Los Angeles is witness to a lot of things. RedState has extensively covered the audio footage in which Nury Martinez (Latina City Council President) calls Mike Bonin’s adopted black two-year-old son “a little monkey” while threatening to beat him.
Angry activists try to force their way into L.A. City Hall as councilmembers vote to elect Paul Krekorian as president. But BLM leader Melina Abdullah says they’re “putting someone in place that’s actually worse than Nury Martinez.” Tonight at 11 from ABC7 https://t.co/l5NgdjjcHO pic.twitter.com/aJtGmyjNuD
— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) October 19, 2022
These current events provide context for Tanya Hernandez’s Fordham professor Tanya Hernandez’s statements on “Latinos achieving Whiteness”. What I can say about LA is that there have been racially-motivated proxy wars and consolidations of power. They are all racists in the original meaning of the word and the woke-washed theory of institutionalized power as the basis for racism. All of those involved in this situation were Democrats or progressives with power or influence, I swear.
First, racism can be displayed by anyone. I don’t care about the mental gymnastics that academics come up with. I won’t agree that people shouldn’t treat others like crap based on their race. It doesn’t matter if you meet certain criteria that exempt you from basic ethics. Let’s move on.
I find the Hispanic name Tanya Hernandez (the professor) to be the most confusing thing about the article. She also calls herself a “race-law expert.” It is amazing that she can be so out of touch. After years of Latinos fighting the absurd term “Latinx”, we now have to explain the race to race experts. They want our language to be flexible to their preferences and impositions. However, the term “Latino”, which includes all Latinos, should not be considered a race.
Here are Hernandez’s remarks in an MSNBC interview.
“Well, there’s another layer. Some people in the Latino community can attain whiteness. One, because they are more European-looking, they prefer our European ancestors.” Two, depending on their accent, education level, and whether they have a recognizable Hispanic name, all these things allow a person to appear and seamlessly pass into whiteness or white Anglowhiteness just like they have whiteness in Latin America and the Caribbean.
I guess that I am trying to convey that despite the idea that all Latinos are brown, there are still Latinos who are white. This is their socially assigned race and they are entitled to enjoy that privilege.
It is genetically ascribed, not socially ascribed. I reject the notion that your race or being a likeness to your race (as Hernandez would claim) is dependent upon your features, accent, education, or name. It is based on DNA. This isn’t Ruby Bridges, on her journey to “achieving whiteness”. She’s actually on her path to school and toward equality in education. She is not being photographed becoming “more white” and thus moving towards racism. It’s quite the opposite.
Racist tropes like racial cultural fluidity and phrases like “Uncle Tom” and “have your black card revoked” are rooted in racist ideas. They use these phrases to silence identity and heritage and seek to value or qualify your existence. If someone says that you are not worthy or qualified to be… your race, they can take your race away.
Black people are always Black, regardless of their upbringing, status, education, or income bracket. This is not a difficult concept. This can be applied to any race. Hispanic/Latino is not a descriptor of a race. Hispanic/Latino describes an ethnicity. Most Hispanics are Caucasian unless they are Black, Asian, or of another race. Spain is located in Europe. The word “Hispanic”, which means that the person is from Spain, is a geographical term. Latino can be described as a geographic term that indicates… Latin America.
These concepts are combined to show that race is determined not only by genes but also by what language they speak and where they live. This allows you to understand how anyone can be of any race, as well as Hispanic/Latino.
Because my mother immigrated from Cuba, it is easy for me to see this. Because of its 400-year history under Spanish colonialism, Cuba is home to many black people. Cuba has more blacks per capita than the United States. You’ve probably seen black Cubans in American sports like boxing matches or professional baseball. Celia Cruz could be a black Cuban that you’re familiar with. Black is their race, no matter where they were born and what language they speak, they will be considered black. There are also many Asians in Cuba, mainly Chinese. They are called chino-Cubano. They are also Hispanic/Latino, and Asian.
It’s as absurd to say someone can’t identify as black or Latino or white or Latino.
Hernandez also points out that Latinos tend to think that all Latinos have brown skin. However, some browns are darker than others. This is just word-salad to stigmatize different levels of melanin and to set cultural expectations for others. She is claiming that there are brown whites and white blacks. Whatever, lady. This is what we call people.
Hernandez pulled back from the point that I almost agree with, which Hernandez wouldn’t call “passing”. Passing is when you don’t look or act like your race or ethnicity so that racists don’t notice you. It’s true. She insists instead that you can morph into an entire existence that is full of privilege and inherent whiteness… whatever that may mean. It doesn’t make Latinos’ “race” or “culture” “brown “…, or oppressed.
In spite of all her education, she was correct one time when she said that there were racial social systems in Latin America and the Caribbean. Did I mention the 400 years of Euro-colonial slave labor? Yet, lamenting against Latino whiteness ignores the racial makeup and feeds Marxist classism within a multi-ethnic ethnicity. Using arbitrary criteria, this is devaluing Latino voices within America. They don’t care about our family history or the experiences of other nations. They don’t care about our beliefs, our challenges, or our greatest contributions to society. They don’t see the humanity of humans.
Either you are the right type of Latino and not too white or your misunderstood “race” (actually, ethnicity) is taken away from you, and your ideas and contributions are devalued. This is racism.
It is wrong to say Nury Martinez “achieved” whiteness when she was exposed as a bigot. Even if leftist professors hadn’t redefined all words to be fluid concepts rather than objective definitions, nobody would have to go on TV to explain how a Latino can become racist by “achieving whiteness.”
This small worldview makes “whiteness” synonymous with racism. This definition says that there is no racism within China. However, the genocide of minorities is a humanitarian concern. Is the Chinese government white or Marxist?
Black means you are black and white means that you are white. You can also be mixed race, but brown is not a race, nor is Latino. I did not have to be white; I was Hispanic and born white. Ta-da! Even though I have a guilt-free history of the white-Irish plight and am not guilty of it, I can still see that LA is wildly racist, Marxist, and insane. Academia wants to know if there is any other answer than the obvious: Everyone can be racist.
