It took Gregory Rodriguez in Time and syndicated columnist Ruben Navarrette, Jr. to offer a perspective missing from cable. Navarrette pointed to the many instances where Latinos have supported a black candidate. Challenging some of the assumptions made by white commentators, who cited “a history of uneasy and competitive relations between blacks and Latinos in…Chicago, Los Angeles and New York,” Rodriguez wrote that “each of those cities have, in the past, elected black mayors who captured the majority of the Latino vote.”
Missing in most of these discussions was any reference to the African heritage of millions of Latinos, sometimes known as Hispanics, or indigenous people. If, using the standard established by slave traders, “one drop” of black blood makes you black, why aren’t they considered black?
Writing about the most recent mayoral race in Oakland, whose main competitors were a black and a Latino, I said that race wouldn’t be an issue because the Mexican-American candidate was darker than the black candidate. A month ago, when I was having dinner on the Lower East Side with a famous Puerto Rican poet and two Puerto Rican scholars, I repeated a joke that comedian Paul Mooney tells: Puerto Ricans and Cubans are “[Negroes] who can swim.” He didn’t say “Negroes.”
They said that whites in Pennsylvania wouldn’t vote for Obama because of his remarks about the white working class being bitter and clinging to guns, a line that was worked by the corporate media almost as much as the Rev. Wright film, which became sort of the Zapruder moment during the primary. Obama won Pennsylvania. They said that white women wouldn’t vote for Obama because of the way he treated Hillary Clinton (whom he praised during debates and on the stump) yet Obama won the white women’s votes. Their breaking ranks with Gloria Steinem shows that the elite elements in the feminist movement are not only out of touch with their followers but follow a double standard when judging white and black men, a tendency noted by feminist critic bell hooks. The low point in the primary came when these women supported Sarah Palin, one of the worst demagogues in American history and probably the tackiest.
In a novel, Reckless Eyeballing, that left me for literary road kill and caused at least one boycott of my appearance at Baton Rouge led by feminist Emily Toth (it fizzled when a professor challenged them; they hadn’t read my books), I had a feminist character in my book defend Eva Braun on the grounds that she was a woman. I was reminded of this on November 18 when Tina Brown, the publisher of a zine called The Daily Beast and MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski carried on about how unfair the media treated Sarah Palin. Not to compare Sarah Palin with Eva Braun. Ms. Palin is more dangerous. Yet Ms. Brown and Mika Brzezinski succumbed to the hockey mom presentation of this rabble rouser by McCain campaign manager Rick Davis showing her cooking dinner with Bush One caddy, Matt Lauer and such. Mika agreed with Tina Brown. She said “it was pretty ugly it got really vicious — while images of Obama were overwhelmingly positive.” Like when Sarah Palin told Gwen Ifill that she would select which questions she wanted to answer during her debate with Joe Biden? Was the media unfair to Mrs. Palin? While Rev. Jeremiah Wright was subjected to a massive form of character assassination the media made little notice of Mrs. Palin’s ties to groups led by kooks. One of which was The Third Wave Movement. Here is how the publication Enlightened Catholicism described that movement.
The Third Wave Movement is also known as the New Apostolic Reformation, Joel’s Army, and The Manifest Sons Of God. Essentially this movement believes we have entered the end times. Joel’s Army sees this as evidenced by the passing of Roe V Wade in 1973, and that those born after this year are part of that army. All these linked groups believe they have a Divine Mandate to clean up the world by taking over the “seven secular mountains,” as explained in this quote from Mary Glazier. Mary Glazier is the leader of Palin’s ‘spiritual warfare group,’ an admission Palin made when interviewed by Focus On The Family: “Glazier’s sermon, which featured her comments on Palin, was given at a conference Opening the Gate of Heaven on Earth that also featured a number of speeches and sermons on the plans of leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation to take control of the seven ‘kingdoms’ of society through their ‘Seven Mountains Strategy.’”
Mika said, “what I liked about her was that she wasn’t guilty about being ambitious, being wired to work.” She cast the Palin family as “truly a modern American family.” Mika Brzezinski casted about for right-wing eyes when she concluded that the media were afraid to criticize Obama because he was black.
Her lowbrow appeal worked. She and “Morning Joe” have been hired to add a three-hour show on radio and she was the subject of a lengthy and flattering profile by Imus Howard Kurtz in The Washington Post.
But regardless of how Mrs. Palin became a pawn in the style of old South Carolina 2000 and Tennessee 2004 campaigns against black male candidates, which included race baiting, red baiting, and even reaching back to the nineteenth century by showing black men in the company of white women, it could have been worse. They could have nominated Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana Governor. This is a man who has such little regard for black life that he has failed to call for the prosecution of white vigilantes who massacred black men and women during the flooding of New Orleans. So sure of themselves that they are above the law, these vigilantes boasted about their killing spree on Dutch television. Blackwater, the off-the-shelf mercenary group, was down there killing people too. The Republican Party won’t abandon its Southern Strategy. It will most likely continue with a brown or yellow face fronting for it. An Indo-American like Jindal. Or a Vietnamese American, a member of a recently arrived immigrant group that might not be aware of the gains that the Civil Rights Movement has made for all colored groups. Vietnamese Americans voted for McCain even though he participated in bombing raids over their country, and called Asians “Gooks.”
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Sarah Palin was there a need for affirmative action following Obama’s successful ascendancy to the presidency. Blitzer is convinced that affirmative action is a black giveaway program yet the Department of Labor reports that the typical recipient of affirmative action is a white woman.
The most accurate account of affirmative action and those who benefit that I have read came in an exchange between Professor Sumi Cho, a visiting professor at the University of Michigan and University of Iowa law schools, who currently serves on the Board of Directors for LatCrit. Professor Cho holds a JD and a PhD in Ethnic Studies from the University of California at Berkeley and Rashida Tlaib, the Advocacy Coordinator for ACCESS, the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services. Ms. Tlaib earned her Jurist Doctorate degree from Thomas Cooley Law School and a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from Wayne State University. Both dismantled the myth of affirmative action as a black program and unveiled the media’s circus-like propaganda effort to make money from white resentment, in their case, Newsweek, but they could have had in mind CNN, MSNBC, and talk shows that reach millions of people. Their conclusions:
Contrary to popular belief, African Americans are not the sole, or even the primary, beneficiaries of affirmative action. Rather, a wide range of groups have benefited from these policies which promote equality by directing resources, outreach and other opportunities to targeted underrepresented communities.