Hispanic Fanatic

The New York Times recently reported on a small rural town where longtime residents complain about “young Mexican men working construction and driving down wages, the children of laborers flooding crowded schools…and strip clubs springing up on roads that used to be dark and quiet.”

Is the town in Wisconsin, Kansas, Alabama, or even (shudder) Arizona? No, it is “a precolonial Mexican village outside Oaxaca City, filling up with fellow Mexicans.”

It seems that the urge to hate immigrants — even of the same nationality — is universal.

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Wow, I almost let MLK Day pass without directing you to an article I recently wrote for Being Latino about the great man himself.

It’s more or less about… well, you can see for yourself by clicking here.

In the meantime, take this newest of federal holidays off. And practice peace, love, and compassion toward your fellow human beings.

Yeah, that all sounds pretty good. Should be easy to do.

If anyone kills a person, the murderer shall be put to death.

The Bible — Numbers 35:30

The dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil.

Pope John Paul II

Each of us has, to some degree, an unhealthy capacity for revenge. And that trait flows from us as individuals into society at large. This unflattering characteristic is one of the driving forces behind capital punishment.

As opposed to many political or cultural debates, there is no middle ground in this. You either want to string killers up or you don’t.

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Twenty years ago, I had my only direct experience with racial set-asides. I won a hundred dollars in an essay contest for Hispanic teens. Of course, kids of any race could enter, but it was clearly aimed at Latinos. I can’t recall ever being part of another program that was, whether stated or implied, just for Hispanics.

As such, I’m still waiting for those affirmative action quotas that will rocket me to the top of any employer’s wish list. Supposedly, all I have to do is show up in an HR office, mention my last name, and sit back while all the qualified white candidates are shoved out windows to make way for me.

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I have been remiss. Some time ago, I was interviewed by Derrick Witherspoon for the internet radio show Reckless 2.0. We talked about ethnicity in America, racial categorization, and of course, the Wisconsin State Fair (really, it all related).

But as well as the interview went (which is not to say that Mr. Witherspoon and I agreed on everything), I haven’t promoted it on this site until now. Sorry about that — I apparently suffered a Rick Perry-level brain freeze… well certainly not that bad, but you get the picture.

To listen to the interview, which means that you will actually hear the sound of my voice (freaky!), just click here.

In America, you can be anything you want to be, and everybody has unlimited potential…

Well, if that were really true, the entire population would be nothing but rock stars, senators, Oscar-winning actresses, and NFL quarterbacks.

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Apparently, a bunch of sluts were running around my city recently.

I’m talking, of course, about the SlutWalk movement, which began earlier this year when a Toronto cop implied that women who dressed like “sluts” deserved to get raped. Outraged at the cop’s statement, women all over North America hit the streets both to protest the Neanderthal mindset that afflicts so many males, and to repurpose the word “slut.”

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My old neighborhood in New York City has become a bit of a yuppie den. My current neighborhood in Los Angeles is apparently being overrun by hipsters.

Can any of us escape gentrification?

As I wrote recently, Latino neighborhoods have increasingly become gentrified as white people move into what used to be called the barrio. This process is either a solution to urban blight or a desecration of Hispanic culture, depending on whether you’re the gentrifier or the gentrifee (yes, I made those words up, don’t bother to comment on them).

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Like all Americans, nothing makes me happier than arguing about emotionally loaded, extremely volatile political issues that have no clear solutions. Yes, that’s why I write about immigration so much.

However, I now realized that I haven’t been fair. I’ve simply assumed that racism — directed toward Latinos — is a primary motivating factor in the debate. But is this true?

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I live in a gentrified neighborhood.

At least that’s what I found out recently, when I spoke to a longtime area resident who informed me that “the damn hipsters came in and ruined everything.”

He didn’t consider me an invader, even though I moved into the neighborhood just two years ago. I presume my Latino status prevents me from being one of those evil hipsters (well, that and the fact that my iPod doesn’t have a single Belle & Sebastian song on it).

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