Nagourney’s Black/Brown Tension Piece Based on Anecdote

In Tuesday’s New York Times, Adam Nagourney picks up on the Blacks and Latinos don’t get along and that’s bad for Obama meme that I’ve seen elsewhere, and blogged about. Nagourney provides lots of anecdote, but only two pieces of data– both of which run counter to his argument that Latinos won’t vote for African-Americans:

Mr. Obama confronts a history of often uneasy and competitive relations between blacks and Hispanics, particularly as they have jockeyed for influence in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and New York.

The statement is not invalid– as Antonio Villaraigosa says in the article, “There are tensions among all groups,” and Black/Brown feelings have been hot at times in LA recently, as JDL recently noted. But Nagourney sites solely on quotes from a handful of people to make the case.

We hear from Natasha Carrillo, 20:  “Many Latinos are not ready for a person of color…I don’t think many Latinos will vote for Obama… I helped organize citizenship drives, and those who I’ve talked to support Clinton.” Javier Perez reports that his Grandmother doesn’t like Blacks. Nevada assemblyman, and Clinton backer, Ruben Kihuen says Latinos gravitate towards Hillary because “the Hispanic community is very family oriented, and we respect our mothers.” And Albert M. Camarillo, founding director of Standford’ Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity concludes that Latinos “might not go into the direction of the Obama camp,” not based on any data, but rather on his observation that “there have been enormous misunderstandings and conflicts over local resources and political representations between the two group.”

(Nagourney could have cited the support Obama picked up Sunday from state senator, and former labor leader, Gil Cedillo and ex-senator Martha Escuita. Or, from California Senate majority leader Gloria Romero. or, for that matter, the endorsements he received Monday from Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena; former Rep. Mel Levine; Assemblyman Ted Lieu, D-El Segundo; Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks; West Hollywood Mayor John Duran and Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke, not to mention from Rep. Zoe Lofgren. )

The only numbers Nagourney cites to support his thesis are the percentage of the Black vote that LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa received in his two runs for City Hall: 50% in his successful 2005 run, up from 20% in 2001, according to reports of exit polls. That’s right: Nagourney’s one example of a Latino politician enveloped in Black/Brown strife won half of the Black vote in his last campaign.

Nagourney would have done well to take a look at the piece John Judis wrote last month, Hillary Clinton’s Firewall, in which he cites academic scholarship that shows ingrained racist attitudes among a large number of Latinos.

African American and Latino sociologists have been conducting extensive surveys in Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and Philadelphia. These surveys have generally found that Latinos display more prejudice toward African Americans than African Americans do toward Latinos or than whites display toward African Americans. In the words of University of Houston sociologist Tatcho Mindiola, Jr. and two associates, “in general African Americans have more positive views of Hispanics than vice versa.”

Judis also cites an early December poll from the Pew Hispanic Center in which Obama’s Latino support was 15%.

Could hostility toward and rivalry with blacks be a factor in Obama’s abysmal support among Latinos? It’s hard to say, but it’s certainly possible. And if it is a factor–and not simply the result of the Obama campaign’s inattention to Latino voters–then Clinton should benefit from this vote in the primaries and caucuses in states like California even if she loses in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.

Latino Voters in Nevada and Califas: “Outside the wave of Obama-mania?”

Given Michael Whouley’s latest revival job and Bill Richardson’s apparently imminent departure, Latino voters, in Nevada on January 19 and California on Feb. 5 , are being hotly pursued by the remaining Democratic candidates.

For starters, we’re unlikely to see Hillary tryto paint Obama as overly pro-immigrant, as she did earlier this month. Absentee voting began Monday in California. In LA, JDL links to a Daily News article that notes that half of all 18-24 year-old voters are Latino. Jaime Regalado of Cal State LA’s Pat Brown Institute: “The negative focus on immigration could also get more young Latinos to the polls. This is one way for these young people to express their anger and exercise their political rights.” JDL further places the election within the context of SoCal (racial and generational) politics:

Current Black-Brown tensions and the recent focus on immigration will make the Obama – Hillary fight a microcosm of Los Angeles class and racial politics. Latino political heavy weights like Antonio Villaraigosa and Fabian Nunez have lined up behind Hillary. Other Los Angeles-based politicians, Assembly Majority Leader Karen Bass, City Council President Eric Garcetti, and Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero, have thrown their support behind Obama. Labor is split on the two candidates. …[I]t will be an entertaining month.

In addition to immigration, California’s economic crisis will be a central issue for Latino and non-Latino voters (the mortgage crisis, the state’s $14 billion budget deficit, the Hollywood writers’ strike, the price of gas), as will issues of police brutality and gangs. That’s a lot to fit into a 30-second spot in any language.

But first Nevada, where Obama picked up the immigrant-driven SEIU and Culinary Workers endorsements. Will Clinton ally, and Cuban-American, Sen. Bob Menendez’s weekend’s foray into the state have an impact on the mostly Chicano, Mexican, and Central American voters?

Writing from New York for New America Media, Robert Lovato points out that another effect of New Hampshire is that the Dems aren’t the only ones chasing the non-Cuban Latino vote:

McCain’s unique challenge to Democrats for the Latino vote comes down to simple math: his GOP rivals’ zeal to win white votes with anti-immigrant appeals is perceived by my father (“I’ll be below the earth before voting for any of them”) and other Latinos, as severely anti-immigrant and anti-Latino, if not racist. McCain’s calls to treat immigrants “humanely” during the Spanish-language GOP debate contrasted strikingly with the smiley “get tough” talk of his shrill opponents…

[W]hen Democrats are evasive -– as in Clinton’s driver’s license flip-flop or when Obama vacillated after being asked by Univision anchors about his vote for the border wall — I see the moral and political opening exploited by Bush in 2004, and McCain before 2008. My father and most Latinos reject the wall as a “muro de la muerte” (wall of death). That the immigration debate merits neither Clinton’s attention nor Obama’s abundant rhetorical powers explains Latinos’ frustration (documented in the recent Pew Hispanic poll) and leaves many of us outside the wave of Obama-mania.

What Ugly Betty Can Learn from Fruit of the Loom

It’s Hispanic Heritage Month– something I hadn’t realized until Al Michaels and John Madden told me, repeatedly, during Sunday Night Football. (That’s the only thing I want to remember from the disastrous Bears game. I don’t even want to remember that odd Ozomatli halftime performance.) Perhaps that’s why I found the Ugly Betty marathon yesterday on ABC Family. The show’s scenary design is fresh and it’s nice to see a show that has more than token Latino representation– as Vivir Latino noted upon the show’s debut last year, “when was the last time we saw a Latina featured on a network primetime spot?” I was quickly bothered, howevered, by the fact that a supposedly Mexican-American family in Corona, Queens features so many characters speaking with Caribbean accents. Synergybc last week “was really annoyed at the very Puerto Rican/New Yorican-like sister and the baby daddy.” I hesitate to criticize one of the only English language shows that employs Latino actors– including two native Philadelphians, Ana Ortiz and Mark Indelicato– but surely we viewers are sophisticated enough to know that all Hispanics dress and talk the same.

Marketer John Gallegos, the subject of Cynthia Gorney’s How Do You Say ‘Got Milk’ en Español? in the NYT magazine, thinks Latinos are sophisticated enough.

[Latinos] are multiplying so fast in certain parts of the country — nearly a 1,000 percent increase in Atlanta, for example, between 1980 and 2000 — that one recent report used the term “hypergrowth.” More than half come from or have origins in Mexico, but the array of homelands is extensive; when Grupo Gallegos got the Fruit of the Loom account a few years ago, Favio Ucedo, the Argentine chief creative director, decided to Hispanicize the four fruit guys, all of whom hover around in the ads offering underwear advice, via some mother-country humor that in Spanish constituted a collective private joke. He made Apple Guy and Leaf Guy Mexicans, hiring Mexican actors and giving them script lines that indicated they were the group leaders. Red Grape Guy became a Caribbean, dark-skinned and the best dancer, with the lilting half-swallowed Spanish of Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic. There had to be a South American, Ucedo decided, so he tipped his hat to his countrymen’s unfortunate reputation elsewhere in Latin America and made Green Grape Guy an ego-inflated, overbearing Argentine, a caricature Ucedo knew Mexicans especially would relish.

One of the highlights of the episodes I saw yesterday was seeing Rita Moreno playing Betty’s tipsy chismosa aunt in Guadalajara. Reminded me of the first time I saw her on TV, on the Muppets.