As you probably already know, right wing, anti-immigration extremist Tom Tancredo went on CNN yesterday and accused Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor of being a member of a "Latino KKK" (known to people like John McCain as the perfectly uncontroversial National Council of La Raza).What you might have missed was that Tancredo claimed NCLR's motto (he actually called it a "logo") says, "All for the race. Nothing for the rest."
As it turns out, NCLR doesn't even have a motto. According to Lisa Navarrete, the group's vice president, the group has a mission statement--in English--which reads "to improve opportunities for Hispanic Americans."
The motto Tancredo's referring to seems to be a mistranslation of a slogan of sorts from the 1960s:"Por La Raza todo, fuera de La Raza nada," meaning, literally, "for the race [or community], everything; outside the race, nothing."
It's a line that appears in a 60's era manifesto called El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, which was influential to members of a separate group called MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán). Several decades ago, MEChA was a fairly radical student organization, whose mission was to return the lands of the southwest United States to Mexico--an idea called "reconquista." Since then it has become, basically, the equivalent of a Mexican Students Association at most colleges across the country. ]
MEChA, as it happens, does have a motto: "La Unión Hace La Fuerza", meaning, basically, "Unity Makes Strength."
NCLR's website is pretty clear about reconquista.
Another misconception about NCLR is the allegation that we support a "Reconquista," or the right of Mexico to reclaim land in the southwestern United States. NCLR has not made and does not make any such claim; indeed, such a claim is so far outside of the mainstream of the Latino community that we find it incredible that our critics raise it as an issue. NCLR has never supported and does not endorse the notion of a "Reconquista" or "Aztlán."These are the sort of ambiguities that I suppose you miss, if you can't tell the difference between a motto and a logo, or MEChA and NCLR, or, dare we say, people of Puerto Rican and Mexican descent.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Republican racists calling Sotomayor racist, part 2
I mentioned the squad of "Republican civil rights activists" slandering Judge Sotomayor yesterday. The subject of that post was the Ricci case and how it reflects the Republicans' fundamental support for judicial activism, in spite of their protestations against liberal judicial activism. Brian Beutler at Talking Points Memo today reported that Tom Tancredo accused Judge Sotomayor of being a member of a "Latino KKK" in an interview on CNN yesterday. Tancredo reached this bizarre and totally baseless accusation through a byzantine string of racially motivated factual and logical errors. Why is this not surprising?
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"La Raza" literally means "The Race" and they are clearly and explicitly an organization created and intended to the ethnic interests of Mestizo people.
Fair is fair. Mestizo people have every right to organize themselves to promote their group interests, as do all other people whether they be afro-americans, American Indians or Gay Chinese Bobsledders. In a free country people have the right to organize themselves.
White people also have a right to organize themselves to promote their own ethnic interests, and yes white people are an ethnic group and do have ethnic interests just like everyone else, not as though they would need any justification to organize, so long as they are not organizing to do harm or violence to someone else.
Say a Judcial pick was a member of David Duke's "Euro" organization which is identical to La Raza or the NAACP except that they seek to promote civil rights for white people and the equality of all races under the law. Of course, they would be called a racist.
The term Racist is meaningless, because it only applies to white people. The most accurate definition of racism is Ethnocentrism expressed by a person of European orgins. For every other group of people on the planet, racism is just ethnocentrism and is perfectly acceptable, unless you are white. Since the idea of racism is exclusive to only one race of people, the term has little meaning, if any.
Judge Sotomayor is anti-white, which is to say that she is against the white majority in this country, which happens to be the ethnic group that this country was founded by and founded for. Until 1865, 100% of the citizens of the United States were white people of European Orgin. From 1865-1970, about 90% of this country was of European orgins.
White people made this the best country on Earth, a country where all of these non-whites wanted to migrate to. Criticizing the people who made this such a great country, and who established the constitution which she swore to uphold on the basis of their race does not instill confidence in me, and causes me to honestly believe that there is a conspiracy to genocide my race from this planet.
White people have the same right to survival and self determination as all people of every ethnic background, and the current government of the United States is openly destructive to our fundamental rights. I hope that more white people will wake up and realize that "Yes, they really do want to 'kill whitey'".
Daniel:
You say that President Obama was a member of a "black nazi church". That confirms the main point of my post, which is that the anti-Obama, anti-Sotomayor rhetoric has been excessive and racist.
I'm trying to decide which fairy tale best describes your allegation that the president is "screwing Israel". Is it "Chicken Little" or "The Boy Who Cried Wolf"? How on earth can support your claim that Israel has suffered as the result of his four month presidency?
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