispanic/Latinos not registered to vote. The 21-31 percent pro-Trump figure would collapse into a mere few digits were all eligible Hispanic/Latinos uniformly surveyed. And that makes the complicity of Republican Hispanic/Latino voters ever more, shall I dare say, deplorable. They are the few who enable, who consort, who do the damage.
But, still, why, why, why? What would press 21 to 31 percent of Hispanic/Latinos to vote for someone who if he had the chance would throw non-white persons out of the country – including those two characters on Ramos’ program on Sunday? And it would not matter that some of us look whiter than Trump.
The answer is complex. It is not about not liking Hillary. One would have to go back 500 years to begin to understand this kind of perversion that goes beyond single-issue voters who vote according to dogmatic beliefs that have their roots in antiquated thinking that holds women to second-class status, considers gays and lesbians not human and submits free will to institutions considered omniscient. Those beliefs trigger hard, ideological anger, but they do not explain it all.
Of individuals, then, who vote for a candidate who hates them it can only be said that they lack something deeper in their person, in their selves. And if one concludes these voters might be deficient psychologically about something so existentially important, then it has to be about the absence of self-worth or, on the other extreme, the worth only of self-interest, that is to say, the financial bottom line that then begets the absence of empathy for others. Thus we have the spectacle of some of these voters who are immigrants – many of them recent – arguing for the wall to be built since they are now on this side of it.
Hispanic/Latino Trump voters are as dangerous to the future of the United States as is Trump. After their candidate is hopefully defeated in a landslide in November, these voters will exist amid the long-term aftermath of the still-rampant pandemic. Chronic unemployment will prevail in the years ahead, causing civil strife and deficits in the economy that then will threaten Social Security and other safety-net programs. We are in for volatile times, and these voters, given neither to reason nor logic, will be ripe for exploitation by the next Trump, which the Republican Party is expert in creating.
The two apologists on Ramos’ program represent a part of the Hispanic/Latino culture that has generated the undemocratic history and the accompanying economic malaise of most of what we call Latin America. That nasty quirk exists in many of us, and it was most recently personified in horrifying detail by the candidacy of Rubén Díaz Sr., a fundamentalist Protestant preacher and vocal supporter of Trump. Díaz, who hatefully opposes women’s reproductive rights and denigrates gays and lesbians and can talk about little else with any sophisticated understanding, was the leading candidate for a congressional seat in New York City until his defeat, as of this writing, by his polar opposite. New York is not alone in giving birth to this type of fascist.
In this vein, more Hispanic/Latino Catholics are becoming aware of how some bishops in the United States and the right-wing television EWTN network have become adjunct organs of the Republican Party, like Fox News. Blessedly, Pope Francis is trying to undo the damage of the previous two Popes.
I think the misguided voting behavior of Trump supporters – and of Hispanic/Latinos who do not vote – boils down to this: Small thinking. They do not see the promise of Hispanic/Latinos and their responsibility to the future. They do not understand that history is calling us to make sure the country survives and flourishes in order to lead the world against pandemics, global climate change and international lawlessness.
Most Hispanic/Latinos are still unaware to this new charge because most Hispanic/Latino ‘leaders’ themselves seem to lack understanding of the flow of history and Hispanic/Latinos, despite being the largest of the country’s minority populations, remain absent from the national conversation.
The only exception I make for Hispanic/Latino Trump voters are those whose property and lives are disrespected by immigrants and drug lords (who, of course, would not exist were it not for the evil of drug consumption on the U.S. side of the border). If these voters want to again send a message about the problems along the border, then they are wholly within their rights.
Other than that, more of us should work to endeavor to recalibrate our understanding of ourselves – and in the process perhaps help keep Jorge Ramos’ blood pressure in check.
Jesús (Jesse) Treviño is the former editorial page editor of The Austin American-Statesman and served in the Clinton and Obama administrations.