Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

"Send 'em back with a bullet in the head the second time."

Said a man with a megaphone outside an Obama health care rally.

There has been much discussion here about health care reform, about open racism on the airwaves and the increasing threats against the life of our POTUS. But I’m warning that the second firestorm of hate is about to roll down the mountainsides of our land like lava.  

We already have hate(post 9/11)the Arabs/Muslims.  We have a long history of hate the scary black people. We now have a black POTUS with a scary Muslim middle name, who is the head of our country, who isn’t going to be allowed to talk to school kids.  

But if you think it’s bad now, just wait.  Lou Dobbs and his minions, though right now eclipsed by Glenn Beck and his Beckette’s, are waiting, yes, salivating in the wings, to unleash the lash against the “aliens” among us. War of the Worlds. Part II.  

Those brown people, the ones who pick the fruits and veggies, wash the dishes in diners, empty the trash and wax the floors of your office, prune the bushes, and nanny the babies, have ancestors who have been here on this continent since before Columbus got lost and bumped into some islands.  Those brown people, with surnames like Vasquez, and Sanchez, and yes, Sotomayor, are invading, and having babies and taking over red, white and blue America.

Yeah, call ’em Latinos, or Hispanics, what’s the difference? They all look alike anyway.  From the people who brought you “The Only Good Indian is a dead Indian” sentiment, we’ve now got Indians (and Africans) with strange sounding surnames, who have to be sent back somewhere, fast.  Preferably with a bullet to the head.  Perhaps we should change the strange sounding names of states like Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Nuevo Mexico, Tejas, to something more Anglo. More American.  

I would venture a guess that Health Care Reform, like Medicare would be okay for folks if they could figure out a way to keep poor people (you know those brown and black and red and yellow folks) from accessing it.  Heaven forbid that Carlos, while working on the local farm, should get his hand caught in some machinery and have to go to the emergency room.  Forget about Nilda, who just made your bed in the hotel, and cleaned up your shit(and you forgot to leave a tip)should have a child who has the measles. Screw Juana, from the Phillipines who emptied your bedpan.

Build the walls higher (but only to the south- hopefully folks will leave following the North Star to Canada on the Second Underground railroad to freedom and health care).  Send out Blackhawk copters.  Secure the borders, we are under siege.

The haters have already got plenty of those brown and black people locked up in our nations prisons which are bursting at the seams.  Congratulations U.S.A. You win the prison Olympics. No more room at the inn. Shit, there weren’t enough buses to get those third world types out of New Orleans (are they Americans anyway?) so let’s just find a quick fix.  The Lone Ranger used silver bullets.  Wonder why he didn’t use ’em on his sidekick who was named Tonto (stupid)?  No matter.

I realize that you folks are focused on town halls, teabaggers, birthers, and bigots with a capital B.  But listen carefully to the subtext. America is doomed.  The black man who forced a wise Latina down our throats, is gonna let those brown folks steal us blind and rob us of our heritage. We now have Nativism with a capital N.

No matter those folks bleed red blood like everyone else, and die like everyone else in our wars.  No matter that they pay taxes, and sustain local economies.  Get them out. By any means necessary.

Fuego, fuego fuego…the firestorm is coming.  

Wayyyy back in 2006 the Southern Policy Law Center issued a report called White Hot: Across the country, the overheated immigration debate fuels racist extremism and violent, anti-Hispanic hate crimes.

But that was in 2006.  Surely things have gotten better in our post-racial paradise?

This story came out yesterday:  Study: Anti-Immigrant Hate Crimes Persist

NEW YORK-According to a research report released by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on Wednesday, Latino immigrants of Suffolk County, N.Y., are abused and discriminated against, on a regular basis, leading to an atmosphere of terror in the region.

The research was conducted in the aftermath of a brutal killing of an Ecuadorian immigrant, Marcelo Lucero, in Patchogue, N.Y., on November 8, 2008, which received national attention. Police reports indicate that the murder was executed by a group of seven teenagers, known as “Caucasian Crew,” who routinely conducted physical attacks on Latino immigrants. Following this tragic incident, a Spanish-speaking researcher from SPLC was sent to interview legal and illegal immigrants in the region.

The report cites numerous incidents of unjust racial profiling, harassment, verbal attacks, and physical beatings experienced by Latino residents of Suffolk County; including first-person accounts. Some of the listed examples include beatings with baseball bats, being shot with BB guns, and being run off the road while riding bicycles.

“I was crossing the street, and there was a car coming. First, they stopped for me to cross the street, and then, when I am crossing, they ran me over. When I fell on the ground, they got out of the car and kicked me,” recalled Carlos Morales, who moved from Mexico in 1998, in his interview published in the report. “They took baseball bats out of the back of their car. They hit me on my knees, in the face, on my back. One of them put his foot on my mouth and said, ‘You should go back to where you come from, you dirty Mexican.’ And he continued to hit me,” he continued.

I’ve been out to do research in Suffolk County NY.  Have interviews with hundreds of farm workers, and immigrants.  Seen the same stuff in Nassau county, Westchester and Putnam.  This is not the south folks.  So no way to point a finger down there.  

Time to wake up and smell the cafe folks.

Cross posted at Daily Kos


Categories: General.

/ 50 Comments

50 comments

  1. Chris Blask

    It is becoming obvious that the opportunity for the forces of fear to culminate in the actions of their worst members.  Joe Scarborough – who I generally respect as a reasonable conservative voice – was arguing that “fear is a valid emotion” the other morning to no push-back.

    Fear is not a valid emotion to base decisions on.  It is a blind and stupid emotion reserved for animal reactions to uncontrolled and un-understood threats.

    The fostering and fanning of fear is making it possible for those on the furthest extreme to mingle with a more passable crowd.  My eventful exit from a Glen Beck group I had joined was triggered by my desire to point out to these basically reasonable (well, most of them) folks that they were associating with extremists that they would not willingly support.  Their response was “hey, it’s not us saying those things” but they miss the point that they are fans of the same things, they are promoting the same memes, and they are providing legitimacy to insanity:

    Cxxxxxx, he is talking about the comments on YouTube at the bottom of one of those videos. The videos themselves are old, but the comments are new (one within 24 hours).

    This would be character assassination by association.  At the beginning he asks a question, but by the end gives his predetermined conclusion of “white supremacist”. I am not

    I feel we will have a lot of interviews in years to come with people like these, and they will consist of “I never supported the violence that followed…”  No, but you enabled it.

  3. John Allen

    unless you are talking about some far distant future.

    I read a lot of blog comment threads and am usually unhappy when people accuse anyone who opposes the President’s proposals of being a racist even when the person hasn’t made any comment that could be considered in the least racist. However, the more comments I read and the more hate I see out there the more I come to realize that much of the hatred really is about race. All this talk about taking back “our country” is based on race. Twisting President Obama’s name to thinks like “Obumbo” or making negative comments about Michelle Obama are clear signs that the writer is influenced by racial hatred.

    The supposed fear of “soshulism” or “dirty commies” isn’t about conservative vs liberal. It is a fear of the browning of America. The feeling that whites are no longer in charge.

    These are the people that say the Civil War never ended. As far as they are concerned the last 150 years are only an intermission. Their parents or grandparents probably went to watch a lynching for entertainment.

    Thankfully, they aren’t the majority and never have been. But there are enough of them to still cause mayhem. One small group, like the one in Patchogue can terrorize an entire community.

    Sadly, I believe we all have a bit of racism in our bones. It comes from our distant ancestors. Fear of the outsider is even common among animal groups. It is hard not to note the differences when we look at someone of a different color or speak to someone who has a different accent. That isn’t racism. Letting it influence your feelings about that other person is racism.

    I hate to say it, but this is going to get worse before it gets better. There won’t be a change until communities demand change and pressure their local officials to crack down on this type of behavior.

    BTW, they’ll need to rename Michigan too, since the name comes from an Algonquin word. And the name of the largest city in Michigan comes from those dirty Frenchies.

  4. NavyBlueWife

    It’s open season on outward discrimination on Hispanics.  I have had people say things to me in public places without even knowing who I am about how all the Mexicans are ruining everything.  And of course, growing up in South Carolina, all you have to do is substitute “Mexicans” with “blacks.”

    I would think it is exhausting being so hateful, but they keep proving me wrong.

    By the way, I love SPLC.  Amazing work they do.  Makes me proud to be a lawyer because they make being a lawyer a noble profession.

  5. sricki

    the racial tension in this country. It’s always been here, of course, with varying degrees of outward visibility. It’s not just an undercurrent anymore though. And maybe it never was for a lot of people. But it just seems to me that, of late, the racially charged rhetoric is getting louder and louder. Of course, much of that has to do with the fact that we’ve recently elected our first African American president. Racial tensions are reaching a boiling point, and hate is bubbling to the surface, where perhaps it was once better hidden — or at least less proudly flaunted.

    The people who believed we would inherit a post-racial society after Obama’s election were naive, and have been sorely disappointed (if their eyes are open, anyway).

    But it seems to me as if people like Dobbs are getting louder too — not just in their racist rantings against the president, but in their xenophobic hysterics over immigrants. It’s both dangerous and sad. My heart goes out to the immigrant community, legal AND otherwise. Immigration reform is going to be a real circus. We think the backlash against healthcare is bad? Just wait until Obama and his pals in Congress start trying to help brown people. He’ll REALLY be labeled a racist and a white-hater then.

    Speaking of racism, discrimination, etc., I’d really like to have an in depth racial dialogue on The Moose. I’m reading a book on multiculturalism right now, and I’m very interested in the authors’ ideas about what it means to be white. They write from a minority viewpoint (they are Asian American, I believe), and they have some fascinating insights about white “culture”. When I finish the book, I think I’ll write a diary on it — I would love a really open, honest discussion, and I can’t think of a better place to have it than here on The Moose.

  6. creamer

    Are we wired that way? We live in the most dominant culture the world has ever seen yet there are those among us who fear a black President addressing their school children. We have a Dobbs and Tancredo who make their  living screaming about a brown invasion.The disconnect from empathy disturbs me.

    Every child has at one point in their life been on the recieving end of taunts and cruel jokes. Black, white, brown weve all been there. How do so many lose the memory of the pain that causes and find themselves doing it to “others” without remorse. Raised a middle class white, I can only imagine how painful taunts and jokes must be for non whites as they grow up where the dominant culture looks a little different than they.

     When Michelle Obama said she was “finally proud of her country”, I knew what she meant and felt some embarrassment. That emotion coupled with anger is what I most often feel when it comes to race in this country.

    One last thought, as our economy recovers and then begins to grow again, we will reach a point where we our more and more reliant on imigrants and guest workers to fill the jobs the new economy will bring. Jobs that must come and must be filled if we are to generate enough revenue to pay for retiring baby boomers. With that the demogrphics of the Southwest will change radically and forever.

  7. John Allen

    is less prevalent than it used to be. But that is wishful thinking. This picture by Norman Rockwell has always had a strong effect on me.

    Ruby Bridges, the little girl in the picture, is actually 7 years younger than me. She was the first African-American to attend an all-white school in the South. That event was commemorated in Rockwell’s painting The Problem We All Live With.

    Here are a few quotes from the wiki page about Ruby Bridges.

    As Bridges describes it, “Driving up I could see the crowd, but living in New Orleans, I actually thought it was Mardi Gras. There was a large crowd of people outside of the school. They were throwing things and shouting, and that sort of goes on in New Orleans at Mardi Gras.”[3] Former marshal Charles Burks later recalled, “She showed a lot of courage. She never cried. She didn’t whimper. She just marched along like a little soldier, and we’re all very proud of her.”

    As soon as Bridges got into the school, white parents went in and brought their own children out; all but one of the white teachers also refused to teach while a black child was enrolled. Only Barbara Henry, from Boston, Massachusetts, was willing to teach Bridges, and for over a year Mrs. Henry taught her alone, “as if she were teaching a whole class.” That first day, Bridges and her adult companions spent the entire day in the principal’s office; the chaos of the school prevented their moving to the classroom until the second day. Every morning, as Bridges walked to school, one woman would threaten to poison her,[5] because of this, the marshals overseeing her only allowed Ruby to eat food that she brought from home. Another woman at the school put a black baby doll in a wooden coffin and protested with it outside the school, a sight that Bridges Hall has said “scared me more than the nasty things people screamed at us.” At her mother’s suggestion, Bridges began to pray on the way to school, which she found provided protection from the comments yelled at her on the daily walks.

    The Bridges family suffered for their decision to send her to William Frantz Elementary: her father lost his job, and her grandparents, who were sharecroppers in Mississippi, were turned off their land. She has noted that many others in the community both black and white showed support in a variety of ways. Some white families continued to send their children to Frantz despite the protests, a neighbor provided her father with a new job, and local people babysat, watched the house as protectors, and walked behind the federal marshals’ car on the trips to school.

    This all happened almost 50 years ago. We like to think we’ve come a long way since then, but, I say again, that is wishful thinking. Many of the parents who pulled their children from that school may no longer be with us, but some of them are still alive. Many of them have passed their hatred on to their children who in turn have passed it on to their children. They are the ones who carry on the legacy of racism and hate.

    None of us are born racist. We have to be taught to hate others. As long as there are parents out there teaching their children to hate we will have haters amongst us.

  8. Hollede

    race is a huge factor for the anti-Obama sentiment, we cannot forget that these lunatics were out in full force when President Clinton was in office. I remember G Gordon Libby say something to the effect of “go for the head shot” because of bullet proof vests warn by the ATF, FBI, and other government law enforcement.

    The shit I have seen lately makes that look like a walk in the park, but for some reason these types of people believe that Democrats are out to destroy our country, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

    The question I ask is, why support a Ronald Reagan or ‘lil shrub who actively took steps to restrict and shred our Constitutional rights? It seems so backassward.  

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