Friday, February 1, 2008

A Few Words on the Hillary-Obama Debate

I have little to say, except that the debate was a spectacle of conviviality and (almost) friendship. You know? I almost feel cheated.

Fittingly, 2 songs were running through my head during the debate.

Song number one:



Song number two:



One great parody came to mind as well--just substitute Obama and Hillary as needed:



And bro'Bama when you gave that weak answer on immigration reform I wanted to "insert hand into throat" in order to vomit. Bro'Bama, you better wake up and come stronger on this issue because the "brown" part of the coalition you are pulling for has no love for a brother.

2 comments:

gordon gartrelle said...

That NY Times piece sucks

We trash people for treating black people as a monolithic group, yet the Times is doing just that with Latinos. That's lazy, irresponsible journalism.

chaunceydevega said...

I don't know Senior Gartrelle. Pero you pienso que no haya una problema aquia...oops I got confused again, it must have been a flashback to Middle School spanish class. But more seriously, I think you are wrong on this one. Looking at your embedded link, what folks are missing out on is the racial triangulation taking place with Latinos and Blacks. Part of this is strategic and not isolated to Latinos, meaning what group hasn't wanted to 1)either stand on our backs to get ahead and profit from our struggles, and 2) to distance themselves from black folk as a way of earning their "Americanness?" Meaning, "we aren't like those lazy black people!" or "We don't make any trouble, we can be good citizens!"

What some folks are right about is that there are Afro-Hispanics who are excluded from these conversations. But again, these groups often don't identify as either being black or share any group affinity with black people--thus the hyphenated names. Couple this with the deep racism in Hispanic countries (even the label "latino" has "racial" connotations) and there is more evidence in support of a claim that Latinos and Hispanics will be voting against Obama as much because of cues from their "leadership" as because of a need and want to not be associated with even a nominally black candidate.

The Irish, and other white ethnics, earned their whiteness in the 19th and early 20th centuries by hatin on black folks, now hispanics and latinos (as a group) are going to earn their whiteness by making the same types of rational, self-interested, and calculating decisions as did the "ethnic" groups which came before them.

Now, the kids of those black Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and a few others are going to be 2nd generation black folk cause they will have learned some lessons about how race operates in America. However, there parents are not going to come around any time soon.