Rogues, Robes and Racists - "Oh, the hypocrisy!" - By Charles Blow

[jefferson_dem]

Rogues, Robes and Racists
By CHARLES M. BLOW

Someone pinch me. I must be dreaming. Some of the same Republicans who have wielded the hot blade of racial divisiveness for years, are now calling Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court nominee, a racist. Oh, the hypocrisy!

The same Newt Gingrich who once said that bilingual education was like teaching “the language of living in a ghetto” tweeted that Sotomayor is a “Latina woman racist.” The same Rush Limbaugh who once told a black caller to “take that bone out of your nose and call me back” called Sotomayor a “reverse racist.” The same Tom Tancredo, a former congressman, who once called Miami, which has a mostly Hispanic population, “a third world country” said that Sotomayor “appears to be a racist.”

This is rich.

Even Michael Steele, the bungling chairman of The Willie Horton Party knows that the Republicans have no standing on this issue. In an interview published in GQ magazine in March, he was asked: “Why do you think so few nonwhite Americans support the Republican Party right now?” His response: “Cause we have offered them nothing! And the impression we’ve created is that we don’t give a damn about them or we just outright don’t like them.” Ding, ding, ding, ding.

Ironically, one of the candidates who was defeated by Steele for the chairmanship sent out Christmas CDs that included a song entitled “Barack the Magic Negro.” Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.

Politically, this “racist” strategy could prove disastrous. Hispanics are the largest and the fastest-growing minority group in the country. And, in recent years, they have increasingly been the victims of racial discrimination. It will be hard to paint the victims, as personified by Sotomayor, as the offenders.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/opinion/30blow.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. That's soooo right

In my extended family are many many Republicans. But one of my first cousins once removed married a Puerto Rican--a scandal at the time (because he was Catholic), but everyone got over it and now he's one of the favorites at family reunions. Can't help but think that Cuz and family will be re-thinking their political allegiance if they haven't already.

[Adelante]

2. Something similar happened in my family -- twice

In the 1940s my uncle married an Italian woman. At that time, it was a family shock, a mixed marriage because she was Catholic, but also there was still a lot of prejudice against Italians. In the 1970s this same uncle's son married a Puerto Rican woman and my uncle almost had a stroke over it. He came to adore his daughter in law, although he is proudly anti-Catholic to this day, as a very old man, despite the two closest women in his life being Catholic. Of course, he sees them as exceptions. But his racial views have really broadened and he was wheeled out of the house to vote for Obama. I've thought about this every now and then over the years, how family events can have such impact on consciousness through growing familiarity with a different culture. He still bitches that my brother who died in the 60s was buried in a Catholic cemetery by his Irish wife, however.